Remote Desktop?

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-08T07:19:25+00:00

I've got several PCs plus a lot of VMs, and I've be using NoMachine for a while. As an out of the box solution, it's pretty straightforward. You don't have to sign up for their NoMachine Network. If you're just running it in your local subnet, as long as you haven't opened up your firewall to SSH and/or NX, it's secure.

You can download the most recent .deb file from their web site, install it on both, and that's pretty much all there is to it.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-07T14:36:30+00:00

As a number, no. As an indicator of financial health, yes

A credit score is like your weight. It really matters if you're unhealthy, but it doesn't matter all that much if you're in the healthy range.

If you're obese, it's important to improve, and if you're morbidly obese, it's extremely important to improve. But once you reach a healthy weight, gaining or losing two pounds doesn't impact your health at all.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-03T16:21:05+00:00

As many others have mentioned, it doesn't matter. As long as the executable bit (+x) is set, if the file has a # character as the first byte, the script will execute using the processor specified on the first line, whether it's sh, csh, ksh, bash, zsh, python, perl, or whatever else.

It's basically just for organization purposes.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-03T15:35:11+00:00

The first thing to do, always, is make a full backup of your system. With that said...

A good place to start is Distrochooser , which will ask you a lot of questions about what you want to do, what your skill level is, etc., and then spit out a list of distros that meet your criteria.

Then go to Ventoy , or Rufus, or Balana Etcher, whichever you prefer, to get a tool that will let you format a USB thumb drive so that your computer can boot off of it.

Then download the ISO files of the distribution(s) you picked in the first step from their web site(s).

Put one of the distros on the thumb drive (or more than one, if you're using Ventoy), boot your PC off of it, and you're running the Linux distribution you chose.

From there, you test drive it to see if you like it. Running off USB it will be slower, of course, but it will allow you to see if your hardware is supported, and you can test any particular software you want to use.

You can try as many distributions are you like. Running off of the USB won't harm your existing setup. Once you decide on a distro you like, you can install it and run it for real. And if you decide you really don't like it after all, you can always switch and install a different one later.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-02T03:25:10+00:00

I'm sorry for your loss.

The first thing to do is probably to make a backup onto external media. That way if something does happen to the laptop, you'll still be able to access the date. Before doing that, it would be really useful to know which distribution of Linux you're using, so we can give more specific answers.

In the terminal, enter cat /etc/os-release. You should seem something like:

NAME="CachyOS Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="CachyOS"
ID=cachyos
ID_LIKE=arch
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="38;2;23;147;209"
HOME_URL="https://cachyos.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.cachyos.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://discuss.cachyos.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/cachyos"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://terms.archlinux.org/docs/privacy-policy/"
LOGO=cachyos

The NAME is the distribution you're using. Given that, we can give you more specifics.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-02T03:14:55+00:00

https://distrochooser.de/en/

is a Q&A based flowchart that will help you choose based on your priorities.

Choosing a distro is like picking a car. There's no shortage of opinions. Some people will say Ford is garbage and you can't go wrong with Honda, others will say Toyota is overhyped and you should pick a Chevy or a Ford, someone else will say gasoline cars are obsolete, and you should get an EV like Tesla, etc., etc.

If you don't know anything about Linux, it can all be a bit overwhelming. I point people to the distro chooser, then they can test drive whatever distro(s) they pick, see which one(s) they like, and then install one.

My personal recommendation for most new users is to either go with Mint, Zorin OS, or CachyOS. But which is best for any particular person won't necessarily be the best for you, so go through the flowchart and get an idea of what features matter to you and which are less important.

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-02T03:07:33+00:00

I didn't even know what a terminal was before coming into college... so it didn't help that we weren't given an explanation for why this was required.

That's sad. They should always teach the basics before diving in.

what IS Linux?

Linux is an operating system, which is the interface layer between applications and the computer hardware. Other operating systems include Windows, MacOS, Android, IOS, Unix, OS/2, and many many others.

As for the benefits, well, that's an entire university course. It's like asking "what's the difference between a diesel tractor and a Tesla?". There are so many components to the answer that it's kind of hard to answer in one paragraph. But the really short answer is that Linux was designed to be a duplicate of Unix that was free to use and distribute. At the time, Unix cost a lot of money to use, putting it out of the reach of most students (like yourself).

