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Valnet: Xfce, Watchdog, Android, and Recovery
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HowTo Geek ☛ Xfce doesn't have to feel frozen in time—here's how I modernized mine
There is a quiet assumption that if you choose Xfce, you have made peace with a certain aesthetic. Functional, stable, slightly frozen in time. It works, it does not surprise you, and it does not try to look like anything else, and much like others, I also accepted it. Then I started making small, almost trivial changes, and something odd happened. The desktop stopped feeling like a compromise and started feeling intentional.
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Kernel Space / File Systems / Virtualization
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Make Use Of ☛ Linux has a built-in crash recovery trick, and more people should use it
Linux has a built-in feature called watchdog, which works on the principle that the system regularly sends signals showing it's still active. The moment it doesn't receive a signal from the system, the watchdog assumes there is a problem and triggers a reboot. This feature has existed as far back as the mid-1990s on Linux and has been used mainly on systems where uptime is non-negotiable, like servers and embedded systems.
On some systems, the watchdog is exposed through the /dev/watchdog device file, while on others, it may be /dev/watchdog0. A process has to write to this file to reset the countdown timer. If the process stops writing, it typically means the system is frozen or resources have been consumed by a runaway process. In such a case, the timer expires, and that's how the reboot gets triggered.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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XDA ☛ I stopped carrying a laptop after trying Android's desktop mode
Google's experimentation with a desktop mode feature for Android has been no secret. The company has been working at it for the last few versions. Having used Samsung Dex, it's been something I've been looking forward to, especially now that I've switched to Pixel hardware. And more so, because it's a feature that could potentially completely change my travel computing setup. It's a straightforward idea, really. Instead of juggling a phone and a laptop, you let your phone be the core computing device, something that is more feasible today than it was a few years ago, and expand it with accessories like a large screen display, keyboard and mouse when you need more space.
Now that the feature is out, I decided to give it a proper shot, and it ended up fitting into my routine far better than I expected. Not just that. It turns out, it is much more capable than I was expecting, and I can see myself incorporating it into my productivity routine.
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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XDA ☛ I stopped being afraid to break my systems after learning what each OS actually needs to recover
Other times, it's systemd or Grub breaking Linux, because it's always one of those two.
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