Pages Tagged “Linux”
Reviews
- Alpine Linux ★★★★★ Lightweight Linux distribution with modern capabilities and smooth package management despite its low resource requirements. Good for small cloud servers, old hardware, Raspberry Pi, etc.
- Arch Linux ★★★★☆ Once it’s installed, it’s fine! Faster updates than Fedora or Debian. Smaller software selection, but community packages and Flatpak make up for it. ARM port and the Danctnix drivers for Pine hardware are solid. I don’t miss the old days of setting everything up by hand, though.
- Boxes (GNOME) ★★★☆☆ A simple GUI wrapper around Linux’s built-in virtualization support. It makes simple things easy, but to adjust advanced settings you either need to edit config files manually or use another GUI.
- Brave (Web Browser) ★★☆☆☆ A privacy-focused browser, but for every cool privacy feature there’s something else that makes me want to firewall the application away from my system.
- Chromium (Web Browser) ★★★☆☆ The basis for most web browsers these days, driven mainly by building Google Chrome. Less tracking and branding, but stable updates are only available on Linux.
- Debian Linux ★★★★☆ My second choice distro for both desktop and servers. More reliable than Ubuntu, more stable than Fedora, easier to install than Arch, though a bit slower to update. Bigger than Alpine, but uses the more typical glibc.
- Dillo (Web Browser) ★★★★☆ Ultra-minimalist and super-fast browser for web documents (not applications). You won’t be logging into Gmail with it, but it’ll load a Wikipedia article incredibly fast.
- DreamHost ★★★★☆ Rock solid web hosting with managed VPS and good support. Hosting this page right now. Cloud computing has been less stable in my experience.
- Falkon (Web Browser) ★★★★☆ A surprisingly capable Chromium browser for KDE and other Linux desktops that runs well even on low-end hardware and virtual machines.
- FeatherPad ★★★★☆ A lightweight, fast, stable, and capable text editor for Linux.
- Fedora Linux ★★★★☆ Still my favorite Linux for desktop use, but every once in a while you’re reminded that IBM (via Red Hat) still has an out-sized influence on it.
- Firefox ★★★★☆ I still have a soft spot for Firefox. At times it’s been the best web browser on Windows and Linux. It’s still good, has a solid extension ecosystem, and serves as an important bulwark against one company dominating browser tech.
- Fluent Reader ★★★☆☆ A simple, no-nonsense, modern-looking RSS/Atom newsfeed reader for Windows, Mac and Linux. Optionally sync with multiple services, but I’ve had issues with Nextcloud.
- Geary ★★★★☆ Really lightweight but still modern, so it’s a good choice on lower-end hardware. Basic IMAP features, good for most day-to-day email use. Needs GNOME for setup.
- Geopard ★★★☆☆ Simple desktop Gemini Protocol client with bookmarks. Polished, fits well with any Linux desktop but especially GNOME. Fast, no frills.
- GNOME Web (aka Epiphany) ★★★☆☆ A rare WebKit browser for Linux. Handles the basics, but it’s specifically designed for GNOME, and it’s limited in what it can do around websites. Well-suited for PWAs, though!
- GNU IceCat ★★★☆☆ Firefox minus all branding and connections to Mozilla services, plus add-ons to block non-FSF-approved JavaScript.
- Google Chrome ★★★☆☆ There was a time when Chrome was the fastest web browser available. It isn’t anymore, and over the last few years it’s felt less like a user agent and more like a Google agent.
- Jellyfin ★★★★★ Great for playing music across my local network, doesn’t phone home to a cloud or try to upsell subscriptions.
- KeePass Password Managers ★★★★★ KeePassXC, its browser extension, and KeePass2Android are a nice, clean set of apps to manage your passwords on your OWN desktop and mobile devices, auto-fill websites and apps, and sync over your own server or cloud provider.
- Kristall ★★★★☆ Cross-platform desktop browser for the small internet, including Gemini, Gopher and Finger. A little faster than Lagrange, but fewer features and hasn’t been updated in a while.
- Lagrange ★★★★★ Lagrange quickly became my favorite Gemini client on the desktop with its clean and convenient UI, stability and speed across platforms. And the mobile version works well too.
- LibreWolf ★★★★☆ Customized Firefox, with an eye toward security and privacy. Follows the stable release channel. Works well most of the time, but privacy features can break some sites.
- Liferea ★★★★☆ A nice, lightweight feed reader for Linux that does the basics.
- Linode ★★★★★ Flexible, inexpensive cloud hosting with a variety of Linux options. Rock solid so far!