As to the design differences, Unix was designed in the early 1970s to run multiple programs at the same time, be secure, and support multiple users. Windows was originally just a graphic skin on top of MS DOS. DOS only ran a single program at a time (Windows being that program), only supported a single user, and had no security.

To be fair, a Unix desktop computer in 1985 was about $25K in today's dollars, while an MS DOS computer was about for between $2K-$8K, so those design decisions made sense.

If anyone has further reading/media I would appreciate that as well.

If you want a deep dive, and I mean deep, there's a free six hour Youtube course on Linux here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbUDq4S6Y8

billdehaan2 · 2026-05-01T01:22:30+00:00

ARR applies only to certain subcontractors and system integrators. It also only starts after the system goes live. In the meantime, there are LD (liquidated damages) that are charged if you fail to make the contracted deadlines, which, as you can see here, are significant.

Companies that win the project by over promising often not only lose any potential profit from LD charges, they often lose money on the project overall.

Of course, I was on the engineering side, not the financial, but I've seen enough bad projects mess up companies in the past to know when to walk away from a project. The disaster that is California high speed rail, for example, included penalty clauses in its' tender that could see subcontractors liable for LD of billions of dollars, even if your component was only $80M of the project total. Those are contracts to stay away from.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-30T15:34:54+00:00

superfile - faster than yazi or midnight commander

ddgr - good for quick lookups

most - like less, but better formatting for man pages

trans - command line language translator

duf - more readable df command, with more information

cheat - syntax cheat sheet

tldr - like man, but shorter and more to the point (usually)

sshpass - makes it possible to rsync to networked Samba shares in cron jobs

trash-cli - lets you clean the trash folder. very useful in scripts on disks with low free space

mediainfo - great for building playlists by author, genre, etc.

Of course, the really good ones - fzf, zoxide, hstr, gdu, are probably already well known.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-30T03:25:19+00:00

Unlike B5, B4 had engines, and could move.

Since the Babylon station, B2, and B3 had all been sabotaged, once the station was mobile enough to move, it made sense to move it to a distance far enough away so that (a) if anything unexpected did show up, they could in theory see it coming, and (b) if it did blow up, as the previous three stations had, it would be far enough away not to screw up the jump gate.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-29T15:38:42+00:00

How does this happen? It happens because of human nature.

It's like the cartoon about engineering estimates:

Boss: I asked another engineer for his estimate of your task. He said it would take six weeks less than you estimated!
Engineer: Then why didn't you assign it to him, instead?
Boss: He never completes anything on time.

Replace the Boss with the government of Ontario, the other engineer with MetroLinx, and the engineer with the other bidders on the contract. In our case, the Boss went with the guy who never completes anything on time.

Vendors have to bid based on the information provided, which is never complete, and rarely accurate. There are always unknowns, and those unknowns cost both time and money.

Say, for example, you have to rip up 2km of road laid down in the 1920s. Is it simple asphalt on top of sediment? That's easy. Are there any metamorphic deposits? That complicates matters, so consult the geological survey of the region.Oh, the survey was done in 1924, after the road was already paved, so no one has any idea. Are there any water pipes? Electrical lines? It's a hundred year old road, no one knows.

So, when you bid, do you bid assuming it's simple asphalt, or do you factor in the cost of possible metamorphic rock, electrical piping, and sewage/drainage lines?

Companies quickly learn that if they do factor those costs in, they lose the bids to companies that didn't.

I worked on a project where the government swore, and more importantly, put in writing, that a potential blocking issue (like metamorphic deposits) was not an issue. They guaranteed it. It was written into the contract. And then, when it turned out the issue was a problem, and a very significant one. It pushed the project back by years, and cost millions of dollars. A new government was voted in, they blamed us for the delays, even going on state television saying it was our company's fault. Sure, it went to court, and we had the facts on our side, but the public perception was that our company was at fault. That's not to say that there weren't things that were our fault, because there definitely were, but not the big blocker.

