Linux

I want to setup a bunch of laptops to be web kiosks, I'll organize my wants into a list so that it's easier to skim:

• Open a version of Firefox with the normal ui, tabs and all.
• Automatically enters a session with no user input on reboot
• Doesn't allow doing anything but interacting with Firefox (kinda obvious, kiosk and all)
• Auto-login
• Automatic updates, with them being applied on restart
• Firefox settings reset on reboot

Nice to haves:

• nice Plymouth screen to hide the scary code on startup.
• completely block any attempts to change configuration on Firefox
• ad-block
• easy deployment to a bunch of machines.

If these sound like pretty strict requirements, they are, I'm doing this to attempt to get an internship by making my school's web kiosk laptops not suck (they currently run a janky install of Ubuntu 18.04)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I'd be glad to add more information.

it's so confusing that the order changes when adding IDENTICAL strings to BOTH filenames. Is this really how it's supposed to be?

I'm trying to come up with a elegant way of backing up my docker volumes. I don't really care about my host and the data on the host, because everything I do happens inside my docker containers and the mapped volumes. Some containers use mapped paths, but some others use straight up docker volumes.

I've started writing a script that inspects the containers, reads all the mount paths and then spins up another container to tar all the mounted paths.

docker run --rm --volumes-from $container_name-v /data/backup:/backup busybox tar cvf /backup/$container_name.tar $paths

So far so good, this works and I can write all backups to my storage and later sync them to an offsite backup space.

But error handling, (nice)logging and notifications using ntfy in case of success / errors / problems is going to suck in a bash script. Local backup file rollover and log file rollover also just suck if I have to do all this by hand. I'm able to use other languages to write this backup util but I don't want to start this project if there already is a ready made solution.

So the question, is there a utility that can simply schedule arbitrary bits of script, write nicer logs for these script bits, do file rollovers and run another script on success / error?
All the backup programs that I can find are more focused on backing up directories, permissions and so on.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22539253

Not sure if anybody on here is actually looking for one, but I went ahead and made a community for Tuxedo OS. The community is for the distro and not the computers (bc I only use the distro) but given that there is no tuxeo computers community rn its fine if you post stuff for the computers.

Hi all,

I'm currently using Zorin OS, but I'd like to perhaps explore other Linux distributions. Is it possible to dual-boot another distro, and then if I'm satisfied and after having installed all the apps I need, to erase my Zorin OS partition and only use the other, new distro?

back in the ubuntu days I used radiotray, but it seems not to be maintained anymore.

my next question is: is https://github.com/ebruck/radiotray-ng/releases/tag/v0.2.9 being maintained? it was last updated nov 10, but the page doesn't list the year.

I've also found some flatpak radio packages. Should I disregard radiotray and try any flatpak radio application?

What I liked of radiotray is that it was minimalist, simply click on it, choose a radio station and that was it, I didn't need to open a whole suite just to listen to radio online. Adding station was also very easy, just pasting a url.

I'm proud to share a major development status update of XPipe, a new connection hub that allows you to access your entire server infrastructure from your local desktop. It works on top of your installed command-line programs and does not require any setup on your remote systems. XPipe integrates with your tools such as your favourite text/code editors, terminals, shells, command-line tools and more.

Here is how it looks like if you haven't seen it before:

VMs

• There is now support for KVM/QEMU virtual machines that can be accessed via the libvirt CLI tools virsh. This includes support for other driver URLs as well aside from KVM and QEMU. This integration is available starting from the homelab plan and can be used for free for two weeks after this release using the new release preview
• You can now override a VM IP if you're using an advanced networking setup where the default IP detection is not suitable. For example, if you are using a firewall like opnsense on your hypervisor
• Fix remote VM SSH connections not being able to use the keys and identities from the local system
• There is now a new restart button for containers and VMs

File browser

• There is now a new option in the context menu of a tab to pin it, allowing for having a split view with two different file systems
• The previous system history tab is now always shown
• You can now change the default download location for the move to downloads button

Other

• The application style has been reworked
• Improve license requirement handling for systems. You can now add all systems without a license and also search for available subconnections. Only establishing the actual connection in a terminal or in the file browser will show any license requirement notice. This allows you to check whether all systems and installed tools are correctly recognized before considering purchasing a license.
• Add download context menu action in file browser as an alternative to dragging files to the download box
• Fix proxmox detection not working when not using the PVE distro and not logging in as root
• The settings menu now shows a restart button when a setting has been changed that requires a restart to apply
• There is now an intro to scripts to provide some more information before using scripts
• Add ability to enable agent forwarding when using the SSH-Agent for identities
• Closing a terminal tab/window while the session is loading will now cancel the loading process in XPipe as well
• The .rpm releases are now signed

Shell sessions

Many improvements have been implemented for the reusability of shell sessions running in the background. Whenever you access a system or a parent system, XPipe will connect to it just as before but keep this session open in the background for some time. It does so under the assumption that you will typically perform multiple actions shortly afterward. This will improve the speed of many actions and also results in less authentication prompts when you are using something like 2FA.

