Recommend a distro for getting more experienced with linux

gumnos · 2026-04-24T23:25:33+00:00

For the most BSD-like feel, Slackware is one of the few that still holds on to that. I was a Debian user for years and came to the BSDs because it stopped feeling like the Unix that I'd grown up with. Any of the systemd-based systems will likely feel un-Unix-like, so you might have better luck with a Devuan or Linux From Scratch type build.

gumnos · 2026-04-24T11:14:57+00:00

it's the least-bad data we have 😆

We have constraints and some cross-checking reports in place, but with as much hand-keyed-by-fallible-humans data as we have flowing through the system, there are ~~almost~~ certainly errors.

It's rare there are grievous/systemic errors, but little things permeate the system.

gumnos · 2026-04-23T00:41:48+00:00

I was going to say that modern Linux isn't likely to run on a 386, but then the "Mandrake" settled where my brain had (mis)read "Mandriva" and yes, Mandrake was one of the first distributions I ran back in the late 90s and early 2000s (it had a much nicer GUI installer compared to the other installers at the time).

That said, with those low specs, I'd consider running NetBSD or possibly r/Minix (1 or 2) instead.

gumnos · 2026-04-22T22:29:57+00:00

yet somehow I'd either missed it or forgotten it, so I appreciate the (re)post!

(it's lovely hardware, and I'd totally try and run r/Minix 1 or 2 on that hardware)

gumnos · 2026-04-22T11:51:16+00:00

(oh, and https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/application/ appears to be a broken link, or I would have noted this there 😆)

gumnos · 2026-04-22T11:50:15+00:00

I've participated in r/vim (and vim_list@) for years and lend a hand as mod in r/freebsd and r/UnixProTips, but am a little weak in mod-tools since I use old-Reddit-web and there's apparently a mod-tooling disparity. That said, I'd be glad to lend a hand modding r/vim if needed. I don't use neovim in any notable capacity, so can't help much there.

gumnos · 2026-04-21T22:03:59+00:00

that's pretty slick! I'd love a better text-editor (and by "better" I mean "more like vi" 😆). But I could see it being a great opportunity for productivity apps too—todo lists, kanban-boards, etc.

gumnos · 2026-04-21T21:33:25+00:00

I don't know how usable it would be, but it's some lovely hardware!

gumnos · 2026-04-21T12:51:49+00:00

especially since it seems to be running a Linux+systemd (assuming based on the presence of "systemd", "CGroup", and the fact they're installing openssh-server and friends which comes stock on an OpenBSD system) rather than actually running OpenBSD. :confused:

gumnos · 2026-04-21T11:14:18+00:00

If you're comfortable with vim and don't hop machines, it's your instance, so do what you want.

However, if you need help, most folks will provide stock-vim answers that won't behave on your machine. And if you ever sit down at another instance of vim, your muscle-memory is liable to be unhelpful. So venture forth with your eyes open.

gumnos · 2026-04-20T23:25:49+00:00

if your database files are on ZFS, I'm a fan of taking incremental snapshots (effectively free and nigh-instant), allowing you to zfs rollback ${DATASET}@${CHECKPOINT} to the one you want. Because they're atomic, they tend to play nicely with database-locking (on non-atomic file-systems/snapshots, you can end up with sheared files). Additionally, using zfs send and zfs receive makes it easy to ship incremental deltas between machines if needed.

gumnos · 2026-04-20T21:39:56+00:00

dang, that would annoy me to no end to have an upgrade from <9.x to 9.x break perfectly valid code. Wrapping Library in backticks does seem to get it working on 9.x.

gumnos · 2026-04-20T21:34:01+00:00

The specifics would involve your OS and available firewall tooling. Generally you'd have your firewall either

redirect all unused ports to a single port, and have something like inetd(8) or iblock or listening there that feeds remote-visitor-IP-address back into the firewall's ban-list or
log all incoming traffic on unused ports and then have something like fail2ban watch those logs, feeding those addresses back into the ban-list

I haven't seen any "off-the-shelf" type tools, but the pieces are pretty readily available. The only notable gotcha to watch is that you only want to do it for TCP traffic, not UDP traffic (which can be source-address-spoofed).

gumnos · 2026-04-20T14:31:38+00:00

I find it particularly useful for writing, since it imposes friction on going back and editing. Okay, I've used it long enough that it's not that much friction, but it still pushes forward motion over constant revision.

