TCB13

TCB13 , 28 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

If you know your way around Linux you most likely don’t need Proxmox and its pseudo-open-source… you can try Incus / LXD instead.

Avoid Proxmox and safe yourself a LOT of headaches down the line. Go with Debian 12 + Incus/LXC, it runs VMs and containers very well. Proxmox ships with an old kernel that is so mangled and twisted that they shouldn’t even be calling it a Linux kernel. Also their management daemons and other internal shenanigans will delay your boot and crash your systems under certain circumstances.

LXD/Incus provides a management and automation layer that really makes things work smoothly - essentially what Proxmox does but properly done. With Incus you can create clusters, download, manage and create OS images, run backups and restores, bootstrap things with cloud-init, move containers and VMs between servers (even live sometimes).

Another big advantage is the fact that it provides a unified experience to deal with both containers and VMs, no need to learn two different tools / APIs as the same commands and options will be used to manage both. Even profiles defining storage, network resources and other policies can be shared and applied across both containers and VMs.

I draw your attention to containers (not docker), LXC containers because for most people full virtualization isn’t even required. In a small homelab if you can have containers that behave like full operating systems (minus the kernel) including persistence, VMs might not be required. Either way LXD/Incus will allow for both and you can easily mix and match and use what you require for each use case. Hell, you can even run Docker inside an LXC container.

For eg. I virtualize the official HomeAssistant image with Incus because we all know how hard is to get that thing running, however my NAS / Samba shares are just a LXD Debian 12 container with Samba4, Nginx and FileBrowser. Same goes for torrent client that has its own container. Some other service I’ve exposed to the internet also runs a full VM for isolation.

Like Proxmox, LXD/Incus isn’t about replacing existing virtualization techniques such as QEMU, KVM and libvirt, it is about augmenting them so they become easier to manage at scale and overall more efficient. I can guarantee you that most people running Proxmox today it today will eventually move to Incus and never look back. It woks way better, true open-source, no bugs, no delayed security updates, no BS licenses and way less overhead.

Also, let’s consider something, why use Proxmox when half of it’s technology (the container part) was made by the same people who made LXD/Incus? I mean Incus is free, well funded and can be installed on a clean Debian system with way less overhead and also delivers both containers and VMs.

Yes, there’s an optional WebUI for it as well!

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9caa6ea8-17b1-48f6-a8c2-ff3f606f3482.pnghttps://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a5a110b2-ed6f-431f-a767-0a21fb337a6b.png

• Context on Incus vs LXD: www.theregister.com/2023/08/04/incus_lxd_fork/
• A sum of my experience with Proxmox over the years: lemmy.world/comment/7476411

Some documentation for you:

• linuxcontainers.org/incus/
• github.com/lxc/incus
• wiki.debian.org/Incus
• linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/installing/
• github.com/canonical/lxd
• techtarget.com/…/LXD-Linux-container-hypervisor

TCB13 , 28 days ago

C’mon just move to Incus: lemmy.world/comment/10896868 :P

TCB13 , 28 days ago

You need to understand what Proxmox gives you, which primarily is ability to run/manage/backup/etc VMs easily

Yeah and after understanding what it gives you then you move to Incus because while it might be a bit harder to setup it delivers around 80% of what Proxmox does without the overhead, mangled kernel and licensing issues.

cockpit-project.org also does VMs and can work for people without cluster needs.

TCB13 , 28 days ago

I’m glad to know that I could help.

I like that I can switch out my distros underneath Incus instead of being stuck on one weird kernel

This is an interesting take that I never considered before, my experience (be it corporate or at home) is usually around Debian machines running Incus and I never had the need to replace the distro underneath it.

TCB13 , 28 days ago

Well, I understand your POV… but real software freedom instead of messages asking you to buy a license and a questionable kernel is always a good choice :P

TCB13 , 27 days ago

You can put Incus on a lot of different systems. Don’t like systemd? Put it on Void. Want a declarative setup? NixOS. Minimalist? Alpine.

This is great, yeah.

TCB13 , 27 days ago

Typically I just run binaries of the services I use, and I don’t tend to use docker or other things

That’s essentially what I do in my NAS with LXD, it’s a great use case for it.

Enjoy.

TCB13 , 27 days ago

Check the bottom of reply, there’s a link there with my experience over the years.

TCB13 , 27 days ago

LXC is worse than virtualization as it pins to a single core instead of getting scheduled by the kernel scheduler. It also is quiet slow and dated. Either run Podman, Docker or full VMs.

