gerdesj

"Every subsystem is a private fiefdom, subject to the whims of each one of Linux’s 1,700+ maintainers, almost all of whom have a dog in this race. It’s herding cats"

There are three similes in that quote. When your considerations are that disorganized, you have not finished thinking everything through. Fiefdoms, dogs and cats ... oh my! That's on top of wild west and other trite, well worn and rather silly similes.

Make your argument without recourse to inflammatory terminology and similes and you slighten the risk of pissing people off.

Clarity is in the eye of the beholder or as someone once said: "You do you".

I like to use my enterprise number and a UUID (all in lower case, for legibility). Here's an example:

.1.3.6.1.4.1.33230.0d456e46-67e6-11ef-9c92-7b175b3ab1f1

Now you might say that the UUID is already globally unique or at least pretty unlikely to turn up anywhere else, so why bother prefixing it with more stuff? To that I say: "I need to be absolutely or at least reasonably sure ... OK nearly sure".

Anyway, you maintain a database of these things and then attach documentation and meaning to them. An editor could abstract and hide that away.

I started this post as a joke. Not sure anymore. Why get your knickers in a twist with naming conventions for variables and constants. Programming is already a whopping layer of abstraction from what the logic gates are up to, another one wont hurt!

If you just run perl it will sit waiting for input. Try perl --version

Windows GPOs are a right old mess. I've been managing them for over two decades. The first fuck up is the word "Group". You cannot assign Group Policy Objects to AD groups unless you use something like ZENworks or some funky WMI filters!

Settings are applied to computers or users. Many settings are available to be set for both but only make sense or even work for one or the other. MS bought out some solution providers and that's why you get the Control Panel and other handy stuff, rather roughly bolted on.

AD with GPOs with the extension to "local machines" is a great idea but dreadful in execution. MS didn't want to nobble third party apps in the past so that's why we have this nonsense. Now its all about Azure/whatevs ie MS's cloud and subscriptions.

Now you belong us!

Linux being a Unix has NIS(+) for a directory or LDAP or AD or anything else you fancy. Ansible works for all mainstream OSs, including Windows.

So often I see people confusing and conflating authentication and authorisation, machine and session state configuration databases.

There are so many options it is almost impossible to know where to start!

Which distro is the VM running (is it even Linux)?

If you want the VM to use the host's VPN then you will need some routing and perhaps NAT/masquerade. This is non trivial to sort out. Can the VM have its own VPN connection to your supplier?

You are starting to reach the point where VLANs/subnets and separate routers (real or VM) may be required. Depending what you use as your ISP router, we might be able to get a solution together - so what model is it and do you have any switches?

Please do a little research before trying random stuff. After checking to see if you are actually using the iwlwifi module, why not find out a bit about whether the mentioned param. is available to you and what it does:

Am I using the module. If the output from this is blank, then no:

$ lsmod | grep iwlwifi
iwlwifi               622592  1 iwlmvm
cfg80211             1331200  3 iwlmvm,iwlwifi,mac80211

Also verify with lspci -k as above:

$ lspci -k | grep iwlwifi -A2 -B2
        DeviceName: WLAN
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake PCH CNVi WiFi
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
        Kernel modules: iwlwifi
00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Alder Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller

# modinfo iwlwifi
   ...
parm:           swcrypto:using crypto in software (default 0 [hardware]) (int)
parm:           11n_disable:disable 11n functionality, bitmap: 1: full, 2: disable agg TX, 4: disable agg RX, 8 enable agg TX (uint)
parm:           amsdu_size:amsdu size 0: 12K for multi Rx queue devices, 2K for AX210 devices, 4K for other devices 1:4K 2:8K 3:12K (16K buffers) 4: 2K (default 0) (int)
parm:           fw_restart:restart firmware in case of error (default true) (bool)
parm:           nvm_file:NVM file name (charp)
parm:           uapsd_disable:disable U-APSD functionality bitmap 1: BSS 2: P2P Client (default: 3) (uint)
parm:           enable_ini:0:disable, 1-15:FW_DBG_PRESET Values, 16:enabled without preset value defined,Debug INI TLV FW debug infrastructure (default: 16) (uint)
parm:           bt_coex_active:enable wifi/bt co-exist (default: enable) (bool)
parm:           led_mode:0=system default, 1=On(RF On)/Off(RF Off), 2=blinking, 3=Off (default: 0) (int)
parm:           power_save:enable WiFi power management (default: disable) (bool)
parm:           power_level:default power save level (range from 1 - 5, default: 1) (int)
parm:           disable_11ac:Disable VHT capabilities (default: false) (bool)
parm:           remove_when_gone:Remove dev from PCIe bus if it is deemed inaccessible (default: false) (bool)
parm:           disable_11ax:Disable HE capabilities (default: false) (bool)
parm:           disable_11be:Disable EHT capabilities (default: false) (bool)

sysfs is a pseudo filesystem with lots of info in it. cat the files here:

