This is just a thread for me to babble on about Linux news and comings and goings, it's something I dabble with in my off-time and enjoy chatting about. I made the upgrade recently to Ubuntu 18.04 on most of my machines, and am pretty happy with the upgrade so far. Most of what I run are servers, but I've got one with the GUI on it, and am enjoying what GNOME has become.
It's Debian with a different Window Manager, so Debian for sure. I've actually only ever had Ubuntu on Pi's before. I need to give Rasbpian a shot.
I've been poking around alot lately with a program called netdata: https://github.com/firehol/netdata It's a very simple install that once completed pops up a website that shows pretty much EVERYTHING a server owner would need to know about what their server is doing, and what is currently tripping up. It only needs around 30 MB's of memory to do this. here is a demo: https://london.my-netdata.io/default.html I've currently got it running on my cluster here at home, and it's been invaluable in telling me what VM's I run are doing what, and what the bottlenecks are. (I.E. I'm starting up three VM's at once on the same machine, it will show the Hard Drive struggling to keep up.) It's completely open source, and really really neat, if it has a weakness, it's that it doesn't keep Data for a long time, it only does around two days worth.
So about a half year ago I decided I was tired of setting up VNC on Linux and wanted to try something else, so I went out and installed Nomachine: https://www.nomachine.com/ Which while not open source, is an alternative to remote desktop connecting to other machines on a network. And I've been a pretty strong convert since then. I prefer to SSH in usually to do most things, since alot of what I can do can be done on the command line, and this requires very little resources, and I've got tools setup to remote in via SSH very easily. But every so often I have other usage cases where this isn't practical. I recently rebuilt a Mac Pro 1 1, that I had lying around, and upgraded it's processors and put 32GB of ram in it. Which was all told surprisingly cheap. 20 bucks was both the processors, another 40 was all the memory. I then set about getting it upgraded to El Capitan with a software cheat tool so it'd make it all the way. It can't go up to High sierra unfortunately. After that, It ran really well, but I have a small area to work with for the computer, so I set it near my main tower, and decided remote screening into it would be ideal. Nomachine made that really easy, and now I can do what little art I do on it. I've been very happy so far with how it's working, and thought it's not open source, it's probably one of my favorite bits of software despite that. So it let me use a mac when I need to, and lets me get into one of my linux machines. I'm still trying to find more uses for it, but for now, graphically it's my goto.
About a year ago, me and my buds got really into ARK, we got our interest right after an ARK sale, and really thought hey, this is cool enough, we should all play online. Which turned into an unmitigated disaster once we realized how rough and tumble the Official ARK server's were, and how hard it was to find a good private server. I offered to use my cluster to host a server or 5 so we could have some fun with it, I had the memory and capacity lying around, and it would teach me a thing or two. So I went through the processes and slowly setup 5 ARK servers, through Steamcmd, which was a complete pain. I set one up for the then every single world they had available and a test realm so just in case an update borked everything. and this sort of worked. However I then discovered this: https://linuxgsm.com/ This website is the web frontend for a Github project that creates scripts to very very easily create game servers on Linux, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Galaxy Citizen is being hosted using the Starbound script. Here's the list-o-games it supports: https://linuxgsm.com/servers/ It's incredibly flexible, allows you to keep logs in the same manner as other servers, lets you upgrade as you see fit, or downgrade if a patch is screwy. And it makes the entire business much much easier. So when I found this, I immediately copied my world and player files and set it up this way, which took probably around 40 minutes to get them all ready to go, and turned them on. I'm still impressed after all this time, though my fascination with ARK stopped with all of the crashing the client does.
Double header today, because I'm feelin spicy: In the course of my job, I get asked often about upgrading computers, and buying new electronic parts. I work IT for a university and am a public facing part of it, so I do this for students personal devices as much as I do it for the Institution itself. I get alot of younger guys who having bought arduino's, raspberry pi's, and whatnot will come to me and ask what they can do with it. Whenever it's a raspberry pi, I always always mention: https://pi-hole.net Pi-hole is probably one of the more amazing programs that have changed how I do everything, because of just how effective it is. What it is, is a Network wide adblocker, it requires a bit more setup than a beginner may be comfortable with, but if you have the patience, what it does is very much worth it. What it does is it blocks ads for an entire network. In addition to blocking ads on a PC or Mac, it can block ads on an Xbox, it can block ads on a smartphone if the smartphone is on wifi, and it'll do all of these well. You can even install bigger lists to have it block other things, like Malware, or attempting phishing attack websites. It can run on anything really, but a Raspberry pi fits the bill well because it uses so little electricity and leaving it on for months or years at a time is an easy option. It can be installed however on nearly any Linux workstation if necessary, or routing device if it's open and linux based.
So, say that you need to get some stats about your machine, RIGHT now, and you are SSH'ed into it, and don't want to use Netdata, which I covered previously, WHAT DO YOU DO? In my case, In place of using the standard htop, I use Glances. https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/ Glances, gives you as much information as possible in the terminal window you call it up in. So if you resize it, it'll display even more information live. Glances runs on everything, including microwaves and toasters, it's really versatile and very easy to install. This and Netdata are my diagnostic tools for Linux nowadays, and using them together, is invaluable to figuring out just what is going on with a machine.
So I heard about this variant of Linux called Kali Linux. Curious to hear your thoughts on said deviant.
Kali, is a Penetration testing Distro, it's good for classes where you want to learn how networks work, and how to break into them, it's great for putting together scripts to change things or to break them. And it's a great protection against other people using Kali, since you can see what they are doing on your network and if it's malicious. What it is not, is a great daily driver. It's not very hand holdy, so if you don't know linux, using it a ton will probably not teach you. If you want to work on office documents, install games, and do normal computer stuff, you can install that, but it's not going to be easy going. A lot of the quality of life changes that are in more Mainstream distros are also just absent, so the distro is harder to use, and thusly less people use it or keep with it because it's harder to use. Kali has a really cool reputation though because it can be used for hacking and breaking into things, but I've seen the mistake many make of using it like it's a normal linux, when it's really not. Ubuntu is the best daily driver and the easiest to get going for people new to linux. (Kali can be finicky with Wireless, and quite difficult to get help with.) And all the parts of Kali can be installed on Ubuntu if you want to learn how to Kali while being in a friendlier environment for learning.
Hey! It's always cool to chat with fellow Linux enthusiasts! I've been hopping between distros for quite some time, and honestly, it's hard to pick a favorite. Right now, I'm using Manjaro, which is based on Arch Linux. I like it because it's got that rolling release schedule, meaning I always have access to the most up-to-date software. Ubuntu 18.04 is a solid choice too, though! It's been really stable for me in the past, and GNOME definitely has some sweet features. In fact, it's always interesting to see Linux keep up with (and sometimes surpass) other OS experiences. Like, just the other day, I saw a cheap windows 10 key and thought: "No way, I'm sticking with my distros." Anyway, feel free to share more about your Linux journey, I'm all ears!
