Personal computing discussed
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just brew it! wrote:Oh, and regarding the "declutter" aspect, here's what I've been doing for a while now for my desktop: When I upgrade to a new version of Linux (every 2-3 years), I always do a clean install to different hardware instead of an in-place upgrade. Using trailing edge gear makes this affordable; FWIW I'm still on the AM3+ platform (FX-8350).
Contents of old home directory (from the system I'm upgrading from) gets put in a subdirectory on the new system. E.g., the system name of my previous desktop was "eisbock", so there's now a "from-eisbock" subdirectory in my home directory on the current system. After cutting over to the new system, as I need stuff from the old system those directories get dragged back to the top level of my home directory on the new system.
Whatever's still left in the "from-xxx" subdirectory (i.e. I haven't touched it in 2-3 years) the next time I upgrade gets moved to the file server in the crawlspace (plus I have backups on external HDDs if the file server should fail). So the stuff from 2 systems back is still accessible, but isn't taking up space on the new build.
Kougar wrote:My NAS can be turned into a web accessible device extremely easily, my own personal cloud as it were. The only reason I've not done so is to make it secure I'd need to buy an SSL certificate, QNAP wants $45 for a three year SSL cert. I haven't been traveling much anymore so I've never gone ahead and bought one, but I will go that route before I would buy data storage service from an online cloud. The cloud will be able to serve files faster, but a good home connection is fast enough for me when I've wanted to pull files off it remotely.
Drachasor wrote:Kougar wrote:My NAS can be turned into a web accessible device extremely easily, my own personal cloud as it were. The only reason I've not done so is to make it secure I'd need to buy an SSL certificate, QNAP wants $45 for a three year SSL cert. I haven't been traveling much anymore so I've never gone ahead and bought one, but I will go that route before I would buy data storage service from an online cloud. The cloud will be able to serve files faster, but a good home connection is fast enough for me when I've wanted to pull files off it remotely.
You can make your own SSL certs for free pretty easily. You then just have to install them on your own devices that use them.
The only reason to BUY a certificate is if a lot of people are going to have access or you might give a random person access (or you want access from random computers or computers you can't install certs on) -- you might not want to deal with the hassle of sending them the certificate and having them install it.
Vhalidictes wrote:Bauxite, you have a good point. Most of that 3TB I care about is probably replaceable at some level of pain. The issue for me is that my pain threshold for re-downloading (assuming it's all still available) is pretty low.
just brew it! wrote:My pain threshold for re-downloading stuff improved massively when I upgraded from 3 Mb DSL to 105 Mb cable a couple of years ago.
Bauxite wrote:So what is your "Z:\", also spinning rust on NTFS?Anything I care about goes on Z:\, because windows does not have a reliable file system and spinning rust has a ~6 year half-life. Single drives + window's BS = you don't really care about what is on it. Same thing if your idea of backing up a single spinning rust NTFS volume is to occasionally copy it to another single spinning rust external drive over USB. Non-technical people should just use a couple cloud vendors, they are going to be way more reliable against the 5 million different ways your data goes poof.
Bauxite wrote:If you try to talk about storage spaces or refs, I'll just laugh at you.
just brew it! wrote:LetsEncrypt.org also issues free public certificates. Although their service is primarily geared towards web servers, it looks like there's a QNAP tutorial for working with LetsEncrypt's certificate issuance/renewal protocol here: https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=122747
Kougar wrote:just brew it! wrote:LetsEncrypt.org also issues free public certificates. Although their service is primarily geared towards web servers, it looks like there's a QNAP tutorial for working with LetsEncrypt's certificate issuance/renewal protocol here: https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=122747
Nice, I will look into that!
But at risk of sidetracking the thread, is it actually safe to use these free SSL certs? I have looked into rolling my own SSL cert before when I found a method to upload it to the NAS device. Problem is I read that the common free SSL certs had digital signature concerns that made them less secure. Wasn't sure if that was a valid concern or just a scare tactic to sell SSL certs, and figured it was somewhere in between. I have only a limited understanding of the process but I also don't want to leave my NAS directly facing the internet with easily breakable security.
DPete27 wrote:Are there some clutter items that Windows creates? Sure. Savegames, scans, my scans, etc etc but I have sub-folders in places like My Documents, My Images, My Movies etc to further organize them.
meerkt wrote:Never used %homepath%\documents. It's just a default dumping grounds for many programs, so it's a sure place for uncontrollable mess.
Kougar wrote:just brew it! wrote:LetsEncrypt.org also issues free public certificates. Although their service is primarily geared towards web servers, it looks like there's a QNAP tutorial for working with LetsEncrypt's certificate issuance/renewal protocol here: https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=122747
Nice, I will look into that!
But at risk of sidetracking the thread, is it actually safe to use these free SSL certs? I have looked into rolling my own SSL cert before when I found a method to upload it to the NAS device. Problem is I read that the common free SSL certs had digital signature concerns that made them less secure. Wasn't sure if that was a valid concern or just a scare tactic to sell SSL certs, and figured it was somewhere in between. I have only a limited understanding of the process but I also don't want to leave my NAS directly facing the internet with easily breakable security.
_ppi wrote:1. I use Documents, Pictures, Videos and Downloads folder, as due to system shortcuts, access to them is much simpler than anywhere else.
It is true that Documents folder gets for whatever reason cluttered by application folders (almost every game has a folder there ...), and also for this reason I use OneDrive for normal documents, and then I have no clutter. My company laptop has setup regular backup of Documents folder, therefore using anything else makes no sense.
2. Yes. Why should I have it different?
3. I use only OneDrive, which is well-integrated, therefore I cannot comment on the others.