$ ls -l /sys/module/iwlwifi/parameters/

... to see what your current values are set at. You can install sysfstools and run this for a neat report:

$ systool -vm iwlwifi
Module = "iwlwifi"

  Attributes:
     ...
  Parameters:
    11n_disable         = "0"
    amsdu_size          = "0"
    bt_coex_active      = "Y"
    disable_11ac        = "N"
    disable_11ax        = "N"
    disable_11be        = "N"
    enable_ini          = "16"
    fw_restart          = "Y"
    led_mode            = "0"
    nvm_file            = "(null)"
    power_level         = "0"
    power_save          = "N"
    remove_when_gone    = "N"
    swcrypto            = "0"
    uapsd_disable       = "3"

xfs has reflinks. That means you can copy huge wodges of data nearly for free on one filesystem. For backup systems this is a killer feature. Veeam rolling up incremental backups into the last full happens in seconds because pointers to blocks are juggled around rather than the data blocks themselves.

xfs has been around for a very, very long time. I use it for larger filesystems eg Nextcloud, Zoneminder and the like (and Veeam backup repos that are not object storage). I use ext4 by default.

pfSense boxes - zfs because the alternative is ufs.

RPi - OverlayFS (with ext4 and tmpfs) gets you a generally read only filesystem with changes held in RAM. Ideal for kiosks, appliances and keeping memory sticks alive.

Windows - NTFS, it works well and has streams and there aren't many other options (ReFS is a bit new but it does have reflinks)

This is from 2004: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/ibm-thinkpad-x31 It will chew amps (electricity). Recycle it as best you can. Grab a modern box instead.

Unless sparks are free where you live, this beast will become a liability very quickly.

It didn't exist!

You can find one for $100.

You can get them substantially cheaper than that! but your point holds. A USB stick is also rather cheap - you can get a 128GB SANDisk jobbie for £10 a pop on Amazon.

I run (one of three partners) a small IT company in the UK. I've always Linuxed since around 1998. After messing with RedHat, Mandrake, Yggdrasil and others I settled down and ran Gentoo for many years and then Arch for some more.

I'm gradually dumping the Windows servers and replacing with Linux based beasties. We are also in the throws of replacing VMware with Proxmox.

I also have a pretty decent Kbuntu based desktop/laptop effort. I've done Windows client deployments in the 1000s so I have quite a good idea about compliance etc. An Ubuntu based box can run several AV solutions, secure boot and full disc encryption. Buzz words perhaps but also audit points and will get you over the line for Cyber Essentials Plus (UK).

Libre Office works for me and I used to teach office suites in the 90's! Things have moved on since but a decimal alignment stop is a decimal alignment stop today too (do you know what that means?). I run our Exchange system, and I migrated it from GroupWise back in the day because the kool kids "required" it. Anyway, Evolution with EWS will get you full functionality for a client but with far less faff.

I'm taking my time. I already have at least two employees who are dyed in the wool Windows officianados begging me to migrate them to Linux. I will but it takes time. For example - "drive mappings" or in English: Remote mounts.

CID - https://cid-doc.github.io/ . This is an easy to add Windows compat thing. Its rather good. For static desktops its fine but for laptops that move around a lot it can be hard to get the file system mounts working again quickly in a dynamic environment.

CID uses a PAM mount based system and in the past I used another one (autofs I think). However it seems to me that mounts are not dynamic or responsive enough. In the end it is Samba and that might need some fettling as well.

As I said earlier, I'm taking my time (I'm an engineer) but be assured that Linux is quite capable of driving your desktop.

I started to answer your question with a list of stuff and then deleted the lot and started again:

What are you really after? Do you fancy a challenge or what?