Holy fucking shit. I just went to my first Java class at uni (3 1/2 hour long one at that) and I havent felt so damn irritated in a while.

Some background:
So first, I only had about an hour of sleep last night and a full day of work before this class so I was more cranky than normal.
Theres only 7 students in the class, 6 others plus me. I am the only one with any resemblence of programming experience. The teacher also claims to be a linux developer.
This is a three part course series. Java 1, 2, and 3. All taught by the same teacher.

The fuckery:
-teacher spends 48 minutes talking about text editors. Not even IDEs. Just talking in depth as fuck about notepad (notepad. Not notepad++ )and atom and textpad. Those three only though, nothing on vim or emacs or ACTUAL IDEs. 48 minutes.
- I briefly mentioned learning node.js on the side and am now the "javascript girl" to my teacher. I'm probably less experienced with js than any other thing i ever practised or studied.
-professor saw linux on laptop and asked what distro. When I said arch he said "oh no you shouldnt be using that Its not really for beginners" ... Uhh what makes you think I'm a beginner to linux? Or does he not think I should be using arch while learning java? Either way its really ridiculous and irritates me that he would discourage anyone from using any software/OS/anything, regardless of what it is or skill level.
-teacher moved a bunch of content out of the course because theyre either "concepts that are never implemented anymore" or "arent critical to know to master the language". These particular topics that were removed? Multi-dimensional arrays, scopes, and exception handling. EXCEPTION HANDLING.
-he writes a hello world program and displays it on the board, proof of it working and everything. He tells the class to write the same program, compile and run it. Never did I guess we would spend the remaining hour and ten minutes of class struggling with fucking hello world programs. Especially when the correct code is on the fucking projector.

And I get it guys, everyone starts somewhere. People have to learn from square one. But these kids have no fucking interest in this. One of them literally admitted to pursuing this degree for the "lavish life" that comes with the salary. Others just picked programming because they didnt know what else to choose to get into the school. It fucking saddens me. I hope that one or some of them end up caring and finding a passion in this field, otherwise I feel fucking sorry for them having to spaghetti code their way through life to get a paycheck cause they couldnt be bothered to put in the effort. I feel even more sorry for any devs they work with in the future too.

The other annoying bit is that I can't test out of this class!! so it looks like for either 7 hours a week ill be bored out of my fucking mind with these beginner concepts or ill be helping others fix really stupid shit in their code (like putting quotes around hello world so it would actually print the string).

Fucking hell. Waste of a semester class.

Hacking/attack experiences...
I'm, for obvious reasons, only going to talk about the attacks I went through and the *legal* ones I did 😅 😜

Let's first get some things clear/funny facts:
I've been doing offensive security since I was 14-15. Defensive since the age of 16-17. I'm getting close to 23 now, for the record.

First system ever hacked (metasploit exploit): Windows XP.
(To be clear, at home through a pentesting environment, all legal)
Easiest system ever hacked: Windows XP yet again.

Time it took me to crack/hack into today's OS's (remote + local exploits, don't remember which ones I used by the way):
Windows: XP - five seconds (damn, those metasploit exploits are powerful)
Windows Vista: Few minutes.
Windows 7: Few minutes.
Windows 10: Few minutes.
OSX (in general): 1 Hour (finding a good exploit took some time, got to root level easily aftewards. No, I do not remember how/what exactly, it's years and years ago)
Linux (Ubuntu): A month approx. Ended up using a Java applet through Firefox when that was still a thing. Literally had to click it manually xD
Linux: (RHEL based systems): Still not exploited, SELinux is powerful, motherfucker.

Keep in mind that I had a great pentesting setup back then 😊. I don't have nor do that anymore since I love defensive security more nowadays and simply don't have the time anymore.

Dealing with attacks and getting hacked.

Keep in mind that I manage around 20 servers (including vps's and dedi's) so I get the usual amount of ssh brute force attacks (thanks for keeping me safe, CSF!) which is about 40-50K every hour. Those ip's automatically get blocked after three failed attempts within 5 minutes. No root login allowed + rsa key login with freaking strong passwords/passphrases.

linu.xxx/much-security.nl - All kinds of attacks, application attacks, brute force, DDoS sometimes but that is also mostly mitigated at provider level, to name a few. So, except for my own tests and a few ddos's on both those domains, nothing really threatening. (as in, nothing seems to have fucked anything up yet)

How did I discover that two of my servers were hacked through brute forcers while no brute force protection was in place yet? installed a barebones ubuntu server onto both. They only come with system-default applications. Tried installing Nginx next day, port 80 was already in use. I always run 'pidof apache2' to make sure it isn't running and thought I'd run that for fun while I knew I didn't install it and it didn't come with the distro. It was actually running. Checked the auth logs and saw succesful root logins - fuck me - reinstalled the servers and installed Fail2Ban. It bans any ip address which had three failed ssh logins within 5 minutes:
Enabled Fail2Ban -> checked iptables (iptables -L) literally two seconds later: 100+ banned ip addresses - holy fuck, no wonder I got hacked!