- Manyverse ★★★★☆ Takes the pain out of setting up and running SSB. Unfortunately it doesn’t overcome SSB’s inherent challenges of discovery, data size or multiple devices. (So far?)
- Microsoft Edge ★★☆☆☆ Once you turn off all the Microsoft specials, it feels usable again – but then, it’s just another Chromium skin.
- NetSurf ★★★☆☆ Lightweight browser for RISC-OS and Linux/Unix (and a few smaller OSes). Slightly more capable than Dillo, if not quite as small or fast.
- NewsFlash ★★★★★ Clean, stable, fast, free, no-clutter and no-nonsense RSS/Atom newsfeed reader for Linux that optionally syncs with multiple services.
- Notepad++ ★★★★★ A perfect balance of powerful and lightweight, Notepad++ is far more capable than Notepad, but doesn’t complicate things like a full IDE.
- Opera (Web Browser) ★★★☆☆ Opera used to be one of my favorite browsers back in the day, but its current incarnation just doesn’t appeal to me. I much prefer Vivaldi, which is a spiritual successor to the original.
- Parallels ★★★★☆ A virtual machine application for macOS that makes it easy to install a Windows, Linux or macOS guest. Downside: annual subscription.
- RSS Guard ★★★★☆ A solid cross-platform feed reader that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Extremely capable and customizable. Syncs with multiple services.
- SeaMonkey (Internet Suite) ★★★☆☆ The old Mozilla Suite lives on! Featuring web, email, news, an HTML editor, IRC client and more. Recent work has mostly been to keep it working and backport security fixes, so web app compatibility lags way behind even the ESR Firefox.
- Sly (Image Editor) ★★★☆☆ Simple, friendly, privacy-respecting image editor for Android and Linux. Convenient for most basic photo adjustments, but metadata handling is currently broken, so I can’t use it to just crop photos for iNaturalist. Once that’s fixed, though…
- Thunderbird (Email and Calendar) ★★★★★ Stable, capable desktop email application, works well with multiple accounts including Gmail, Nextcloud, easy to set up and use but with advanced settings when you need them. FLOSS.
- Tor Browser ★★★★☆ When you really want (or need) to stay private while using the web, Tor is the way to go. Just keep the drawbacks in mind when you do.
- Ungoogled Chromium ★★★☆☆ This takes Chromium and removes everything that connects to Google services…including things like safe browsing and the extension store.
- UTM ★★★☆☆ A simple application wrapped around macOS’ built-in virtualization and emulation capabilities. Fewer bells and whistles than the commercial options, but works better for some purposes.
- Vivaldi (Web Browser) ★★★★★ Spiritual successor to the original Opera browser, this ultra-customizable web browser can open into a full suite for email, calendar, feeds and more – but only if you want it to.
- VMWare Fusion ★★☆☆☆ VMWare Fusion worked great on my Intel-based MacBook for work for years. But since Broadcom bought the company, I can’t even find it.
- Waterfox ★★★★☆ A Firefox fork aimed at improved performance and privacy, without sacrificing usability. Also available on Android.
- Web Browser Recommendations Vivaldi, Orion, Waterfox and Zen are my current favorites. I want to like Firefox, but I’m not so sure about Mozilla these days. Safari’s OK. LibreWolf and IronFox are good for everyday privacy, Tor for advanced scenarios. Falkon and Dillo are good for slow hardware.
- Whalebird (Mastodon client) A simple desktop app for Mastodon and (most) compatible Fediverse servers. Fast, runs on multiple platforms.
- Wine and Crossover ★★★★☆ THE major compatibility tool for Windows apps on Linux or macOS, including SteamOS. And a commercial distribution with installers and support.
- Zen Browser ★★★★☆ Similar to Arc, Zen has a non-cluttered design that stays out of your way. Unlike Arc, it’s built on Firefox, runs on more platforms, and doesn’t require you to log in just to use it!
Tech Tips
- @font-face Crashes Firefox on Fedora 11 (Obsolete) Until Fedora updated one of its libraries, Firefox on Fedora 11 would crash on any website that uses an embedded font.
- Add a Gemini filetype to Gnome You might need to create a gemini.xml file and/or a .desktop file for your favorite Gemini clients. Here’s how and where to put them.
- Airport Extreme vs. Linux (Obsolete) Broadcom refused to release drivers or specs for the chipset, so for years no one could even write their own.
- Apache, mod_ssl, and syntax errors in krb5.h (Obsolete) Syntax errors in krb5.h usually mean your Linux distro put Kerberos somewhere Apache isn’t expecting to find it.
