We haven't spoken about my Slimbook Pro2 system in a while. Well, there's a reason for that. A good reason. Everything is fine. Boring, I know. There's nothing sensational or controversial to report. But then, if you are thinking of buying yourself a Linux-adorned machine, you sure do want to know how robust one of these might be, and whether they can withstand the test of time, usage and real-life functionality. Which is why we're here.

Now, we have done this exercise eleven times already. In the last report, we mentioned some errors and bugs, a few oddities here and there, but by and large, the Slimbook experience remains uneventful. With several more months of usage tucked under the belt, it's time to pause and reflect.

Read more ...

When it comes to virtualization - mostly semi-pro or casual usage you'd find in a typical nerd setting, VirtualBox offers an excellent bundle of goodies; a friendly UI, lots of features, reasonable performance, simple and advanced options to suit every skill and mood. I've written about VirtualBox many times in the past, reviewing a whole range of topics, from the Guest Additions configuration to sharing & port forwarding and then some. Several dozen articles to be more precise. Including major release reviews among them, of course.

Recently, VirtualBox 6.X has been released, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look at what's new, check some of the improvements and fixes, and see whether you should move off the 5.X branch onto the latest edition. Come along, let's see what gives.

Read more ...

They needed rest.

But they couldn't rest. Not yet.

Lip had probably recited these numbers a dozen times to "rookie" teams over the years—a lack of sleep was a powerful enemy. A full day without sleep rendered you 15% less efficient. Two days, it was 70%. Three days, you had one in three chance of injuring yourself with your own weapon. The longer you went without rest the more dangerous it became. They were all hurt, exhausted, and have not drank or eaten enough. That made the math even more unfavorable.

And then there were the wounded.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

The Internet is getting worse by the day, but there's still some hope out there. Today, we shine light on two such examples. Number one: People take pictures, all the time, even when they shouldn't - like their restaurant food or selfies, for that matter. And they do it using all manner of devices, from lowly phones to sophisticated, expensive SLR with lenses that wouldn't shame Hubble. Indeed, if photography is more than just a social reflex to you, then you will want to know which camera to buy for your occasional visual memoirs. To wit, Digital Photography Review, or Dpreview in short, is a great resource of all things camera.

Number two: Few people define the 80s better than the Gubernator: the epitome of masculinity, swagger, casual violence, and of course, the bestest one-liners in the history of cinema. Few people are better remembered for their words, be they Rennaissance philosophers or modern-day politicians. Going to cinema, or more aptly, sitting down to play some grainy VHS and watch Arnold kick ass, one would soon be exposed to scene after scene of delightful, cheesy, out-of-this-world quotes. You came looking for copper (or choppa), and you found gold. Arnoldum.

Read more ...

As you probably know, my go-to video editor is Kdenlive, which I've used many times before, to great success, creating dozens of unfunny clips, all of them available on my Youtube channel. But then, I've recently had less luck with the program, having tested both 2018's beta and last year's 19.08 stable edition, and neither really impressed me.

I came across bugs and crashes, and overall, it felt like the application has taken a nosedive. While older versions ought to keep working fine for quite a while longer, I wouldn't like to be in a position where my artistic spread of majestic wings is curtailed for any reasons. Hence, alternatives, hence testing. And thus, I came across an old-new title, OpenShot, a free, cross-platform video editor. Funnily, I've seen it many times before, but never really used in properly. This article shall remedy that.

Read more ...

The end of an era. The start of a new one. I strongly believe that Windows Phone will go down into the annals of history as the most beautiful, ergonomically pleasing touch interface ever designed. But the phone support is no more (just remember the hysteria around making the desktop like this, all in vain), and I require a new mobile device. Any good story starts with a conflict.

Roughly two months ago, I began me hunt for a successor phone for the Lumia 950. My requirements weren't that stringent, but they were also quite peculiar. In the end, after a good few days of online research, reading and then some more reading, I bought a Motorola One Zoom. Now, let me share the details. And if you're wondering, yes, this is a proper, long smartphone review, with a dose of dramatic prose. After me.

Read more ...

Lee Qiang came about to see a Chinese soldier bearing down on him. He instinctively reached for that which wasn't there; his rifle was pinned under him, the strap torn off his harness. Without thinking, Lee Qiang pulled his pistol from his thigh holster and fired a dozen rounds into the man's legs and groin. Whatever words or screams the East Alliance man may have uttered were lost in his sophisticated helmet-mask.

There was a whole bunch of enemy soldiers pressing toward the gap between the two Magdas. Pablo wasn't shooting at them.

Pablo wasn't there anymore—just his machine gun, propped against the rock.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Let's start with a little teaser. I have a whole bunch of Windows 10 articles coming out in the next few weeks. They mostly revolve around the installation of new devices with the aforementioned operating system, the upgrade of old devices from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and the subsequent mandatory post-install tweaks and changes. We shall start, as the title subtly hints, with the middle option.