One other kind/type of attack I get regularly but if it doesn't get much worse, I'll deal with that :)

Dealing with different kinds of attacks:

Web app attacks: extensively testing everything for security vulns before releasing it into the open.
Network attacks: Nginx rate limiting/CSF rate limiting against SYN DDoS attacks for example.
System attacks: Anti brute force software (Fail2Ban or CSF), anti rootkit software, AppArmor or (which I prefer) SELinux which actually catches quite some web app attacks as well and REGULARLY UPDATING THE SERVERS/SOFTWARE.

So yah, hereby :P

I think I've shown in my past rants and comments that I'm pretty experienced. Looking back though, I was really fucking stupid. Since I haven't posted a rant yet on the weekly topics, I figure I would share this humbling little gem.

Way back in the ancient era known as 2009, I was working my first desk job as a "web designer". Apparently the owner of this company didn't know the difference between "designer", which I'm not, and "developer", which I am, nor the responsibilities of each role.

It was a shitty job paying $12/hour. It was such a nightmare to work at. I guess the silver lining is that this company now no longer exists as it was because of my mistake, but it was definitely a learning experience I hold in high regard even today. Okay, enough filler...

I was told to wipe the Dev server in order to start fresh and set up an entirely new distro of Linux. I was to swap out the drives with whatever was available from the non-production machines, set up the RAID 5 array and route it through the router and firewall, as we needed to bring this Dev server online to allow clients to monitor the work. I had no idea what any of this meant, but I was expected to learn it that day because the next day I would be commencing with the task.

Astonishingly, I managed to set up the server and everything worked great! I got a pat on the back and the boss offered me a 4 day weekend with pay to get some R&R. I decided to take the time to go camping. I let him know I would be out of town and possibly unreachable because of cell service, to which he said no problem.

Tuesday afternoon I walked into work and noticed two of the field techs messing with the Dev server I built. One was holding a drive while the other was holding a clipboard. I was immediately called into the boss's office.

He told me the drives on the production server failed during the weekend, resulting in the loss of the data. He then asked me where I got the drives from for the Dev server upgrade. I told him that they came from one of the inactive systems on the shelf. What he told me next through the deafening screams rendered me speechless.

I had gutted the drives from our backup server that was just set up the week prior. Every Friday at midnight, it would turn on through a remote power switch on a schedule, then the system would boot and proceed to copy over the production server's files into an archive for that night and shutdown when it completed. Well, that last Friday night/Saturday morning, the machine kicked on, but guess what didn't happen? The files weren't copied. Not only were they not copied, but the existing files that got backed up previously we're gone. Why? Because I wiped those drives when I put them into the Dev server.

I would up quitting because the conversation was very hostile and I couldn't deal with it. The next week, I was served with a suit for damages to this company. Long story short, the employer was found in the wrong from emails I saved of him giving me the task and not once stating that machine was excluded in the inactive machines I could salvage drives from. The company sued me because they were being sued by a client, whose entire company presence was hosted by us and we lost the data. In total just shy of 1TB of data was lost, all because of my mistake. The company filed for bankruptcy as a result of the lawsuit against them and someone bought the company name and location, putting my boss and its employees out of a job.

If there's one lesson I have learned that I take with the utmost respect to even this day, it's this: Know your infrastructure front to back before you change it, especially when it comes to data.

Well, here's the OS rant I promised. Also apologies for no blog posts the past few weeks, working on one but I want to have all the information correct and time isn't my best friend right now :/

Anyways, let's talk about operating systems. They serve a purpose which is the goal which the user has.
So, as everyone says (or, loads of people), every system is good for a purpose and you can't call the mainstream systems shit because they all have their use.

Last part is true (that they all have their use) but defining a good system is up to an individual. So, a system which I'd be able to call good, had at least the following 'features':
- it gives the user freedom. If someone just wants to use it for emailing and webbrowsing, fair enough. If someone wants to produce music on it, fair enough. If someone wants to rebuild the entire system to suit their needs, fair enough. If someone wants to check the source code to see what's actually running on their hardware, fair enough. It should be up to the user to decide what they want to/can do and not up to the maker of that system.
- it tries it's best to keep the security/privacy of its users protected. Meaning, by default, no calling home, no integrating users within mass surveillance programs and no unnecessary data collection.
- Open. Especially in an age of mass surveillance, it's very important that one has the option to check the underlying code for vulnerabilities/backdoors. Can everyone do that, nope. But that doesn't mean that the option shouldn't be there because it's also about transparency so you don't HAVE to trust a software vendor on their blue eyes.
- stability. A system should be stable enough for home users to use. For people who like to tweak around? Also, but tweaking *can* lead to instability and crashes, that's not the systems' responsibility.

Especially the security and privacy AND open parts are why I wouldn't ever voluntarily (if my job would depend on it, sure, I kinda need money to stay alive so I'll take that) use windows or macos. Sure, apple seems to care about user privacy way more than other vendors but as long as nobody can verify that through source code, no offense, I won't believe a thing they say about that because no one can technically verify it anyways.

Some people have told me that Linux is hard to use for new/(highly) a-technical people but looking at my own family and friends who adapted fast as hell and don't want to go back to windows now (and mac, for that matter), I highly doubt that. Sure, they'll have to learn something new. But that was also the case when they started to use any other system for the first time. Possibly try a different distro if one doesn't fit?

Problems - sometimes hard to solve on Linux, no doubt about that. But, at least its open. Meaning that someone can dive in as deep as possible/necessary to solve the problem. That's something which is very difficult with closed systems.

