I want to prevent myself from reinstalling my system.

Any even remotely normal file on disk doesn’t stop that, regardless of encryption, privileges, attributes or anything your running OS could do to the drive. If you erase partition table it’ll lose your ‘safety’ file too without any questions asked as on that point the installer doesn’t care (nor see/manage) on individual files on the medium. And this is exactly what ‘use this drive automatically for installation’ -option does on pretty much all of the installers I’ve seen.

Protecting myself from myself.

That’s what backups are for. If you want to block any random usb-stick installer from running you could set up a boot options on bios to exclude those and set up a bios password, but that only limits on if you can ‘accidently’ reinstall system from external media.

And neither of those has anything to do on read/copy protection for the files. If they contain sensitive enough data they should be encrypted (and backed up), but that’s a whole another problem than protecting the drive from accidental wipe. Any software based limitation concerning your files falls apart immediately (excluding reading the data if it’s encrypted) when you boot another system from external media or other hard drive as whatever solution you’re using to protect them is no longer running.

Unless you give up the system management to someone else (root passwords, bios password and settings…) who can keep you from shooting yourself on the foot, there’s nothing that could get you what you want. Maybe some cloud-based filesystem from Amazon with immutable copies could achieve that, but it’s not really practical on any level, financial very much included. And even with that (if it’s even possible in the first place, I’m not sure) if you’re the one holding all the keys and passwords, the whole system is on your mercy anyways.

So the real solution is to back up your files, verify regularly that backups work and learn not to break your things.

What’s your end goal here? You try to keep files just on that one media without any options to make copies of them? Or maintain an image which has enforced files at their directories? And against what kind of scenarios?

ACLs and SELinux aren’t useful as they can be simply bypassed by using another installation and overriding those as root, same thing with copying. Only thing I can think of, up to a degree, is to use immutable media, like CD-R, where it’s physically impossible to move files once they’re in place and even that doesn’t prevent copying anything.

Geeqie is a quick one to go trough photos and it groups RAW+JPG as a single item on preview, so even a few hundred photos are quickly ran trough with just a keyboard. I’m not sure on how well it manages tags as I don’t use it for tagging, but it’s most likely in your distros repository so testing it out is quick.

Then do sudo apt install xfce4 and sudo apt purge cinnamon* muffin* nemo*.

It’s been a while since I installed xfce4 on anything, but if things haven’t changed I think the metapackage doesn’t include xfce4-goodies and some other packages, so if you’re missing something it’s likely that you just need to ‘apt install xfce4-whatever’. Additionally you can keep cinnamon around as long as you like as a kind of a backup, just change lightdm (or whatever login manager LMDE uses) to use xfce4 as default. And then there’s even lighter WM’s than XFCE, like LXDE, which is also easy to install via apt and try out if that works for you.

I understand the mindset you have, but trust me, you’ll learn (sooner or later) a habit to pause and check your command before hitting enter. For some it takes a bit longer and it’ll bite you in the butt for few times (so have backups), but everyone has gone down that path and everyone has fixed their mistakes now and then. If you want hard (and fast) way to learn to confirm your commands, use dd a lot ;)

One way to make it a bit less scary is to ‘mv <thing you want removed> /tmp’ and when you confirmed that nothing extra got removed you can ‘cd /tmp; rm -rf <thing>’, but that still includes the ‘rm -rf’ part.

Absolutely. Maybe leave Gnome/KDE out and use a lighter WM, but they’ll be just fine. Specially if they have 8GB or more RAM. I suppose those have at least dual core processors, so that won’t be a (huge) bottleneck either. You can do a ton of stuff with those beyond just web browsing, like programming/text editing/spreadsheets and so on. I’d guess that available RAM is the biggest bottleneck on what they can do, specially if you like to open a ton of tabs on your browser.

Make sure you have package alsa-utils installed and try to run alsamixer. That’ll show all the audio devices your system detects. Maybe you’re lucky and it’s just that some volume control is muted and if you’re not it’ll give you at least some info to work with. Majority of audio devices don’t need any additional firmware to work and they almost always work out of the box just fine. What’s the hardware you’re running? Maybe it is something exotic which isn’t installed by default (which I doubt).

And additionally, what you’re trying to play audio from? For example MP3’s need non-free codecs to be installed and without them your experience is “a bit” limited on audio side of things.

They both use upstream version number (as in the number software developer gave to the release). They might additionally have some kind of revision number related to packaging or some patch number, but as a rule of thumb, yes, the bigger number is the most recent. If you should use that as a only variable on deciding which to install is however another discussion. Sometimes dpkg/apt version is preferred over snap regardless of version differences, for example to save a bit of disk space, but that depends on a ton of different things.

Mullvad (apparenlty, first time I’ve heard from the service) uses DNS over TLS and I don’t think that the current GUI version has the option to enable it. Here’s a quickly googled howto from Fedora on how to enable it on your system. If that doesn’t help search for ‘NetworkManager DOT’ or ‘DNS over TLS’.

Imperial, adjustable, left handed wrench. Or left handed any common hand tool (hammer, spanner, screwdriver…). Muffler bearing. Light bulb for the crank case. Blinker fluid. The list goes on.

And, within reason, I think those are pretty decent pranks. No one gets hurt, many get a good laugh out of it, including the one looking for a two headed hammer if executed properly.

I don’t know where the Debian project is based.

Trademark and at least some copyright for the project is owned by an entity in the New York and Ian Murdoch who started the project was US citizen. But calling the whole project as USA based is wrong, it is based ‘on the internet’ as even the core team is spread across the globe.

I’m tempted to say systemd-ecosystem. Sure, it has it’s advantages and it’s the standard way of doing things now, but I still don’t like it. Journalctl is a sad and poor replacement from standard log files, it has a ton of different stuff which used to be their separate own little things (resolved, journald, crontab…) making it pretty monolithic thing and at least for me it fixed a problem which wasn’t there.

Snapcraft (and flatpack to some extent) also attempts to fix a non-existing problem and at least for me they have caused more issues than any benefits.

It’s been a while (few years actually) since I even tried, but bluetooth headsets just won’t play nicely. You either get the audio quality from a bottom of the barrel or somewhat decent quality without microphone. And the different protocol/whatever isn’t selected automatically, headset randomly disconnects and nothing really works like it does with my cellphone/windows-machines.

YMMV, but that’s been my experience with my headsets. I’ve understood that there’s some propietary stuff going on with audio codecs, but it’s just so frustrating.

The command in question recursively changes file ownership to account “user” and group “user” for every file and folder in the system. With linux, where many processes are run as root and on various other accounts (like apache or www-data for web server, mysql for MySql database and so on) and after that command none of the services can access the files they need to function. And as the whole system is broken on a very fundamental level changing everything back would be a huge pain in the rear.

On this ubuntu system I’m using right now I have 53 separate user accounts for various things. Some are obsolete and not in use, but majority are used for something and 15 of them are in active use for different services. Different systems have a bit different numbers, but you’d basically need to track down all the millions of files on your computer and fix each of their permission by hand. It can be done, and if you have similar system to copy privileges from you could write a script to fix most of the things, but in vast majority of cases it’s easier to just wipe the drive and reinstall.

I’ve ran into that with one shitty vendor (I won’t/can’t give any details beyond this) lately. They ‘support’ deb-based distributions, but specially their postinst-scripts don’t have any kind of testing/verification on the environment they’re running in and it seems to find new and exiting ways to break every now and then. I’m experienced (or old) enough with Linux/Debian that I can go around the loopholes they’ve left behind, but in our company there’s not too many others who have sufficient knowledge on how deb-packages work.

And they even either are dumb or play one when they claim that their packages work as advertised even after I sent them their postinst-scripts from the package, including explanations on why this and that breaks on a system which doesn’t have graphical environment installed (among other things).

But that’s absolutely fault on the vendor side, not Debian/Linux itself. But it happens.

You can’t just tell the cops “no but seriously, I’ve been practicing with an air gun in my backyard, trust me bro”.

Obviously, but you conveniently didn’t quote the part where I said you need a signed proof from a licensed weapons trainer.

But really, can you find me a single one who’d certify you without having been a part of the association? In the current climate? Seriously?

I can. Multiple even, a phone call away. But in here you just of course have to ‘trust me bro’, I’m not going to prove that just for the sake of random conversation over the internet.

Good luck getting a pistol for execution as a farmer without being a hunter. Regards, someone who was born in a village of hunters and farmers.

I know several. Coming from someone currently living in a village of hunters and farmers. Obviously many of them are hobbyist hunters as well, but you don’t get a permit for 9mm pistol for duck hunting.

I’m getting more and more doubtful that you actually have a license for any sort of firearm.

I don’t care. The law, and my very real world experience, says that you don’t need to be a part of any association or club to get a permit regardless of the weapon type, as long as you otherwise qualify to have one.

Because ranges do have weapons you can go shoot with

Some do, but that’s the main attraction on their business where they loan weapons and let you shoot with them. Vast majority of ranges however are just a place in the middle of nowhere, some even without any kind of electricity and often they go days or even weeks without anyone visiting. Most of those places don’t have any kind of winter maintenance either. So if you were forced to leave your firearm there there would be very little of stopping someone malicious visiting with heavy tools and breaking into every safe on site.

