Linux, BSD, Servers and Computer Hardware Articles
Added a script which does all the same things as the Debian MATE XSS script did…
Installs the Full XScreenSaver collection (GL + Extras)
Removes MATE Screensaver
Symlinks XSS commands to replace MATE SS commands
Optional SETUID for Sonar
Ensures MATE SS doesn’t try to reinstall
Locking works via “System” –> “Lock Screen”
Fix for locking via keyboard shortcut
I’ve been using apt-cacher-ng for a few months now. For those who don’t know, this is a service you can run locally which will proxy apt requests from your network clients. This way, each time a package or update is requested there will be a copy retained in the cache. Upon each subsequent request for the same file(s), the local copy can be served instead. This saves bandwidth, and offers a speed advantage since you’ll likely be getting full GB ethernet line speed on your LAN. Read more about ACNG here.
While several local machines and VMs have no issues using my local ACNG proxy, the server actually hosting ACNG itself seemed to be giving errors when doing an apt update.
You’ll likely see the warnings “503 Server reports unexpected range” as well as “Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.”
Basically, because the machine is trying to proxy through itself, some kind of problem occurs. Now, the simple solution is to just point to the normal Debian mirrors directly. That however wouldn’t offer the benefit of our local cache! The more boxes / VMs pulling for it, the more value you’re getting out of the whole setup… So here’s how we resolve this issue.
Write a text file to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00acng and place the following lines inside:
Acquire::http::Proxy::localhost “DIRECT”;
Acquire::http::Proxy::127.0.0.1 “DIRECT”;
Acquire::http::Proxy::novo.lan “DIRECT”;
Of course, change “novo.lan” to the hostname of your ACNG host. My sources.list looks like this, hence the hostname used in my example.
deb http://novo.lan:3142/deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://novo.lan:3142/deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware
deb http://novo.lan:3142/security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://novo.lan:3142/security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free-firmware
deb http://novo.lan:3142/deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://novo.lan:3142/deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware
You may want to add a 4th line, with your actual LAN IP if you’re naming the apt mirror by IP instead.
I purchased my unit from Amazon about 18 months ago. I never even tried the stock firmware — I bought this router specifically because of its solid OpenWRT support and excellent bang-for-the-buck features.
For around $80 (if I recall correctly) you get:
It’s a shame — I always intended to do a proper, in-depth review of this unit, along with a full guide on flashing OpenWRT. That said, the flashing process was painless and straightforward. If you’ve ever loaded DD-WRT onto an old Linksys back in the day, this is quite similar, though with a few extra steps.
I do recall some slightly ‘gray’ areas in the instructions on the OpenWRT Table of Hardware (TOH) page for the DL-WRX36, and I had made some notes. If I can dig them up, I’ll definitely update this post to include them. As I remember, nothing critical — just a couple of steps that were worded a little ambiguously. I highly recommend reading through the guide fully before starting, so you’re not left halfway through wondering what to do next.
Is it still available?
Amazon doesn’t have it in stock at the moment. Would I recommend it if it was? Absolutely. I’m very happy with mine.
For those curious, the IPQ807x SoC inside this router supports advanced hardware features like Qualcomm’s NSS (Network Subsystem) hardware acceleration, which dramatically improves routing throughput and reduces CPU load for tasks like NAT, firewalling, and VPN handling. While official OpenWRT builds don’t currently enable these proprietary modules, a few skilled community developers have published unofficial builds that do.
Personally, I run the latest stable firmware from the official OpenWRT release repository, and it’s been absolutely flawless for me. I get my full broadband speeds with headroom to spare — whether wired or over 5 GHz WiFi — and I’ve never felt limited by not having those additional offload features. This setup also ensures I have seamless access to the official OpenWRT package repository via Luci and UCI, with a stable, predictable system that updates cleanly.
That said, for the adventurous or performance-hungry tinkerers out there, those community builds with hardware offloading might be worth exploring. More details and links are listed below if you’d like to check them out.
Additionally — OpenWRT natively supports VLANs and VLAN tagging, letting you create isolated network segments, guest networks, or prioritize traffic on your LAN however you like. Combined with its firewall and routing flexibility, this makes OpenWRT an extremely versatile platform for both home and small business networks.
Since upgrading my desktop to an Intel AX210 WiFi card, I consistently get 1–3 ms pings to wired LAN machines — pretty respectable. Speeds are solid too, with ~500 Mbps transmit/receive over 5 GHz WiFi.
My configuration is simple:
It works beautifully. No worries about being stuck on ancient 3.x kernels — OpenWRT keeps this thing current and reliable.
Luci, the web-based interface, is clean, solid, and well-organized. Every function accessible through the web GUI can also be executed via SSH on the command line.
If you’re a geek, you already get why this is awesome. But for everyone else: it makes quick changes a breeze — no digging through endless menus. You can configure it like a Cisco router via serial, telnet, SSH, or otherwise.
