amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
No way, that's awesome! I'll give it a try for sure!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Hmmm never used xubuntu per se, but XFCE already seems like a good option for a low-spec computer. You could probably chip away at the resource usage some more by building your own desktop environment around a bare window manager, but honestly at this point the gain is negligible. If anything, you might want to look into tiling window managers just because they can offer a much more fluid and customizeable desktop experience as opposed to floating WMs. I'm using BSPWM right now, but considering switching to wayland with hyprland or qtile.
As for choice of distro: Not sure if NixOS would run well on your machine -- my homeserver is also a pretty low-spec computer (dual-core Intel Atom), and nixos-rebuild switch
takes ages to run. Otherwise, go for Debian Testing if you want stability, Void if you want to not have systemd. There's also Devuan, which is basically Debian without systemd, but iirc it's not as popular as Void. But honestly if xubuntu works for you, then it's fine.
Also, some miscellaneous tweaks for improved performance:
- IF YOU BOOT FROM A HARD DRIVE REPLACE IT WITH AN SSD! Solid-state drives are pretty cheap nowadays, and the upgrade from hdd to sdd is the single biggest performance improvement you can do for an old laptop
- If on x11, disable compositing. On XFCE, there should be an option for it somewhere in the settings. If on a bare window manager, simply don't install any compositing manager (picom, xcompmgr, etc.). The downside is screen tearing and no proper window transparency, but it does put less strain on the CPU.
- Consider looking into a custom linux kernel? I boot linux-tkg on my main laptop and it gives some pretty good performance improvements. But I'm not so sure whether it would translate well to a low-spec system.
- Again, not exactly a performance tip, but consider formatting your boot partition as btrfs. Apart from all of the other cool features that you get with BTRFS, transparent file compression can, in some cases, be a win-win-win situation: less disk usage, faster file access, and longer SSD longevity. On low end system tho it may actually be the case that the CPU is the bottleneck as opposed to the disk, so transparent file compression may actually slow things down. Here are the settings I use for btrfs on my laptop (thinkpad with a core i7-5600U, mSATA solid state drive):
lazytime,noatime,autodefrag,compress=zstd:3,discard=async,space_cache=v2,ssd
. Again, not sure how well these translate to a low-end system, you should do your research. - If your system supports uefi, consider using EFISTUB as opposed to Grub. Much faster boot times. Another option is to add two efi entries: one for EFISTUB (and have that be the default), and a second one for Grub, for when you need to change boot options or boot into recovery mode.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
I personally use KeepassXC on my laptop and KeepassDX on my phone, and keep them synchronized with Syncthing. Works great, and no need for third-party / cloud storage!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
I'm curious, how do you manage passwords in your web browser? Do you use the keepassxc browser extension? Or just copy-paste from keepassxc manually?
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Nice, I have the exact same setup! Do you sync it to your phone too? What app do you use on your phone to read the database file? (I myself use keepassdx)
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Any reason to use the original Keepass over KeepassXC? Also, tip for anyone using Keepass or KeepassXC: there's an Android app called KeepassDX that supports the keepass database format, so you can keep your passwords synchronized between your computer and phone by simply syncing the database file with Syncthing. No third-party server required!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
It still blows my mind that with nixos, setting up and continuously renewing an ssl cert is literally just two lines in the config file. I use nixos on my homeserver, thinking about switching my laptop to it too (currently Void linux).
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Yeah exactly. Op's meme looks like the rage comics I used to make on my ipad in elementary school.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Ugh this is me rn. Spent like 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get NixOS to request a new DHCP lease. Reconnecting to the network? Nope, same IP. dhclient? Nope, not on NixOS. systemd-networkd? Keeps throwing some weird error. The solution? Just reboot the damn computer.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Syncthing is great. Servers are overrated anyway, I would rather everything be peer-to-peer wherever possible. Currently working on a script to integrate calcurse with DecSyncCC so I can keep my calendar synced between my laptop and phone without a server!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
My idea is that if I stay on the oldest supported version for as long as possible, that would help me avoid evil changes in new versions, since the news would have gone public before I update. You bring up a good point about security updates tho. How relevant is it to browser extensions? Has there been malware out there that specifically targets vulnerabilities in extensions? Just casually doing git log | grep -E 'vuln|crit|secur|bug'
in two extensions that I use quite extensively (pun intended), I don't seem to find any security-related commits.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Haha I feel the same! It really does feel like a completely new and unexplored world. Kind of crazy to think that the idea of federation has been around since e-mail, yet only now people are applying it to social media!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
In Mac Os you can actually pop open the plastic covers to reveal a pretty advanced control panel that feels oddly like Linux, but you have to do it very quietly, or else Steve Jobs will rise from the grave and slap you across the wrists with a metal ruler
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
y... you do realise this is a meme, right? If you want to find a specific command that you ran in the past, you can just hit ctrl-r and search for it? No-one is actually spamming the up key, it's a joke.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Here's another mindfuck: gnu readline is so popular that developers of other software tend to implement its keybinds as hidden features/eastereggs. That's why ctrl+u works in GTK text input boxes as well!
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Delete until start of line. So essentially equivalent to spamming backspace a bunch.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Wait until they learn that you can ctrl+u
when you mistyped your password in sudo
instead of spamming backspace...
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
Would be cool if there was something like qubesos, but with namespaces instead of virtual machines. I guess we're slowly moving there with Flatpak, but they only seem to be concerned with GUI apps and see sandboxing as a convenience tool for developers, not so much as a security measure.
amanwithausername 1y ago • 100%
You joke, but this is how the typing system of BASH works
Also, upvote for Nanachi 🐰
This isn't meant to "mean" anything btw, just a stupid pun.
It seems every now and again some popular Chrome or Firefox extension decides to "go evil" seemingly out of nowhere. Stylish got [caught logging browser history](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/chrome-and-firefox-pull-stylish-add-on-after-report-it-logged-browser-history/), The Great Suspender [turned out to be spyware](https://thehackernews.com/2021/02/warning-hugely-popular-great-suspender.html), and, in the case of "get cookies.txt", which was endorsed by youtube-dl, apparently [the user is not the only one "getting" the cookies](https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/11i5vyq/psa_the_get_cookiestxt_extension_is_now_actively/). In most of these cases, it seems that trustworthy extensions get sold off to some shady third parties, or the developers just "turns evil". This got me wondering: would it be an effective security precaution to simply disable updates for browser extensions? i.e. to download the extension manually from the developer, instead of relying on chrome web store / firefox addon catalogue. It wouldn't help much if the extension you're using contains malware *now*, but it would prevent malware being installed in potential future updates. So, what do you guys think?