The best example in this case for me (don't remember how I did it by the way) was when I mounted a network drive at boot on windows and Linux (two systems using the same webDav drive). I changed the authentication and both systems weren't in for booting anymore. Hours of searching how to unfuck this on windows - I ended up reinstalling it because I just couldn't find a solution.
On linux, i found some article quite quickly telling to remove the entry for the webdav thingy from fstab. Booted into a root recovery shell, chrooted to the harddrive, removed the entry in fstab and rebooted. BAM. Everything worked again.

So yeah, that's my view on this, I guess ;P

I really, honestly, am getting annoyed when someone tells me that "Linux is user-friendly". Some people seem to think that because they themselves can install Linux, that anyone can, and because I still use Windows I'm some sort of a noob.

So let me tell you why I don't use Linux: because it never actually "just works". I have tried, at the very least two dozen times, to install one distro or another on a machine that I owned. Never, not even once, not even *close*, has it installed and worked without failing on some part of my hardware.

My last experience was with Ubuntu 17.04, supposed to have great hardware and software support. I have a popular Dell Alienware machine with extremely common hardware (please don't hate me, I had a great deal through work with an interest-free loan to buy it!), and I thought for just one moment that maybe Ubuntu had reached the point where it just, y'know, fucking worked when installing it... but no. Not a chance.

It started with my monitors. My secondary monitor that worked fine on Windows and never once failed to display anything, simply didn't work. It wasn't detected, it didn't turn on, it just failed. After hours of toiling with bash commands and fucking around in x conf files, I finally figured out that for some reason, it didn't like my two IDENTICAL monitors on IDENTICAL cables on the SAME video card. I fixed it by using a DVI to HDMI adapter....

Then was my sound card. It appeared to be detected and working, but it was playing at like 0.01% volume. The system volume was fine, the speaker volume was fine, everything appeared great except I literally had no fucking sound. I tried everything from using the front output to checking if it was going to my display through HDMI to "switching the audio sublayer from alsa to whatever the hell other thing exists" but nothing worked. I gave up.

My mouse? Hell. It's a Corsair Gaming mouse, nothing fancy, it only has a couple extra buttons - none of those worked, not even the goddamn scrollwheel. I didn't expect the *lights* to work, but the "back" and "Forward" buttons? COME ON. After an hour, I just gave up.

My media keyboard that's like 15 years old and is of IBM brand obviously wasn't recognized. Didn't even bother with that one.

Of my 3 different network adapters (2 connectors, one wifi), only one physical card was detected. Bluetooth didn't work. At this point I was so tired of finding things that didn't work that I tried something else.

My work VPN... holy shit have you ever tried configuring a corporate VPN on Linux? Goddamn. On windows it's "next next next finish then enter your username/password" and on Linux it's "get this specific format TLS certificate from your IT with a private key and put it in this network conf and then run this whatever command to...." yeah no.

And don't get me started on even attempting to play GAMES on this fucking OS. I mean, even installing the graphic drivers? Never in my life have I had to *exit the GUI layer of an OS* to install a graphic driver. That would be like dropping down to MS-DOS on Windows to install Nvidia drivers. Holy shit what the fuck guys. And don't get me started on WINE, I ain't touching this "not an emulator emulator" with a 10-foot pole.

And then, you start reading online for all these problems and it's a mix of "here are 9038245 steps to fix your problem in the terminal" and "fucking noob go back to Windows if you can't deal with it" posts.

It's SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING, I spent a whole day trying to get a BASIC system up and running, where it takes a half-hour AT MOST with any version of Windows. I'm just... done.

I will give Ubuntu one redeeming quality, however. On the Live USB, you can use the `dd` command to mirror a whole drive in a few minutes. And when you're doing fucking around with this piece of shit OS that refuses to do simple things like "playing audio", `dd` will restore Windows right back to where it was as if Ubuntu never existed in the first place.

Thanks, `dd`. I wish you were on Windows. Your OS is the LEAST user friendly thing I've ever had to deal with.

The coolest project I've worked on was for a certain country's Navy. The project itself was cool and I'll talk about it below but first, even cooler than the project was the place were I worked on it.

I would go to this island off the coast where the navy had its armoury. Then to get into the armoury I'd go through this huge tunnel excavated in solid rock.

Finally, once inside I would have to go thru the thickest metal doors you've ever seen to get to crypto room, which was a tiny room with a bunch of really old men - cryptographers - scribbling math formulae all day long.

I can't give a lot of technical details on the project for security reasons but basically it was a bootable CD with a custom Linux distro on it. Upon booting up the system would connect to the Internet looking for other nodes (other systems booted with that CD). The systems would find each other and essentially create an ad-hoc "dark net".

The scenario was that some foreign force would have occupied the country and either destroyed or taken control of the Navy systems. In this case, some key people would boot these CDs in some PC somewhere not under foreign control (and off the navy grounds.) This would supposedly allow them to establish secure communications between surviving officers. There is a lot more to it but that's a good harmless outline.

As a bonus, I got to tour an active aircraft carrier :)

starting my own linux based company, macrohard

our first piece of software will be a linux distro known as doors, and we're going to have a line of tablets called macrohard floors

comment below to apply, and with more product suggestions

Do you have a main Linux distro or do you keep switching?