- Batch Adjust Photos for DST with ExifTool I always forget at least one camera when switching to/from DST, and I always forget the command for exiftool to batch-adjust the image timestamps.
- Double Lock Screen (Obsolete) Usually multiple desktops on Linux will stay out of each others’ way when they aren’t running. Not always.
- Fedora 7 Problems With Glint Video Driver (Obsolete) Grab the Live CD first and make sure that all your hardware works properly. If not, see if the fix is available before you actually upgrade.
- Firefox Thinks It’s Running an Older Version Than Last Time (But Isn’t!) Look for the compatibility.ini file in your Firefox profile, and delete the LastVersion line.
- Fix for “Among Us” not joining games on Linux Change your server region and change it back. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. But at least it works.
- Fixing a Blank Article Pane in NewsFlash There’s a bug in WebKit that can prevent articles from displaying in NewsFlash, but there’s a workaround.
- Fixing Flash in Fedora Core 5 (Obsolete) Flash hard-codes the paths where it looks for fonts, instead of letting the X server tell it where to look.
- Fixing Twhirl (Obsolete) Just delete the entire ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS/ folder and start from the ground up.
- Geary With Gmail, (Mostly) Without GNOME Install GNOME, add Gmail to your online accounts, then uninstall the rest of GNOME. But keep gnome-online-accounts!
- Get the Date/Time in ISO 8601 Format on the CLI On Linux: Just type ‘date -Is’ in the commandline. On macOS: type ‘date -Iseconds’
- Getting Flash to work on Google Chrome for 64-bit Linux (Obsolete) Flash works on the Google Chrome beta for Linux, but may need an extra symlink for the 64-bit Chrome to use the 32-bit Flash.
- GNOME/Wayland Fails to Log In After Installing XFCE (Solved) The most ridiculous Linux bug I’ve encountered in ages: Installing XFCE changed a mouse cursor setting for GNOME that caused the login screen to crash when trying to log into GNOME/Wayland.
- How Many Bits of Pi? Apparently all Raspberry Pi CPUs show up the same in the Linux kernel, so you have to look at the actual hardware to verify what processor you’re running on and whether it’s 32 or 64-bit.
- Install Vivaldi on Arch Linux for Arm64 If you don’t want to use Flatpak or Snap, here’s how you can modify an AUR package for x86_64 to build an Arm64 package for Arch.
- Installing Valhelsia on Linux MultiMC no longer downloads mods from CurseForge, and CurseForge won’t run Minecraft on Linux. But AT Launcher will, and has a workaround for CurseForge’s API limits.
- Invisible Grub Boot Menu (Fixed) If your GRUB menu isn’t showing up, but your system still boots… check splashimage and make sure it points at a real file
- Keep Your System Updated! Most drive-by computer infections use old vulnerabilities for which patches are already available.
- KeePass Password Managers KeePassXC, its browser extension, and KeePass2Android are a nice, clean set of apps to manage your passwords on your OWN desktop and mobile devices, auto-fill websites and apps, and sync over your own server or cloud provider.
- KeePassXC Browser Extension vs. Flatpak (Not Working Yet) Web browsers running through Flatpak have trouble interacting with KeePassXC.
- Let’s Encrypt on Alpine Linux The Easy Way Don’t use acme-cert. Use certbot.
- Linux Ejecting DVD Drawer on Wake (Fixed) (Obsolete) It’s a recent bug in the Linux kernel. Wait a couple of days and it’ll be fixed and Fedora will ship the new one.
- Mac OS X Finder Deleting Files on a Linux Share If you connect to a Samba share from MacOS and it deletes files after telling you it can’t copy them, try turning off unix extensions in Samba.
- Nepomuk is Not Running (Obsolete) KMail kept tossing errors on launch because an old config was trying to load the wrong Nepomuk backend.
- Nextcloud Needs Me To Sign In Every Time (Desktop Linux) Make sure your keyring manager is starting before the Nextcloud client.
- Nextcloud Tasks: Mobile, Recurring, and Compatibility Gotchas Which desktop, web and mobile applications have and haven’t worked well for me since switching my personal to-do lists to Nextcloud Tasks.
- NVIDIA on Fedora 27: Bad Resolution and Painful Mouse Lag (Fixed) (Obsolete) As of 2017, Wayland didn’t work with the binary NVIDIA drivers, and the system would lag painfully. If you tell GDM not to use Wayland, it will fall back to the older display system.
- NVIDIA/Nouveau picture extending beyond screen (Solved) After switching video drivers, my display extended past the edges of the screen. It turned out to be a monitor setting hidden by the old driver.