With the Windows 7 deadline loometh (now passeth), I decided to sacrifice one of my olden Windows 7 desktops for this experiment. I mean, it wasn't a big deal - as I had contingencies in place (hint: new hardware), and with the lovely Seven going out of support (but that shouldn't scare you, right), I wanted to see what kind of future awaits anyone willing to bite the bullet and try their luck with the latest Windows version. This article is a tale of that attempt.

Read more ...

Strange how things work. Apparently, people rarely learn unless they go through an experience personally, and often, even not then. Companies and organizations are much alike, so when Mozilla embarked on its Firefox revamp many years ago, it went after Chrome, and it trying to be like Chrome only made Chrome better.

Fast forward, Mozilla re-discovered the meaning behind its motto, and figured that it has a golden opportunity of making its browser stand out. People are sick of getting their private info trafficked left and right by careless data vampires, and they want something ... more humane. Recent versions of Firefox seem to be doing quite all right on that front, and the last two or three releases are a great example of a champion effort. Let's see.

Read more ...

All right. Just a few days back, we talked about my messed-up laptop and the subsequent recovery of the KDE neon instance in its eight-boot Windows-and-Linux setup. As it turns out, various distributions would not boot because they were configured to mount a non-existent partition. This happened because new Linux systems use a sub-optimal way of marking devices, with meaningless, human-unreadable UUID strings rather than simple numbers.

Well, we need to fix the Windows 10 instance as well. Here, the issue was kind of similar. Windows 10 would start booting, then there's be a message about diagnosing PC, automatic repair - and then, predictably, the automatic repair would fail. In the previous article, we've already established that the Windows 10 partition was healthy, all the data was there, so I didn't want to do any reset or such. Let me show you how I gracefully fixed this rather annoying issue.

Read more ...

Over many tens of thousands of years, human motor skills and reflexes evolved as a response to biological threats, long before any technology made things faster than neural signals could move the muscle tissue. The average response time to a visual stimulus is about three-quarters of a second, or half that for people who are alert. That does not sound like a lot until you take into account other factors, like rocket motors.

A typical anti-tank missile flies at about 250 m/s. This means it will clear about one and a half football fields in the time it takes the human brain to register and respond to a visual signal. It’s a metallic object the size of a bread loaf, jumping football field lengths as fast as you can blink. Even if you can see it coming, you have no time to react. You can't dodge missiles.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Remember, I told you about a messed up laptop? Well, let's elaborate, shall we. I was doing some testing with imaging & recovery software, and once I was done, I wanted to see how well the process had gone. Not well, it turned out. GRUB was there, but no entry in the menu worked initially. Once I had that promptly fixed, I saw that Windows 10 wouldn't boot, and wouldn't auto-repair, and half the distros on the system (out of the total eight) in the multi-boot setup wouldn't start either, going into emergency mode. We're talking the full share of distros, take your pick.

Now, the GRUB recovery was quite tricky - none of the methods I could think of worked, and I ended up installing a test distro just to get the bootloader configured properly. Then, I started one of the distros that DID work, and noticed there was no data loss. Everything was there, all the partitions were sane and whole, and the files were in their right place, Linux and Windows included. In this article, I'd like to show you how I went about this problem, and how I fixed it - and in the sequel, we shall do the same for Windows 10. A useful exercise. Follow me.

Read more ...

Back in June, I posted an article summarizing several weeks of rigorous testing of my Moto G6, coupled with extra hardened security and privacy settings. I did this to examine and evaluate the usability of Android in real-life conditions, as a preparation for the tragic and inevitable switch come the end of life of the magnificent Windows Phone platform.

Recently, I decided to extend the testing and use Android even more stringently. Over a period of about two weeks, I used the phone in strange and wondrous places, I tried to rely on it for semi-essential needs, not that smartphones ever served more than ancillary needs for me, and I did this in parallel to my future phone purchase hunt. While you're going to read about my Lumia 950 successor shortly - it's not the Moto G6 device, that's a brave pioneer slash scapegoat - in this here be article, I'd like to walk you through my recent Android escapade. Commence we shall.

Read more ...

The reason why I attempted this thing is a bit convoluted. It started, like any good story, with a problem, a conflict, a conundrum. I had a laptop with a multi-boot system, Windows 10 and a whole bunch of Linux distributions, and it was ill. Not booting. Nothing. I needed to recover it, and recover it I did, one system after another, until only Windows 10 was left and acting rather stubbornly.

I thought using the Windows 10 install media could help, as I'd have better control over the recovery tools and options than using the one that Windows offers on a botched startup. This meant creating bootable media, and this turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I wanted to create the USB media in Linux, without relying on any third-party tools that purport to do this. Why? Because independence. If it works with standard tools, you can use it anywhere. Begin to commence.

Read more ...

Lee Qiang remembered his grandfather's stories. He had been an electrical engineer working in the Middle East in the 1980s, dabbling in some rather expensive projects in Libya and Iraq, and then later, in the 1990s, in Afghanistan. Grandad would proudly boast, sober or drunk, that he'd been one of the few Polaks with a passport and an unrestricted travel visa back in the day, before the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

And he had seen some rather gruesome things, which he had shared with his grandson the day he was accepted into special forces training.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

I love discovering fun, challenging scenarios in ArmA 3. This fabulous war simulation is the only shooter game really worth considering. Having played the franchise since Operation Flashpoint, I found its uncompromising realism to be an excellent form of meditation, especially after a long day of work full of IT buzzwords.