I wish I can stop switching, but I'm never satisfied after using a distro for about 6 months.

First I tried Mint, then Ubuntu, then Kali, and I'm currently using Zorin.

I still have a long list of distros to use, but I'm wondering if anyone else has a certain distro they use or if they're constantly switching.

After i read about Arch Linux for the first time here about a few weeks ago, i thought i'd give Antergos a try on my Laptop which i use solely for working. Found out that Matlab is supported, so i don't even need a VM.

First time having a Linux distro. Still feels a bit odd for being a Win only user for a long time, but i love the look and with every hour it gets easier. :)

What is your story of your first encounter with a Linux Distro?

Here's mine (Slight long version) –
Back in my 8th grade I used to buy Tech magazines that used to have DVDs filled with random updated contents like Audio/Video tools, Wallpapers and other stuff. There used to be this "Linux Distro of the Month" section that I used to ignore because I didn't know what it is.
But one issue of the magazine had a review of this "amazing new" Ubuntu 10.10. I read it and at first I thought it's some kind of theme for Windows (I know). But then I tried it out on my HP Compaq nx6120 which had a pure BIOS. No UEFI shit. Ubuntu came with it's wubi installer and it installed Ubuntu smoothly like a normal software. Later I discovered that it is a completely different operating system that doesn't run anything from my Windows. I was upset about it and I booted back to Windows.
But I never removed it. I felt like exploring what it was and why people use it.
It's almost 9 years later and I'm so glad with what had happened back then.

Since apparently lots of you are into Linux, I would like some advice.

I'm wanting to install a distro to use as my main OS, but there is just too much choice.

I'm coming from Windows 10 so I read that KDE is a good choice for a desktop environment and the Plasma version looks pretty good.

Yesterday I've tried Deepin OS but I'm not a huge fan, looks good but not enough content / customization.

So right now I'm hesitating between Manjaro (with KDE) and Elementary OS.

Would you recommend any of these, and why ?

Btw, this is my first rant 😎

bro just learn C bro I promise it's all smooth sailing bro haha lol just take up HTML with CSS bro its a piece of cake bro what bro lol just start coding up differential equations with numpy library haha its so simple bro just start with Ruby bro it will take only couple days bro what lol bro take this aeronautical course on how to code an airplane simulation bro its so simple bro just start algorithms on cryptography bro its so easy i cant bro just start writing drivers for printers bro haha lol just start writing a bootloader for a new Linux distro bro lol haha easy bro just make a billion dollar company bro haha its so simple.
keep going bro haha invent your own JS framework over a billion existing ones haha bro typescript is so easy bro lol what u say take up redis bro go from the first command bro learn mongodb and mysql together bro its so simple.

but bro don't try to master JS bro .. u will regret it forever bro.

Want to switch to Linux so bad right now. Getting tired of Windows and its shit. It took 12 minutes just to shut down!!! I'm just holding back until I finish this project I'm working on for Uni so I don't mess things up. After that it's goodbye Windows!
What distro should I try first? ;)

So, in my very first rant in this astounding community, I unwittingly decided I’d settled for Ubuntu not knowing the massive sea of distros out there 😊 …... boy was I ignorant!

After testing a number of these distros out there I was comfortable enough to truly settle for Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

I wanted something stable, something that I won’t have to tinker much with, something that has a relatively long-time community support. So, I based my decision vastly on the below points since I think they encompass your everyday Joe distro requirements.

1. Package Manager
2. Desktop environment
3. Community support
4. Stability

Any whom, thanks @Totchinuko for sharing your experience about Linux Mint, also @calmyourtities for the Zorin suggestion. I must say I still like Zorin’s look and feel desktop environment. Also @hacker, @Cyanide for your suggestions and to the guys shared their view and comments on the rant 😊 😉

I booted up windows yesterday night to play some games which is weird for me since I am almost never in the mood

It had to update for like four hours automatically without asking me first so I leave it on and just go to bed

Next day, not really in the mood to play games, as usual

I go to restart into superior distro: Linux

Computer reboots into windows

Try again: fucking windows

Another: malware fills my screen once again

This fucking ass clown overwrote grub

This fucking piece of shit malware deleted my fancy dual boot screen and had the balls to casually say "Hi" while it did it

I then remembered my laptop doesn't have a keyboard combination to select what to boot from. I have to fucking boot my laptop by pressing a pinhole on the side so I can select linux.

Fuck Lenovo with their shitty button and fuck Windows

On the bright side, I guess if anyone steals the laptop they'll never know I have a second OS on it.

I remember
I did this 1 command which i didnt understood properly
But all i can say is it "apt remove" this 1 package

Suddenly i am watching my every distro related package getting purged

And simultaneously my chrome stopped working , i can no longer open nautilus or even a folder
Terminal is dead
Desktop things are changing rapidly
And.. i finally thought oh well i needed to change my flavour anyways xD
That was how i met my first kernal panic

!rant
Medium long story about POP!_OS

TL;DR : A true K.I.S.S. OS. Very well designed UI. In general suitable for everyone. Any distro-hoppers MUST try out. If your current OS is already heavily customized to your needs, DON'T bother with POP. (Read till the end if you are on toilet, nothing to lose)

Backstory : I am never a fanboy of anything although I am loyal to the tools I use daily. So OS is also something I picked and use to meet my needs except when I was a student. My first linux experience was about a decade ago with ubuntu. Have tried almost all kinds of light-weight and minimal distros after that (lubuntu, arch, mint, puppylinux, fedora, centos and others I forgot) during my student years.

