So I can’t find a great answer, but as best I can tell StatCounter uses user agents to determine this data, the web browser being the most obvious source but not the only source.

The user agent for most web browsers on “macOS” the operating system generally report as “Mac OS X”. So other user agents, which report things like “Macintosh” but rarely actually “macOS”, are reported as “macOS”.

This also explains why “OS X” has a larger share than “macOS”. Web browsers on the macOS operating system are used more than “other”.

At first glance you’d think “OS X” and “macOS” should just be combined. But chances are if someone is using a web browser on macOS, they’re probably also using “other”.

Another problem is that we don’t know how StatCounter is handling duplicate/fake data. If I constantly hit refresh or send analytics from a single device, how is that counted? What if I send “OS X” and “macOS” data?

Luckily we also have the Cloudflare data, which shows Linux between 9% and 15%. So StatCounter using 10% is probably on the lower side, but within the margins.

So as another comment pointed out you don’t need to give your user account access to docker in this way, it’s an optional step, but one that I suspect many people do (since it’s part of the official docs).

What the LLM has done is silly, but completely possible. It climbed through the window that you left open.

But let’s jump to a different scenario, the ping command (on Linux). That’s a perfectly harmless command, right? You just want to say hello to another computer and see if they say hello back.

Except that historically the ping command was something called “setuid” which means when it ran it ran as root. It ran as root because in order for ping to work it has to create a special type of network packet that only root can create. But if you’re root you can run anything! So in theory ping opens a huge attack surface. If you have to worry about ping then is everything too complex to be manageable?

Luckily, as I said, this is a historical problem. The permissions ping needs have been moved to a specific capability and the command changed to utilize it and now ping can just run as a regular user without root privileges. But you can’t just make that change overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort.

So could the same be done for docker? Maybe. A rootless version of docker already exists. If you actually wanted to do what the LLM suggested, that wouldn’t work with a rootless docker, at least not without a bunch more configuration (and even then maybe).

So is security hard? Yes. Is it impossible? No.

That’s fair. So it’s more like you already have a door on the second floor, that door is unlocked, and a ladder in your garage.

In this case the LLM knows about the ladder, but you forgot about it because you’re talking about the fridge on the first floor.

Sure. So we don’t know the original question but we can see that changes were made to SDDM, which is basically your login screen. So the original request was probably something like “Can you change my login screen to do something cool?”

Now, the configuration for the login screen is located in /etc and requires administrative privileges to change.

The query was run by the user account and not an admin account. Typically to run something as admin you use the command sudo which will interactively ask for a password and then, if allowed, you can run the command as an admin.

However the tool docker, in order to function properly, has the ability to run commands as administrator and won’t prompt for a password.

So basically what happened here is instead of asking for a key to unlock the front door to your house, it installed a new door on the second floor, went through that door, rearranged your refrigerator, went back out the door it created, and then patched up the hole perfectly.

Yes. I started using it years ago and have been unable to exit ever since.

But honestly related to your question, I started learning to use vim exactly because when I started to learn and use Linux I was often stuck in situations where that was the only thing available.

You might find a symbolic link useful. For example

ln -s /media/docs ~/docs

Now you’ll have a “folder” in your home directory named “docs” that points to “/media/docs”. You can use that path with commands like mv or cp.

These commands now both move “myfile” to the same location

mv myfile ~/docs
mv myfile /media/docs

So I completely understand where you’re coming from, but sometimes you gotta live on the edge and accept the consequences.

Mint is based on testing irc.

I thought so too, and it looks like it used to be, but LMDE is currently based on Debian Stable, specifically LMDE 7 is based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, first released Aug 2025.

FWIW I’ve been running Debian Testing for a few years now and been plenty happy, might get worth trying that.

Yeah, I mentioned fish, or zsh, only because day to day shell and scripting shell can be different.

If you want to script, bash is the way to go. For day to day, any personal preference is fine.

As you’ve mentioned in other threads, bash is a hard requirement for the OS, so if it’s already installed, and the default on most Linux distros, bash is probably the best option.

The dash shell isn’t designed to be user interactive. It’s a lightweight scripting shell/language.

The ksh shell is an older standard shell. Years ago I worked for a company that ran corporate Unix systems and on those systems only ksh and tcsh were available. Ksh was the default, and as someone only familiar with bash it was a bit different but mostly the same. So there is at least one point for maybe choosing ksh.

However my personal shell preference is zsh. When I write scripts I do so using bash. The two shells are 99% similar on a day to day basis, but I prefer zsh for a user interface. So I use one for day to day and the other for scripting.

