I can only speak for myself, but I have always had bad luck with Linux on desktop. Something always breaks, isn’t compatible, or requires a lengthy installation process involving compiling multiple libraries because no .deb or .rpm is available.
On servers, it’s fantastic. If you count VMs, I have far more Linux installations than Windows. In general, I use Win10 LTSC for anything that requires a GUI and Ubuntu Server for anything that only needs CLI or hosts a web interface.
Win10 LTSC still has quite a few years left.
Having my status turn yellow when I so much as look away from my screen is bad enough. I really hope this “feature” stays off.
How does Teams give away your location? I’ve used it extensively, but I’ve never seen someone’s location unless the enter it manually.
I’m a big fan of 4k/who gives a shit.
That’s great until they decide to stop providing whatever content you licensed.
If you’re not receiving physical media, and you’re not saving a copy to local storage, then you’re not buying anything. You’re renting it.
When it comes to writing code, there is a huge difference between code that works and code that works *well." Lets say you’re tasked with writing a function that takes an array of RGB values and converts them to grayscale. ChatGPT is probably going to give you two nested loops that iterate over the X and Y values, applying a grayscale transformation to each pixel. This will get the job done, but it’s slow, inefficient, and generally not well-suited for production code. An experienced programmer is going to take into account possible edge cases (what if a color is out of the 0-255 bounds), apply SIMD functions and parallel algorithms, factor in memory management (do we need a new array or can we write back to the input array), etc.
ChatGPT is great for experienced programmers to get new ideas; I use it as a modern version of “rubber ducky” debugging. The problem is that corporations think that LLMs can replace experienced programmers, and that’s just not true. Sure, ChatGPT can produce code that “works,” but it will fail at edge cases and will generally be inefficient and slow.
There are really two reasons ECC is a “must-have” for me.
I don’t care about ECC in my desktop PCs, but for anything “mission-critical,” which is basically everything in my server rack, I don’t feel safe without it. Pfsense is probably the most critical service, so whatever machine is running it had better have ECC.
I switched from bare-metal to a VM for largely the same reason you did. I was running Pfsense on an old-ish Supermicro server, and it was pushing my UPS too close to its power limit. It’s crazy to me that yours only pulled 40 watts, though; I think I saved about 150-175W by switching it to a VM. My entire rack contains a NAS, a Proxmox server, a few switches, and a couple of other miscellaneous things. Total power draw is about 600-650W, and jumps over 700W under a heavy load (file transfers, video encoding, etc). I still don’t like the idea of having Pfsense on a VM, though; I’d really like to be able to make changes to my Proxmox server without dropping connectivity to the entire property. My UPS tops out at 800W, though, so if I do switch back to bare-metal, I only have realistically 50-75W to spare.
Social media companies, adult websites, whatever, can try to find ways to block children from accessing their content, but kids will always find a way around it.
It’s the parents’ responsibility to control their children. I’ve said 1000 times, children don’t need access to smartphones and tablets. A desktop PC or laptop with strict parental controls is adequate enough for school work, learning about technology, and some basic entertainment.
When a child is old enough to work and pay for a smartphone themselves, then they’re old enough to have a smartphone. A prepaid flip phone with basic voice and SMS is more than enough for a 15-year-old.
I have a few services running on Proxmox that I’d like to switch over to bare metal. Pfsense for one. No need for an entire 1U server, but running on a dedicated machine would be great.
Every mini PC I find is always lacking in some regard. ECC memory is non-negotiable, as is an SFP+ port or the ability to add a low-profile PCIe NIC, and I’m done buying off-brand Chinese crop on Amazon.
If someone with a good reputation makes a reasonably-priced mini PC with ECC memory and at least some way to accept a 10Gb DAC, I’ll probably buy two.
I thought I spelled something wrong; I didn’t, and now I’m lost. Aren’t most non-fiber connections asymmetrical connections?
This is only true when you have a single transmission medium and a fixed band. Cable internet is a great example; you only have a few MHz of bandwidth to be used for data transmission, in any direction; the rest is used up by TV channels and whatever else. WiFi is also like this; you may have full-duplex communications, but you only have a very small portion of the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz band that your WiFi router can use.