I like all things minimal. ("Keep It Simple Stupid" is my email signature.) When I started working, Windows became the sole OS I use since it met my needs better than others. Except that one time when I tried Elementary. Although I found it a good OS, it didn't get installed as a dual-boot. I don't find Elementary minimal. It is one of well designed OSs but I still think it can be improved. (Plus I had this weird feeling that it is similar to Mac OS)

At the start of this year, Widows alone was not enough for my needs. Decided to look for a minimal linux distro. My old i7 ASUS has 8GB RAM and roughly 250GB free storage. So I am not that worried about hardware requirements. My main struggle is downloading stuffs. (Few of you guys must know by now the speed of my internet LOL.) Well, even if I had a good speed, I will still look for minimal distro as first priority. So I went with minimal ubuntu image and xubuntu environment. Although I do not like the UI design, it is acceptable. Through out the years, I have configured it to suit my needs and currently pretty happy with it.

Thoughts on POP!_OS : To me, it is literally like meeting a young girl who is perfect for my life. She has the perfect body, beautiful face, amazing appearance and good manners. And she is young, of course there is a lack of experience issue. But it can be taught and she has a very high chance to become a wonderful lady if she continues like this. Only crap is I already have someone and in a committed relationship. So I could not go any further than introduction. I do save her contact and will keep in touch with her online. You know? Things change. Things always change somehow.

guess what i learned today?

i have no creativity whatsoever.
or at least in a design sense.

i bought a website my first website a few weeks ago and the main page looks, well, barfable.

orange on blue? i have no where near enough css experience to pull that off. i ended up trying to make it like a linux distro (zorin os), which is neon blue on black.

i asked for advice on the ux stackechange network, and of course, two people with a low reputation both answered, and of course of course, both their answers contradicted each other.

welp, fuck me.

I'm learning docker and I just started a container running a Linux distro.
What was the first command I run in the container?
rm -Rf / --no-preserve-root

Hey guys, wanna install Linux first time, but had some doubts.
Config - core 2 duo 2.93GHz, 2GB ddr2 ram, 320 hdd, AMD graphics card.
Doubts :
1. After writing it on usb and setting it in usb boot mode, the system didn't read the pen drive data ... is it because of the writing software ... I used power iso.
2. What about the partitions ? Do they still remain and will the install guide only ask to format the c drive or the whole hdd ?
3. Which distro do y recommend... I had kali/debian/fedora/mint in mind
My friends complained about fedora taking 45 seconds to boot up, I don't know about the other distro's ..
Thanks in advance

I'm freaking done trying to get Linux on my machine. I've tried every distro with many different versions of the kernel and I always run into the same problem on my desktop.

The computer super stutters for 2 seconds ish than freezes.

I've spent DAYS looking into this issue trying to find something. The worst part is that it can happen 5 minutes when I boot or 5 hours. At first I thought it was Compton. Then I thought I installed arch wrong. Maybe an update to the BIOS? How about downloading updated microcode? Maybe this obscure bug with AMD processors and setting power idle to typical? Nothing. I'm now behind on my school work because of the massive amount of time ive spent getting this fixed. It works just fine on my laptop, but it doesn't work on the machine I built to code with. I'm done. Give me Force Lightning, a red lightsaber, and call me a Sith baby because I'm joining the dark side. Here I come Windows.

For those who are wondering my setup:
Ryzen 7 1700
Rx 480
Asus x-370 prime
16 gb Corsair RAM

And no, Windows has never had this bug.

University, first Java practical lesson.

I'm sitting near this guy, clearly hyped up because he managed to install his first linux distro earlier.

After 5 minutes he asks me how to do the task the Professor assigned that morning.

I'm playing dumbass in my head, thinking stuff like "oh big boy installed ubuntu but can't declare a fucking Rectangle class in java lol" (what a dickhead).

I helped him, and then proposed to go out for a quick smoke.

Turns out we're very similar, hyped as hell with linux (like I was at the time), with same CS interests. Still texting sometimes.

I'm soon going to be crossing the path into the world of Linux with my first install.

So here's my device specs:
Toshiba Satellite L755-S5256
RAM: 4GB
CPU: i3-2310 (2.1ghz)

I use the device to stream movies and TV onto my TV (through HDMI cord) since the TV can't connect to the internet.

Any suggestions for a simple and light weight distro I could use? Thanks everyone in advance!

So, today I wanted to program a bit and, after reading the last chapter, I want to see what I able to do.
I run my last Linux distro, I open sublime and I start typing code. I finish, I build. 0 warning, 0 errors. Nice! I execute the code: error.
I watch and I struggle on the code for hours, I search on Google, I search on StackOverflow, but after 1 hour I notice I'm looking for a needle in a haystack. So I search instead for a way to produce a better error. I found it, I'm very happy. Let's try what the error actually is:
Error: success
Ok....
Ok...... Well, maybe.... Uhm......
Ok, I won't give up. I search for a tutorial. Found.
The code is almost the mine, it's actually a usual snippet, nothing new. I compare my code with the code in the example/tutorial.
First line, is the same.
First 10 lines, are the same.
First 30 lines, are the same.
I build and execute the example: it works.
I build and execute my code: still doesn't work.