- PineTab2 Notes: Getting Things Working Things I’ve had to do on my PineTab2 to get various features working and/or usable.
- Promise SX6000, FreeBSD, and Linux (Obsolete) If you want to build a Linux or FreeBSD system around a RAID array, don’t use the Promise SuperTrak SX6000 controller. At least not for now.
- Remove GPS Tags After Taking a Photo Google Photos won’t remove GPS data from an image, but you can easily remove just the location data using a desktop or laptop.
- Repair missing UEFI entry for Fedora Linux Boot to a live image and either manually edit the menu with efibootmgr or use a specialized tool like boot-repair.
- Resolving SELinux audit errors on boot in Fedora Core 4 (Obsolete) Rebuild the initrd so it can label the boot filesystem with the new policy.
- Running Mac Software on Linux: Good Luck Out of curiosity I went looking to see if there are any macOS compatibility layers for Linux these days. There isn’t much.
- s3cmd crashes with ‘expected str instance, bytes found’ s3cmd 2.3.0 breaks on Python 3.12. The fix is simple, and will be in the next s3cmd release, but here’s how to fix your local copy before it’s released.
- Seeking the Perfect Balance for BOINCing After a brief stint at distributed computing early in the pandemic, I came back first to Folding@Home, then BOINC, with the goal of only using spare power to help out with research.
- Setting up a Wireless Network on Linux 2.6: Ralink 3062 and Network Manager (Obsolete) Wifi on Linux can still be a pain to get working. Here’s how I set up a Zonet ZEW1642 on Fedora 13 using the Ralink 3062 drivers.
- Tell (most) Linux Web Browsers to open Gemini links with your favorite client Most Linux web browsers will open unfamiliar URL schemes with XDG, which will look for .desktop files for the applications that can open it.
- Tell Firefox to open Gemini links with your favorite client You’ll need to click on a Gemini link to get the config options, and then you can choose what to open it in.
- Using Plasma Discover on GNOME in Fedora Fedora’s packages for Discover are missing dependencies, so you have to install kf6-purpose and kf6-kitemmodels on the command line to use it.
- Using vi Without an Escape Key Ctrl+[ usually works as ESC, and if you can send that combination somehow, you can still use vi!
- What do GNOME Online Accounts Do? It’s not obvious which services GNOME will use from each provider. Here’s where to find it.
- When digiKam Failed to Connect (Obsolete) File permissions. Always check the file permissions.
- Windows Losing Drives After Sleep (Solved) It turned out the motherboard had two SATA controllers, one of which worked properly and one which didn’t. I just moved the cables over.
- Workaround for Gmail being blocked by “Temporary Error” in Firefox on Fedora (Obsolete) In this case it was a Fedora-specific issue, but it could be worked around by holding down shift and hitting reload.
Blog Posts
- Something Went Wrong
I really wish GNOME’s “Oh No! Something went wrong!” screen would let me restart just the crashed components instead of forcing me to log out completely. Or let me decide if I’m willing to continue without whatever crashed. If the audio broke, and I’m not doing anything that needs sound right now, it shouldn’t block […]
- Dillo Resurrected
The super-minimalist web browser Dillo has released a new version for the first time in almost a decade! (Now there’s a blast from the past!)
- Waking Up is Hard to Do (PC Edition)
Always nice to be greeted by this unlock screen: Ever since upgrading to the latest NVIDIA driver, my Linux system has had a weird quirk with resuming from suspend/hibernate. All the applications and services that were running pick up right where I left them, but anything drawn by Gnome shell — including the unlock screen, […]
- Dreamwidth and Debian
Whenever I visit a Dreamwidth journal and leave it open in a tab, I always find myself wondering why I was looking at the Debian website. For obvious reasons.
