James'Techblog

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

  XFCE, a very old and lightweight desktop environment, is a flagship of many distributions including Manjaro, Lite, and others. XFCE has always had this touting for being medium to lightweight on lower spec hardware and beyond. XFCE comes with many of its own applications and settings managers and is stable and never gets in a hurry to update and change, that said, the latest release has many new improvements and features to the interface. It brings a new mimetype viewer/editor in default applications menu, a new icon set by default, many improvements to the panel and some performance improvements to the overall compositing of the desktop. Power management has seen some improvements expected to improve battery performance and life on mobile hardware. The panel includes more granular controls and new toggles for things that included a checkbox before. There is a new dark-mode feature for the xfce panel that should help blend with matching wallpapers and help with eye strain. Arch L...

  Vivaldi web browser, a browser founded by Vivaldi Technologies and the co-founder of the old Opera browser, has recently released a snapshot in their 3.5 branch before final which has the technical preview build of a email client and feed reader. The work for these implementations is on going and should be in the next final release slated for sometime later this year or towards January of next year. Vivaldi promised the offering in the beginning with one of their first desktop previews ever. Vivaldi said that in a future release they would implement it, but at the time they didn’t even have the stand alone web mail yet. Vivaldi’s email started as web mail and users could test it without having the browser installed. Web mail is still available, but now you can access the same mailbox in your vivaldi browser. The email client, while robust, still has a few kinks to work out and this process will be on going for some time, however, it is currently usable with the likes of Fast Mail...

  Microsoft, the company behind Windows and Xbox are distributing their new Edge built on Chromium engine cross platform. Just recently while browsing my usual tech news sites, I found an article stating that Edge is coming in October of 2020 to Linux as a preview release before the final. Microsoft already had an Edge built on their IE Trident engine, but it was losing in marketshare and failing miserably as an everyday browser. No one was using it, it had sparse plugin and extension support and many were only using it to download Google Chrome. Since Chromium is open source and full of compatibility, it makes sense to use an already established engine with so much support to back end their browser as they focus solely on the UI experience moving forward. Microsoft didn’t stop there though, they also work with Google on the open source Chromium code to make it better suited for their needs as well. In this new iteration of the browser they promise to offer better plugin and extens...

  Linux is inherently more secure than other operating systems by the wide range of permissions that it uses for each individual file. Most new users who install Linux on their desktops will do so in a way that their default user has access to the Wheel group. The Wheel group manages things like installing to and uninstalling from as well as system configurations using sudo privilege. It does this in a way that is secure. Normally the user won’t directly be able to access these services without typing sudo or super user do. Sudo tells the shell that the user is requesting elevated privilege directly and asks for the sudo password found in the passwd file. Sudo also suggest switching a user from the normal group level of User to Wheel, but unless the user’s name is already in the Wheel, the user will not be able to gain root access anyway, not even with a password. This type of access control prevents many user apps from gaining access to Kernel space memory and control. In Linux, e...

  EFI or secure boot, has long been a bit of a mixed bag with Linux. Linux isn’t like proprietary OSes that get signed to boot directly with Secure Boot enabled in the Bios firmware. Secure Boot is a security feature written into BIOS for the purposes of Microsoft to only allow signed software to boot. This is meant to in theory at least, limit rootkits and malware from handling startup of the computer. This did workout to be a ploy for Microsoft to monopolize as systems with this turned on would only work with Microsoft signed OSes. Ubuntu does have a key that allows it to boot, however, getting the OS to work after installation can be a task without taking some precautions first. Many people will have to manually partition their drives in a way required for secure boot. Linux installers will typically assume you want your drive formatted to EXT4 or some variant of EXT that is typically used by Linux. Secure Boot enabled will sometimes prevent Linux from booting this way and so it...

  Using Brave for over a week now, I can safely say that this browser is one of the best open sourced pieces of software for viewing the web that I have ever used. It’s lightning fast and is pre-configured for people who are new to the internet or are wanting to learn bit currency. Brave uses BAT tokens to pay both creators and users alike with a Brave Rewards feature that can be set to automatically contribute to preferred creators while using the users’ wallets. Brave browser strips advertising scripts and trackers from web pages, but with rewards enabled, will occasionally send you ad notifications in the browser itself which when clicked will take you to a page for that ad and will add BAT tokens to your account. Brave has recently released their sync 2.0 which is touted to be much more comprehensive than their older synchronization function. This sync now allows users to sync not only bookmarks, but also history and passwords as well. Brave doesn’t use google synchronization a...

