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You can do it with ufw limit too


You can also literally have anything pipe rules into it. Want WordPress auth to result in fail2ban-enforced bans? You can do that. Want cheap rate limiting? You can do that too


This thread seems pretty full of people dismissing the project based on the idea that it only protects against ssh credential stuffing, and ignoring the other 99.5% of what F2B does.


Chrome/Linux instead of GNU/Linux?


Remember, GNU is a collection of packages. ChromeOS still has GNU utilities built in, therefore, it is still running on GNU/Linux. Now, if Google made a GNU replacement, then the ChromiumOS kernel would have been named Chromium/Linux, or Chrome/Linux.


I do the same thing with the iNatutalist app. I joke with my wife that I'm filling out my Pokedex. Currently at 164 species.


Only if you don't need to create ZIPs over 2GB.


For me it's Pelican and cloudflare pages. I've got a GitHub action that rebuilds the site whenever I commit changes. Completely free. Super fast. Pelican is easy to theme and my site is one of the fastest out there.

Now if only I ever felt like writing anything. It's been five years.


> I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?

Lots of people already do this.



One of my favorite uses for this is creating .wsb files that would launch a script and install zoom/WebEx/etc so I would not have to install them on my PC. The video and audio worked just well enough for me to get away with and it was easier to screen share what I was doing within the container and avoid sharing anything extra (ex: notifications).


I have used it for a while and this is the first I’m hearing about wsb files. Do you have a link?



In other words, you would like the docker persistence model and hand roll it?


The wsb file and script to do this might be like 20 lines and doesn't require installing docker.


this seems like overkill to avoid installing a critical piece of work software like video chat


Not the op, but... The video chat my company uses is indeed a critical work software.

The 27 other obscure video chats that people around the world use, though, are not. And they all want to dig their claws into your registry and drive and startup. And then flash incomprehensible error messages on reboot. And constantly run in background and uodate and ask for ever more permissions.


100% this. We used Google Meet. I had no interest in installing any apps for meetings with external parties.


I don't think it's overkill. I have a whole VM that I use for the sole purpose of not installing my label printer software on my host machine.


It's not necessarily that critical if your company doesn't directly use it, and it's only used by third party vendors you sometimes interface with.


zoom is on my 10-foot pole list. I won't install it on my machines. The sandbox is a good alternative to the browser version.


Imo, so many of Microsoft's dark patterns are a direct result of them owning bing. Bing has bad market share, so MS takes every chance they get to show it to users. Start menu web search, Edge defaults, dark patterns abound just to get eyeballs on bing.


Bing's assistant (chatbot) is also a good example of the nest technical side. There are some people there trying to make new technology accessible to many.

Hampered by other things in the same pattern, right now requiring an Edge User agent.


Look no further than Debian. After switching from Ubuntu I started to understand why people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty.


Ok, but which release channel? And can I convert an Ubuntu into a Debian by reinstalling it while keeping my home directory?


> And can I convert an Ubuntu into a Debian by reinstalling it while keeping my home directory?

You can do that with any distribution, unless you expect your configs to line up exactly.

If you don't keep your /home on a separate partition, back it up. Install Debian, making sure to separate /home and root into different partitions this time. Go through your ~/.configs, find the ones you've changed (most of this will probably be browser shit) and put copies aside. Then take all of the configs out of your home directory backup (including the originals of your changed configs) and put those aside in a different place, deleting them from the backup of your home directory. Backup the virgin ~/.configs from your new install (do not delete them from the new home directory.) Then copy your old home directory files (sans configs) over your new ones using rsync. Compare your manually changed files to the virgin files from the install - has the format changed, will they still work? Are they located in the same directory in Debian as in your previous distro? If it looks fine, copy them in. See if they work. If they don't, look up why not. They probably will.

If you keep your home on a different partition, then install as if you don't, and let Debian create a home in the same partition as the new OS. Do the same config dance as above (annihilating your old configs other than the customized ones), and switch your /home to be mounted from your old home partition.

Or at least this is what I do. On your desktop, you probably want to install testing, on your servers stable.


I just pin to a specific code name (version) instead of a state (such as testing), e.g. right now I'm using bookworm which happens to be testing, and I'll still be using it for a while once it's been declared stable. If I feel like I'd want to upgrade some packages that are available in the next testing, or I can't install some specific package from unstable because it requires an update for a big library (often libc6), I update to the next testing.

I think it's better to avoid pinning to testing since it gets a lot of updates right after a stable promotion (after the package unfreeze), which you probably don't want.


> Ok, but which release channel?

For home use, Debian testing is usually a good balance between things not breaking and things not being ancient.

For servers, Debian stable is probably a better choice.