I won't give up, I said it. I won't give up.

I wonder if there's a tool like git diff, so I can see what the differences are, maybe I've no good eyes.
I search, first Google result, "diff"
diff myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

...thank you
I search for a better command
diff -y myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

I search for a still better command
Found. StackOverflow stroke again.
sdiff myCode.c example.c
"the files are not identical"

.....
....

.....

I gave up.

Ps. I've 10 years of experience in programming

So my friend that wanted to start learning how to code started with some basic JS and he just decided after a little research to learn some C++, started out with free tutorials but I recommended a C++ Udemy course that was recommended to me from one of you guys, he said he was enjoying it so I was pretty happy...

At about midnight last night he tells me he is thinking about switching to Linux after using Windows his entire life... I have done gods work my friends...

I'm thinking about trialling him with standard Ubuntu 18.04 and maybe Elementary OS 5.0, anyone else got some recommendations for a new Linux user's first distro?

So following a previous rant, I’ve decided to make the jump and move full time to a Linux setup on my PC, with a windows VM (I do much more Ruby and php at home than Windows stuff, so makes sense to use Linux as everyday os.

The question that I need help with is which distro to go with.

I have experience with Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Debian, but I’m not adverse to trying something new, I’m even toying with the idea of Arch (but with a few test runs on a vm first)

!rant

I'm going to try to switch over to Linux (dual-boot at first), but I've been trying to figure out which distro to use. Any suggestions?

Also, if you have any tips for me, you can leave them in the comments too

Why is it that security (hacking) distros went so popular?

I see more and more posts pictures even on devrant featuring them. Even I see people at my uni that are on kali. I can't believe all of them are that into security. I even know two linux noob friends that wont listen to advice and went to kali as first distro.

I'd never use kali/parrot/whatever vs my current manjaro setup... I'd rather go back to arch.

Hello, i want to start using linux. this is my first time. which distro should i start with? is it ok to start with Manjaro instead of Ubuntu?

I am installing openSUSE tumbleweed at the moment. This is my first rolling distro so I am a bit excited but you have to take risks to learn something new :)

I can't decide on a linux distro because all I've tried are great. Seriously.

I'd call myself a novice-to-intermediate linux user (heavy on the novice part) and since I work as a web developer it's been a great learning experience to use the same OS on my workstation as the webservers my projects run on. (Ie I started out with Ubuntu and a LAMP setup).

The thing is I distrohop ad infinitum... Feels like I've tried out every desktop environment known to mankind (I just can't stop myself when I see a new one or a new take on an old one) and I've dipped my toes in Arch territory to. Loved Antergos when that still was a thing. Found EndeavourOS this weekend, kernel panic ensued. I'm a noob with sudo and that's never a good thing. 😆 (Try out in a virtual machine first you say? Bah. Where's the fun in that?!)

So now I'm on Linux Mint w Cinnamon because why not. (Because it's sluggish and boring, that's why...) I had to just get something up and running quickly so I could get back to work. 😬

But one day in and I'm realising I actually miss GNOME. And Ubuntu feels like home. I would feel much cooler using Arch but honestly I don't think I can be trusted with it. I love tinkering with settings, look and feel and whatnot but I can honestly do that just as well in an Ubuntu/GNOME environment.

Maybe Pop!_OS... could be something for me. 😏

Got my first ever fully working non-derver Linux distro running - yay! Living room streaming rig - here we go!

Holy mother of butts. Two weeks. Two weeks I've been on and off trying to get hardware rendering to work in xorg on a laptop with an integrated nvidia hybrid gpu.

I know the workarounds and it's what I've been using otherwise. Nouveau without power management or forced software rendering works fine. I also know it's a known issue, this is just me going "but what the hell, it HAS to be possible".

The kicker is that using nvidias official tools will immediately break it and overwrite your xorg.conf with an invalid configuration.

I've never bought an nvidia gpu but all my work laptops have had them. Every time i set one up I can't resist giving this another shot, but I always hit a brick wall where everything is set up right but launching X produces a black screen where I can't even launch a new tty or kill the current one. I assume it's the power management tripping over itself.

The first time I tried getting this to work was about 3 or 4 years ago on a different laptop and distro. It's not a stretch to say that it would be better if nvidia just took down their drivers for now to save everyone's time.

I see several post about linux, that made me remember the worst day of learning about linux installation many years ago.

I actually just want to know about linux, then suddenly install it without any knowledge about formatting harddisk and something like that.

And the first choice which come up is "install on entire harddisk" i think its like on windows installer and i go through next and next.

Then i got my whole data erased after that. At that time i feel regret.wanna burn my linux cd installer.

But the thirst for trying new is so high.its like wanna pay for the mistake.

After that i like to install many linux distro to choose which one suit my need.

I love linux!!

