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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
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LINUX MINT 19


With Linux Mint 19.1 coming in November, I decided to switch from arch-based as it was getting kind of buggy, I chose Linux Mint 19 and 18.3 for my drives, mostly because older computers wouldn’t work as well graphically with the new xorg stack in 19. The newer computer, however, works fine. It uses the modesetting driver in place of the standard intel driver that the cpu calls for. This seems to weed out any issues and the performance is at least on par with the brand name version of the driver module. Linux Mint all-in-all works better and smoother with regards to default themes and with optimizing itself for SSD drives. It also has a lot of things that I’m used to with regards to the traditional layout of the desktop, the standard Ubuntu base for packages, and the way that rather than resorting to a terminal every single time I want something done, I can find a graphical component for most things.

My one gripe with Linux Mint is that in a short while, many of the packages in the repositories will become out of date again even with regards to the selection from Ubuntu itself. When it comes to using the same mirrors and repos as Ubuntu, it strikes me as kind of odd that Wine, though presently and newer version, will soon be two versions behind Ubuntu on the same LTS. Anyway, like I said, there weren’t any noticeable issues otherwise at the moment.

Linux Mint is hosted on Linux Mint and has an Ubuntu variation and a Debian variation. The Debian variation uses similar packages but the packages are from a slightly different repo. Debian isn’t updated as often as Mint’s standard, however, when something new does make its way into Debian it will later find itself in a Mint standard point release. Linux Mint 19 is fast and easy to work with. The update manager appears the same from the outside, but underneath, it leverages Timeshift, an application that creates snapshot/restore points like in Windows, to prevent possible regressions from updates, this in turn allows Mint’s update feature to download and install all the updates rather than just those that don’t effect deep system configuration unlike previous versions. Update Manager also allows you to update automatically for security purposes, but you can do the same thing by placing a script in cron.daily.

Linux Mint’s Software Manager now utilizes Flatpak directly in the application. This is nifty and makes using flatpaks even easier. In previous versions, Flatpak was installed, but wasn’t found in the Software manager by default. Various improvements were done to the themes and Cinnamon now loads even faster than before. Kernel 4.15.x is used by default and like unto Ubuntu, a Swap file is used rather than a separate partition for Swap as before. Changes to the swap can still be managed via swapon/off and by tinkering with fstab. Trim is covered by default for SSD drives via a script set in cron.weekly.

I really like what I’m seeing with Linux Mint, it shows that they listen and that they have grown as a distro and team behind it. I hope that future releases are even more improved in the future. As a rule of thumb 18.3 is supported until 2021 and 19 is supported until 2023. Those who wish to update from a previous version are shown how to do so on the blog, however, there is a word of caution there as well.

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