Giacomo Venturini gturi

Don't use VPN services.

No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.

Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.

A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.

Note: This is the guide for v 2.x.

For the v3, please follow this url: https://blog.csdn.net/sam_shan/article/details/80585240 Thanks @liy-cn for contributing.

For the v6, please follow the comment below: https://gist.github.com/trandaison/40b1d83618ae8e3d2da59df8c395093a?permalink_comment_id=5079514#gistcomment-5079514

StarUML

Download: StarUML.io

Encrypted Btrfs storage setup and maintenance guide

Initial setup with LUKS/dm-crypt

This exemplary initial setup uses two devices /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc but can be applied to any amount of devices by following the steps with additional devices.

Create keyfile:

dd bs=64 count=1 if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/cryptkey iflag=fullblock
chmod 600 /etc/cryptkey

Connecting to an Android device over SSH

Initial Setup

Install Android App Termux from APKPure or AppStore. If the app exists, just delete and re-install it to get the latest version, The APK can be downloaded from https://apkpure.com/termux/com.termux/ Install the APK using by running

adb install ~/Downloads/Termux_v0.73_apkpure.com.apk

In the following gist I'm going to guide you through the process of installing and booting an entire linux distribution with full desktop environment just like you would have with a classical VM, but with much better performance and much worse isolation :)

The reason why I did this was mainly because it's cool, but also to test new distros with decent graphics performance without actually booting them on my PC.

If you "try this at home" just keep in mind a container is not as secure as a VM, and some of the option we're going to explore will weaken container isolation from "a bit risky" to "totally unsafe" depending on what you choose.

Also, we're going to use systemd-nspawn for containers as it's probably the best fit for our use case and can also boot any linux partition without needing to prepare an apposite container image.

Less go!

The problem

Initial situation

Using Fedora 38, say you want to update the package albert from manuelschneid3r, hosted at https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home:manuelschneid3r&package=albert.

And with dnf update, you get the following output:

~ sudo dnf update
Dependencies resolved.

This guide was created for EndeavourOs Endeavour Release which if using the Online installer, as of July 2024, will provide Plasma 6.1 and Nvidia 555 drivers. This guide shows using Grub but will work with systemd-boot as well if you follow steps for kernel params.

Create file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf with the following contents

options nvidia_drm modeset=1
options nvidia_drm fbdev=1
options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0
options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1 NVreg_TemporaryFilePath=/var/tmp

	-- show running queries (pre 9.2)
	SELECT procpid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, current_query
	FROM pg_stat_activity
	WHERE current_query != '<IDLE>' AND current_query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'
	ORDER BY query_start desc;

	-- show running queries (9.2)
	SELECT pid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, query
	FROM pg_stat_activity
	WHERE query != '<IDLE>' AND query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'

	[user]
	useConfigOnly = true

	# [includeIf "gitdir:~/Projects/company1/"]
	# path = ~/Projects/company1/.gitconfig

	[alias]
	# add all
	aa = add .