First what you’re saying about the scheduler isn’t even what happens by default, that was some crap that Proxmox pulled when they migrated from OpenVZ to LXC. To be fair, they had a bunch of more or less valid reasons to force that configuration, but again it due to kernel related issues that were affecting Proxmox more than regular Ubuntu and those issues were solved around the end of 2021.

Now Docker and LXC serve different purposes and they aren’t a replacement for each other. Docker is a stateless application container solution while LXC is a full persistent container aimed at running full operating systems…

Docker and LXC share a bunch of underlaying technologies at on the beginning Docker even used LXC as their backed, they later moved to their execution environment called libcontainer because they weren’t using all the featured that LXC provided and wanted more control over the implementation.

For those who really need full systems is LXC definitely faster than a VM. Your argument assumes everything can and should be done inside Docker/Podman when that’s very far from the reality. The Docker guys have written a very good article showcasing the differences and optimal use cases for both.

Here two quotes for you:

LXC is especially beneficial for users who need granular control over their environments and applications that require near-native performance. As an open source project, LXC continues to evolve, shaped by a community of developers committed to enhancing its capabilities and integration with the Linux kernel. LXC remains a powerful tool for developers looking for efficient, scalable, and secure containerization solutions. Efficient access to hardware resources (…) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (…) Close to native performance, suitable for intensive computational tasks.

Docker excels in environments where deployment speed and configuration simplicity are paramount, making it an ideal choice for modern software development. Streamlined deployment (…) Microservices architecture (…) CI/CD pipelines.

Anyways…

It also ships with a newer kernel than Debian although it shouldn’t matter as you are using it for virtualization.

It matters, trust me. Once you start requiring modules it will suddenly matter. Either way even if they ship a kernel that is newer than Debian it is so fucked at that point that you’ll be better with whatever Debian provides out of the box.

TCB13 , 27 days ago

Actually it would be interesting to see cockpit-machines move to Incus as a virtualization backend and support both LXC containers and QEMU VMs tat way.

TCB13 , 27 days ago (edited 27 days ago)

Yes ksmtuned is your friend. For VMs it can be managed / enabled like any other Linux Kernel + QEMU/KVM running with KSM enabled.

On LXC containers it may be a bit harder as it depends a LOT, best results if you’re using systemd both the host and containers. It may work out all out of the box or you’ll have to resort to ksm_wrapper in both the Incus executable and the stuff running inside your containers.

Don’t forget that:

KSM only operates on those areas of address space which an application has advised to be likely candidates for merging, by using the madvise(2) system call: int madvise(addr, length, MADV_MERGEABLE). www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt

How does it handle Windows VMs

As one would except from QEMU… blog.simos.info/how-to-run-a-windows-virtual-mach…

Does the WebUI give a nice and easy novnc window

Yes it works fine. youtu.be/wqEH_d8LC1k?feature=shared&t=508

TCB13 , 28 days ago

How to reliably(!) exclude files from a list in tar?

You delete the entire file because the format and tools are hard to deal with for basic operations like this one. :)

Just kidding… but we know there’s some truth to it.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

Ahaha fair enough. * screams in KDE *

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

Both designs are good imo. Adding the extra space for the “cancel” button could cause a copyright claim

What ahaha since when a modal is copyrighted? I don’t buy it, this is simply poor design by the GNOME team.

GNOME’s workflow is similar to Apple’s so why not copy some more things for better consistency?

Exactly my point, but they should learn how to properly copy things. Or at least think about them, Apple didn’t add the margin for no reason.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it…

Well, it’s insulting for people to lose their work because someone did a lousy UX job. :)

Cloning macOS should not be views as something “bad” because for what’s worth we all know Apple spends a LOT in usability research (they’re not as good as they used to be, but still better than the rest).

Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.

That’s the thing, I’ve basic design / UX training and all the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add a margin. Any design undergraduate should also be able to notice that life saver as well… however the GNOME team totally missed it.

This isn’t the first time them failing at basic UX and they don’t like when people try to suggest improvements nor when they later on criticize them.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

I don’t completely disagree with you, however the cost of losing an important document because you clicked on the wrong thing is way higher than having to look at the extra space every day.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

That’s my point. :)

However for this they would need to admit to themselves that they’re essentially a copy of macOS.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

I get it that you hate this design

I don’t hate it, it looks better than what was there before, no doubts there, but at the same time they could’ve just made it better.

All the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add margins, accents and shades. Any design undergraduate should be aware of this, however the GNOME team totally missed it.

It’s going to be a good update with accent color support (I won’t fight about it ok?)