One mission that drew me in recently is Terrorist Hunt - Factory, by Fin Soldier, a remake of the Rainbow Six Vegas TH gamemode. In this mission, you and up to three other human players are pitted against 28 AI enemy soldiers at a factory plant. Sounds simple, but typically, you end up outnumbered, and a relatively simple premise becomes a very tricky, difficult objective. As I learned to perfect it, I realized something. I was mimicking the real combat tactics used by professional soldiers. Follow me.

Read more ...

Another year comes to a close. Another year of distro testing, surprises, illusions, disillusionment, some happiness, some sadness, and most of all, not the year of Linux after all. But while the dream may be fading, there's still reasons to be jolly. Or at least content. Because some pretty nice and solid Linux distros did come out in 2019, and we need to crown the bestest of them.

Last year, the winner was MX Linux MX-17 Horizon. It delivered a good, whole desktop experience. A pleasant twist, one sorely needed in the lethargy-bound world that is home Linux nowadays. Which makes for an interesting little competition this year, because it's not just about boring technical details, it's also about giving users something they can proudly run and enjoy, beyond the rudimentary point-and-click essentials. I've already given you my take on the Plasma, Gnome and Xfce winners, so now we need to put all that together, and see what comes out. Let's do it.

Read more ...

Before you say, removable media, that's so 90s, hear me out. First, Plasma is a highly versatile, polished desktop environment with tons of goodies and excellent features all around. Second, finding some of these capabilities does take a bit of patience and rigorous sub-menu digging, hence the use of the term hidden in the article title. So, not really hidden, but more sort of, revealistically challenged.

Third, I want to take to you about the rather unique, colorful way the Plasma desktop approaches and solves the removable media handling. Not something you think about often, but then, you can really turn this into a super-handy, time-saving exercise for your desktop. To wit, begin we shall.

Read more ...

Dear readers, the jolly season is upon us. And I thought, 'tis time for gifts. Which means the Kindle edition of The Amazing Adventures of Dashing Prince Dietrich will be available for free on Amazon from now till the very end of the year. Five days. So maybe grab yourself a book and do so light holiday reading?

If you're not convinced for whatever cosmic reason, then, the name of the book series should sway your heart and mind the other way around. Wait for it ... Woes & Hose. That ought to do it. The Amazing Adventures of Dashing Prince Dietrich is a hilarious, fast-paced, gunpowder-rich, grim yet fun novel that will take you into a crazy, hectic world of disappointed sons of royalty, romance, sharp humor, and even sharper swords. Guns, too. Enjoy.

Read more ... (Amazon)

Sveta walked with a funny, stilted gait. She must have been stiff from the ride in the boot—as Lip liked to call it—of the car, and probably nauseated from having her sensory deprivation. There was a scowl on her pretty face, mirroring the one on Lip's chiseled, whiskered features. He was waiting impatiently for her to waddle over.

The captain pointed at the large binoculars, resting on a solid tripod in the middle of an old industrial rubbish heap, half-buried under weeds. "What's there?"

About five kilometers away, where the binoculars zoomed in, there was some kind of a town. The place wasn't marked on the maps. It didn't really look like a town. More like a makeshift market. Perhaps a military compound of some sort.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Here's an interesting problem for you. Remember my Asus Vivobook dual-booting Windows 8 and Ubuntu? Well, I had the machine upgraded from Trusty to Bionic, and in the course of further exercises, I also installed Plasma on the system. Everything was good, but then whenever I'd start Discover, I'd notice a message that shouldn't be there.

At the bottom of the Discover main screen, it would read: kdenlive_projectprofiles.knsrc" "Loading of providers from file: https://kdenlive.org/data/mltprofilesources.xml failed". Strange. Apart from this showing up for a few seconds, everything was working well. I was able to search for applications through Discover and install them, Kdenlive was working as expected. But my OCD demons wouldn't let this rest. So let's fix this, shall we.

Read more ...

I have been using Firefox for roughly fifteen years, give or take. During that period, I've seen it grow into a beautiful project, become a world of wonderful extensions, and then slowly shrink and fade as it did what the competitors do, losing the core advantages it had in the first place. Despite all that, it remains my primary browser. And if you're asking me - well, you should - it ought to be yours, too.

In this article, I will tell you why. It goes beyond the everyday stuff like memory consumption, the extra three milliseconds of browser launch, or how pretty the application may look on a phone. It's about choice, the freedom of choice, and the critical importance of competition. As a nerd reading this article, you have a moral obligation to be part of that equation. Follow me.

Read more ...

And now, we've come to the third member of the Tux Triumvirate, the Xfce desktop environment. Previously, we talked about the KDE and Gnome desktops, and their best offerings of the year. Now, we shall embark on the same journey of soulsearching and whatnot with Xfce. Who knows what's gonna happen?