Ethernet is not like this. You have two independent transmission lines; each operates in one direction, and each is completely isolated from any other signals outside the transmitter and receiver. If your ethernet hardware negotiates a 10Gb connection, you have 10Gb in one direction and 10Gb in the other. Because the transmission lines are separate, saturating one has absolutely no effect on the other.
You are absolutely correct; I phrased that badly. Over any kind of RF link, bandwidth is just bandwidth. I was more referring to modern ethernet standards, all of which assume a separate link for upload and download. As far as I am aware, even bi-directional fiber links still work symmetrically, just different wavelengths over the same fiber.
If you have a 10GBaseT connection, only using 5Gb in one direction doesn’t give you 15Gb in the other. It’s still 10Gb either way.
This is a really good explanation; thank you!
There is one thing I’m having a hard time understanding, though; I’m going to use my ISP as an example. They primarily serve residential customers and small businesses. They provide VDSL connections, and there isn’t a data center anywhere nearby, so any traffic going over the link to their upstream provider is almost certainly very asymmetrical. Their consumer VDSL service is 40Mb/2Mb, and they own the phone lines (so any restriction on transmit power from the end-user is their own restriction).
To make the math easy, assume they have 1000 customers, and they’re guaranteeing the full 40Mb even at peak times (this is obviously far from true, but it makes the numbers easy). This means that they have at least a 40Gbit link to their upstream provider. They’re using the full 40Gb on one side of the link, and only 2Gbit on the other. I’ve used plenty of fiber SFP+ modules, and I’ve never seen one that supports any kind of asymmetrical connection.
With this scenario, I would think that offering their customers a faster uplink would be free money. Yet for whatever reason, they don’t. I’d even be willing to buy whatever enterprise-grade equipment is on the other end of my 40/2 link to get a symmetrical 40/40; still not an option. Bonded DSL, also not an option.
With so much unused upload bandwidth on the ISP’s part, I would think they’d have some option to upgrade the connection. The only thing I can think is that having to maintain accounts for multiple customers with different service levels costs more than selling some of their unused upload bandwidth.
This is kind of a shit article. Most of these are just old hardware that eventually had modern improvements, not “trends.”
A “trend” is cold cathode black lights inside the case, not a silly naming scheme for CPU revisions.
I think I’m misunderstanding how LDAP works. It’s probably obvious, but I’ve never used it.
If my switch is expecting a username and password for login, how does it go from expecting a web login to “the LDAP server recognizes this person, and they have permissions to access network devices, so I’ll let them in.”?
Also, to be clear, I’m referring to the process of logging in and configuring the switch itself, not L2 switching or L3 routing.
Like several people here, I’ve also been interested in setting up an SSO solution for my home network, but I’m struggling to understand how it would actually work.
Lets say I set up an LDAP server. I log into my PC, and now my PC “knows” my identity from the LDAP server. Then I navigate to the web UI for one of my network switches. How does SSO work in this case? The way I see it, there are two possible solutions.
I generally understand how SSO works within a curated ecosystem like a Windows-based corporate network that uses primarily Microsoft software for everything. I have various Linux systems, Windows, a bunch of random software that needs authentication, and probably 10 different brands of networking equipment. What’s the solution here?
As someone who has written a ridiculous amount of code that deals with date and time, I support this 100%.
At least for me, the whole “made by devs for devs” isn’t really the major downfall. It’s the fact that it can’t be trusted to remain functional in a dynamic environment. I like using the command line, but sometimes that’s just not enough.
If I need a specific software package, I can download the source, compile it, along with the 100 of libraries that they chose not to include in the .tar.gz file, and eventually get it running.
However, when I do an “apt update” and it changes enough, then the binary I compiled earlier is going to stop working. Then I spend hours trying to recompile it along with it’s dependencies, only to find that it doesn’t support some obscure sub-version of a package that got installed along with the latest security updates.
In a static environment, where I will never change settings or install software (like my NAS), it’s perfect. On my desktop PC, I just want it to work well enough so I can tinker with other things. I don’t want to have to troubleshoot why Gnome or KDE isn’t working with my video drivers when all I want to do is launch remote desktop so I can tinker with stuff on a server that I actually want to tinker with.