I think anyone who suggests daily driving Debian testing should also mention the fact that packages can disappear from testing for weeks/months at a time (and reappear later). It's recommended to configure `unstable` in your sources as well but set up apt pinning so that those packages are only pulled in if they're missing in testing. See: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting "Best practices for Testing users"

In practice this means adding something like this to /etc/apt/preferences (along with adding entries for `unstable` in /etc/apt/sources.list)

    # use `n=` when referencing codename (i.e. buster/bullseye/...)
    Package: *
    Pin: release n=bookworm
    Pin-Priority: 550

    # use `a=` when referencing archive (i.e. stable/testing/unstable)
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=unstable
    Pin-Priority: 520
That way apt will pull in any packages missing in testing from unstable, and once the package is reintroduced to testing, will prefer that version rather than continue to track unstable.

Maybe I've been lucky but I've been running testing on my non-server desktops and laptops for 13 years now and have only rendered my system unbootable once (required having to boot up a live CD to reinstall an older working version of some bad libpcre update that had been rolled out).


I’ve been bitten quite a few times by Testing so I run stable now.

Even the current stable is fairly “new” so I don’t even mind.


For a long while I ran testing and had zero issues.

Warning: if you're used to PPA life in Ubuntu Debian doesn't offer an equivalent that I'm aware of. EDIT sibling comments indicate home brew might solve this.

The problem with Debian is you can't usually pick "a thing" from another channel, you mostly have to fully commit. Testing is great until it isn't and anecdotally sid/unstable never fixed that for me - I just had to learn to build the occasional package from source

Ultimately I'm a lot happier having gone on that journey but it can feel very arduous the first few times apt doesn't have a recent enough version of something available


Right now I run testing as my gaming Linux, and I like that the packages are not old. But there's also a KDE bug that occurs daily, and it's a bit annoying.


> people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty

Look even further at Devuan, made by people who conder Debian as a bit dirty. (I use both as needed, I'm just riffing on your comment)


Personally - I think the step away from systemd is a fairly huge mistake.

I understand that legacy users and orgs may have vested interests in sticking with older init systems, but personally I think systemd solves a challenging problem space in a very easy to use manner.

I much prefer writing a systemd unit file than having to wade into sysvinit or runit.

Politics aside - I just find systemd far easier to work with.


> I use both as needed

In what case do you need to opt for a different init system than systemd? Genuinely curious, as I've been using debian with systemd for almost a decade now and haven't run into any issues regarding it.


Asking why/why not to use systemd is covering very old territory here at HN and not the point of my earlier comment - I was riffing on someone using the term ''a bit dirty'' in regards to a Linux distro.


I understand the point of your comment, and that why/why not is mostly a philosophical/political/whatever question.

But really, the “I use both as needed” is the statement which pokes my interest. When do you need something else than systemd? What is the actual work which doesn't run with that particular init system? I'm honestly unsure if you were just joking or if there's really something more to it.^^'


Another reading of that comment would be that they use Debian (with Systemd) when needed, and personally prefer Devuan for philosophical/personal reasons.


It's still pretty easy to replace systemd in Debian with sysvinit (we do it at moderate scale). Devuan works very well though, basically there's little difference between Devuan and Debian without systemd (all the packages are identical, except where a package has decided to require systemd in which case the Devuan version will just have the dependency removed).

Long term though there's a query over support for anything other than systemd in Debian, hence the move towards Devuan.


I consider Devuan just under maintained Debian without systemd (I personally consider that a drawback but for some that is a big selling point).


Where Debian is a reputable distribution with a clear goal, the Devuan crew is solving a non-issue by means of almost religious levels of resistance toward systemd.

If you want technological merit, chose Debian. If you want to join the conservatives of Linux, you should go for Devuan.


Even during Debian's systemd adoption wars I'd never seen any argument calling into question Devuan as ''disreputable''. After all, it was a group of experienced Debian folks that made a systemd-less version of Debian that compares almost exactly with Debian's status and capabilities. I hope in your case you have not been forced to use Devuan.


Hit me up when you finally notice that enterprise and seniors embraced systemd years ago while you kept avoiding change.


You implied that Devuan is disreputable.


I don’t think that’s what they are saying.

Debian is reputable because it is widely widely used for ages.

Devuan is not disreputable. It is simply a fringe variant of Debian that has much fewer users and no obvious reason to adopt for most people.

Debian has a good reputation.

Devuan does not have much of a reputation at all, because most people that might use it have no problem with using Debian and systemd.


> it was a group of experienced Debian folks

No, it wasn't. There was only one ex-Debian person in their team.


I'd heard many times over the years that Roger Leigh was given a great deal of support by other Debian people, let alone across the Linux community. Maybe I misremembered.


You're using language and innuendo instead of argument to imply that the maintainers and users of Devuan are irrational. The objections to systemd were almost completely about the technical merits, with a side order of being annoyed that Red Hat was again being allowed to dictate the standard Linux stack by inserting another impenetrable monolith.

I know it's weird for me to object to your comment without implying that you're insane. It's alright to feel like using systemd after a tangle of init scripts was a breath of fresh air. I understand that point of view. I don't understand the invective against people who put their money where their mouths were.


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