The thing is, yesteryear was a happy-ish kind of year. I had reasonable fun with Xfce, with MX Linux leading the pack, offering the freshest experience. Overall though, Xfce is usually a hit and miss experience. There was a time when it was kind of drab and apathetic, then things picked up nicely a couple of years ago, and now we're holding our breath for the 2019 showdown. Begin.

Read more ...

A whimper.

It was a sound that did not belong in his fitful dreams.

Lee Qiang woke up, kicking the thin, camo-patterned top half of his space sleeping bag off him, rising, walking toward the source of the sound. For half a second, he felt disoriented and weak from low blood pressure before a rush of adrenaline made him alert and sharp.

He wasn't the only one to wake up, but he was the first to intercept the situation.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Ladies and gentlemen and rare penguins. It's time for another best-of article. Today, I'm going to cover the Gnome desktop. Just a handful of sunsets ago, we did the Plasma finals, with Kubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine as the lucky winner. Now, we shall look across the playground at the other major camp.

Gnome hasn't been the same since the integer increment from 2 to 3. What used to be super-slim, super-fact and super-ergonomic desktop became a minimalistic platform that just doesn't work for me, mostly because it removes essential components from the classic desktop formula that people need and expect. That doesn't mean Gnome can't be enjoyed, with some rigorous alterations and tweaking. In fact, there are some pretty decent systems wearing this guise out there. Let's see which one deserves to be the champion for this year. Follow me.

Read more ...

The end of the year is an important part of the, ehm, year. One of the cardinal reasons is the tradition of watching the best Christmas movie of all times, Die Hard. The second reason - and tradition - is to reflect upon the past twelve months of distro testing, and come up with a winner. But before we do that, we ought to have a little game. We should examine the Linux systems based on their desktop environment first.

Let's start with Plasma. Last year, I selected Kubuntu 18.04 as my winner, because Slimbook, with Manjaro in second place. I was rather happy with how things went yesteryear. I even had a sense of optimism imbue my brain cells, hoping that the Linux desktop world can, this time, despite the odds, sustain the momentum, grow and flourish. So let's explore 2019, and see what happened, Plasma style. After me.

Read more ...

The end of the year is approaching. That means best-of compilations. But before we get there, we must test Xubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine. We've seen the autumn-crop MATE edition and Kubuntu in action, with reasonable results plus some annoyances and inconsistencies. Not bad, but then not exactly the emotional revolution that I've been hoping for. Which makes the Xfce case extra interesting.

Speaking of interesting, MX Linux MX-19 patito feo. I tested the distro only a few days ago, and it aims to be friendly and usable Xfce desktop out of the box. Now, now, to make the results relevant, I'll be doing the Xubuntu experiment on the same machine as the others - my much used-and-misused Lenovo G50 box, with its plethora of installed systems, Windows and Linux, take your pick. So we'll do the usual, live session games, installation, some post-install fun and games. Hopefully. Begin.

Read more ...

A woman?

When you think you've seen everything.

"Do not shoot," she repeated.

"Everyone, hold your fire," Lee Qiang instructed over the comms, his mind on fire. "This could be important."

"Check," Cem acknowledged.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Last week, we talked about MX Linux MX-19. This week, let's have a look at Fedora 31. Now, some of you may already start grumbling and complaining. Because I will focus a lot of my energy on the Gnome desktop and what it doesn't do, and all that. But then, Fedora is the pioneer child (not in the communist sense) of the Gnome world, showcasing the latest fixes and features the environment offers. Therein lies my hope and my expected but hopefully proven wrong disappointment.

Looking back to the past two years or so, I found Fedora to have improved a little in the performance area, has become more consistent, gained stability in major areas side by side with bugs and problems in others, and still isn't user-friendly enough for immediate consumption. Y'know, proprietary stuff, window buttons, desktop icons, stuff like that. Fedora 30 is a good melting pot of all these observations. I wasn't happy, but then, it's time to rewind the clock, reset my emotions, and boldly charge head first into the wall of open-source.

Read more ...

It's been a while since I've done one of my Slimbook CRs. Well, I've sort of run out of things to complain, but also new features that I can meaningfully test. Not to worry! New experiences, new opportunities, and once again, a new article is upon us, with fresh real-life challenges. They are out there, it just takes a bit of time finding the extra use cases.

For those of you wondering what gives, about a year back I bought a Slimbook Pro2, installed Kubuntu on it, and since started writing about my real-life, no-nonsense production-environment experiences using Linux in a way most people consume Windows, which have culminated in some ten reports so far. Well, to get up to speed, grab the last one, and then work your way back. Now, let's continue.

Read more ...

Just recently, I wrote my melancholic Firefox & WebExtensions piece, summarizing roughly two years of the new Firefox, the changes, the market share, all of it. Not a pretty picture. But what can I say, I'm an optimist. A definition thereof, someone who keeps smiling despite repeatedly getting smacked on the forehead with a wooden ruler.