It’s funny that you mention that because…

In macOS, you can specify an accent color to customize the appearance of your app’s buttons, selection highlighting, and sidebar glyphs. The system applies your accent color when the current value in General > Accent color preferences is multicolor. support.apple.com/en-mt/guide/mac-help/…/mac

I’m totally okay with “being inspired” (cloning) macOS, it should be viewed as good thing because Apple does spend a lot in UX research however lets make thing properly.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

it just looks like Mac because top bar, dock and some design choices

Top bar, dock, system settings, activities (somewhat e mix between Apple’s mission control and launchpad), now the modal buttons, accent colors… and so many other things.

MacOS felt extremely clunky to use vs gnome’s fluid workspace and app switching.

Maybe you were running it without proper GPU acceleration and without a keyboard with actual macOS shortcuts on the function keys? Virtualizing macOS is hard and it will give you a very poor experience.

Obviously macOS has it’s defects but at least you aren’t risking losing your work due to a misclick nor you are restricted from having desktop icons like you’re on GNOME :)

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

just take it and make it better here and there. Just a few steps left :)

You mean, copy it and make it open :P I guess something along the lines of github.com/CuarzoSoftware/Louvre

@ehopperdietzel is working on that it seems.

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

How? Improving something like this is hard. Do you have any proposals?

I’ve submitted a fair share of UX in-depth analysis with examples and links to literature on the GNOME team blog and they tend to ignore / comment dismissingly and then remove my comments after a few weeks.

Accent color taboo. Let’s not talk about accent color.

Ahahaha

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

The older one is actually properly executed, the first button is the “Cancel” one and that makes sense because people read from left to right and tend to click mindlessly / without reading on the first button. Not sure if they actually changed the position on right to left languages but they should have…

TCB13 OP , 28 days ago

In-depth analysis ≠ random ramblings on lemmy.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

The issue there isn’t only differentiation, that well done, the issue is that an user might miss click because both buttons are close to each other.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

I’m kind of on the same boat you’re… however KDE tends to have issues with visual proportions and margins everywhere.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.

Well I’ve complained about those a couple of time… but people always say that it’s their vision.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

Not a permanent dock. Docks predate Apple any way.

The Dock comes from NeXTSTEP, the operating system Steve Jobs left Apple to develop back in 1986… GNOME was announced in 1997 so I don’t get your argument.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html

That’s definitely interesting.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple.

Yes, so let’s copy Apple and keep the few things GNOME does well.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

See the problem there, regular users don’t Ctrl+s, they point and click.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors

Yes it does. Those guys did a really good job.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

I’m curious what you are referring to losing work due to a misclick?

If you place “Discard” and “Cancel” next to each other, without a margin in between, is easier a user looking to click on “Cancel” to click on “Discard” and lose a document. This is more common than people think and that’s why Apple added the margin there and also why any good UX manual tells you to add a margin for destructive operations like that one.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

According to the UX experts you don’t need the space between the save and discard buttons as long as the “save” is the first one. Missclick are more prone to happen from top to bottom than the other way around, so if the user wanted to hit “save” it’s more likely he will click above the button than it is to click “discard”. Same logic applied down there, when the using is looking to cancel it’s easier to missclick and hit the “discard” button than anything else.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

You aren’t wrong, but that has nothing to do with he issue at hand. They should copy each other if a solution is good, and that’s the issue here, GNOME forgot to copy a good UX practice that Apple actually took the time to implement.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags

Isn’t this ironic? The DE with a user base that is way more tech savvy people thinks users can’t use tags.

macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings,

What are you talking about?? At least on macOS app icons are consistent not the crap they are on GNOME.

macOS (…) setup cannot be properly automated

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple makes automated setup even easier than it is on MS ecosystems, companies can literally buy a computer on the Apple Store and have it shipped to an employee with the companie’s profile pre-installed by Apple without even needing to touch or open the box. The employee get’s the computer, opens the box and just has to login with this corporate account.

You’ve Apple’s own MDM, Jamf, JumpCloud and so many others. Even Ansible can be used to configure, setup and automated macOS deployments.

macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Well at least it doesn’t like a 5 second pointless fade animation after every single click like GNOME does, nor does it bundle web technologies for theming that make the DE be as slow as it can get when it comes to rendering a new window.

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

Your point being…?

TCB13 OP , 27 days ago

This is an application of Fitts’s law. I saw some paper referencing it to back that kind of margins on destructive actions but I don’t remember the title.

TCB13 , 28 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

If I connect it to my computer using a SATA to USB adapter instead of directly to the computer’s SATA, can it somehow affect the result of this scan?