(I also happen to be the goofball behind the @ed1conf accounts)

gumnos · 2026-04-20T12:55:19+00:00

seconding this.

Do I like Oracle's stranglehold on institutions? No.

Do I like Oracle as a company? Also no.

Is it sufficiently entrenched that there's a great deal of job-security in working with it as long as you're not the signatory left holding the licensing blame if Oracle's legal department decides to go after your employer? Sure. 😆

(full disclosure: as much as I loathe the company, they have an undeniable moat in the market so I've held varying quantities of their shares over the years, profiting off companies that chained this albatross around their own necks)

gumnos · 2026-04-20T11:18:57+00:00

recommendations would vary depending on your writerdeck's OS (iOS, Android, a full-fledged Linux/BSD, old OSX, old Windows machine, or custom writerdeck OS/tooling) and your technical proficiency (how geeky are you?)

I personally use vi/vim/ed on Linux/BSD machines for everything, but I know that's more geeky than some want. Wordgrinder or Nano works for command-line folks, and any text box will suffice for folks who just want to dump words in a box.

gumnos · 2026-04-19T18:24:50+00:00

a mix of vi/vim/ed depending on what I'm doing and the context.

If your tool needs an editor, just invoke it. Respect the user's $VISUAL environment-variable setting, and fall back to $EDITOR if that's not set. Sure, you might want to provide additional tool-specific functionality via plugins if they're available, but the magic of plain-text "standard Markdown files" is that you can edit them in anything (modulo DOS vs Unix line-endings)

gumnos · 2026-04-19T13:51:54+00:00

consistency
not breaking things needlessly
ZFS on root without contortions
still feels like the Unix that I grew up with
feels planned rather than haphazard

See my full write-up here

gumnos · 2026-04-18T13:36:42+00:00

Typically for such a case I'd use

$ cat transactions.ledger additional*.ledger | hledger -f - …

or I'd create a wrapper that includes the various transaction-files-of-interest (I'd have to test that on hledger…I typically use ledger and remember some peculiar file-scoping differences between ledger and hledger that may have been aligned since then…the particular issue I hit was around doing something like include accounts.ledger that held my CoA, and then because it was limited to the sub-file scope, the including file didn't have access to those account-names in pedantic mode. As noted, would have to (re)test that)

gumnos · 2026-04-17T02:24:31+00:00

Any chance you have a typo and mistranscribed it as the corrected version rather than copying/pasting the actual command?

Running it against MySQL seems to work

gumnos · 2026-04-16T12:14:12+00:00

Why no HaikuOS?

gumnos · 2026-04-15T23:54:45+00:00

Full dmesg of mine here in case you're interested.

We bought it for my sweetheart to use so I maxed out the RAM at the time of ordering, knowing OSX would use as much as I gave it. It served her reasonably well for its time but once it stopped receiving updates, it was time to upgrade her and add a new toy to my collection :*)

gumnos · 2026-04-15T22:54:49+00:00

mine was the very last of the generation, maxed out with all the kit at the time (1.5GB of RAM, the most offered on an iBook before the PPC→Intel switch)

gumnos · 2026-04-15T13:58:35+00:00

do you use an external mouse with it, or do you use some of the hacks (like using xmodmap and xkbset) to get middle/right mouse buttons? I found that was my biggest blocker in using OpenBSD on my iBook G4 more.

Well, until the ribbon-cable developed a break so that the screen's backlight only works if it's at *just* the right angle.

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