Other threads have also mentioned fish, which is also a great choice if you don’t know where to start.

Are zsh or fish “heavier” or “bloated”, maybe. But remember to consider your attack surface. If your house is on fire it doesn’t matter of you fix the leaky faucet in bathroom or the kitchen.

For #4 if the Random instance weren’t “new”, then calling the nextInt() function would definitely have side effects, since the next integer would pull one away from the random stack.

However unlike the first three which will run within a consistent amount of time, #4 will take an unknown amount of time to run, so you can’t just collapse it and eliminate the loop.

For example a very simple race game where a participant moves a random number of steps each turn, we may want to time how long that race takes. We can’t just say that they will reach the end immediately. In fact technically we don’t know that they will ever finish the race… But that’s the halting problem and a whole other issue.

I’ve used dropbear in the past and it always feels a little janky, but it works well.

I would suggest whatever you pick, it should be a similar base to what you run or are most familiar with.

If you run something Debian based, you should recommend something Debian based. Fedora, Arch, etc.

The same is also true for desktop environments, if you use KDE, recommend KDE. If you run something not necessarily beginner friendly, recommend what you’re familiar with.

At some point you’re going to be asked questions, so the more familiar you are, the better for both of you.

Computers were either Windows or Mac, they couldn’t be anything else, that was a fact. Then I saw someone using Linux and had so many questions. How? I was given a Knoppix live CD, went home, and booted my home PC into Knoppix and it changed my perception of computers.

I didn’t change over immediately but eventually Ubuntu was handing out install CDs and YouTube was full of wobbly windows and desktop cubes. It wasn’t useful but it looked cool.

I still needed Windows for gaming, but for day to day it was so much easier to use Linux.

Eventually my gaming was exclusively on the Switch and then was I was looking to play certain PC games the Steam Deck was available, so I bought that.

I think Windows 8 was the last one I used and I’ve never had any desire to go back. Linux is just easier.

But us in the middle who pretend we’re smart

The trick you’ll learn is that everyone is just pretending. The more your learn the more you realize you don’t know.

After you updated the config did you update-initramfs or update-grub (I forget which flags might be needed off hand).

Since this is happening pre-boot it isn’t reading from /etc.

Before Arch that role belonged to Gentoo.

To add, before the change the Gentoo wiki was a top resource when it came to Linux questions. Even if you didn’t use Gentoo you could find detailed information on how various parts of Linux worked.

One day the Gentoo wiki died. It got temporary mirrors quickly, but it took a long time to get up and working again. This left a huge opening for another wiki, the Arch wiki, to become the new top resource.

I suspect, for a number of reasons, Arch was always going to replace Gentoo as the “True Linux Explorer”, but the wiki outage accelerated it.

Linux has two ways of drawing pictures, the old way (Xorg) and the new way (Wayland).

The old way is like a giant box of crayons with the crayon sharpener built in. The box is all marked up, the sharpener is full of gunk, and a few crayons are melted together. Nobody really wants to touch the old box of crayons, although it does work for the most part, it’s a familiar box.

The new way is like a smaller box of crayons. The clean sharpener isn’t built in but it is available nearby, although some people say it doesn’t work as good. A few crayons are missing, but are available in most cases, they’re just not in the box. Most people are working to improve the new box.

If you’re using Linux, the new box of crayons is generally the better choice. It’s ok to stop using the old box.

Knoppix. I didn’t see it listed yet so I had to chime in.

I saw it and was confused that computers could run something that wasn’t Windows and wasn’t Mac. Then I was handed a Knoppix LiveCD and suddenly MY computer was Linux. Absolutely blew my mind.

I then explored Mandrake (now Mandrivia?) for a while but it never really stuck.

A few years later Ubuntu was handing out LivdCDs to everyone running Warty Warthog and soon after window managers started to use Beryl (?) which let you have a fancy cube desktop. Absolutely pointless but that’s how it all started.

As you mentioned elsewhere it’s encrypted.

Take a look at /etc/crypttab and creating and adding a key file that can unlock the drive.

Essentially your additional SSD will have both a password and a file containing a password that can unlock the drive. When you unlock your root filesystem (I’m guessing at boot) it will then have the key file that can unlock the SSD.

Something like cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/pathtossd --new-keyfile /etc/newpassword

Systemd might make this easier to setup nowadays.

Edit: Also, yes, the password to unlock your SSD is just sitting in a file in your root drive. Be sure to restrict it to only be readable by root.