It depends on how much power the disk requires and how much power the USB port can deliver. Also note that USB-A is the worst connector out there when it comes to mechanical reliability - it only takes a finger on the plug to screw whatever data transfer is going on.

For external disks (both 2.5 and 3.5") I’ve a bunch of this powered USB disk enclosures. They’ve a good chip, are made of metal and a USB-B 3 port. You can connect those to any USB-A device and you’ll know that only one side might fail… if you’ve USB-C a cable like this tends to be more reliable.

Another good option, if you’ve USB-C and you want something more portable is to get a USB-C disk enclosure as those will be able to deliver more power and be more reliable.

PS: avoid whatever garbage Orico is selling, Inateck is much better.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

What if you just get your browser using their own repositories or flatpak? 🌈

TCB13 , 1 month ago

Oh no, this is Flatpaks’ fault because they made this twisted repository system instead of doing sane things and then it is Flathub’s fault as well because they aren’t opening their storage to rsync or other sane syncing methods.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

I agree with everything you said, however there are a few details.

it is technically possible to just launch your own [repo]

The ability to create repositories ≠ from mirror existing ones.

Unlike apt repositories Flatpak ones aren’t simply a directory tree with a bunch of files that can get mirrored using rysnc or other efficient means, it’s a clusterfuck of HTTP-only requests that need to be backed by specific metadata and there aren’t tools to manage those.

flatpak create-usb may be promising but the name says its all - the priority wasn’t to create a way to mirror repositories but a quick and dirty hack for some situation.

theoretically you could open your own repo and throw all dependency related packages in there or am I getting something wrong here

Theoretically yes, in practice things are bit more nuanced. That tools only considers your current architecture, it’s a pain to get dependencies in an automated way and most of the time you’ll end up with broken archives. You’ll also need to hack things a lot.

TCB13 , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Because…

• Universities might want to locally host a mirror in order to waste less bandwidth and provide faster downloads;
• Large companies usually like to host internal mirrors for the same reasons as above and also so they can audit and pick what packages will be available for their end users;
• Flathub is slow af for some people;
• Local country-specific mirrors are always faster;
• In some countries not everyone can access the official flathub;
• One might be dealing with airgapped networks and systems for sensitive work and you want to have ways for your end users to install flatpaks;
• Fastly, their CDN might go down at any point (like Cloudflare sometimes does) and you’ll end up with nothing;
• Flathub itself may be subject to a cyberattack and their service might get crippled for a days or weeks and you’ll have nothing as well;

For what’s worth Debian archive repositories are about 5 TB and people actively mirror then in universities, companies, cloud providers etc.

The question here isn’t “why would you” but rather “why would I be unable to do it”. Their actively gatekeeping their repository in a futile attempt to be the single and central point of flatpak distribution - much like what Apple does with the App Store.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

It’s a fun exercise for you to see how convoluted and problematic it becomes.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

Even Microsoft’s Winget repository is easier to deal with than Flathub.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

Controller by Microsoft? You mean a GitHub repository with the entire list of packages? A simple list of yaml files that simply point to whatever the developers decided to point them at?

Definitely worse than the BS that flathub is :)

TCB13 , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

WooCommerce powers 38% of the online stores out there…

WordPress’s data structure is not properly suited for an e-commerce site

To be fair WordPress’ data structure is not properly suited for anything, not even posts and pages, let alone block structures and whatever but the truth is that it works and delivers results. Same goes for WooCommerce, if you don’t want to be hostage of Shopify and your objective actually selling shit instead of spending all your time developing store software then WooCommerce is the way to go.

WooCommerce also has an extensive extension list, integrations with all the payment providers out there and it’s easy to get help / support be it free or paid.

and it’s a resource hog.

Did you ever they Magento or PrestaShop? Doesn’t seem like you did as those are store-first solutions and they’re all slower and more of a resource hog than WP can ever be.

TCB13 , 1 month ago

How do I know all of this? Well I happen to work with WordPress professionally as the lead developer for an agency where I manage literally hundreds of WordPress sites and host all of them myself on servers I manage for them (not shared hosting reselling).

I used to have the same role and before that I managed a shared hosting provider. At that job the majority of websites hosted there were WordPress and customers would pay us to develop or fix stuff sometimes.

The vast majority of those “extensions” (plugins) are horribly made and are security nightmares,

Yes, this is true and a problem, but at the same time the WordPress ecosystem, as you know, gets shit done.

I also had some experiences with PrestaShop/Magento and they are even worse than WordPress. You still have the performance issues, the 3rd party poorly developed themes and plugins and a convoluted API.