The thing is, I've been using Firefox since day one, and it remains my primary browser, despite all its failings and mistakes. There are many reasons for this, as I shall expand in a separate, important article. Now, I'd like to focus on Firefox 70, the latest minus one release. It looks neat, it comes with a slew of privacy-related tweaks, and it might be the remedy for my ailing soul. Wait, you may say, what about Firefox 71? That shall come soon. I'm not here to do news, I'm here to do meaningful technical tests and reviews, and this takes time. So Firefox 70, let's have a look.

Read more ...

An abandoned power plant.

No. Not abandoned.

"Turn around. We are going back."

Lip frowned. "Come again?"

"Turn around. We are going back. I want to inspect that power plant we just passed," Lee Qiang said.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Dear readers, here's some good stuff. Electric Spec, an online speculative fiction magazine has published my short story The Binary Conundrum in their Volume 14, Issue 4. The story has a simple premise: To kill? Or not to kill? What if the question does not have an optimal answer? An AI system faces the dilemma even as the war against humanity draws to a close ...

"There," Senior 9 communicated.

Junior 48 focused on the transmitted coordinates. It didn't have Senior's camera resolution, but it could still see the disturbance on the plateau seven kilometers and four hundred and three meters away. A cloud of dust rising from the surface, caused by a non-climate phenomenon ...

Read more ... (Electric Spec)

Let's mix it up a bit, shall we. So far this distro-testing season, we had Ubuntu MATE and Kubuntu, both of the Ermine stock. Reasonable results. Now, we will try something completely different. The distro of choice for today's session is MX Linux, a frugal, lightweight Xfce-clad system, with some nice features and perks.

Over the years, my experience with it has been ... mixed. But, most importantly, it's steadily improving. Version after version, it's getting better. Friendlier, more mature, more accessible to people outside the circle of diehard penguin-loving geeks. With that in heart and mind, and good results with MX-18, the previous version that is, we are testing the latest edition, patito feo. After me.

Read more ...

I don't like repeating myself. Or even linking to my own articles. I find the exercise tedious if somewhat necessary to help readers connect the dots. Now here's a theme that I've mentioned so many times it isn't possible to encompass all the relevant references from the past thirteen odd years of Dedoimedo: I want a super-stable desktop with a lifetime support that exceeds hardware life.

Sounds simple. And yet. Throughout my Linux adventures, I've used a tiny number of Linux distros in a serious, production fashion on the desktop. OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu. A little bit of MX Linux lately. But that's pretty much that. The golden formula seems so hard to nail. Distros are either modern and fickle or stable and old. You sort of can't get the sweet spot in between. Or maybe you can. CentOS 8 Stream.

Read more ...

As you know - or maybe you don't know - I'm not a great fan of the iPhone. The restrictive nature of the ecosystem simply isn't for me. Small things, y'know, like music sync or full MTP access. Anyway, I still do like to test Apple hardware and software if and when I can, just to see and understand what gives, and get ever so closer to a better class of people than myself.

I used to briefly possess an iPhone 6 (own is a wrong word here), and nowadays, one of the phones in my small array of test gadgets happens to be a white-cover iPhone 6s. Overall, the newer model does feel like an improvement over the older one, but it's not one to stir my emotions and such. With the recent release of the iOS 13 operating system upgrade, and the S model being eligible for it, I went about upgrading the device. This article here is a review of my findings. Follow me.

Read more ...

"Shishka time," Juraj said.

Lee Qiang could not—despite the situation—help but smile.

The shaped-charge missile hit the truck on the right side, shearing the wheel clean off the axis, the molten jet of metal setting the rubber on fire, slicing through the engine block and spewing out in a shower of golden sparks on the other side. Like a great beast, the truck ground to a halt.

Of course, Lee Qiang could not have seen all this; it happened too fast for the human eye to register, but his camera caught everything.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

The end of support for Windows 7 might be just around the corner. That does not prevent me from having my first ever failed Windows Update on this spectacular operating system - not sure if this is a sign of things to come. Indeed, I have an old laptop that I've not used in about a year, and I decided to run Windows Update on it. The first thing it needed were the new cryptographic signature patches, to be able to install future rollups.

I got the prompt for KB4474419 via Windows Update, ran it, seemingly all way fine. But then, at about 70% mark, I saw a message that said: Failure configuring updates, reverting changes. Something along those lines. Never before have I seen this happen, so I set about troubleshooting and fixing the issue. Follow me.

Read more ...

Dear readers, it's me again! I have some terrific news. Apress is offering my System Administration Ethics e-book at a mindboggling discount as part of its Cyber Monday deal spree. Until December 3rd, my work as well as ALL Apress and Springer Computer Science books are available for only 7 dollars each!

If you were hesitant about buying it before, hesitate no more. I would strongly recommend you grab yourself a copy, and maybe even tell a friend or five. You will get a beautiful, DRM-free book covering one of the more important and relevant topics in the IT industry today. Of course, blowing my own horn is silly, so I urge you to get the book, read it, see what gives. Maybe even write a review. Support Dedoimedo and all that.

