Linux Mint 15

Today I decided to try out Linux Mint 15.

This is a FRESH INSTALL and I’ve managed to break it in about 15 seconds.

Apparently there’s a known bug that Linux Mint’s shiny new file browser (Nemo) freezes when you copy multiple files over a network. This bug has timestamps from March 2013 and it’s the end of August. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Why is such an obvious thing not working right out of the box and nobody seems to be doing anything about fixing it. I’m not talking about what actually might be happening with their developers, but my actual user experience. I downloaded a Linux distro that’s been receiving praise for being ‘one of the best’ Linux desktop experiences ever and I can’t copy a 10 MB folder across the network and then find out it’s a bug that’s been known about for MONTHS.

I really want to love Linux on the desktop as much as I love using Linux on servers, but how can I? It always seems like some distro will get a good thing going and then totally sabotage all their hard work by changing things that simply shouldn’t have been changed (I’m looking at you Ubuntu with your awful Unity interface). Or some underlying project will fork, or we decided to completely change the way sound works or whatever.

I just want it to work. I don’t care what developer x had to say or why ‘we just shouldn’t do it that way’ just because. Why did Debian remove aircrack then Ubuntu as well? Here, read this.

Yes I know your distro has the best oxygen generator and can even fly my computer to Mars, but its worthless to me if I cannot do simple office tasks: watching a flash video, right click dragging, copy a folder of files.

Why hasn’t Linux penetrated much on the desktop front? Simple answer: I, you, other users, all have our own work to get done and I simply don’t have time to battle and ‘trick’ my operating system to do what I want.

Sigh, I guess I try Ubuntu again or something…

angry tux

Removing IP’s from DenyHosts

DenyHosts will scan your auth logs and add any ip to hosts.deny trying to brute force a login. That’s great, but I feel it lacks an important feature: An easy way to remove a blacklisted ip address. So I’ve come up with a script to do it for you.

Please note, I’ve only tested this on Debian Linux and you may have to modify it to fit your operating system.

Save the following as ‘ipdenyremove’ and you’re set:

#!/bin/bash
if [[ $1 == "" ]]; then
        echo "usage: ./ipdenyremove ip-to-remove-from-denyhosts";
        exit 1;
fi

thepath="/var/lib/denyhosts/";
for x in `ls $thepath`; do
        file=$(<$thepath/$x)
        echo "$file" | {
                while read line; do
                    if [[ $line != *$1* ]]; then
                        echo $line
                    fi
                done
        } > $thepath/$x
done

hostsdeny="/etc/hosts.deny";
file=$(<$hostsdeny)
echo "$file" | {
        while read line; do
            if [[ $line != *$1* ]]; then
                echo $line
            fi
        done
} > $hostsdeny