Re: info is not dead
On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:13:47 -0500 Nate Bargmann wrote: > where some nice formatting is done in the GUI Emacs version. The > stand alone GNU info browser is rather obtuse. I found a much better > option to be the independent pinfo (Debian package of the same name) > browser which provides navigation up and down through the document > using Lynx style key bindings. If pinfo doesn't find an info document > it will open a man page when one is available. I'll just second that, haven't had GNU info installed on any system in the last 15 years. Never grew comfortable with it, it's about twice the size of pinfo, with the latter being rather idiosyncratic in its own ways and a little buggy. Surely it never was supposed to do more than fill this gap, and as far as I know this is all there is, if you don't feel like using a clunky Tk GUI. Well actually, vim can do it too, a simple plugin is included in Debian's vim-scripts package already, but as I recollect you'd still need default info, that's what made me go for pinfo once. To be honest I'm not happy with the info format still being around, precisely because sometimes man pages don't cut it, and we should have something better by now. On the other hand, and I'll make no bones about it, so called chatbots turned out to be extremely useful (overused) for me in that respect and are now doing enough of the job for about 80% of the time. You just can't beat that for speed or convenience, and when is there no internet connection. Regards, Oliver
Re: Password managers
On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 21:58:17 -0500 wrote: >As it happens, pass(1) appeared to be precisely what I was looking for. >My original code stores all passwords in a single file, whereas pass >stores each password in a separate file. In addition, I don't need pass >in order to decode the password files. If pass every goes away or >disappears from the Debian repos, I can still fetch my passwords (and >associated data). Plus, it will insert any line in the password file >into the clipboard. And it's a terminal app. Yay. > Good to see there's still an option for every liking. Turns out my expectations are not that far from yours, though gpg is a no-go for me (hence almost all in-repo managers) and bash/git magic all but out of the question for anyone also using mobile. I know it's not workable for everyone, but if your usage of oldschool passwords is still manageable, already decreasing and/or you're using them only where you really have to, going stateless is another clean, quick and unbloated option: https://www.lesspass.com/ https://github.com/lesspass/lesspass Debian has "gokey", perhaps the exception I could use otherwise, same principle but apparently very bare-bones, cannot say more about that. I've been using lesspass for years, it means I'm not saving anything, anywhere. Nothing can be stolen, lost, destroyed or has to be synced. Passwords are computed each time by way of "site", "login" and my master password, they can still be changed of course if I have to. For many people, however, that gets unwieldy real fast as you have to remember not only all site/login combinations but also specifics like length, excluded symbols and possibly counter. So before long many would start populating some kind of database anyway, defeating the whole concept. On the other hand you can use it on the CLI too, there's a Python module, though not in Debian, and the Web interface is quite handy. F-Droid even has a (very simple) app for Android. It's not a recommendation for you, as one cannot save let alone annotate anything, but maybe someone else is interested. I'ver never been a fan of managers, don't like to save stuff in the browser(s) and the idea of pulling in 100 MiB or half of the wacky Qt cosmos just in order to save a few phrases makes my nose bleed. Oliver
Re: No Books in print on Systemd?
On Sat, 18 May 2019 23:11:42 -0400 Kenneth Parker wrote: > Did also see the following two: > >> > >> * How Linux Works, 2nd Edition (Paperback); Brian Ward; 2015.. > >> Incidentally references systemd as one of the many topics covered. > >> > > > I'll look, but this will, likely not have the detail I need. Nope, probably not. I read it a couple of years ago and Brian's book is huge, better still for a beginner I'd think. But if you're looking for something that roughly makes up for systemd's man pages, on paper, than this isn't it. I've been looking for one myself, no luck so far. About the best I might mention at this point is "Linux in Action" by David Clinton, Manning 2018, quite new. Be informed though it's more of your typical sysadmin guide: very broad in subject, goes into archiving, backups, hardening, webserver, devops, everything. Considering that, it's not particularly large, hence once again often lacking the depth. And then it doesn't have _a_ specific systemd part, or chapter; rather it's kind of smeared all over the place, perhaps as you might expect, a bit like systemd on Linux. ;) I'm afraid, eventually there's (as yet) no replacement for the online manuals, and as drab as man pages can be, or whether you like systemd or not, I'd say the docs are quite decent. Not least considering its age. Almost overdone. If all free software was like that, we wouldn't need to kill too many trees. Apart from that, and ongoing development, another hurdle could be that systemd is just too Linux specific, really. While even there clearly centered on the Desktop and enterprise environment. So while a book on the kernel is just about as relevant if you're doing Android, or Linux embedded, systemd isn't. Not to mention there haven't been a lot of titles on init scripting either. Best wishes, Oliver
