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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

PUPPY LINUX: A LIGHT DISTRIBUTION LIKENED UNTO KNOPPIX BUT BASED LOOSELY OFF OF VECTOR

Puppy Linux is a distribution that few people really try out. Little is really known about the distribution and the ones who benefit most from it are the ones who never want to get their hands dirty fixing some bug(or even seeing bugs at all really). Puppy was pieced together file by file and is thus related strictly to no other distribution, but rather takes from all of them. It is based on GNULinux and follows the GNU licensing. Puppy runs on a limited portion of RAM which is negligible by today’s standards. Puppy boots to around 100 MB or less but it is recommended to have about 128 or better MB of memory in the machine. Puppy has versions built for ARM devices as well. The distribution was built to breathe life in older hardware and show users off a whole new set of modern software despite not necessarily having to be ran from a hard drive, in fact, the distribution can run on systems where the hard drive is dead or not present at all.

To boot to the system, you will have to point your boot priority to the USB or CD drive in the BIOS or hit F12 on most machines during boot. Puppy requires not commitment and comes mostly up-to-date upon creation of the boot device. The distribution comes in multiple builds ranging from Tahr(Ubuntu 14.04) to Xenial(Ubuntu 16.04) all the way to Slacko(Slackware). The Xenial and Tahr versions mainly just make use of the Ubuntu repositories and of course the Puppy specific repos. Puppy uses busybox for an initialization system and JWM for a window manager. JWM is lighter than most window managers and doesn’t have the same dependencies as a consequence.

Using Puppy is pretty straight forward, just plug and go. For those more knowledgeable of Linux systems, the Init system uses scripts at boot and these scripts can be found by typing the appropriate commands to list init.d and rc.d scripts. The distro comes with a small handful of wallpapers and themes to get you started and a Puppy specific package manager to install extra applications. The OS also offers to save the session at the end towards shutdown. This session saver will save all files you’ve created and installed since boot either to the drive hosting the OS or another drive separate from the host drive.

Puppy is a fast(Lightning fast) distribution that is community driven and maintained for the most part. What Puppy lacks in documentation, it makes up for in built in GUI solutions and relative ease of use. The range of supported hardware is insane and the software, while maybe a version behind the latest version, is still a stable and sturdy choice for a fairly crash-free and problem-free user experience. While they accept minor code and monetary donations to the project, right now, the biggest help would be promotion. To get the word out about one of the least appreciated yet most efficient distributions out there.

Links to get started:

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