Finally decided to give Arch Linux a go on hardware.
I've never had so much fun installing a distro before.
I chose Deepin as the desktop environment, it's fucking beautiful.
(I somehow didn't really take to i3, I prefer a full blown environment like Deepin).
Since it's my first time using Arch and Deepin, do you guys have any advice? How you like to use and maintain Arch? Any tips? Productivity hacks? (Besides a tiling WM)

First time setting up a linux distro for myself I decided to do it on an external hard drive. Accidentally formatted the whole thing. Lost 200gb of anime.

I restored about 60% soon aftet meeting up with a friend of mine. But it was still devastating.

At first glance, this week's group rant seems perfect for me since I have drunk coded at least 2 to 3 times per month (my TGIFs are usually followed by Saturday morning demo meetings).

However I cannot say I have had any particular "worst" code that I have done so far.

Yea I once formatted and installed some linux distro while drunk and couldn't remember the login info the next morning.

Yea I once exported, imported between dbs from prod and local while drunk and lost this and that data.

Yes I once decided to organize my repositories and somehow deleted some repos without any backup while I was drunk.

I was fine. I somehow solved my way out by either bullshitting or being quiet or fixing without any sleep. Most of the times nobody really comprehend the extent of my actions. So I was fine. Hence I really don't have any particular worst drunk coding experience yet.

Best drunk coding experience?
Well I do not agree that coding while drunk is a pleasurable or fun thing to do. So I don't really have that either.

This week's topic is actually a very tough one although it might seem easy.

I feel like ubuntu gets too much attention. While it is good (even though I used it for all of about 3 weeks) it gets way too much attention and I don't know why. I can also say the same about mint. These two distros are probably the most well known and I find they actually lack a bunch of things that I love in my distro. Ubuntu has effectively branded gnome and is basically always bragging like "hey look our animations are at a high fps now" when kde plasma has been doing that for ages. Gnome and cinnamon (i find ) lack a lot of customization options and generally aren't really fun to work with. I eventually settled with arch using kde because I wanted an os that was going to be hard but would be forgiving in it's challenges and customiZations and I got that. Ubuntu and mint can be good for first timers but I feel like they get more attention then they should and others don't get as much.

Sorry for the terrible rant with probably a lot of typos. It's late and I have an opinion, it is always dangerous when I have an opinion. I don't mean to offend these distros or their users. What I say is my opinion and what I believe but hey I might be wrong.

Thanks

First time installing a Linux distro as my main system. I chose arch and finally got xorg with lightdm and i3 working. I really live it so far.

Still no browser besides lynx though. Buy there's a more important thing I need to fix first. Gotta style that white console away😎

Also I corrupted windows while installing, so I'll have to reinstall that later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

getting my new laptop today. Thinkpad X1 Yoga (2nd Gen). Can you guess the first thing I'll do?

if you guessed "install a Linux distro" you guessed right. I'm looking to try something new; I'm a sucker for dank animations and polished UI/UX. suggestions?

nb4 "use arch"... no.

Using manjaro xfce for personal use for like a year and despite not distro-hopping I'm kind if sick of it

Last week was the first time I used macOS at work at I loved it.

I want a better user experience for my personal computer, but I'm too lazy to rice and mod everything from acratch all over again.

I heard elementaryOS has a mac-like UX. Anyone can reccomend?

Why the FUCK does this bloated Ubuntu rotten swamp corps of a former beautiful Debian always, really ALWAYS, FUCK UP distro upgrades!! Which retarded spoon shagger at Canonical came to the conclusion it were a good idea to release every 6 month, regardless of the inability to actually update this crap?!? My other systems run Arch since their first install back in 2009, still clean and up-to-date systems!!!!

I should've tried Mint sooner the first distro that has just worked out of the box for me.

Easy to install deb packages the ui looks good built in dark theme. If it runs as well on my desktop as it is on my laptop I think I'll have a distro for life.

Any opnSUSE users here, I might switch to that distro but I would first like to know what you think.

Besides all the creepy stuff going around deepin, I have to say it's the first distro that made forget I was using Linux.

Trying to find a linux distro I like to replace Windows on my home pc... Didn't like the first 3 I tried, so I'm continuing to try others...but now it feels more like I'm trying to kill Windows

ಠ_ಠ

Last weekend I was working on a small project for a friend of mine: a dockerized webapp, plus API backend and DB. I had some problems with the installation on the vps and had to try out different images and never really did a complete setup of my usual dotfiles. Got it running on an Ubuntu distro. Everything great.
It was the first release so I still had to check that every configuration worked ok, like letsencrypt companion container, the reverse proxy and all that stuff, so I decided to clone the whole project on the server tho make the changes there and then commit them from there.
Docker compose, 10 lines of code, change the hosts and password. Boom everything working. Great... Except for the images in the webapp.

WTF? Check the repo, here they are, all ok. I try different build tactics. Nothing. Even building the app on another docker always the same. Checked browser cache, all the correct ports are open. I even though that maybe react was still using some weird websocket I didn't know, but no.
Damn, I spent 5 hours checking why the f*** the server wouldn't make it out.

Then, finally, the realization...

I didn't install the f******* git-lfs plugin and all I was working with were stupid symbolics links! Webpack never even throw an error for any of the stupid images and the browser would only show a corrupted image, when decoding the base64 string.

Literally the solution took 5 minutes.
F*** changes on production, now I do everything on a fully automated CI.

