FWIW https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk works well. Sure it hasn’t been updates for a couple of years but maybe it’s not really needed.

Sorry I don’t know enough but here is an interesting articles about other kind of gnomes :P https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-tech-rally-apple-iphone-elon-musk-tesla-luddite-movement-2025-9

With pleasure. I discovered kdialog just recently too as until now I used notify-send but as you are using KDE this gives you a lot more options.

If you are into this kind of things check also dbus or KWin, there are a LOT of fun and powerful ways to interact with KDE.

FWIW if it users WebDAV might want to check copyparty then as it also provides that, and a WebUI, and… a lot more.

It also has kdeconnect-cli with e.g. kdeconnect-cli --share myfile.txt so don’t think you are stuck with a GUI to use KDEConnect.

I imagine dbus-monitor should work with cron but probably if starting once DBUS is actually running (so not sure @reboot would be sufficient)

1-liner would be something like watch -n 10 "pgrep konsole || kdialog --msgbox 'konsole no running'"

namely :

• watch to repeat a command at interval, e.g. every minute (could also be crontab)
• pgrep to check if a process is running
• kdialog on KDE to send a message to the current user (plenty more ways)

Thanks, it’s quite interesting but again IMHO it relies on bad practices. If you’ve been compromised and you “restore” (not in an sandboxed environment dedicated to study the threat) then you are asking for trouble. I’ll read a bit more in depth but the timeline I see 1987, 1998, 2017 show me this is a very very niche strategy, to the point that it’s basically irrelevant. Again it’s good to know of it, conceptually, but in practice proper backups (namely of data) remains in my eyes the best way to mitigate most problems, attacks and just back luck (failing hardware, fire, etc) alike.

12 years ago I took “Malicious Software and its Underground Economy: Two Sides to Every Story” and it was quite interesting not so much for the technical aspect (which was still nice) but for the economical aspect that is often underappreciated. The core idea was that scammers or hackers might be doing it for fun, as you did, or learning, as I did… but the ones who keep on doing it sustainably make money out of it, consequently they are predictable. Namely they need repeatable methods that scale or that target a specific group. I really recommend taking a similar class but anyway, the big picture here is sure, maybe AV would miss such things and yet it wouldn’t really matter because nearly nobody does that and/or it wouldn’t propagate much.

That doesn’t make much sense to me, one backup data, not executables or system. Even if they were to be saved in the backup then they wouldn’t get executed back.

Anyway, that’s still conceptually interesting but it’s so very niche I’d be curious to hear where it’s being used, any reference to read on where those exist in the wild?

Funny but that’s the entire point of a digital “life” if you want to use analogies : your backup is you.

Nothing needs an antivirus if you backup your data properly.

PS: I’m getting downvoted for this so I’ll explain a bit more : if you backup properly, you can restore your data. Sure your system is fucked… but who cares? In fact if you care for your OS installation then right away it shows you are NOT in a reliable state. You install another OS and start from there. Maybe it’s not even due to a virus, maybe your hardware burns in fire, same situation so IMHO a working backup (and by working I mean rolling, like TODAY it’s done without your intervention) then you restore. Also please don’t tell me about ransomware because even though it is a real threat, if you do your backups properly (as in not overwritting the old ones with the new ones) then you are still safe. It can be as basic as using rdiff-backup. It’s fundamental to understand the difference between what’s digital and what is not digital.

It’s not just for Linux but :

• there is an error message somewhere

It’s fundamental because instead of saying “It doesn’t work!” and get no useful help, people must think of it as an investigation (or whatever get them going) looking for clues. Until you get the right message and can provide the right context (e.g. what computer are you using, what OS version, etc) then you get generic help which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure it’s not entirely impossible if you are both lucky and patient but you are doing yourself and others a huge disservice.

Before Linux maybe they were used to black boxes but here, nobody is intentionally trying to hide away anything from you!

PS: bonus, notes are basically free. Jolt down notes about anything and everything you are learning. Don’t just “use” a computer, LEARN how to use a computer.

If most of your passwords are actually for Websites, Firefox has Profile letting you manage passwords across devices.

simula on my steam deck

Ah, interesting. I did try it years ago on my desktop with my Valve Index but didn’t consider on the SteamDeck. How does it work without 6DoF and controllers?

Immich distributed compute for https://github.com/immich-app/immich/tree/main/machine-learning with a control panel to witness the “boost” (which tbh might be impossible to notice)

Ah… forgot about them for a while, checking : last update from April “#58 - Dev Kits, Compute Packs, & 2025 Timeline” so in theory now they are on board certification. Good occasion to also check https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula/commits/master/

Out of curiosity, did you try one?

I setup WireGuard only last week so maybe I’m the one who misunderstand something : on your LAN assuming you are NOT using your router (or switch, or a networking device) to be a peer of the VPN, don’t you need to add each machine as a peer to the VPN? Also doesn’t that leave the most granularity so that the (root) user of each machine can chose to be on/off and more, e.g. split tunneling?

Indeed but by doing so I can connect from the outside World too, e.g. if I’m at the dentist waiting for an appointment, I just connect to the VPN over my 5G connection, no login required.

Because it’s low end I’d put :

• headless Debian pre-configured with WiFi and sshd to then add
• CopyParty via its single .py file
• apt install minidlna to serve media files back to add devices on LAN, e.g. VLC on desktop and mobile devices
• mount a large microSD for data
• I’d add a WireGuard VPN configuration file and make both accessible outside the LAN but only on my devices

All that is relatively quick if you have done it before (maybe 30min total) and can run 24/7 for years requiring very little power.