Realistically the best option here is to not have the data in the laptop. So they would remote into a machine you control to access the data, or something of the sort. Regardless the laptop should have full disk encryption so if it gets stolen no data is accidentally leaked.

Other than that the best way I can think of is giving the user a non-root account and have the laptop connect to tailscale automatically so you can always ssh into it and control it if needed. But this is not ideal, because a malicious person could just not connect to the internet and completely block you from doing anything. This is true for almost any sort of remote management tool you would be able to find.

On my personal computer ~/Projects/<name>, you need to remember that real-life is not like college, you won’t be working on a new project every week. If you have more stuff than you can manage like this, you’ve bitten more than you can chew.

On my work computer it’s a bit more complex, because I have to work with other people’s projects as well, so I have a ~/Work folder and in it several folders by type of stuff, e.g. ops for operational stuff such as scripts to deploy stuff or grant permissions, code for servers (and client) code, etc. Also if I’m working on something specific that requires multiple repos I create a folder for that project with the repos inside.

Yes, the drones was just an example, hence the “example given” before it.

Yes, only those with ties to the war, e.g. people who work for companies that develop software used on Russian drones.

But people are angry that this wasn’t explained from the beginning.

I use https://silverbullet.md and love it, it’s a bit more than a note taking app, but it’s definitely worth it.

And your point is?

Uhh, that’s interesting, I miss that feature a lot, but the plugin is always out of date.

It’s not about nationality. Here are the facts:

1. LF is USA based (headquarters in California), as such they’re subject to USA law
2. USA imposed sanctions on companies that are directly involved in supplying Russia with weapons.
3. To have business, including receiving help, from those companies would open LF to legal repercussions in the country where they’re based.
4. Baikal Electronic JSC is on the sanctioned list.
5. Serge Sermin public GitHub profile listed Baikal as their employer

Therefore to not remove Serge from the maintainers would open LF to legal repercussions.

You might not agree with what was done, I certainly don’t, but I understand it.

Which is why most people don’t even realize this is a requirement. Also lots of us come from a time before these fancy players, so we needed to sort things out this way in order to find what we wanted.

To me, having a library be just files thrown in a folder regardless of show/movie/etc seems very messy.

No Linux client? I guess I understand, not enough DRM free Linux games, but still… Not for me.

This thread made me look at this issue. Realistically it’s not a big issue, the VAST majority of the binary blobs are accounted for and have a script or a readme file that shows where they’re downloaded from.

That being said I will take a serious look at alternatives.

Dozzle sounds awesome, definitely adding it to my stack

I haven’t heard anyone else mention it, Vultr is a good one as well.

There’s nothing like it, nor will it ever be, for a couple of reasons.

Programming is a long running task

Distros like Kali are meant to be used for quick tasks where you don’t need data preservation (or when data preservation is a bad thing). Programming is the opposite of this, it’s only about data (the program) preservation. Programming something that will get erased on the next boot is pointless on the long run if you need to program that again, and if you don’t then what you’re doing is not programming but something else that requires some programming.

Programming is a wide term

There are multiple languages/IDEs/Workflows/etc, ranging from fully free and open source to paid closed source, whichever you will use depends entirely on you, having all of that pre installed would be 99% garbage since you will only care about 1 or 2 of them.

Programming requires setup

Even if you had whatever workflow you use pre installed, to work on something you would need to setup git keys, install dependencies, compile the first version, etc… and that’s all before you can start doing stuff. And you would have to do this again and again since distros like Kali are not meant to be installed (if they were they wouldn’t need to come with all those packages pre-installed because you could just install the ones you cared about)

Even considering your edits, it’s still a stupid argument. By that same logic nothing should be preserved. Watching LotR now is not the same as watching it when it first came out, which should have never been made according to you because by that time the book should have already been destroyed since you wouldn’t want to preserve it for 50 years, but Tolkien shouldn’t have even written it, since they were based on ideas and drafts he did during the first world war exploring how war changes men and power corrupts, which obviously is only valid in that context and nowhere else so it should be destroyed since preserving it would be invasive and destructive, no?.

Preserving something can never be destructive, it’s the opposite of it. If the Mona Lisa was destroyed you wouldn’t even know it existed, so how can having preserved it be destructive when the alternative is oblivion?