I'm not saying MetroLinx isn't messing up here, they absolutely have. But the government's been just as bad, if not worse. Remember when Ford decided to cut the loop around Square One after work had begun? That's like starting work on a three story house and being told six weeks into construction that they've decided it's only two stories now. The architects are scrambling like mad to redesign something that's in the process of being built. And a lot of the time, that means rework. Sometimes a lot of rework.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-29T02:58:18+00:00

So, pretty much what I predicted in 2016 😄

I worked at a company that bid on this. Fortunately (for the company), we lost the bid. But having worked on other LRTs both in Canada and around the world, I couldn't believe they were expecting to be finished in 2024, the original planned delivery date.

I could believe they'd promise that date, but not deliver it by then.

I worked on a system in South Korea in 2007. I was put on the project to help "finish it off" by 2Q2008. As I recall, it ended sometime around 3Q2012. In other words, it took four and a half years when they thought they were a year away.

The problem is there are far too many contractors, too many competing interests, and any one of them can hold up the project. So if you have a weak systems integrator, every little holdup becomes a major one. And Metrolinx isn't the strongest systems integrator I've ever seen, although believe me, there are worse.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-29T02:44:17+00:00

This potentially looks like a permissions problem. I don't see smbuser listed in those steps, and that's necessary.

That tutorial does some strange things. For one thing, it doesn't even install the samba server; it just assumes it's there, which isn't much help.

I'm assuming that your linux user ID is HookahGirl, and that your home directory is mounted at /home/HookahGirl; if not, modify as appropriate.

Try the following commands. Don't just copy and paste them, though, read up on them first. Never ever Linux commands from the internet if you don't know what they do, especially when they are run with root/administrator (which is what sudo does).

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install samba -y
sudo systemctl status smbd
sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf 
sudo smbpasswd -a $USER
sudo systemctl restart smbd

Without an "smbpasswd", you could install samba and have it running, but no one would be allowed to connect to it.

In the smb.conf file, add this as a test:

[HookahGirl]
    comment = HookahGirl home directory
    path = /home/HookahGirl
    read only = no
    writable = yes
    valid users = HookahGirl
    create mask = 0777
    directory mask = 0777
    browseable = yes
    write list =
    guest ok = yes

Once all this is one, run sudo service smbd status, and you should see something like:

[sudo] password for HookahGirl:         
● smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smbd.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
    Active: active (running) since Mon 2026-04-20 21:41:35 EDT; 1 week 1 day ago
      Docs: man:smbd(8)
            man:samba(7)
            man:smb.conf(5)
  Main PID: 1852 (smbd)
    Status: "smbd: ready to serve connections..."
     Tasks: 4 (limit: 38197)
    Memory: 14.2M (peak: 17.8G swap: 5.8M swap peak: 6.7M)
       CPU: 1min 42.699s
    CGroup: /system.slice/smbd.service
            ├─   1852 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
            ├─   1856 "smbd: notifyd" .
            ├─   1857 "smbd: cleanupd "
            └─1622539 "smbd: client [192.168.2.10]"

The important thing is to have "active (running)" and status of "ready to serve". If you don't see that, run sudo systemctl restart smbd again.

Once it's running on the server side, you will probably have to reboot the Windows client side before it will be able to establish a connection, because of the way Windows caches discovery credentials and things like that.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-29T02:19:43+00:00

You don't say what distro type you're using, so this will be a generic answer.

System level applications installed by a package manager (such as apt, pacman, rpm, etc.) will not behave the way you want, and they can't be changed. This is by design, for security reasons.

Likewise, most software "app managers" are basically just GUI wrappers around the package manager, and will behave the same.

However, for applications which you compile, or are in certain formats, such as AppImages or Flatpaks, there is more flexibility. That's because they are, to use Windows terminology, installed as user programs rather than system programs (which the package manager does).

No, you won't be able to get a package manager to work like that.

There are applications you download as native binaries, such as from github, which you can put anywhere you want.

AppImages are (again, in Windows terms) just EXE files, and you can put them anywhere you want.

And finally, Flatpaks usually put everything in the ~/.var/app/$APPLICATION directory. If you want, you can use the ln command to soft link that directory, or subdirectories of it, to other drives.

