Arch Install: Post Post Install Considerations

Now that I have a graphical desktop with the full installation of GNOME, what else do I do to my arch to be able to accomplish my work. The first thing to check is make sure you're not running as root. You should create a user account with lower priveleges and use it for everyday computing.

$ adduser <username>

$ passwd <username> ##give it a password; this is different from the root password

Now that you have a user account, you can use sudo when performing administrative tasks without going to root.

$ pacman -S sudo

$ visudo ##edit your sudoers file using visudo, add your username and give it proper priveleges

Check if you have a firewall. I installed ufw and enabled it.

$ sudo pacman -S ufw

$ sudo ufw enable & ufw status verbose & ufw default deny

I like to monitor my hard drives with SMART. I installed smartmontools. Check the configuration file in /etc/smartd.conf. List your block devices with lsblk.

$ lsblk

$ sudo pacman -S smartmontools

$ sudo vim /etc/smartd.conf ##proceed to edit the file to your case

You should have the habit of checking systemd and journalctl.

$ man systemcltl & systemctl --failed ##to list failed units

$ sudo journalctl

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Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.

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