- This is why you vote
The code name for Fedora 9 Linux has been chosen, and it’s going to be Sulphur. Because a foul-smelling rock associated with rotten eggs and depictions of Hell is just what we want to identify an operating system. (Actually, it might not be too far off for Windows Vista.) Bathysphere was only 8 votes behind. […]
- Double helping of Moonshine
A question over at the Comic Bloc Forums reminded me that I hadn’t gotten around to writing a full profile of the Impulse villain, White Lightning. Fortunately I had a full list of appearances already, so I was able to look up the answer to the question, but it felt like being caught totally unprepared. […]
- Mandriva: Dual Upgrade
I just updated a system running Mandriva Linux 2006 and in the release notes I discovered that not only will it upgrade a Mandrake system, but it can now upgrade a Conectiva system. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that both used RPM as their package format/database, but I really had the impression that […]
- Browser War, OS War
It occurred to me today that if you lay out the three major players in computer operating systems and the three major players in web browsers, the results track remarkably well. Windows and Internet Explorer. The dominant player. Obtained that position by being good enough, cheap enough, and promoted enough to win a protracted two-way […]
- Reinventing the Upgrade Wheel
The internet is a hostile place. Viruses, worms, and worse are constantly trying to break or break into your computer. Software developers are constantly fixing the holes that can let them in. It’s become critical to keep your system up to date. Unfortunately this can be very frustrating, even for a power user, for one […]
- Diversifying Fedora Core
Fedora Core is following the path blazed by the Linux kernel: having started out as primarily an x86-based project (the 32-bit Intel-based processors from the 386 through the Pentium 4 and Athlon), it’s branching out. Versions 2 and 3 added support for the AMD-64 chips (basis of the Opteron and Athlon 64), and now, with […]
- That Annoying Typing Bug
From the Gnome 2.10 release notes: In the past, while typing something into one application when suddenly your instant messenger offered a chat request from your friend, your words would be typed into the chat window. Imagine if you were typing your password at the time. This should no longer happen in GNOME 2.10. In […]
- More Linux Consolidation
Remember UnitedLinux? It was a consortium of Conectiva, SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera to build a common distribution that could compete with Red Hat. That effort got derailed, in part because Caldera decided they could make more money by changing their name to SCO and extorting suing the market into oblivion. Now Novell owns SuSE, TurboLinux […]
- Random Links
AKA stuff I wanted to write about earlier this week but need to just slam out while they’re still topical. Judge slams SCO’s lack of evidence against IBM. After all the wild claims they’ve made without providing evidence, it’s nice to see even the judge is getting sick of it. Beware the unexpected attack vector […]
- Subtle Update Hint
Something that could help with the ever-shrinking window between turning on a new (Windows) computer and getting hacked by some automatic probe is to just make downloading security updates part of the setup process. I installed two Linux distributions this weekend, Mandrake 10.1 and SuSE 9.2, and both did this. What I liked about the […]
- Linux everywhere!
This looks cool: GlobeTrotter [archive.org] is a 40 GB external USB hard drive that comes pre-installed with Mandrake Linux. Basically you can carry it around and temporarily turn any computer into your Linux box! It should be more flexible (and run faster) than CD-based distributions like Knoppix or Mandrake Move [archive.org], although it’s bulkier than […]
- I’ll get you, my pretty!
Ouch. I can see these people take Darl McBride seriously: Techworld.com – Linux is mine, all mine, cackles distracted SCO head. I know it’s been said before, but he really is starting to sound like the famed Iraqi Information Minister.
- Zero Downtime
This morning I upgraded the mail servers at work. They were down for maybe two seconds each. I doubt anyone even noticed. If you’re used to installing software on Windows, you probably think I’m kidding. Didn’t I have to shut the service down before installing the upgrade? Didn’t I have to reboot when it was […]
- From the department of Huh?
Groklaw has posted an affidavit in the SCO vs. Daimler Chrysler case. Essentially, SCO sent DC a letter saying “as per your license terms, send us a list of all the computers you’re using UNIX on.” DC wrote back saying, “We haven’t used UNIX in seven years, so there is no list.” And SCO sued […]
- What color is SCO’s sky?
OK, I haven’t written much on the SCO vs. Linux debacle in a while, mainly because others have done so much better and in much more detail than I possibly could, so here’s a summary of the situation as I see it. SCO: Linux stole from us! Linux: Uh, no. What did we steal? SCO: […]
- What’s NOT in a name?
Cliches aside, it appears that as a result of the trademark suit by Microsoft, Lindows is now going by the name Lin—s (LinDash) in parts of Europe. Lindows — or Lin—s if you prefer — is a company that has been selling an ultra-user-friendly version of Linux. Criticized by many for lax security (they’ve chosen […]
- SCO is a bunch of bastards
Several months ago, Scummy Computer Operations sued IBM claiming that IBM had copied code from UNIX into Linux. They refused to say what code had been copied. Already this sounds fishy. In their initial filing, they insulted the ethics and competence of the entire Open Source community. Eventually they started making wilder and wilder claims. […]
- Always check the requirements
We have a “yours, mine and ours” set of computers at home. My system started out as a Compaq Presario in 1994 and has been upgraded piecemeal over the past decade, Katie replaced her Power Mac with a G4 last year, and we picked up an eMachine to use as a dial-up server when we […]