  Solus Linux, like many other distributions, occasionally updates the grub configuration files during an update of the system. These instances usually occur when something has either changed in Systemd(The init system that runs everything from the toaster to the kitchen sink), and the Kernel(Backbone and nervous system of the operating system). Grub updates usually remove dead or broken images of old kernel upgrades from the past and set the newest kernel image as the default, so having this run automatically is important and is kinda like an automatic transmission shifting gears in your car. Linux isn’t perfect and updates happen pretty regularly, so having something there to ensure those updates take effect is vital. Updating the grub manually from time to time can also help resolve booting issues or ensure your latest firmware and kernel modules are loading properly as expected. To do this within the terminal on Solus run sudo clr hypen boot hyphen manager space update. This wi...

  Solus Linux is a really innovative distribution in how it handles its curated list of packages and third-parties. Solus also has a ground-up project of Budgie desktop which is very modern and stylish. EOPKG is the preferred package management across all of their desktop offerings which is forked from PiSi package manager originally created for Pardus Linux. Solus has not only forked the original package manager, they have made great improvements in its built in feature list as well. Solus Linux is an independent distribution and so is the EOPKG package management system as Pardus no longer caters to PiSi. EOPKG has many features now that weren’t included in earlier releases of Solus; One such feature is the ability to easily roll back updates with a single line command. EOPKG stores history of every operation done since system installation. This includes updates and updates to the repositories. To view the history of the package management, simply enter sudo eopkg history in the ...

Arch Linux is one of the most up-to-date Linux distributions out there, and no doubt one of the most enigmatic with all of the Snaps vs. Flatpak arguments going on in the Linux world today. Ubuntu no longer compiles Chromium to be packaged on apt repositories anymore. For this piece of software your choices are limited to a snap package. In direct opposition with this, Linux Mint have decided to not allow Snapd or Chromium to be installed on their system through apt by default, but rather give users documentation links on how to go about compiling or installing Chromium through some other means on their systems instead. While this can be annoying, there is Arch Linux which still gives users a pre-compiled and easily installable version from their repos. Arch Linux is also fast and very privacy conscious as there is no software preloaded to track users, nor is there any other software than what the user might want on his or her system. While Arch Linux isn’t for beginners...

Hot on the heels of Antergos Linux’s demise, EndeavourOS, a distribution based directly on Arch Linux, is a distribution that offers an easy Calamares Installation to put Arch Linux on most systems. The distribution comes with YAY(AUR helper) by default and it works in much the same way as Pacman, the official package installer for Arch. Pacman and Yay are both CLI tools that use almost perfectly parallel syntax. Yay can be installed from git cloning the repo from github and reinstalling it can be done from Pacman. Endeavour also installs with literally bare minimum packages and lets the user build his/her own system in accordance with their needs. Endeavour sports the XFCE4.14 desktop by default, this is a much needed update to XFCE as a whole as it offers many features and changes that previously weren’t available(more on this later), and helps Endeavour put its best foot forward as it were. Endeavour is a tweaked and polished xfce with nothing really installed out of ...

TLP AND POWERTOP Linux by default doesn’t offer a lot in the way of battery saving as of yet. This isn’t as bad a problem in Android and IOS devices as they have built these platforms around a battery as a power source rather than the desktop version the operating systems are partially based on as these were designed for desktop computers. That’s not to say that Linux hasn’t come a long way with their kernels, that said, there are a few utilities and tweaks that can really help in regards to squeezing an extra hour or so out of that battery. TLP allows the user to recalibrate the battery reading within the OS for optimum percentage reading. This sounds more complicated than it really is, but in Androids there is a file that gives the system the percentage of the battery which may or may not be correct sometimes for different reasons, this file gets corrupted and can no longer give optimum battery readings. The same is somewhat true in Linux for Laptops. Linux u...

VLC, a popular open source media player for multiple platforms including Linux, was said to have a vulnerability that was left unpatched from about a year ago by a German researcher. The vulnerability was supposedly not even published to the VLC bug tracker itself but rather a third-party and it appears now that the vulnerability is actually a case of sensationalism. The president of VLC or VideoLan, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, stated that the vulnerability patched a year ago and thus could not be reproduced by him and his team in the latest release. The application version is at 3.0.7.1 at time of writing. Kempf also stated that the researcher was possibly using an outdated version of Ubuntu, citing a possible flaw found in a third-party library relating to VLC several months ago. This too was patched. Multiple articles and youtubers have commented on the hype , none of which seem to add anything new, however, an article on Slashdot says otherwise. The full article will be below.  ...

Pale Moon, a browser forked from older Firefox code, has released a security fix release for their recent 28 series browser version. This update fixes multiple issues with security and bypassing blocking of ftp authentications if necessary. The release also fixes a multitude of DiD(Defense In Depth) vulnerabilities or those vulnerabilities which are not currently being exploited or are not active in Pale Moon at the moment. Note that DiD does not mean that such vulnerabilities are not still active in other Mozilla forks. Pale Moon also updates NSS to the latest. Pale Moon is a fork of earlier versions of Firefox. As such, it is not to be mistaken as a Firefox clone or an insecure Firefox. Pale Moon’s engine Goanna, and the UXP-based browser are both forked from Gecko and Firefox 4 consecutively. The browser is meant to give users the customization and feel of earlier releases of Firefox without any insecurities that would result in modern use of such a version of software. Pale Mo...