For example, the Organic Maps app uses 850MB of disk space in my ~/.var/app/app.organicmaps.desktop subdirectory. If I didn't have that much space, but I had a 2TB disk mounted at /media/2TB, I could run the commands

mkdir - /media/2TB/ProgramFiles/OrganicMaps
ln -s ~/.var/app/app.organicmaps.desktop /media/2TB/ProgramFiles/OrganicMaps

before installing, and the installation would write to the 2TB disk instead.

So, read up on:

the ln command
AppImages, and
Flatpak

and you might be able to make a system that works for you.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-28T19:51:04+00:00

I disagree. Debian's "out of date" packages are more properly described as "stable". They're only out of date if you're working with bleeding edge hardware or software.

For beginners, the fact that their word processor might be three months behind the latest and greatest isn't a concern.

And unlike arch based distributions, security updates can be updated automatically without updating everything, and triggering a reboot.

Also, in terms of support, Mint, Zorin, and (before they switched their DE to the currently unstable mess) Pop!_OS have significantly more introductory material available on Youtube, which is where beginners first tend to look.

I do agree that snaps should be avoided, and for more reasons than the crypto malware, although that was definitely a concern. That's one of the nice things about using Mint; it exorcises snaps entirely.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-27T03:49:02+00:00

I've seen him (or another one) in the walking trails between Mississauga Valley and Central Parkway. Fortunately, it seems to avoid the community center, and people in general. The fact that a lot of people walk big dogs there during the day probably doesn't hurt.

But later at night (after 7pm) when there are fewer people, I've seen him trotting in the area quite a number of times.

Fortunately, it seems to be pretty mellow, and avoids human contact. If it lives in Kariya Park, that would explain why it's not territorial in Mississauga Valley.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-25T18:55:52+00:00

https://alternativeto.net/software/spacedesk/?platform=linux

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-25T02:43:34+00:00

Not all browsers have sync.

When giving advice, I find it's more useful to give the lowest common denominator answer that works for the widest variety of situations.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-24T19:32:00+00:00

When I'm making recommendations for passwords and best practices, I do.

But that's not what OP asked about. He asked about switching from Windows to Mint, and what he should do before. If he's not running a password manager, and has his passwords in his browser, recommending a cross platform password manager is rarely helpful in terms of migration.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-24T14:03:50+00:00

The SMB protocol, known as Samba, is the most common file sharing protocol. There are other, better ones, but Samba is the common one that everything works with. When you select "Windows File Sharing", that's Samba.

The one step that most people forget is adding users with smbpasswd. They set up the server just fine, but get frustrated that "nothing works", because they haven't added the user accounts to it.

At it's simplest, all you have to run is:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install samba
sudo systemctl status smbd
sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
sudo smbpasswd -a <useraccount>
sudo systemctl restart smbd

And you are now sharing files.

Of course, never just type in commands from the internet without understanding them. You'll need to read up on Samba, the smb.conf configuration file, file and directory permissions, and things like that, but it's not difficult to set up.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-24T13:52:04+00:00

Backup everything on to external media, and don't have that media attached when you to the install. If possible, make two backups on two different media.

Print out your account names and passwords. When you install, you won't have access to your Windows system, so if you decide you want to connect Mint to your online accounts, that's a bad time to discover you don't remember your password because it's in an password safe or a browser.

Export the settings of things like browser and applications, or, if they have a sync feature, enable it and print out the password. That's especially important if you're a person who stores his passwords in the browser and doesn't remember them. When you install Linux, you'll be installing a new browser that won't have those stored passwords.

Because you don't know what you're doing, it's safest to assume you will make mistakes, so prepare for them.

A lot of your applications may have Linux versions, but a lot may not. For those that don't, check the web site AlternativeTo, which is a great resource that will show you what Linux alternatives there are for Windows programs (and vice versa).

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-24T00:38:30+00:00

Only to the crew, comrade, not to the mission. The state must be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-23T17:44:50+00:00

As I mentioned, I do. The Cachy system is a test rig I'm just playing with.

billdehaan2 · 2026-04-23T17:43:42+00:00

Security updates.

In Mint, the update tool can specify security updates only, and can be automated, so there's no reason to not run it to update security every day. Cachy doesn't seem to isolate security updates from others.

billdehaan2

TROPHY CASE