Security updates

There's now a new mechanism in place for checking for security updates separately from the normal update check. This is important going forward, to be able to act quickly when any security patch is published. The goal is that all users have the possibility to get notified even if they don't follow announcements on the GitHub repo or on Discord. You can also disable this functionality in the settings if you want.

Fixes

• Fix Proxmox detection not working when not logging in as root
• Fix tunnels not closing properly when having to be closed forcefully
• Fix vmware integration failing when files other than .vmx were in the VM directories
• Fix SSH and docker issues with home assistant systems
• Fix git readme not showing connections in nested children categories

A note on the open-source model

Since it has come up a few times, in addition to the note in the git repository, I would like to clarify that XPipe is not fully FOSS software. The core that you can find on GitHub is Apache 2.0 licensed, but the distribution you download ships with closed-source extensions. There's also a licensing system in place as I am trying to make a living out of this. I understand that this is a deal-breaker for some, so I wanted to give a heads-up.

Outlook

If this project sounds interesting to you, you can check it out on GitHub or visit the Website for more information.

Enjoy!

Hi all, we are hiring a remote worker and will be supplying a laptop to them. The laptop will be running a Debian variant of Linux on it.

We are a small shop and this is the first time we have entrusted somebody outside of our small pool of trusted employees.

We have sensitive client data on the laptop that they need to access for their day-to-day work.

However, if something goes wrong, and they do the wrong thing, we want to be able to send out some kind of command or similar, that will completely lock, block, or wipe the sensitive data.

We don't want any form of spying or tracking. We are not interested in seeing how they use the computer, or any of the logs. We just want to be able to delete that data, or block access, if they don't return the laptop when they leave, or if they steal the laptop, or if they do the wrong thing.

What systems are in place in the world of Linux that could do this?

Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated? Thank you.

If I'm interpreting this correctly, many MP4 patents are going to expire next year. 🎉

I've been using prime run for years, optimus manager before that. Has the nvidia open source stuff lead to anything on this front?

Geforce GTX 1060

I used i3 for years on Ubuntu then discovered Regolith Desktop and haven't gone back. The thing is, I've never encountered anyone else who uses it.

Right now is the best period of time yet for Firefox-based browser, especially when most alternative browsers are Chrome-based.

While there are a bunch of forks like Librewolf and Palemoon, they provide features mainly for power users like hardened privacy and tweaked user-prefs. A year ago the only fork I knew of, based on recent stable versions of Firefox and added productivity features on top was Floorp. I was very surprised at the hype and sudden popularity of Zen Browser in the past few months and have been curious why it grew so much faster than Floorp which has been around for much longer, look at the Github star graph: https://star-history.com/#zen-browser%2Fdesktop=&Date=. Zen Browser currently has 19.3K stars while Floorp has 6.1K.

Reasons I can think of are the following: heavy promotion of the browser by the devs and community on places like Reddit along with emphasizing its 'zen' philosophy, really fast development (it now has way more features than Floorp), and the Zen mods store, where you can install CSS mods.

What are your thoughts and reasons for Zen Browser becoming so popular so fast? (while its not mainstream, it did grow fast in among Firefox and power users)

Hi all

I've been a touchpad user for a long time with Linux, I love the gestures and I think the 3-finger GNOME ones are even better than the ones on my MacOS work computer (which have a weird delay when switching workspaces, but thats besides the point). Thats to say, I use Firefox and GTK4 apps when I can because they implement kinetic scrolling in a very smooth and satisfying way.

Now comes the problems, applications using Chromium/Electron all have a very janky kinetic scroll implementation. They are all way too fast, and thats when the kinetic scroll is enabled manually in the settings. Does anyone know of a way to reduce that speed? Or even better, if someone has links to issues that I can track that aim to improve the kinetic scrolling implementation, and its default setting status (when its going to be enabled as default), I would appreciate it a lot!

BTW, if some of you are interested, I made this small website some time ago to track the status touchpads on Linux: https://arewescrollingyet.com/. If someone has issues for chromium I will gladly add it to the site

that would be fun and easy to use but that would mean no neofetch no terminal games no ls no vim no flatpak sadly would that be a good distro? i know about chromeos and android and i know linux users don't usually recognize those as linux distros but i do honestly

Wayland and audio is fixed, but only on the canary branch for the moment, this isnt lazy either, they changed the whole screenshare flow to suit linux's permission prompts

Not sure if this is also true for KDE.