And I agree that the Mona Lisa is no big deal, you know who else agrees? People from that time. It’s widely known that the Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci’s less famous works, and until Napoleon made a big deal out of it it was just a random painting in a random museum. So I get part of your point, that people who make a big deal out of the Mona Lisa are only there to see the famous painting, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to preserve it, or that there are no people who go there to see the actual Mona Lisa.

You don’t need to port the home directory, just have it stay on the other disk, that’s how I used to do my systems when I had small SSDs. But porting it should be straightforward, just copy it over and it should all work.

As much as I disagree with your last statement (I think Linux for client is on par with Windows for the vast majority of users), I strongly agree with everything else. This wasn’t a Windows problem, but a “your IT is cockblocking you” problem, it could have happened in Linux too if it wasn’t because he used a rogue device, he could have fixed it on Windows too doing the same.

Personally I would have gone straight to Linux because I’m out of the loop on how to do these sort of stuff on Windows. If it had to be Windows, let IT figure that out, their firewall, their anti-virus, their problem.

Wasn’t this the OS of freedom? Hmmm

Yes, you’re also free to shoot yourself in the foot. Do what you want, I’m trying to prevent you from hurting yourself, but you’re free to do so of you so wish.

I tried to install ISO image writer on Ubuntu, on my laptop.

Ubuntu already comes with an iso image writer.

Went straight to the package manager, no terminal bullshit, downloaded it, open button is greyed out.

What program? How did you run it? What are you trying to do, you need to be a lot more specific,

Fantastic. Stable version btw. Solved by uninstalling and installing another version available on the manager.

Package managers only have one version, so that shouldn’t be possible.

Linux is literally problems after problems after problems.

Again, at least once you didn’t installed it via the package manager, so at least once you shot yourself in the foot. I’m guessing it was the first time, and you installed a snap/flatpacks which maybe required especial permissions for accessing USB devices.

Like, download the APK, enable Unknown sources, tap on the icon? I don’t use android since 2017 but i’m pretty sure is the same, isn’t it? Not an happy comparison.

Yes, it’s the same, try explaining that to your grandma who doesn’t know how to answer a call and you’ll quickly tell her to first learn to use the basics before wanting to enable external sources and installing random stuff from the internet.

When i want to uninstall and app and all the dependencies connected to it (autoremove, right?) is Linux able to tell if some of those dependencies are necessary for other apps and “whitelist” them?

Yes, it keeps track of which things use what, autoremove removes things that were installed as dependencies but nothing else depends on them now. So for example if you uninstall Ark and that was the only thing using unzip, running autoremove would get rid of the unzip library.

If i got a beginner friendly distro how will i learn how to use linux properly?

That’s like asking how will you learn to swim if you start in a pool where you can reach the bottom. First of all under the hood Ubuntu and Gentoo are 99% the same, the main differences are philosophical, almost everything you learn for Ubuntu will carry over to any other distro. But if you try jumping straight into the deep end you will be overwhelmed. I mentioned Gentoo because you usually compile your own kernel when using it, how can you possibly learn Linux without compiling your own kernel!? But the majority of people who know Linux nowadays have never done so, and you shouldn’t need to either. The same applies to all the thousand paper cuts you’re inflicting to yourself for choosing a distro whose philosophy doesn’t include being beginner friendly.

So if an app is not a package manager i’m fucked?

For the time being, yes. But here’s the thing, if everything else is working, figuring out how to install a package manually is simple, but if you’re struggling with 100 other things you will be overwhelmed by it. Tell me, when was the last time you downloaded an .APK from a random site on the internet to install something on your phone? It’s the same thing.

I tried, it did nothing, i went online to search for a solution.

Weird, that used to work last I used Debian based with KDE.

This is mental. This shouldn’t be a thing even for pros. I need 15 minutes to install an app? Sorry i won’t go out this evening, i need to install an app and god knows what can happen.

Nope, I could install that in 1 min, because I know what I’m doing, so I know how to install dependencies. But you don’t, so you shouldn’t try to install stuff manually. For starters I would have added a PPA instead of manually installing a .deb, that way the package would get updated and apt would install the dependencies automatically, if that wasn’t an option or I was feeling lazy I would have just installed using snap/flatpacks, or if I had to install using a .deb, I would just use apt to do it to autoresolve dependencies. The fact that half of what I said there sounds like gibberish is the reason why you shouldn’t do it. It’s equivalent of someone who can’t even use Android properly asking you how to install an APK not on the play store, first learn the basics, then you can do complex stuff.

