Bodge it Your Way - A Linux Story

**tl;dr:**

*Too many tabs open in Firefox. Want more keyboard centered control over Firefox. Plugins do not suffice due to API restrictions. Build a custom solution where i3 and rofi manage the "tabs"(which are now windows). Works fine on Arch, Rofi is the show stopper on debian. Final thougts on the greatness of our savior linux, some xkcd comics and a note with cheesy philosophy.*

​

**Main Content:**

I like vim. And I like surfing the web. Until some years ago, there were some Firefox plugins that allowed to use your browser similar to vim. Due to security risks, the Firefox plugin infrastructure got rehauled and the Firefox-vim solutions now are somewhat limited.

My Linux path let me down the long dark road of tiling window managers, what I feel is just consequent should you also like vim (possibly for emacs users too, for that matter, but that wasn't my road to follow). Of course, one does not just use i3, but combine it with dmenu, its i3 incarnation or some other derivative, to start your programs with it at least. In my case its rofi. Using already i3, rofi and the castrated Firefox-vim plugins I thought "Wouldn't it be lovely if i3&rofi managed my tabs". Having usually 20-30 open tabs, I stopped using the top tabbar long time ago, but I loose oversight also on the sidebar, should I exceed 15 or so tabs. So I dreamed of tabs I could switch with rofi, Firefox showing only the addressbar and website and a mouse I would never have to touch again. So I bodged together something that reminds of a solution to my problems.

What I wanted:

1. New windows instead of tabs, so i3 can manage it.
2. Open new address with rofi, but have my Firefox url completion.
3. Start a search from rofi
4. Switch window/tab with rofi
5. only the address bar in Firefox

Where there Problems? \[This goes for arch linux\]

1. There are plugins and some settings in Firefox you can click to make that happen. No Problem here. Also no problem in opening dozens of windows. Windows and tabs seems to be the same for Firefox. This is different, should you force Firefox into opening a new instance! But I don't want that anyway, so this is fine. (You might think about doing this if you want to separate your banking account from your facebook account, so maybe that is a future feature of similar bodge?)
2. That was surprisingly easy. Firefox's History resides in a SQLite file somewhere. I copy it to /tmp, so its unlocked when I open it. SQLite generates a list of entries and the FZF search in Rofi gives me sane sorting of these addresses. The sorting is not as good as in Firefox, but its gets the job done surprisingly well...(More specifically, I move a first copy of the history in /tmp to a new name and then query with SQLite on that, while I copy a new history in parallel, so I don't have a delay when opening rofi)
3. This doesn't work. I "query" Firefox via commandline arguments. Firefox comes with "firefox --search <term>" which for some reason doesn't work on neither arch-linux nor debian. Via random trying I got it to search under some strange conditions and when my first word was "google", but then "google" would also appear in my search, which rendered this solution useless... Should you have any idea why that is so, I would be happy to hear about it.
4. Well, the developers of rofi build rofi with that feature in mind. No problem here. You can set a filter, so only Firefox windows are shown to start with.
5. Many people want to get rid of the tabbar. It is/was not supported by Firefox by default. But you can hack the UI's css... So thats what I did. I had to do it a long time ago, when I started using the sidebar, so this was already solved for me.

The same setup on debian failed, as rofi doesn't take the input I generate with SQLite. I don't care too much about this, as my debian has a large screen and the tabs are not to much of a hazzle. Its my primary workstation and debian's main purpose is, that in one or two years it should reliably behave like it does today. So I don't want to try to muc

h stuff on it... On my notebook, I have arch installed. Being a notebook, I care about my limited screens "real-estate" and there it works fine... So I didn't care to much about digging into a solution.

I use this setup daily and my main problem is my default behavior of opening tabs with Ctrl+t when surfing to google for something new. I havn't yet found out how to remap that to new window. So now I sometimes and up with having multiple windows and in some windows multiple tabs... Other then that it works like a charm (well, as much charm as you could expect from a bodge like that)

**Final thoughts**

Is this more efficient? If so, will this ever pay off?You probably already have your favorite xkcd comic at hand. Should you not, here are two possible options for you:

[https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/)

[https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

The answer is probably: NoBut it should be: No, does it have to be?

I would love to see myself in a long line of craftsman that took pride and joy in their work and tools and put ornaments on them and improved them in small ways, that might never pay of. However, I just bodged together a couple of programs and didn't even debugged a probably minor problem that stopps me from using it everywhere. Nevertheless, I still like my solution. I like whats possible with Linux/arch/debian (maybe its possible with windows & mac, but probably not this easy). I am, again, impressed how much I could change my system by just combining some programs in a certain way (Yeah, I know its the UNIX-philiosophy. But just because it has a name doesn't mean it shouldn't be cherished from time to time) . Of course, this takes a long time learning that these programs exist and one could combine them in that certain way to achieve a certain outcome... But now that its out its easy and it feels good ;)

To end on a philosophical note: Maybe that's something that, among other aspects, drives Linux desktop users: The possibility to bodge your tool into something that fits you and your style. In a far reminiscence of those gone days where we roamed the wild and slugged stones on stones to sometimes even improve our weapons, instead of just making a big pile of dust. Its maybe not about efficiency but feeling good with the tools at your hand and exploring the space of possibilities.

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Is taskwarrior dead/dying?

Taskwarrior is a super cool task manager, but...

