I work with IBM i/AS400 servers and those are not exactly the quickest thing to “reboot” (technically an IPL). Especially the old ones. I have access to the HMC/console but even this sometimes takes several minutes (if not dozens) just to show what’s going on.

It’s always a bit stressful to see the codes passing one after the other and then it stops on one and seems to get stuck there for a while before continuing the IPL process. Maybe it’s applying PTFs (updates) or something, and you just have to wait while even the console is blank.

I’ve been monitoring those servers for years and I’m still sometimes wondering if it hanged during the IPL or if it’s just doing its thing, because this part, even with codes, is not very verbose.

Fortunately it’s also very stable so it pretty much always comes back a few minutes after you start wondering why the hell it’s taking so long.

Not in rescue mode. If you can’t mount your root partition because something was fudged in /etc/fstab, for example, you may be stuck in recovery and depending on your distribution, it may not have nano in that minimalist mode.

For me it also happens when I install a VM of Debian using the small image, on my dedicated server in a data center. The company hosting the server requires a special network configuration and AFAIK, there’s only vi. So i need to use the console to access the VM and from there, edit /etc/network/something with vi to setup the network. Once done I can reboot and install the rest of the software over the network, including nano.

I’ve been using Linux for more than two decades. Before nano I was using pico, but it also required to have pine/alpine installed. So knowing the basics of vi has often been helpful over the years for me.

Maybe it’s because I like tinkering with VMs and SBCs, and most people will not encounter situations where they don’t have nano, but it can happen. And you’ll be glad to know at least “i” and “:wq!”.

Sometimes you don’t even have the luxury of nano. Any moderately advanced Linux user should probably learn the basics of vi. Just knowing how to insert text and save it can fix a system that’s stuck in recovery. Even if it’s just to add a comment in front of a line in a config file.

How do you use these when you are connecting via SSH? You enable X forwarding?

It’s fine when you have a graphical environment, but what do you do when you dont have one?

The only open source client that I know that worked with Steam is for bridging Steam’s chats and notifications with IRC. It’s called Bitlbee.

And i’ve stopped using it a few years ago because IIRC it was a pain to keep the authentication working with Steam. They thought hackers were accessing my account or something like that, and I kept having to disable security “features” just in order to stay logged in.

I assume an open source client not endorsed by Steam would have the same issue.

Not yet. I just use a different browser for now. It’s an intermittent issue where it just randomly fails the SSL handshake.

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to www.sepaq.com. SSL received an unexpected Server Hello handshake message.

Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_UNEXPECTED_SERVER_HELLO

Apparently I can also try to change SSL and TLS options. I’ll experiment a bit and see. I guess I should also let the website know. Maybe it’s just a configuration issue on their end, and other Firefox users are facing the same error. I use this website to make camping reservations and as winter is coming where I am, I have a few months to try different options before it becomes a bit more annoying again.

The open source community works in mysterious ways. This bug reminds me about the audio via HDMI bug for old radeon video cards. A simple flag in kernel configuration could have fixed it, yet the bug has been present in kernels from something like 4.1 to 6.0. It only recently has been fixed, after years of having to patch your kernel for a very simple bug.

For a reason I’m not yet sure about, the official website for provincial parks in my province refuse to establish a secure connection with Firefox. I’ve switched to FF a few months ago now and aside from that specific website not working correctly, the rest is fine to me.

I’m a tech and not a serious programmer but I really like scripting with bash. It’s an easy way to automate and program tasks while also manipulating data.

For example, I’ve automated reports for my work and made lots of screen scraping scripts.

It’s my go to for anything. I’ve recently started to learn python but often catch myself thinking it would be easier to accomplish most of what I want with a bash script.

And my least favorite has to be Tcl. It’s one of the first serious languages I “learned”, because eggdrops in the 90ies, and I still don’t like it.

AFAIK that’s one of the goals of the ARM (and maybe eventually RISC-V) architecture. It’s doing well on mobile and the low consumption is needed for a future that will require less energy. Or at least, do more with less. Having ARM desktops would also merge the mobile and the desktop environments.

Apple has moved to this architecture, and software wise, Linux is very compatible too. Even Microsoft knows and is trying (clumsily) to move to ARM.

The Pi5 will indeed open new possibilities on that front.

I kind of moved on to other devices or older models, depending on what is needed. If you just need a low power computer that can run Linux for simple tasks and projects, there’s now lots of alternatives. So far I’ve tried a Banana Pi BPI-M5 and a Le Potato and they’re both promising.

There’s a few instances where an original Raspberry Pi is still needed. For example, it’s super easy to install Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi while not really supported on other experimental boards. Same with GPIO tinkering with some hit and miss implementation on alternative boards.

The only negative thing that I’ve began not to like about the Raspberry Pi was/is the power management and consumption on the version 4. The fact that I had to use a “dumb” USB-C charger and that everyone on forums and in comments were always “screaming” that you needed a beefier or more powerful power supply kind of killed the enthusiasm for me. Like, I can charge my laptop using a power bank and PD, while the Raspberry Pi 4 complains that it doesn’t get enough power from the same bank. I’m sure they fixed their power issues and PD negotiation in the version 5 but apparently, it will also necessitate a pretty “good” power supply because it can pump up to 25 watts. Personally I don’t need that much power for most of my projects and it’s even annoying because it significantly reduced/reduces the number of ways that I can power the board.

Still, I’ll certainly try it if I can get my hands on one. They are very nice devices and their popularity makes them very standard and compatible. But I’m not in any rush because I’ve since tried alternatives and some will also do just fine too, or even better.