Once again, System Administration Ethics e-book, until December 3rd, on the Apress website. Case-sensitive code: CYBERWEEK19. Enjoy!

Read more ... (Apress book site)

A-B-C-D-Ermine. Now I know my ABC, won't you come and test my Linux? Kubuntu be next on our plate. After exploring Ubuntu MATE of the Eoan family, it's time to focus on the quintessential Plasma desktop distro. As you know, I'm quite pleased with how Plasma has evolved over the years, and as it happens the LTS release of Kubuntu happens [sic] to the daily driver (and passenger) on my Slimbook machine. But we can't take things for granted, and test we must.

Let's see what results we're gonna get on my eight-boot G50 laptop. It already has a bunch of Plasma stuff on it, including an 18.04 instance, neon Developer edition, and then some. One more won't hurt. We're looking for the consistency of experience, too, so compare to Ubuntu MATE we must. Enough nonsense. Let's begin.

Read more ...

It's been roughly two years since Firefox 57 was introduced and the abrupt transition to WebExtensions happened. Overnight, a decade of work made by thousands of developers was made obsolete, turning existing extensions into a legacy heap of nostalgia and code, some of it darn good code. We were told that modern times require modern means AKA mobile nonsense, and this is the future.

Fast forward to NOW, and I'm not happy or optimistic. Firefox usage has declined further, just as I predicted, because the more Firefox became like Chrome the less incentive there was for its loyal users to recommend it to other people. Only recently, with the explosion of privacy nonsense do people realize how important it is to have a healthy underdog browser, and in this regard, Firefox is the last bastion, i.e. the least worst browser of the bunch, although they are all quite annoying. But. Maybe the future is rosy? So I decided to take stock of my current extensions, the new crop, evaluate what they do, and if indeed, we're in a better place than we were when XUL ruled supreme. After me.

Read more ...

"What the hell are they doing?" Lip growled.

Lee Qiang shook his head. "No idea."

"Putain."

They had stopped because the road ahead was blocked. Someone was fighting someone else.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

How is an ermine different from a martel or a beaver? Je ne sais quoi, the French would say, but good news! We can discover how different Eoan Ermine is from Disco Dingo, and/or other Linux distributions out there in the wild. Commencing the autumn season of testing, joy, tribulation and unknowns, we begin with the MATE edition of the family.

Now, some notes ere we begin. I happen to know the head honcho of the MATE project, but this familiarity shall not be affecting the outcome of this review in any shape or form or whatnot. Furthermore, I did dabble some in the beta version of Ubuntu MATE and provided some feedback on the rough edges here and there, which again, is something you should know in advance. All that said, my Lenovo G50 laptop with its plethora of partitions and installed systems is about to receive a new one. Let's do it.

Read more ...

Dear Dedoimedoistas! My publisher has just informed that the holiday season comes with perks. In other words, my recently published System Administration Ethics books is available at a discount, using a purchase coupon code directly on the publisher's site.

I think this could be a really good opportunity for you to grab yourself a copy at a reduced price. This book comes with an important set of rules and guidelines for how to conduct oneself professionally and ethically in the IT world, something that has come under a lot of scrutiny recently. I would be happy and honored if you read the book - it's the best way to support Dedoimedo. The discount offer will be available till December 31, both for print and e-book versions. Case-sensitive coupon: ETHICS20. There you go. Enjoy!

Read more ... (Apress book site)

Here's a weird problem. I was using my Asus Vivobook, which happens to dual-boot Linux and Windows, and in the resident Windows 8.1, during some strenuous maintenance - installation of several applications, updates and such - my screen colors suddenly changed. It was as if the brightness had been halved, even though the slider was in the max. position.

I didn't discover what triggered this color muting, but I did realize that I needed to find a way to restore my colors back to what I like. And so I started fiddling a little with color adjustments and display calibration, and eventually wrote this tutorial, for things ain't (too) trivial. Thus, if you happen to be using Windows, and suddenly you find yourself disliking the colors on your screen, here's a tutorial that could help you.

Read more ...

First, if you think or even vaguely suspect this article has somehow anything to do with any sort of West Coast soap opera melodrama about boring political affiliations, you're reading the wrong article, so please, click the close button on the browser tab and go back to your Interneting. This article is an attempt to understand, or rather, enlighten you, into what makes one receptive or resistant to change. Mostly when it comes to technology.

The world is currently undergoing several social, cultural and technological mini-upheavals, at a faster pace than in the past. This gives us a unique privilege to live through them, and even observe them, through our own personal experience. Typically, changes of this nature used to take generations, so people would often equate them with the natural cycle of human life, and thus, they were also easier to miss, ignore and adapt to. Now, the speed makes everything more interesting. Let's commence.

Read more ...

Traditions are there so they can be maintained, nourished, upkept, repeated. Most notably, any time there's a new major CentOS release, I happily jump on the opportunity to test the distro and also provide you with a tutorial that shows all the steps you need to undertake to turn a fairly boring server distro into a fully productive, fun desktop setup.

We've done this with CentOS 6 and CentOS 7 (and there are sequels, too), and it's time we do the same with CentOS 8. So let me show you all the bits and pieces you require to enjoy stability with the latest and greatest software. Over the years, this effort has become easier, so it will be interesting to see whether CentOS 8 makes it even simpler than the previous versions. Let's begin.

Read more ...

Dear readers, I am truly happy to announce the publication of my latest technical book. It comes with a lengthy but important title - System Administration Ethics: Ten Commandments for Security and Compliance in a Modern Cyber World. A colleague and I have been writing this book over the past year and a bit, and we've jotted down what we believe are the most critical dos and don'ts of information technology.

Ethics has never been more important - just look around, and you'll see the Wild Wild West of the digital world, breach here, breach there, data this, data that. Amidst this chaos, you will find techies, afloat, lost, confused, angry, and wondering how their work and passion has become the spearpoint of social dissent and mistrust. I hope this book can provide the right pointers.

Read more ...

Operation Putain started three hours into Operation Lake Placid, with the morning sky streaked in lead and filthy white but no rain. Lee Qiang was happy they didn't need to slog through mud on the very first day of their mission.

Assembled in eight Magdalena SUVs, they crossed the border into Sector 8. Well, the term "border" was deceiving. It implied a line, a fence, maybe a formal checkpoint, whereas in between the two territories, it was fluidly marked by a stretch of rugged land about 10-15 kilometers wide. Inside this buffer zone, wearing the wrong kind of uniform did not mean you'd automatically get shot by the other side.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

In January 2020, Windows 7 will come to the supported end of its respectable lifecycle. After this point, there will be no more updates from Microsoft. Since there are roughly 500 million active Windows 7 devices still out there, this raises a very important question: What should existing users do now, and for how much longer can they continue using Windows 7 in a manner that is safe, smart and logical?

I thought, here's a great opportunity to address this concern. I will explore the Windows 7 question from three main angles: security, hardware (and performance), and functionality. We did this thing when Windows XP was about to be retired, and we will do it again now. Oh, and rule no.1: don't panic!

Read more ...

It had taken Lee Qiang the better part of his military career to develop and hone his philosophy on warfare. He was very proud of his epiphany.

War can be best described as Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous work, Four Seasons. With one exception. It starts with the second violin concerto. Summer.

War always starts in the summer.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

It's happened again. The KDE team has released a new version of their desktop environment. Seemingly a small increment, based on the numbering scheme, it still brings a wealth of changes, improvements and whatnot to the desktop scene. That means there's only one reasonable outcome: some proper testing.

And so I did. I fired up my neon instance sitting cozily in the eight-boot Windows-and-Linux setup on my G50 laptop, let the system run a whole bunch of updates, and an hour later, I had the Plasma 5.17 desktop up and running. Now, let's see how it fares and what it offers. After me.

Read more ...

You know how the popular saying goes. When it rains ... people drive slowly just to annoy you. But as it happens, I received a bunch of emails from people asking me two things: 1) Why have I not recently done any more Cinnamon reviews (other than Mint)? 2) When am I going to review the latest version of Manjaro 18.1 Juhraya?

The answer to these question is: yes. At the same time! I decided to try Manjaro Cinnamon, not something I've done before, so it should be an interesting, refreshing and hopefully worthwhile exercise. The test box will be the same one I used for the Illyria Xfce test, so we can compare things in earnest - and accurately. This is an eight-book mixed Windows & Linux box, and it comes with UEFI, Intel graphics, 16 sweet partitions, and another instance of Manjaro that we won't touch in this review. Begin to start.

Read more ...

Feeling bored? Not enough excitement or first-world problems in your life? Worry not! Windows 10 at your service - not to be confused with Windows as a Service, right. Indeed, if you've followed the tech news in the past three or four years, you may have noticed there's always a flurry of unexpected activity with Windows 10. This could be system changes after updates, this could be problems with updates, or this could be, the latest thingie, how to setup your local account after a fresh installation. Shouldn't be an issue right, except, seemingly, it is.

A few days ago, I came across an avalanche of articles discussing a (new) phenomenon: when you set up your Windows 10, it seems to be more difficult to create a local account, and you might be forced to use an online account instead. I read this on Ghacks, among other places, and then decided to do the test for myself, to see whether this is indeed the case. Let's see what happens.

Read more ...

Civilians.

No, that was not the right word. Non-combatants, then. That didn’t work either.

Everyone was affected by the global war of the past nineteen years. The best description was people with no control over their lives. Fallen leaves, waiting to be swept and whirled by a sudden gust of wind. Ghosts, with brittle smiles.

One such specimen stood at the corner of the street. Smiling that empty smile of people living through hell.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Plasma is an extremely extensible, flexible desktop environment, and it lets you customize and change anything and everything to the tiniest detail. You can go about mimicking other desktops and systems as you please, limited only by your imagination and patience. If you want a Mac-like look or a Unity look, you can.

So I thought, I should revisit my old Plasma widgets article and explore some fresh applets out there, to see what else you can do here. Indeed, there are lots of hidden goodies lurking beneath the surface, and if you're curious, you will discover fresh tools and features that can make the Plasma desktop experience even more enjoyable.

Read more ...

Several days ago, I reviewed CentOS 8. Overall, the whole thing went well, but there were some snags along the way. Most notably, I had trouble getting the system configured so that I could use Gnome extensions and transform the vanilla, default look & feel of the Gnome 3 desktop, which I find extremely unproductive, into a more classic desktop formula.

There were problems getting Gnome extensions installed, and then the system didn't have the native host connector, and it took a bit of work sorting everything out. Not trivial. Before I give you a full perfect desktop tutorial that I promised, the kind we did with CentOS 7, I'd like to show you all the steps you need to get the Gnome extensions properly configured in the latest edition of this server-cum-desktop distro. After me.

Read more ...

Now and then, the sun rises above Gondor. And by Gondor, I mean Linux. And by that, I mean, occasionally, fresh new software is born, and it is indeed as fresh as a brioche just taken out of the oven in a small, remote village somewhere in Normandy. The holder of the challenge seems to be Peek, a software designed to help you create compact, high-quality demo animations of desktop activity.

Being able to record your desktop isn't a new thing. I've written about this many times in the past, covering programs like recordMyDesktop, Kazam and friends. Even Spectacle can do this for you, and if you're handy with the omnipotent ffmpeg, then you can do whatever you fancy. Sounds like a simple recipe that would be hard to beat. But this article proves otherwise. After me.

Read more ...

Commander Lip sure didn’t waste time.

He tried to kill Lee Qiang the very next day.

They were riding an APC to the front lines for a routine inspection and familiarization. It was one of the new prewar models, a Kismet urban warrior, with an anti-tank mesh on both sides. A squeaky clean example of a dwindling inventory.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

Many a person in the modern world have had, at some point in their life, to write a document of some sort, usually a CV, and then send it to other people for professional scrutiny. Others have braved their luck writing books and articles, or creating presentations. Many have tried, but few had succeeded.

If you want to write a nicely styled document, you need, well, style. Or rather styles. Ever since computer graphics became powerful enough to show fancy stuff on your screen, document writing has gone from text to a vomit of figures and colorful objects mixed with words in one messy bundle. But if you want to do it right, you want content and style separation. In essence, this is HTML and CSS, and to be fair, this is your modern word processor with the use of styles. Or if you're feeling really adventurous - LaTeX. Or if you're feeling bold and lazy, then maybe LyX. Then, there's another candidate - TeXstudio, and we shall discuss it today.

Read more ...

My music requirements are simple. I have many great qualities, but a refined ear isn't among them. With an aural sensitivity of a comodo dragon, my needs come down to a simple player that is pleasing to the eye, comes with a semi-modern layout, and most importantly, will not annoy me with badly arranged albums, titles and tags. The last piece has been my chief music-related woe for years.

When it comes to music players, I'm kind of okay here. VLC does the job, and when you tweak it, it's quite delightful one must say. Then, when I'm feeling adventurous, there's Clementine, which features splendidly on the desktop, with a clean interface and tons of goodies. And yet, now and then, I go about testing music applications, because music collections won't sort themselves, now will they. To wit, Quod Libet.

Read more ...

There are operating systems that were never meant to be used as desktops. Well, to be fair, most Linux distributions fall into this category, in a way. But CentOS falls more. It's a no-nonsense server distro, designed to give you three quarters of an eternity of stable support and a blackhole worth of predictable boredom so you can do work stuffs. But if you wanna desktop, you can too.

I've always had a soft spot for CentOS - if you're curious, you can read all about my CentOS 6 story and the subsequent CentOS 7 saga over the past decade. Now that the latest release is out, it's time for another long review. I'll commit the distro to my eight-boot mixed Windows & Linux Lenovo G50 machine, which, by the way, already runs a CentOS instance. And if all goes well, then we will attempt an in-vivo upgrade, too. For now, let's commence the journey.

Read more ...

Eyes squinted against the daylight glare, Lee Qiang stepped out of the tin-can transport, together with seventeen other soldiers, all new recruits—except him. They milled quietly, rubbing shoulder against sweaty shoulder, trying to get some sense of where they were.

Hell, Lee Qiang thought.

A familiar place.

Read more ... (my books-only website)

In a perfect world, desktops are complete solutions. Alas, we live in a world that is far from perfect. If you look across different Linux desktop environments, only Plasma (and Unity) offer a fully consistent layout. Gnome requires modifications, and Xfce never mastered the dock idea that well.

Indeed, while testing Manjaro, I decided to retry my notion of a handsome Xfce desktop with a top panel featuring global menu and a pleasant dock at the bottom of the screen. In Gnome, the latter part would be satisfied using extensions, the likes of either Dash to Dock or Dash to Panel, Plasma would give you icons-only task manager or Latte, MATE would give you its own plankified dock version, and Xfce ... well. To that end, I decided to test and explore Cairo Dock. Hence, this article.

Read more ...