Skip to main content

Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
Post a Comment

WHY LINUX IS STILL MORE SECURE THAN WINDOWS EVEN IN 2018

Linux is more secure than Windows and this is no secret. Many websites and companies alike all use Linux for their servers. Some Linux desktops are more stable than others that is true, but Linux servers have fewer attack surfaces thanks to the headless(lack of desktop) by default set up. Linux servers are sturdy as there is no graphical interfaces or other useless software getting in the way. Linux servers are, in my opinion, far superior to Windows servers. This is much to do with the lack of graphical tools as well as how the system is laid out by default. Linux files are placed in order on the drive, whereas a Windows machine is constantly in complete chaos. Always moving files around to and fro. In Linux, the file system is structured in a much more organized fashion.

Another way that Linux is more secure and better than Windows is that Linux uses separate accounts in Ubuntu by default. Manjaro is generally used in a similar way. Arch and Debian usually have it differently, one could argue this way is actually better, but it is more restrictive. In Debian, I have to log into root to install something, yet I can still use software from the standard user account. This isn’t remotely set up by default in Windows. This means that files and programs can only access what the user has access to while the user is running the program.

Linux security depends on the file being executable, this goes back to the filesystem in that files aren’t generally executable by default, this would cause memory and cpu issues, it would mean that any file could run rampant. Writing software for Linux is a different process than for Windows. In Windows, files are typically set to executable by default and this is by design. Windows is meant to be easily accessible, probably so much so that there are more viruses targeting it as a whole. File extensions also prohibit Windows viruses from running within Linux systems as Linux doesn’t have equivalent extensions. Linux itself isn’t the Operating System, contrary to everyone’s believe, it is the kernel, however, the kernel is audited every day by thousands/hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Most of the software on top of the Linux kernel is open-source. Open-source means that it is easily viewable as well. Every line of code can be read and accounted for. Many can’t read code, however, this doesn’t stop the many talented geeks who can. Generally this software is free, but regardless of the monetary status, Linux is open while Windows is behind closed doors.Windows is generally shut off from third party auditing. Also, unlike Windows, there is no telemetry collection either. This is something that is quickly becoming popular with computer users across the globe.

Lastly, Linux has exceptional tools for monitoring and intrusion detection(Tripwire, snort, etc). It’s no wonder why so many companies and website owners use it for their backend. Linux market share is rising on the desktop slightly as well. While it still has a way to go before it’s targeted so widely as Windows, it still shows promise, and what can be accomplished with open-source software. Moving forward, we should expect to see it prosper and bloom. Linux is the future.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NOSCRIPT CONFIGURATION FOR PALE MOON SPECIFICALLY

I wrote an article before about making Pale Moon more private. I covered a few of the settings and back end changes I make each time I install it. I mentioned Noscript, but I didn’t give any details about how I set it up. First though, you have to get the version already marked for your version of “Firefox” or in this case, Pale Moon. If you went to https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/noscript/ you would probably find the Pale Moon addons page devoted to the newest possible Noscript being marked specifically for Pale Moon. Other versions may work, but these are hybrid addons and the closer we get to Noscript 10, the less I trust it to work with Pale Moon specifically. I just opt to stick with 5.0.6. There have been people asking about what happens when Maone, the developer stops supporting the hybrid versions of Noscript, “Will it work with Pale Moon?” Why yes it will. Noscript blocks scripts, that’s its main function and it will do that as long as Java script exists on a page. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SSD PARTITION ALIGNMENT

I was searching for more information regarding SSDs last night as that is what I now use, I found an interesting little tip that most users will never have to worry about, but people using Arch Linux, Manjaro or Windows that was cloned from another drive may want to consider checking this. The Partition manager within Linux normally takes good care to ensure that you have some free space to be used by the SSD in the event that a cell becomes worn out or corrupted. Also, Linux generally ensures that a proper amount of unallocated drive space is set aside preceeding the partition. However, on my own image of Manjaro, I discovered that this was not the case. The partition was “out of alignment”. To fix this situation, I found an article on  Lifehacker that went into instructional detail about how to solve this from a live environment or an image of Gparted . Gparted is a separate live environment of Linux that is based on Debian and uses Gparted as the main tool to manage...
Post a Comment
Read more

PALE MOON PRIVACY SETUP

I did a review of Pale Moon back when 27.6.2 came out in linux. I had mostly great things to say about the browser then and my feelings towards it have not changed. Pale Moon is a very useful tool for scowering the net. It has privacy at its core with a few implementations made by Moonchild, the lead developer, built in. I also mentioned the point that Pale Moon has a canvas poisoning feature in the backend, however, I wasn’t very clear about how to turn it on. I thought in this tutorial, I’d show with a series of screen shots, some of the useful settings and preferences that I change to make Pale Moon a bit more private. I also thought I’d take this time to rant a little more about some of the not so savory issues with Firefox which have recently come under scrutiny by various people in the the Linux world. First order of business, if you haven’t heard, Mozilla recently added an extension into their browser which gave people ads. That’s right, they were ads for a specific t...
Post a Comment
Read more