In a recent tweet on the project’s twitter page, the team behind Antergos recently announced that they would be discontinuing the project. While this came as a big shock to the community, the developers described this is a bit of a long time coming as things in their lives became hectic and the project has become somewhat stagnant, not seeing much in the way of features or major improvements above standard Arch based software packages. The project was founded directly on Arch Linux and thus the Arch specific packages will be updated forever, however, many changes are soon to take place to make this a smooth transition. The Antergos repository will be the first to go, moving many packages over to AUR and making the repository itself obsolete. It is unclear as to whether the project will cease to install for new users, but that is a safe bet. Antergos started as Cinnarch and has always been mainly an arch installer with many extra bells and whistles, but it appears that this ever evo...

Solus is one of the most interesting Linux operating systems. Initially coming from a Debian-based background, Solus offers a rolling release model for updates in a simple and clean desktop-focused distribution. Solus is developed independently from other distributions and flavors of Linux and has three main desktop environments to choose from with a fourth one on the way in Plasma. As of May 3 2019, Solus has updated their Gnome desktop and the Gnome stack that Budgie uses. In this release, a major release, Solus adds the upstream Gnome-Shell and Mutter performance and security improvements as well it has removed many apps and libraries which are no longer being maintained and or updated from its repository. Another change, albeit a disappointing one, Deja-Dup which allows you to sync files to the cloud in the form of backups will stop working with this feature. It’s a real bummer, however, Solus developers decided that a certain library involved in this client to server exc...

An article popped up recently on the register, a United Kingdom based tech news site. Google’s new API has been in the news for a while now. The new API will limit or restrict third party code from accessing URLs in time to do anything about them. This kind of new behavior is especially tough for content blocking extensions in the Chrome browser. Google has yet to fully implement the newest API which is called DNR for short. WebRequest API is soon to be deprecated to make way for a new way of doing things. This shouldn’t be a big surprise as Google makes a lot of its overall revenuse from advertising. Gorhill, a developer of a very popular content blocking extension known as Ublock Origin, has stated adamantly that his extension would cease to function correctly if the new API takes precedence. Third party content blockers are closer to the browser than they are the net, this is not necessarily the case within Opera as their content blocker is built in. DNR API means that con...

Lately, I’ve been working on improving my scripts and their Help feature. This feature includes leaflets on basic functionality of some of the features held within the script. I layout basic details about what is being done in each more clearly, but still there are things missing here. I removed as many lines previously as possible to allow for some added lines of information. I realize that it doesn’t seem like a lot at the moment, however, I have also mirrored my repository on Github and moved a copy of it to Gitlab. I’ve made that repo almost completely independent of Github. There is still a bit of work to be done and so I will be doing that soon. I’ve also made my Gitlab publicly accessible now. My mind and my sleeping have been sort of a wreck lately, I’ve been trying to make minor improvements around the house with all this going on, I feel my time and energy has been largely divided, though not in equal parts. I’m hoping that by the end of this week, things will be a littl...

Solus, an operating system with a rather colorful history as Solus OS, having been based on Debian at one point, is now released as a rolling distribution, most recently in the form of Solus 4.0 Fortitude. Solus 4.0 took a while to reach release due to changes in project management and various other matters. Solus 4.0 uses the latest software packages and updates in a timely fashion. The software that comes preinstalled is very sparse, meaning that users should go into Solus expecting to install other software. The package manager is a forked version of Pisi which is called Eopkg. Eopkg is not based on deb or rpm package managers so getting deb files to work might be a bit of a hassle, nevertheless, most software that newer users might find useful should be either within the standard Solus repository or the ever growing third-party repository. Snapd is also preinstalled and readily available for those who want software that isn’t in either of these. Solus 4.0 also uses one of the ...

We all know about the speed and efficiency of Linux, the security is unmatched as well. Linux is by far more secure than Windows and Mac as the Open Source community behind Linux is always eyeballing the code and subsequently fixing bugs thereafter. Linux and Unix are about as secure and as efficient as running a computer operating system gets, but there are some issues and bugs that don’t always get fixed or noticed in a timely fashion and one of the jobs of a System Administrator would be to check for these issues to make sure they’re not a problem in a business environment. SSH is a big gap in security that gets updated frequently, however, there is nothing that can be done to prevent it from being an inherent security risk as it is facing the internet and is a hole with which data travels through from device to device. Businesses and administrators use SSH to tunnel through from their devices to effect changes in files on other machines remotely and this, along with Telnet(wh...