Packages. Tons of networking, telephony, and FOSS/Linux software packages are at your fingertips — one search away.
At the end of the day, every router is a computer of some sort. Unless it runs something exotic like VxWorks, chances are it’s powered by a Linux kernel. OpenWRT puts you in control. It’s your hardware — and you should run it your way. Suddenly that consumer-grade router feels like enterprise-grade gear.
Happy hacking!
Here is a bit of KDE software which I was not aware of. It was not included in Debian 11 (Bullseye) — you had to build it from source or use third-party packages… However it was officially packaged starting with Debian 12 (Bookworm) and newer.
Here it is, running it on Kubuntu 25.04:
Excellent little tool for those who don’t want to benchmark disks in the terminal via dd / fio. Nothing wrong with healthy feature parity & easy of use!
This is a follow-up to XScreenSaver Install Script for Debian MATE Desktop
We’ll create a small wrapper script at /usr/local/bin/mate-screensaver-command:
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/mate-screensaver-command
Add the following:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ “$1” == “–lock” ]]; then
xscreensaver-command -lock
else
xscreensaver-command “$@”
fi
Then:
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/mate-screensaver-command
I’d like to take a moment to explain a handy feature of htop, a system monitoring and process management tool — basically a text-based “Task Manager,” but far more powerful and flexible. I run it on my desktops, laptops, servers, and occasionally on virtual machines, whether in a graphical session or a terminal-only environment. Below, you’ll see it running on my server, where I’ve configured it to display the frequency of each CPU core, temperatures, total disk I/O, and total network I/O. As you can tell, activity is minimal — not much happening at this early hour, around 7 AM, when both local and internet traffic tend to be quiet.
htop is a brilliant little utility that punches way above its weight. It’s lightweight, packed with functionality, and refreshingly easy to use. Better yet, there are hardly any dependencies required, and it’s so cleanly written that even a novice should have little trouble building it from source, should they desire to do so. Remarkably portable, htop will compile on just about any Linux system, any of the BSD variants, macOS, Solaris and illumos derivatives, Haiku, and Cygwin (Windows). I think you get the point.
One handy but often overlooked feature is that htop can remember your custom display settings. Whether you prefer to see CPU frequencies, temperatures, disk I/O, or network traffic meters — you can tailor your view exactly how you like it.
Once you’ve customized your layout (press F2 in htop to access the Setup menu), simply press capital S (Shift + s) to save your settings. The next time you launch htop, it’ll load up your preferred view automatically.
I still like having them. And while most people have moved on from X.Org on Linux, well… here we are.
The 5300U in my ThinkPad has more than enough GPU power to display some beautiful screensavers. But by default, the system will ramp up into a higher performance state — because normally, that’s exactly what you’d want. Like if you were playing a game, or trying to load some bloated modern website.
But my idle laptop? I don’t want it getting all hot while it’s sitting on my lap or on the bed, just because it’s running a screensaver. So this is my little attempt to fix that — and it’s looking pretty promising.
When XScreenSaver runs one of its screen hacks (screensavers), we’ll put the CPU into its lowest available frequency. That way, even when running hardware-accelerated 3D, the system will stay nice and cool.
Fortunately, the author of XScreenSaver — Jamie Zawinski — is a pretty smart dude, and the software already includes a clean little mechanism we can hook into to make this work.
Here’s how I’ve got it set up:
Create a script in your home folder, or wherever you want. xscreensaver_freq_watch.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Save current CPU and GPU max frequencies
CPU_MAX_BEFORE=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq)
GPU_MAX_BEFORE=$(cat /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_max_freq_mhz)# Watch xscreensaver events
xscreensaver-command -watch | while read -r line
do
case “$line” in
LOCK*)
# Optional: do something on screen lock
;;
UNBLANK*)
echo “Screensaver stopped — restoring frequencies…”
echo $CPU_MAX_BEFORE | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq > /dev/null
echo $GPU_MAX_BEFORE | sudo tee /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_max_freq_mhz > /dev/null
;;
BLANK*)
echo “Screensaver started — limiting frequencies…”
echo 500000 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq > /dev/null
echo 300 | sudo tee /sys/class/drm/card0/gt_max_freq_mhz > /dev/null
;;
esac
done
Of course, make it exactable with chmod +x. Also, use nopasswd in your /etc/sudoers line for your user.
Now because I’m using MATE / LightDM, I’m going to use a .desktop file. You could do something else, .xinitrc or a systemd service, but this is how I did it.
mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
nano ~/.config/autostart/screensaver-watch.desktop
And inside that, we have the following
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/home/ben/screensaver_freq_watch.sh
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name=Screensaver Frequency Watcher
Comment=Limits CPU and GPU frequencies while the screensaver is running
So far, it’s looking good! You may need to change this a bit depending on your configuration.
