Updated 03-Aug-2025 Update April 2025 To be honest, I no longer use Nemo as the dependencies became super-annoying. Thunar is more than adequate and actually has a lot of extensibility. It is also the default file manager in XFCE, my current desktop of choice. Nemo File Manager Nemo file manager is made for Cinnamon by ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Pix is another Linux Mint application (the second I use, along with Nemo) that is a useful, lightweight, simple image editor, good for cropping, scaling, and converting between filetypes. However, for actual editing, Inkscape is my editor of choice (I find GIMP hard to use). The latest versions of Inkscape may not be ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Update May 2025 Most of the below is crap. I hate Jack. Pipewire isn't any better. But I did find a bit of a fix for my PulseAudio settings (a bit more control) from this page: sudo apt purge pulseaudio-equalizer # removes the old EQ # the order in which the services are ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Silly name, a bit bulky, but overall a functional mp3 music player. The venerable ipod shuffle is sorely missed. Note 2024-10-08 This item appears to be no longer manufactured (prices on Amazon are crazy). What appears to be the best successor (for better or worse) is the Ruizu x52. SanDisk Clip Jam features ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Debian 11 Bullseye Alpha 1 / 3 These are notes from an initial installation of Debian 11 (Bullseye) Alpha 1 from 2019-11-30, and A new reinstall using Alpha 3 from 2020-12-20. This is meant as the daily driver on an Intel NUC6CAYH, which is a four core celeron with 8gb of ram and ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025
Markdown makes editing easier and faster. It is faster to use markdown than having to reach for the mouse to format things, and even if one wants to use the mouse there are markdown editors that provide. Markdown is very portable and since it is in plain text can be used across a plethora of devices and interfaces. It is highly readable without hiding any detail.
Updated 03-Aug-2025
Inkscape is an amazing vector graphics editor. It is free and open source and works on a variety of platforms, including Linux, Windows and OSX. Inkscape replaces Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator and can read their files, and is a first class citizen among these other editors.
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Originally published 2018-09-06, updated 2022-09-05 My beloved KeepassX has not seen a release since 2016, but a newer fork entitled KeePassXC has. The latest version looks very much the same when viewed from LMDE3 with a dark theme. The added functionality is quite nice: A TOTP Seed and Code Generator. For native theme ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also the local file sync tool FreeFileSync for handy local drive copying. Google Drive (GDrive) and other cloud storage alternatives such as Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive all have the serious drawback of keeping one's information in a third party cloud repository. Privacy and security are generally compromised this way, even when paying ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 APT -- Advanced Package Tool -- is all that is needed for most application installations when there are repositories which are regularly updated for packages of interest. Note that apt essentially makes irrelevant apt-get so there is no reason for that redundancy any longer. Note: Use aptitude when dealing with packages that have ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Note: if you just want a secure Gecko-based browser, there is LibreWolf which can be installed using Extrepo. Firefox woes Firefox has dramatically disintegrated under the so-called leadership of Mitchell Baker, enriching herself to the tune of millions while the market share (and revenue) of Firefox plummeted and 250 employees were laid off. ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This article briefly describes some issues with managing portable music players on Linux, particularly the Apple Ipod Shuffle and the Sandisk Clip Jam (it's replacement). Note that the Ruizu x52 is the proper replacement for the Sandisk Clip Jam Quod Libet Quod Libet is absolutely zero help with managing portable music players (with ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 How to manage fonts in Debian (installing/removing/refreshing). See also Fonts, Typefaces, Typography Microsoft Core Fonts Installer Check to see if this is installed via apt-cache sudo apt-cache search ttf-mscorefonts-installer Emoji fonts Yeh, I don't like them but people use them so need to see them. sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji Debian and application fonts ... Read more
Updated 11-Aug-2025 **Note - This article needs a revamp as it references Amazon Linux and should simply be straightforward for any Debian. On a new Amazon Linux AMI installation, there is a useful ec2-user account configured. However, in order to make it more useful, there is a need to edit some .bashrc files, as well ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is a grab bag websites, books, software, and services which have helped in this genealogical endeavor. DNA Analysis FamilyTreeDNA YSeqDNA GEDmatch I started with FTDNA, and it is difficult working with them to do exports, or really anything that is beyond the basic interface. Also, their prices are high. YSeqDNA is cheaper, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also Deep Speech, Tesseract Items on ML (from 2019) IBM's Ginny Rommety gave a compelling keynote at CES on AI, as well as answering a great set of questions on Bloomberg Technology. It seems to me that the discussion of AI (as per Rommety) should not be using the term AI but ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Current issues The latest version of Inkscape has to be downloaded as an AppImage from the website. An earlier version is available via apt. There is also a PPA but that is not recommended. If the AppImage doesn't run, check from invoking at the command line, and also make sure to install sudo ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Note: This page is a document of the next generation of webdev/devops from what is currently in place (granted, much out-of-date). What follows is a personal technology stack learning task list rather than a comment on the state of web development. Note: As of May 2025, this generally holds true, with the exception ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 ufw is known as a Debian (and Ubuntu) firewall, which is disabled by default but easy to use. There are some GUI front-ends which make it popular for Linux on the desktop. Coming from a CentOS background (RHEL/Amazon Linux AMI), ufw is not as common (as, say firewalld, or simply iptables, to which ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also Kodi, which I've started using nowadays to replace Chromecast / Android TV as of May 2025. I've gotten fed up with the nonsense that is Chromecast (slow, limited), Apple TV (slow, limited), and Fire TV Stick (slow, limited). I ran across the Vero 4K, which was announced in February, 2017. Besides ... Read more