Well, yes, of course. Also i read some contradictions in your post:

No contradictions, let’s go over one by one

the installer only installs what is supposed to, but it needs dependencies to actually make the app usable.

Yes, but each dependency is its own package, so when you install one package you might be installing several. But if you try to install one package manually (via dpkg) you don’t get the packages it depends on (because dpkg is a glorified unzip, it doesn’t know how to fetch dependencies).

But that’s what package managers do, right?

Exactly, unlike dpkg, apt does know how to install the dependencies, so it would do it automatically.

Different apps could use the same libraries but also different ones, so the system could become bloated nonetheless.

Yes, but you’re missing the point, a single library doesn’t weight that much, a dozen copies of that same library do. You installed KDE, so you probably had these apps (among others):

• Dolphin
• Okular
• Kwin
• Konsole
• Ark
• Kate
• Etc…

The KDE library is 150/200MB, so on Windows each of those application on it’s own weights at least 200MB, so probably you’re looking at 2GB for 10 apps that use the KDE library. On Linux they weight very small amount, because all of them use the same KDE library which is installed system-wide. Maybe some of those also use other libraries, but if you install anything else that uses that same library the library won’t be duplicated the same way it is on Windows, where each installer is self-contained and brings all of the libraries it needs to work.

I don’t see how is this beneficial for the user.

There are two main advantages:

• Smaller footprint for the system. Like I shown installing all those packages on Windows would be a few GB, but on Linux it’s probably less than 1. Expand that to an entire system and you’ll see how you can have a full Linux system filled with packages occupying less than Windows with some programs installed
• System-wide updates. Imagine a vulnerability was discovered in SSL, on Windows you would have to manually figure out which programs use SSL, figure out if the latest version of it uses an SSL version that fixes that vulnerability, update them to that version, rince and repeat for all programs installed. Whereas on Linux a system update fixes everything. Same thing for new features or bug fixes.

And the disadvantages are:

• Complicated to install a package (because you need to resolve the dependencies). Which is not an issue if you use a package manager.
• Stuff might break if different programs depend on different versions of the same library. Again, not an issue because the package manager ensures everything is up to date so you get the latest for all apps and libraries which work together, but the moment you install something manually you need to manage this manually for that package.

So overall it has 2 huge benefits and no downsides as long as you use the package manager.

How? I’ve installed Debian with KDE

Mistake number 1, Debian is not beginner friendly.

downloaded the .deb from steam website

Mistake number 2, this is windows mentality, if it’s not in the package manager it’s too advanced for you for the time being. Beginner friendly distros would have had steam in their package manager.

learnt to install that using sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb

You could have also double clicked the Deb file, but this is a bad way, dpkg does not resolve dependencies, so you would need to figure those out and install them by hand, which can be tedious at best.

opened the app and i’ve been welcomed with a text inviting me to press enter to continue, pretty simple. The program downloaded stuff, steam is ready now. Not bad.

You lucked out, your system had all of the requirements met.

Repeated the exact same thing on Debian with xfce, that apparently doesn’t come with a software installer, nothing works. An alert says i need to download dependencies (i know dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies). Where’s the “enter to continue”?

No such luck therez remember when I told you to use the package manager? This is why. Possibly missing something stupid like an i32 library, which you could manually install, but you shouldn’t, you’re making things hard for yourself for no reason other than wanting to avoid beginner friendly distros.

How is this my fault??

It’s your fault because like I’ve been saying since the beginning you’re trying to use Linux as if it were Windows and getting frustrated because it behaves differently. Trying to do this will be frustrating and you will become angry because nothing works like you expect, but you must understand that it’s not that things don’t work, it’s that they work differently.

You might be thinking this is stupid, an installer should install everything it needs, right? Nope, that’s a windows mentality, in Linux the main idea is that an installer only installs what it’s supposed to, any dependency should be system-wide. Why you might ask? Simple, imagine if every single GUI app had to include it’s own copy of the full GUI library it uses, your system would quickly become bloated, not only that but each program would open it’s own copy of the library using more and more memory, not to mention the interoperability problems between programs using different versions of the same library. In Linux the standard is for programs to use system libraries, it’s the convention, just like how on Windows it is to not (which has its own set of problems). This is why package managers are important, they’re not just downloading an executable and running it, they’re doing lots of stuff behind the curtains, all of it can be done manually, but like you found out it’s troublesome, so best is to avoid.