Linux

I'm training for Cyber Security and we had a live class yesterday. The instructor asks us, "What's the most vulnerable OS in the world?"

Most people say Windows (predictably), I wanted to say "Any OS which hasn't been hardened & left at default config" but I didn't wanna be a smart ass - no one likes a smart ass. That's probably what the instructor is going for anyways. Trick question and whatnot.

Nope. The man claims it "Linux" which is the most vulnerable OS in the world. Shares this article (screenshots).

I skim through the thing - we're live, don't have much time. I raised three concerns with the "analysis".

1. Debian is treated as one single OS, disregarding versions. Windows versions are treated separately.
2. Desktop Windows is represented by 7 & 10, which came out in 2008 & 2015 respectively. Windows XP, Vista, 8 & 8.1 are not even mentioned. This is for the period 1999-2019.
3. The analysis only considers raw No. of reported Vulns. without regard to severity.

The instructor does apologise... for offending me! Are my concerns valid? Are my objections justified? Am I thinking in the right way for a career in Cyber Security? No, it's whether or not I'm "offended" that's of top concern!

I'm a bit pissed and wanted to rant.

I know nothing. If I can use a computer or phone and it does basic tasks for me I’m all good. I currently use an iPhone and a MacBook.

My boyfriend is much more into programming. Recently he got an expensive Lenovo and has dove headfirst into this Linux stuff.

He tries to explain it to me. I don’t know what he’s saying! “Ubuntu,” “Free and Open,” “terminal.” He’s got this new software that’s not google called “Brave.” He got a Raspeberry Pie thing for Christmas. He’s so enamored with it, and wants to share it with me and make me use it, but he can’t explain it to me well enough for me to understand and when looking it up myself I can’t find many basic user friendly explanations either. Frankly, I’m a little scared of computers. Terrified of getting hacked. Anything wonky looking on my computer scares me and sometimes Linux looks, well, creepy to me. It’s definitely my lack of knowledge. I am a complete noob.

If you guys had a friend, or gf, who knew nothing about Linux or ANYTHING, how would you even begin to explain it? I want to understand the slightest bit so I don’t crush his excitement with my lack of personal understanding (editing because the first way I worded it got the point across wrong)

Edit:

Thank you guys! I can’t believe how this blew up. I have been reading through all of the comments and a majority of them have been kind and very helpful. :) There’s a stigma around nerds especially computer nerds sometimes and I was a little nervous to come on here but you guys really wowed me that you guys really just care about this stuff and want to help. I wanted to address some things I’ve gotten comments on:

A lot of relationship advice. My boyfriend and I have talked about what the line is between sharing our stuff and being too melded together. He’s shown me many interests that I happen to have found I liked and vice versa. I’ve actually been pursuing some new interests recently such as cross stitch that can be my own thing apart from us. We very much enjoy each other and communicate often. Some of you are telling me not to feign interest and I’ll be honest, even if I don’t dive into this fully I just would like to know what he’s talking about to support him.

Edited again because the passage I just wrote here didn’t make sense thank you guys again!!

If we could write a whole new unix-like operating system from scratch today, such that nothing in it has to be backwards compatible with old hardware or standards (only has to support modern hardware to reduce complexity), what are the "lessons learned" and unnecessary baggage?

By operating system, I mean everything from the kernel to the final applications that your desktop environment comes with by default. For example, would it be a microkernel? Would terminal emulators follow a different standard? Would ascii be abolished and replaced by unicode? Would the kernel be written in something other than C? It would certainly need an X11 equivalent, and maybe gui libraries. Or maybe even libraries work differently, too. Maybe bash is outdated and something crazy like lua, lisp, or even a hot code reloading compiled language replaces it. (Yes I realize the purpose/usage of bash and those other languages are totally different, but I want to allow OS designs that are so totally different that something crazy like this might make sense)

I realize this question has a huge scope, so go wild with the answers. Any opinions you have about anything could lead me down an interesting rabbit hole as I try learning more about linux.

Just discovered this today while trying to fix Firefox's mouse scrolling as I can feel it's quite janky compared to when using Chrome/Chromium (still on Linux) or when I'm on Windows (dual boot) on any browser.

It felt like I was running 30 ~ 60 FPS at the minimum so I can definitely feel the difference since the rest of the system runs at 144hz (i.e, dragging windows around, mouse pointer, games, etc.).

My current setup: F33, Gnome wayland, 2k 144hz monitor.

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To correct this. First, make sure that you're running the supported refresh rate of your monitor (I already did so this wasn't my problem). But on Gnome, it's just in the Settings > Displays > Refresh Rate. I think you need xrandr for other WM though.

Next, open Firefox's about:config and set this key (default = -1):

layout.frame_rate 144

That's it! Restart Firefox and scroll through any webpage in your monitor's native speed!

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Bonus: Here's the mouse scrolling tweaks that I used to match with my preference (first problem as mentioned). YMMV so feel free to tweak this in case you prefer a different feel.

general.smoothScroll.msdPhysics.enabled true
mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount 30

There are other related settings that you could tweak like:

general.smoothScroll.currentVelocityWeighting
general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel.durationMaxMS
general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel.durationMinMS
general.smoothScroll.stopDecelerationWeighting

The first two was sufficient enough for me so I left the other settings as is.

Edit:

So I tried to replicate the same issue on Xorg as a guy below said nothing changed from his side, I found that this seems to be more about the display servers or compositors (Wayland, Xorg) than Firefox all alone.

I tried logging in through an Xorg session and set the layout.frame_rate back to -1 and there I had no issues with scrolling not running on the right frame rate, it was all good, tested after a few restarts and it was running correctly. I then got back to wayland and it was all the same issue again, set back to the frame_rate to 144 and it was all good.

I'm not familiar yet with how display servers or compositors work under the hood so I'll let someone else chime in on this if this was actually the culprit here.

This is not a support post of any kind. I just thought this would be a great place to discuss this online. If there is a better forum to discuss this type of issue please feel free to point me in the right direction. This has been an issue for a long time and it needs to fixed.

Despite using Linux for the past two or so years, if there was one thing that made the transition difficult(and still difficult to use now) is Asian character input. I'm Korean, so I often have to use two input sources, both Korean and English. On Windows or macOS, this is incredibly easy.

I choose both the English and Korean input options during install setup or open system settings and install additional input methods.

Most Linux distributions I've encountered make this difficult or impossible to do. They almost always don't provide Asian character input during the installer to allow Asian user names and device names or make it rather difficult to install new input methods after installation.

The best implementation I've seen so far is Ubuntu(gnome and anaconda installer in general). While it does not allow uses to have non-Latin characters or install Asian input methods during installation, It makes it easy to install additional input methods directly from the settings application. Gnome also directly integrates Ibus into the desktop environment making it easy to use and switch between different languages.

KDE-based distributions on the other hand have been the worst. Not only can the installer(generally Calamaries) not allow non-Latin user names, it can't install multiple input methods during OS installation. KDE specifically has very little integration for Ibus input as well. Users have to install ibus-preferences separately from the package manager, install the correct ibus-package from the package manager, and manually edit enable ibus to run after startup. Additionally, most KDE apps seem to need manual intervention to take in Asian input aswell. Unlike the "just works" experience from Gnome, windows, or macOS.

These minor to major issues with input languages makes Linux operating systems quite frustrating to use for many Asians and not-Latin speaking countries. Hopefully, we can get these issues fixed for some distributions. Thanks, for coming to my ted talk.

Hi everyone,

I wrote the third article in my series of documenting my tinkerings with a Raspberry Pi. The pros here might find it trivial but I'm hoping this can help people who are new to this as I'm trying to consolidate all these things together in simple terms and also learn more on the way :)

Baking a pie to block ads - III

Thanks for reading!

Constructive feedback is welcome :)

Edit: Thank you so much everyone for the encouraging and kind words and the cool awards!!
I have noted down all the concerns and questions and will cover all of them in the next series of articles :)
Thanks to everyone who have answered some questions as well!

Please feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any questions :)

TLDR: The software used to cheat and run bots in TF2 can be ported to Windows. Ending Linux support for TF2 wouldn't stop bots and cheaters. Linux support is essential to the game's future.

I've seen a lot of people posting here recently saying that Valve should end Linux support for TF2 as a means to stop the bots from invading servers, and that's been bothering me a lot.

Just so you understand where I'm coming from: I'm a pretty relevant figure from South America's TF2 community. Alongside a pretty active YouTube channel, I run 11 community servers (10 in Brazil and 1 in London) for people to play free of charge in a safe and welcoming environment. For several reasons (mostly the belief that computing should be open source) I choose to play on Linux. Also, all my servers run on Linux, for security and cost reasons (If I ran Windows servers not only would they be more exploitable but they would also cost me double and I wouldn't be able to host as many).

Suggesting Valve should cut off Linux support for TF2 is a hideous idea.

First, it would discriminate a legitimate portion of the player base. Alongside me, there are plenty of other legitimate players and community figures that run Linux. We are all Valve's customers abiding by Steam's ToS, like you, and we have the right to participate in the game we so much enjoy.

Second, it would not solve the bot problem. The bots currently run on Cathook, an open source software. It is true that this software is currently distributed as part of a Linux distribution and it runs on Linux. However, it wouldn't be impossible to port it to Windows. The bot creators probably chose to distribute it alongside Linux because Linux is free and legal to distribute. Therefore, it is more convenient for them to use Linux as a base. If they needed to, they could port it to Windows and make it work on Microsoft's OS. And believe me they would have incentive to do that if Valve decided to cut Linux from TF2: bot creators rent their services and make money with it. This has become a business for some and they would easily solve these sorts of OS restrictions.

Third, TF2 needs Linux support to survive long term. A lot of you frequently recommend community servers as an alternative to casual matchmaking, because they are better managed and usually safer form bots and cheaters than Valve's official servers. Well, do you know what OS is most used for game servers around the world? That's right, Linux based operating systems, like U

I was going to donate/ discard my 10 year old macbook pro because it had become completely unusable then it occurred to me to install linux on it and turn it back into a useable computer.

Whether it's a pc or a mac, linux can make an old computer useable again. There are of course limitations on the software you'll be able to run, but it can make the difference between discarding a computer or bringing it back to life.

Ever since I was exposed to the Linux community, I was inevitably faced with all the talk and jokes about Arch Linux. It gave me the impression that Arch is an advanced user type of distro, a distro more difficult to use, maybe unnecessarily difficult, for people who enjoy self-torture for the purpose of looking like hacker man! And don't get me wrong, that is slightly appealing, but I discovered this was not really true. Arch is very noob friendly!

Now, I should clarify that Arch is still a minimal install distro. So this means that you will likely not have a very usable OS out of the box right after install. But to me, a noob isn't necessarily someone who doesn't want to learn, it's someone who doesn't know and lacks in knowledge; someone who's new. IF YOU WANT SOMETHING READY TO USE OUT OF THE BOX AFTER INSTALL, ARCH IS NOT FOR YOU. And I would not recommend it if it is your very first distro. But Arch is certainly for you if you are not exactly a Linux expert, but have some experience in it. There are a few things that Arch does very well to be noob friendly:

1. The Arch Wiki is VERY GOOD. The Arch wiki does not only have info on how to install and setup arch, it had information on so many things! It has info on how to secure your system, info on so many desktop environments and how to set them up, and even how to start gaming or emulating consoles, and all kinds of popular Linux software. Arch wiki is extremely well written, and will be more than enough for you. Ignore any other source unless it is not in arch wiki.

2. The community support is very good. It might not seem so because of some of the memes and the snobby "Arch btw, you're dumb for using Ubuntu" crowd, but the community is very helpful and willing to support. There is a common misconception that you will have a hard time finding support for anything other than Ubuntu, but most support questions that you find for Ubuntu online will work for arch. This isn't to say that I didn't find enough support that was arch specific (even though it'd probably work outside of arch).

3. Pacman (the package manager) is very easy to use and noob-friendly, and it is very fast.

4. When you build your system from a minimal install, you'll gain a lot of understanding of how it all works, and you'll become better and troubleshooting. Imo, arch is much easier to troubleshoot than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is loaded with things you don't know are there, whereas with arch, you built it from the ground up, you know much

I moved over to Linux Fedora about 18 months ago because the laptop I was using just wasn't suitable for Windows 10. I really enjoyed the changeover and I'm pretty technically savvy and messed around with Linux a little as a kid. At the time I was running my own business and I found my workflow really changed using Linux compared to Windows, I can't really explain it but I just work differently when in Linux compared to another OS.

I purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 2 about 12 months ago which of course came with Windows 10 Pro - I didn't want to risk breaking anything and so I happily used Windows until a few weeks when I realised that Ubuntu is actually an option on the ThinkPad P1 and so everything should theoretically work. I made the decision to go ahead and install Ubuntu - that was about a week ago and once again I have experienced a significant change in my level of productivity and the way in which I work.

I am now the Director of an organisation that undertakes OSINT investigations and similar duties. Many of my co-workers utilise Linux on virtual machines for both security and development reasons - as I told them I'd moved over to Ubuntu for my primary business laptop - we all kind of agreed that it was by far superior for investigations and law enforcement purposes over Windows or even iOS.

For me, Ubuntu is the perfect OS of which to launch and coordinate everything else. I spend a lot of time using an Android Emulator because we investigate Smartphone applications and once again I was taken back at how much better these Emulators run on a Linux-based platform.

I guess I was just really surprised at how well it all runs on my Lenovo P1 - I figured the slight issues I had with Fedora were due to the OS and it really looks like it was actually the laptop. I was hesitant in trying Linux on such an expensive machine - if I'd known it was like this I would have selected Ubuntu as a pre-installed option!

Valve put out a year in review for 2020, showing they've increased to 120 million monthly active users overall.

That puts the Linux number at close to 1 million monthly active users.

I've updated the GOL Steam Tracker to note this, at the bottom. You can also read my article here.

0.78% (December 2020's number for Linux) of 120 million = 936,000

Edit: actually it was 120.4 million, so 939,120 Linux monthly active users.

Seems Valve are committed and teased something else coming:

>Linux - We're continuing to invest in technology that improves game compatibility and performance through Steam Play. We're also putting together new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements.

as a long time btrfs user I noticed some some of my daily Linux development tasks became very slow w/ kernel 5.10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhUMdvLyKJc

I found a very simple test case, namely extracting a huge tarball like: tar xf firefox-84.0.source.tar.zst On my external, USB3 SSD on a Ryzen 5950x this went from ~15s w/ 5.9 to nearly 5 minutes in 5.10, or an 2000% increase! To rule out USB or file system fragmentation, I also tested a brand new, previously unused 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, with a similar, albeit not as shocking regression from 5.2s to a whopping~34 seconds or ~650% in 5.10 :-/

I am looking for a lightweight web browser that is not a fork of Chrome. Excluding Firefox, Vivaldi or Brave but can be a fork of Firefox.

I tried GNOME web, qupzilla and midori, but Youtube doesn't behave properly on them.

I used Linux on the desktop for 11 years from 2002 to 2013 or so, mostly on Gentoo or Arch with KDE, but I tried other distros (Ubuntu, Fedora) and DEs (xfce, gnome) throughout that time. I always dual-booted Windows for gaming.

I still run Arch on my home server and we use RHEL on our servers at work. I use Windows w/ an X server to run konsole and other apps remotely at work.

Point is, I'm not an amateur. I use Linux daily, just not on the desktop. I gave up on the desktop years ago because Windows was good enough and was more stable and reliable. Simpler, even.

Since a lot of time has passed, I was wondering if things have fundamentally improved. From what I read, it seems like it hasn't, but I thought maybe I was just getting biased information.

I got a new laptop without a discrete GPU, so there's no reason I couldn't run Linux on it for everything. It's got a second M.2 slot, so I could buy one and try a Linux desktop again without much trouble. I just don't want to waste my time if the situation is still as it was in 2013: "usable but buggy and inconsistent with no real advantage over Windows."

edit: VirtualBox didn't work as well as I'd hoped so I installed Arch after shrinking my Windows partition by 64GB. It's fine so far. I tried KDE w/Wayland and that was a mistake and waste of an hour. I've got things set up enough to not be frustrated and am typing this from Firefox in Plasma. I'll update in a week or two.

The support for the newly added webcam mode for the GoPro(8&9) is pretty poor on Linux. I found some tutorials out there that describe the rough steps, but always require some personal adaptions. To simplify this and to get en par with Windows, I created this script. Enjoy!

https://github.com/jschmid1/gopro_as_webcam_on_linux

If you find any bugs or just have an enhancement request, feel free to open an issue on GitHub or just simply post it here.