I run several virtual machines on a home server, and this setup works out quite well for a couple of reasons. First, the VMs can run tasks at any time without slowing down the machine I’m actively working on. Second, Virt-Manager is a pretty slick solution—it gives you access to local LXC containers, QEMU virtual machines, or even lets you connect to VMs on another server over SSH.
If you’re just looking for the front-end functionality of Virt-Manager, you might find this interesting: you don’t need to install all the QEMU and libvirt daemon packages!
On Debian Bookworm, when I try to install Virt-Manager, it tells me it’s going to install 107 new packages, using about 220MB of disk space. Now, that’s not a ton of space, but it is quite a few packages. So let’s try a leaner approach:
That only pulls in 22 packages, using around 25MB of disk space.
For those who don’t know, the --no-install-recommends option in apt tells it to skip non-essential (recommended) packages when installing software. It still grabs everything needed to run the software, but skips the extras that apt thinks most people might want. Usually, that’s fine—Debian actually splits packages pretty aggressively (and sometimes annoyingly so).
For example, you’ve probably noticed that nearly every package with development tools also has a separate -dev version. Or maybe you’ve seen how xscreensaver is split into four separate packages, even though it’s distributed as a single application by its author.
Oh, and unless you’re exclusively using serial consoles through libvirt, you’ll probably want SPICE support working too! That means installing a couple more packages—just over 2MB extra:
sudo apt install libspice-client-gtk-3.0-5 gir1.2-spiceclientgtk-3.0
Let those install with their normal dependencies and recommended packages—otherwise the SPICE graphical interface won’t function correctly.
Anyway, remember that --no-install-recommends trick—it’ll definitely come in handy someday!
Happy to see that OpenBSD 7.7 is officially released! What’s new? More than I’ll even try to list here. Well… that’s a lie! I’ve got to mention some of it.
Personally, I was definitely pleased to see amongst the changes there are lots of kernel improvements. Many SMP enhancments, New AMDGPU hardware supported, as-well as Intel Arrow Lake. Perhaps post exciting is they’ve updated DRM to Linux 6.12.21. Also
acpipci now active on hypervisors, resolving longstanding SeaBIOS/qemu issues
-f, simplifying rc(8) startup.
If you do a quick search online, you’ll find plenty of discussions where people ask about turning off zram—for one reason or another. They’re often met with a barrage of comments saying they’re making things worse. “Zram is free performance, didn’t you know? It costs nothing and doubles your RAM!”
Yeah, well—hear me out.
My desktop has 16 GB of RAM. I don’t even get close to running out of memory unless it’s been up for 30 days straight with 100 different apps or browser tabs open. My newer ThinkPad has 8 GB.
Now, 8 GB isn’t considered a large amount of memory anymore. In fact, people will tell you it’s rapidly becoming the bare minimum. But I’ll tell you this: for most people’s needs, especially on a laptop, it’s plenty. I don’t tend to have much open on my notebook—just a couple of browser windows, a few terminals, email, maybe a file manager. Any more than that and I start feeling lazy, because odds are I’m not really using all that stuff. I tend to be more focused when I close down things I’m not actively using.
Anyway, back on topic—why don’t I use zram?
My machines are all 8 years old, or older. They work just fine, but they are not new.
My desktop has a 4th-gen Intel chip, and my laptop runs a 5th-gen low-voltage i5. Zram does give you “more memory,” but it comes at a cost. It works by compressing unused memory pages, which means your CPU has to do that work. Every time a page is written to zram or read back out, it must be compressed or decompressed.
Whether or not that impact is that noticeable, I can’t say for sure—I haven’t run benchmarks. But I do know this: my machines are fast enough, and I like to keep them light, fast, and nimble. And since I already have enough RAM, it makes no sense for me to use zram. If I do need to swap, all of my systems have fast SSDs to handle swapping well enough. I typically allocate 1–4 GB of swap space, and I do that on the fastest SSD in the system.
If you’ve got multiple drives—say, NVMe, SATA SSD, and a spinning hard drive—only put your swap on the NVMe. Another tip: if you’re not planning to hibernate, there’s no reason to make your swap as large as your RAM. Swap is useful as a safety net so your system doesn’t lock up when you run out of memory, but in my experience, I’ve rarely used more than 1 GB. If you’re consistently using multiple gigabytes of swap, you probably just need more RAM.
Another argument I often see is: “Zram doesn’t consume extra memory.” Well… how does that make any sense? Of course it does. Sure, it’s compressed—maybe you use 500 MB of RAM for what would’ve been 1 GB of swap—but I’d rather use that 500 MB as actual RAM and just let the system swap to SSD.
If you want to disable zram on Fedora, just create an empty config file called zram-generator.conf and place it in /etc/systemd/.
You can even do this from the live installer, while it’s still copying data. Just pop open a terminal and run: