If proficient UNIX/Linux usage is a craft, then the shell is the craftsman's workbench. I think having a solid grasp of bash--and knowing how it's different from other shells--is key. You can't go wrong by starting with the shell because it's essential no matter what your specific needs are. Where you go from there depends on your specific needs and interests.

- best bash tutorial anywhere: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
- compilation of bash pitfalls: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls
- learn to recognize bashisms: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Bashism

Write as many shell scripts as you can. After a script is working, make it correct. After it's correct, make it beautiful. Here is a tool to help you improve your existing shell scripts: https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck

I hope that helps

The official Tiny Core Linux wiki is down. Developers are aware and working on it. In the meantime, wiki can be accessed via this mirror:
https://www.linuxsecrets.com/tinycoreli … start.html

Their forum is alive and well:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net

Main reason to strip binaries is to make them smaller (I've sometimes seen them shrink to 50-75% of original size). TCL packages contain stripped binaries in the interest of keeping everything as tiny as possible.

Asking people to pitch in computing power but they refuse to show the source code? That's lopsided and creepy.

I'll be happy to contribute and spread the word when they make the source code available.

That's not correct. The output of the hwclock command is your local time, and what comes after the final + or - is your timezone's offset from UTC. +00:00 would only be correct for users who live in Greenwich

Please go over the steps above in my longer post. If you still have questions after that, let me know and I'll try to help.

No resolution. Also, I don't know if this is peculiar to T400 or all laptops.
Note that the ExpressCard came with a power cable, but I don't use it because I don't want to carry around an extra cable.

So here is what I've discovered:

- ExpressCard never works on battery power.

- ExpressCard works if laptop was on AC when it booted and has been on AC continuously up to and including when I use the ExpressCard.

- If laptop was on battery power when it booted and later I switch to AC power, I need to eject and re-insert the ExpressCard in order for it to work.

Hope this helps.

Ron,

I don't think the fact that your friend's email client is proprietary has anything to do with it. Also, uni2ascii is unlikely to help. It sounds like an encoding issue.

The emoji in question is the "slightly smiling face" (formal Unicode notation: U+1F642, details about it here: https://www.iemoji.com/view/emoji/1112/ … ling-face). Here are the relevant details:
UTF-8 encoding: 0xf09f9982
UTF-16 encoding: 0xd83dde42 (notice this matches the "D83D "DE42" in your original post)

How are you viewing your friend's emails? In a web browser? If so, take a look at that emoji here:
https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-e … html#1f602

If you can see the "slightly smiling face" emoji there under the "Browser" column, we'll know it's not a browser or font issue on your end.

My best guess is that your friend's email client is using UTF-16 encoding, while your email client is expecting UTF-8 encoding. Different encodings agree on how to represent 7-bit ASCII characters but differ on how they represent wider characters such as emojis.

Have your friend check their outgoing mail encoding and change it to UTF-8 if it's currently something else.

Forking the OpenBSD kernel in order to avoid systemd and/or other linuxland woes makes no sense. By virtue of not being Linux, OpenBSD (as-is) does not suffer from linuxland woes.

With extensions/packages. I don't think it would be appropriate to take up space on Devuan's servers to go into great detail here. If you decide to try it and need help, start a thread on forum.tinycorelinux.net or send me a personal message there (my user name is GNUser there, too).

Everything you need to know to get started is in the gratis e-book "Into the Core":
http://www.tinycorelinux.net/corebook.pdf

Here is the actual proposal: https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002
I've been watching this closely. Voting ends on December 27.

This year I learned to use OpenBSD and also Tiny Core Linux 64-bit (they call it "Pure64" for some reason). Both of these operating systems are completely immune to systemd nonsense. It doesn't hurt to have options...

Tiny Core uses Busybox init and is minimalistic in every regard, but can be built up to be a full desktop replacement OS. It has been my daily driver since August 2019 and at this point I've added enough polish to it that it does all I need. Warning: It is very much a do-it-yourself OS, similar to Arch Linux but even more extreme in its minimalism. I think Devuan users would find TCL much to their liking.

Hopefully Debian will do the right thing and my wanderings will have been for naught!

Even if user makes a shell script SUID, the linux kernel will ignore it because it's a major security risk. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/2910

Here is a simple demonstration of how SUID is set, but kernel ignores it:

$ echo '#!/bin/sh
apt update' >testing
$ chmod a+x ./testing
$ sudo chown root:root ./testing
$ sudo chmod u+s ./testing
$ ls -l ./testing
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 21 Dec 13 09:43 ./testing # the 's' shows that SUID bit is set
$ ./testing
Reading package lists... Done
W: chmod 0700 of directory /var/lib/apt/lists/partial failed - SetupAPTPartialDirectory (1: Operation not permitted)
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)

Permission is denied because the script is running as regular user, not root (i.e., SUID was ignored).

golinux - I use iridium as my daily driver. It is an "ungoogled chromium". Highly recommended. https://iridiumbrowser.de/

Thanks, ralph.ronnquist. Indeed it does (synclient TouchpadOff=1). This does not interfere with the trackpoint.

However, I've found that synclient, xinput, et al. are only effective in preventing the touchpad from controlling the pointer. That's it. On a low level, they leave the touchpad very much alive--run sudo cat /dev/input/eventX and watch all the chatter from the "disabled" touchpad when anything comes near it. This noise prevents the system from becoming idle when laptop's lid is shut.