Ok, I’ve decided. I have a really old laptop that I love but is only usable for basic surfing and text editing, so I’m gonna put a Linux distro on there to experiment.

Baby’s first Linux!

!rant
Experienced devs please tell help me.

Learning software development has been a challenge. Many times it's frustrating.

I also learn languages and I find them to share one trait with software development, which is complexity.

At first I looked at languages the way I'm currently doing with software. I'd look in a new language and after decided it's cool to learn it, I would stare at it for a few weeks trying to realize what the heck I was going to do. I wouldn't even know how to get started.

Eventually this stage goes away and I think that is about to happen with me with software.

But then a new challenge would come, which is me not making progress as I wanted. That's sort of happening with me by learning software as well, bit in language I now know how to deal with it.
That's because I work full time with something that isn't in my interests and when I arrive home Im tired and want to relax. So I decided my language learning had to go slower as long as I have this job, meaning no hours spent in front of books or a pc studying - that's what I could do with English, I was a teenager and had 12 hours a day to do whatever I wanted.

So I usually spent 5 minutes here and there learning something in my target language when I can, no frustration needed, my only rule is: practice everyday, even if I don't learn anything new.

With software, that doesn't apply though.

So, what I mean by tracing a parallel between these to fields is that I have a strong conviction is that once you get the principles on how a certain kind of learning works, you can apply it everywhere in the field. But with software it's been harder.
Anyways, I see that are some principles that apply, cause trying to learn software is changinge and teaching a lot of things like:

*you have to read a lot (of documentation) . At first I thought all documentation was painful to read and understand, but I found out some software are well documented and one can use those only to get used with it.

*immersion / discipline are important. I'm not very disciplined, I'm better with immersion but both are important if you need to acquire complex subjects/skills

*how to deal with complexity. I installed Arch Linux a few days ago. Just to install it I ended up reading more than 20 pages of documentation (install guide, Wpa supplicant, systemd, networkd, xorg, etc etc). Gradually I'm realizing that when you have to install/tweak something in that distro you necessarily spend a bunch of time trying to understand how it works, otherwise you don't get too far like in Ubuntu or Debian.

*and lastly the one that bothers me. Constantly getting frustrated and feeling crap about my poor skills. No matter how much I progress, it still seems like I'm stuck.
(that's when I ask your help/opinion :) )

First laptop I ever owned (around a decade old) continues to live, just in another form. After the first 6 years, the battery died, half the keyboard doesn't work, and the monitor began to fail.

But it still works, so I have decided to give it new life. Gonna make it a new body, add an SSD, new battery, substitute screen, replace keyboard... Maybe this is too costly. No, it must be done.

Finally install a lightweight Linux distro. It shall be glorious!

I hate windows, the fucking constant updates and restarts as soon as I start working.

I have been wanting to make the change for a while now but I would like to ask the community first, which Linux distro should I start with? I understand most basic bash commands and am fine navigating the command line, but would love to hear people's opinions. Thanks!

Why am I so curious?

You are always talking about Arch linux. Well, I got a second hand (very old) laptop to use as a backup, as I am going to working from home and I just have a desktop pc. So I decided to install Arch on it just to know how does it works. After this first experience, I would change it to a lubuntu (I am talking about a Celeron with 2GB RAM).

Well... I managed to install Arch. It is up and running. Lot's of problems to fix yet, sound, native wifi (I am using a wifi adapter that just works on any linux distro) etc but I am fucking in love with Arch! And I can't use it to work, as it is very unstable and I really need everything always up and running to work. I cannot have any glitch with the computer or I can lose a deadline.

For the first time Linux user which distro should I install?

Hi guys, I need your help. Mostly those who use MacBook for development. I'm looking to buy a new laptop and was thinking of getting a MacBook. This will be my first time owning one. I always used Windows but for almost over a year now, I've been on Elementary OS. I do programming on my current laptop in Eclipse, IntelliJ and mostly, Android development in Android Studio. Also, I'm learning HTML and CSS. The battery of my current HP laptop has degraded to the point this thing only last 30 - 40mins when unplugged. Because of this, I can't do much on-the-go. Buying a new windows laptop, I know I will definitely dual boot with another Linux distro or better full boot Linux and get rid of Windows. My question is, how is programming or development on a MacBook. How's does Android studio perform? Are there anything that MacBook users wished worked better on Macs which involves Development? Please help because I can't decide and since I haven't used a MacBook as my daily driver, I'm not sure how it will affect my work writing code in there.

Thanks I'm advance for your answers. 😁

So one of my first rants was about me unable to setup Debian with (lightdm) Cinnamon to be working with optimus laptop and to make the damn hdmi port work, where the port is attached to the nvidia gpu (vga passthrough?)

I have to try it with another distro because the dual-booted Windows greatly feeds my procrastination. (Like ... Factorio, Stellaris, Rimworld and etc. type of procrastination, it's getting somewhat severe. )

So what would you people of devrant recommend me to try? I am thinking a lot about Arch but I am afraid there will be a lot more problems with the lenovo drivers for various things.

The next one is classical Ubuntu, at the end this distro looks like it's at least trying to work amongst other distro's.

Also thought about Fedora because yum and RedHat. ( ..lol )

Thx ppl.