There haven't been any posts in the taskwarrior [blogosphere](https://taskwarrior.org/) since early 2018

There hasn't been any significant [Git activity](https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/taskwarrior) in the past \~6 months

Their [IRC Channel](https://botbot.me/taskwarrior/) provider has shut down.

Does anyone have any background info about what is up?

https://redd.it/dnu9g9
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Operating Ststems comparison

Hi there,

I'm looking for a book (or site) that compares Windows 10, Mac OS X and Linux from a technical point of view, do you guys have any suggestions?

Thanks guys

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The US national hall of inventors included the fathers, Ritchie and Thompson, for the invention of UNIX: Awesome short video with Ken
https://vimeo.com/309887752

https://redd.it/dnyq2m
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Linux Elitist...
https://youtu.be/XK4H5wjfmws

https://redd.it/do1kti
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Thoughts on running Xubuntu and ZFS on root
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20191028#xubuntu

https://redd.it/do1ivu
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Linux Experiences/Rants or Education/Certifications thread - October 28, 2019

Welcome to r/linux rants and experiences! This megathread is also to hear opinions from anyone just starting out with Linux or those that have used Linux (GNU or otherwise) for a long time.

Let us know what's annoying you, whats making you happy, or something that you want to get out to r/linux but didn't make the cut into a full post of it's own.

For those looking for certifications please use this megathread to ask about how to get certified whether it's for the business world or for your own satisfaction. Be sure to check out r/linuxadmin for more discussion in the SysAdmin world!

_Please keep questions in r/linuxquestions, r/linux4noobs, or the Wednesday automod thread._

https://redd.it/do3vpz
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HTTPDirFS - a filesystem which allows you to mount HTTP directory listings, and servers which support Subsonic API.
https://github.com/fangfufu/httpdirfs/

https://redd.it/do34s5
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Google Snap: a Microkernel Approach to Host Networking
https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub48630/

https://redd.it/do3ypr
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Smart Platforms Article
https://pclite.net/manifesto

https://redd.it/do68sc
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GraphQL Foundation Launches Interactive Landscape and Welcomes New Members from Open Source Summit Europe
https://wire.mpelembe.net/graphql-foundation-launches-interactive-landscape-and-welcomes-new-members-from-open-source-summit-europe/

https://redd.it/do6l90
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Sell me on identifying disks based on UUIDS over Labels.

Why on earth would it be best practice to meaningfully identify a disk based on uniquely generated garbage?

Bad practice to use /dev/sda1 etc in fstab as it can change on you without notice so use a UUID?

Okay, why not identify via the label field? Human settable and meaningful data entry and still just as computationally static as a UUID field until manually manipulated. More accessibly changed yes but UUID is not immuteable either so is that really a argument that can stand?

Accidental conflicts are more likely to arise? Not if naming schemes are followed, regardless a malicious user is perfectly capable of changing the UUID on their USB thumb drive aswell so UUID doesnt even remove that risk.

Identifying via label makes certain processes significantly easier to understand by design aswell, migrating disks for example, provided you label correctly the fstab file won't require regeneration.

https://redd.it/do74qp
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How many of your know about "sudo !!"?

I recently took up a teaching job and demonstrated to a class how to setup a security module. I forgot that I was in a user account and when I ran a command it gave out the permission denied message.

I typed "sudo !!" which runs the previous command as root. They were all like, woah! what was that command you did? They've all used Linux before and were quite familiar with it but they were just so amazed that they had not known about that simple command.

I spoke to some other IT teachers afterwards and they too had not known about this command. At this point I was quite surprised. So I thought I'd post here to let you all know about it, in case you weren't aware.

&#x200B;

EDIT: To clear up any confusion as noted by u/bjrn: The '!!' element is used to refer to the previous command. It can be used in conjunction with anything really. It just saves you typing out the last command. The 'sudo' part is logically placing 'sudo' before '!!' which is the previous command.

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Linux Networking From Go
https://tomdnetto.net/post/linux_networking_from_go_nftables

https://redd.it/do8woi
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Video by a former director explaining the context and importance of fighting off the Rothschild patent troll (even if you don't use GNOME or Shotwell), in terms anyone can understand
https://invidio.us/watch?v=OacaptJDj1I

https://redd.it/doa2cd
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How to remove duplicate lines from files with awk without sorting or changing their order
https://opensource.com/article/19/10/remove-duplicate-lines-files-awk

https://redd.it/dob3hq
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Humble Book Bundle: Linux & BSD Bookshelf by No Starch Press
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-bsd-bookshelf-2019-books

https://redd.it/dod8af
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A new home for KernelCI
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/a-new-home-for-kernelci.html

https://redd.it/do98is
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Unbox Therapy shows off Gnome without realising

[Unboxing Edward Snowden's Favorite Laptop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVcJgCvFuWo)


Interesting to see someones first impression.

https://redd.it/dof39l
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Is Slackware a good distro for learning Linux ?

I was wondering if Slackware was a good distro for a learning tinkerer that likes to study, change and break stuff, while also being a main workstation.

I believe that such a distro should be :

* Well documented
* Stable, meaning that:
* It doesn't break easily
* It doesn't change all the time, it's not a rolling release
* Has a friendly and experienced userbase

I don't care about being supported or having recent packages, mainly because I only use free software and compiling exist.

So, would Slackware be a wise choice for me ?

And while you're at it, what are your thoughts on Slackware as a whole ?

Thank you for your time and have yourself a nice day :)

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