For instance, if you want to shoot moose. I’m not sure if exceptions exist, but I’m pretty sure felling permits aren’t given to individual people, but hunting parties.

If you own enough land you can apply for an permit for yourself. You’re correct that vast majority of them are granted to parties and associations, but strictly speaking you don’t have to join one.

You need to show at least two years of shooting with a firearm. Where would you get that kind of experience if you’re not practically part of an association?

By yourself. You can train with a air pistol and all you need is to prove that you’re an active hobbyist. In practice you need to have a certified weapons trainer to prove your word and some of them might not sign the certificate if you’re not a part of their association, but it’s not a strict rule nor something required by law.

We have a freedom of association and that includes freedom of not associating with anyone. I’m not a member of any kind of sport shooting clubs as there’s none around here and that’s not a problem. Sure, you need to find out a certified trainer who trusts your shooting diary, but that’s it. And ‘valid reason’ is as good an explanation as any. Your hobby is target shooting? You can apply for a license with that. Your hobby is hunting? Same thing. You’re a farmer and need a weapon in case you need to kill one of your cows/wild hogs in case it injured itself and/or is a threat to safety? Sure. And if you happened to be a farmer in the 70’s you could get a permit for semi-automatic .22lr pistol for pest control, but I don’t think that’s a valid reason anymore.

So, with that in mind, I’d be very surprised if the gun used in today’s tragedy were illegal but as the media has already covered, it was a legally licensed firearm, so there’s no point of speculating with that any further.

It’s not too hard to get a license for one, but you’d never have it at your residence, it’d be kept at the range, and even with the keys, the kid would not be able to get the gun from the range.

As far as I know there’s no range which would provide gun storages for it’s members for various reasons, most obvious being that they don’t want the liability in case something, like a break in, happens. At least outside big cities this is something that doesn’t and can’t exist. Additionally, by law, the guns must be stored at the primary residence, unless you make special arrangements otherwise, like having a safe at the range with electronic alarm systems and all the jazz or stored with a gun professional in case you intend to sell it/have it repaired/things like that.

With hunting weapons (rifles, shotguns) it’s even more obvious that they can’t be stored elsewhere, but that’s a whole another matter.

For the license you need to have a valid need for a gun of any type. So you need to prove that you’re active hobbyist (no need to join any kind of club or association, regardless of the user case) and prove that you’re mentally and physically in good enough order to own a gun. And that is a fact as I went trough the whole circus few years ago and got myself a permit.

However it could just as well be an actual gunpowder propeller firearm, it’s not impossible, and am very interested in how it was acquired if it is an actual gun.

Based on local news it was an actual handgun (as in gunpowder operated) and legally owned by “close relative” of the shooter. One of tabloid newspapers here made a guess based on a blurry photo that it might have been a .22 revolver, but no official nor confirmed information is released.

High powered gas handguns are legally in the same category than gunpowder operated ones and they’re relatively uncommon compared to .22lr or 9mm pistols, which specially older people could have purchased with relatively easily back in the day. Today the laws are stricter, but it’s still not too difficult to legally get one. They should of course be locked up so that unauthorized people can’t have access to them, but if that relative took the shooter to the range he/she might know where the keys are kept, for example.

Whatever the case might be on how the gun was obtained, I’d say that it’s more important to focus on why this individual decided to shoot classmates. There no point on speculation on what the reasoning was at this point, but if the shooter decided to hurt their classmates a common kitchen knife would’ve been enough too. Once the official investigation is complete we’ll have more information on what actually happened and speculating about “dipshit criminals” doesn’t do anything helpful nor useful at this point.

In any case this is a terrible tragedy for the whole country and there needs to be serious discussion about what the society should do and what we should change to keep our kids, shooter included, safe and in such a mental state (in a lack of better words) that they don’t end up hurting people around them.

I don’t know about homeassistant, but there’s plenty of open source software to interact with odb2 at least for linux. With some tinkering it should be possible to have bluetooth enabled odb2 adapter where you can dump even raw data out and feed it to some other system of your choise, homeassistant included.

If you want live data from the drive itself you of course need to have some kind of recording device with you (raspberry pi comes to mind) but if you’re happy just to log whatever is available when parking the car you could set up a computer with bluetooth nearby the parking spot on your yard and pull data from that. It may require that you keep the car powered on for a while after arrival to keep bus active, but some cars give at least some data via odb even when without the key being in ignition lock.