My routine for rebuilding my Linux laptops from scratch
Maybe you’re sufficiently Linux-nerdy that you’ll enjoy glancing at this. Or maybe not, whatever. 😉
Category Archives: Free software
Python fails Postel’s Law parsing email messages, with a workaround
The next-generation email parser in Python silently ignores data it doesn’t understand, sometimes to the detriment of the caller.
Interesting journey: converting my last home computer from Ubuntu to Debian
This was a satisfying exercise with the right amount of complexity to make it just enough of a challenge to be interesting without being frustrating.
Rambling about hacking on my creaky old email archival infrastructure
What started out as a simple message archiving task turned into many hours of debugging, fixing, and cleaning up the old archives. Both frustrating and fun at the same time.
Just published: “perlmod_install_info” Ansible module
I’ve just published a new Ansible module called perlmod_install_info whose purpose is to help you install Perl modules on systems in the most portable way possible. Specifically, this module knows how to search for Perl modules in dnf, yum, and apt repositories as well as in cpanm. It prefers the OS repositories over CPAN because… Read More »
Long time Ubuntu user, first time Debian installer
My hot take: Debian is a good desktop operating system for highly technical people who know how to troubleshoot and fix computer problems, but it may not be the best choice for less technical people looking for a desktop operating system to use instead of Windows or macOS.
Any advice on dealing with a bogus trademark infringement claim sent to Google?
Someone told Google that my “LInkedIn Jobs Filterer” Chrome extension violates LinkedIn’s trademark. It doesn’t. What can I do about it, when I can’t afford to pay lawyers to defend a free, open-source extension?
You should be backing up your password manager
It’s a bad idea to entirely rely on the company hosting your password manager to back up your data.
Hack of the day: keep the Emacs server running in the active login session
Prereqs for this hack being useful to you: (1) you use GNU Emacs; (2) you keep a single Emacs running in your session and use emacsclient to open files for editing in it; (3) you have Linux computers that use systemd on which you keep multiple concurrent login sessions open; and (4) you want emacsclient… Read More »
How to access your encrypted Linux system from the Ubuntu installer when your system won’t boot
I had to figure out the steps for myself by assembling pieces of it from many different web pages, so I’ve collected them all here for my benefit and yours.