Post tagged: software

Desktop Environments 2023

Around April 2023, I decided to look for a new Linux Desktop Environment for my personal void linux. So I tried these distros: lxqt: This is the one I eventually chose to switch to. I liked it that it was very small and light, and very modular, almost like a kit that you assemble yourself. Because I have thinking for some time that I would like to make my ...

Nanowiki

NanoWiki is a Wiki implementation based on picowiki. I have been using SimpleNote for a number of years. It works pretty well but somehow I was looking for: Ability to include and render nice asciiart pictures Organizes articles in a folder structure. ...

Supervisorui REDONE

Currently I am using docker containers to deploy applications. A number of those containers make use of supervisord for managing processes. While supervisord itself comes with a UI, it is unhandy for me because each container is its own supervisord instance. So I was interested in some software that would let me manage multiple supervisord instances in a single page. Turns out that there ...

flatpak

Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system. Flatpak was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project and was originally called xdg-app. Snap vs Flatpak ...

Migration to Pelican

Finally got fedup with github pages and its jekyll static site generator. Essentially things would break without any particular reason and there would be nearly no way to tell what went wrong. I addition, it was not easy to test changes before making them public. So I switched to pelican, essentially because it was ...

Open Source Alternatives to Visio

Need to create diagrams, flowcharts, circuits, or other kinds of entity-relationship models? Microsoft Visio is without a doubt the best software for that, but that doesn't mean it's the best choice for you. Visio may be the industry standard in the corporate world, but it comes with a huge drawback: it's expensive ($299 for the standard ...

Managing our personal finances

During my last vacation I wanted to move how we manage our personal finances away from the ad-hoc spreadsheet that we had been using for the past few years. I envisioned something server side, so I wouldn't need to add software on my wife's computer. And initial quick run through of server side software did not yield anything that interested me. In general I could only find full accounting applications, which ...

Starting with 3D Printing

So I finally tried my hand at 3D printing. Obviously I did not buy at 3D printer. These are either quite expensive or you need to assemble them yourself, which I don't think is in my capacity level. To get started, you first need a 3D model to print. There are several 3D models available in Thingieverse, however I actually wanted to make my own model. After all, that is the whole point of 3D printing. Custom made parts/objects that can be printed as needed. To create a 3D model you need some 3D modelling software. For my very first model I opted for TinkerCAD. This is software that runs on the cloud that lets you create your own 3D models. This is particularly interesting because you don't need to install anything on your computer and it would essentially run on anything where a web browser runs. For a web based application, it is quite responsive and feature-full. You can use (like me) a facebook account to sign-in. Models can then be downloaded as an ".stl" file (the format used by 3D printers) or send directly to 3D printing service such as 3D Hubs. 3D Hubs, is an online 3D Printing service which facilitates transactions betwen 3D Printer owners (Hubs) and people who want to make 3D prints. Printer owners can join the platform to offer 3D printing services while customers can locate printer owners to get their 3D models printed nearby. ...

Let's Encrypt

This is a service that let's you get SSL certificates for HTTPS. These certificates are trusted by major browsers. See Let's Encrypt This is a barebones howto to get SSL certificates: git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt cd letsencrypt This contains the client software for let's encrypt. ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --manual This will start by updating and getting any needed dependencies and then jump to a wizard like configuration to get this done. Follow the prompts and pay special attention on the prompt used to validate your domain. (You need to create a couple of folders and a file with the right content). Afterwards your certificates will be in: ...

RPMGOT

Software package download proxy rpmgot is a simple/lightweight software package download proxy. It was designed to run on an OpenWRT router with some USB storage. So it is fully implemented as an ash script. The basic idea has been implemented multiple times. For example refer to this article on a squid based implementation. Unlike squid, which once you include all its dependencies can use up over 1MB of space just to install it, this software has very few dependencies. The idea is for small developers running the same operating system version(s) would benefit from a local mirror of them, but they don't have so many systems that it's actually reasonable for them to run a full mirror, which would entail rsyncing a bunch of content daily, much of which may be packages would never be used. rpmgot implements a lazy mirror something that would appear to its client systems as a full mirror, but would act more as a proxy. When a client installed a particular version of a particular package for the first time, it would go fetch them from a "real" mirror, and then cache it for a long time. Subsequent requests for the same package from the "mirror" would be served from cache. ...

Raspberry Pi - Low cost CCTV

A good tutorial on creating a low cost surveillance camera using the raspberry Pi camera module and one of thos fake surveillance camera things. Instructables has a good tutorial on creating a low cost surveillance camera. Essentially makes use of a Pi, the Camera module and fitted into one of those inexpensive fake surveillance cameras. ...

Raspberry Pi Weekend project

So finally took the time to try out a Raspberry Pi. For this weekend project wanted to do something relatively simple. Essentially, I wanted to recreate/enhance the functionality of a TL-WR702N. The TL-WR702N Nano Router is a neat device but being closed, can not be customized to what I wanted. It can be used in the following modes: ...