Episode: 4367
Title: HPR4367: My first episode; 001 Introduction
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4367/hpr4367.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 23:45:23

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4367 for Tuesday the 29th of April 2025.
Today's show is entitled, My First Episode 001 Introduction.
It is part of the series' bash scripting.
It is the first show by Newhost Oxo and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Living in the Linux command line, bash and scripting.
Hello and welcome to my first episode for Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Oxo and I am a Linux N2CST working with Linux for 15 years now, I think, maybe
more.
Well, a little bit about myself, so to say, my name is Oxo, how did I get that name?
I wanted to have a short name on the command line and also quickly enter on my keyboard.
So it was, I thought three names, three letter name and two unique letters in that name,
and eventually I came to the number X1 0, which is 0 X0.
So for, well, that's a good name, let's try that.
So then I installed Linux and I set my username and then there was a problem because your
username cannot start with a number.
And then my name became instead of 0 X0, it became 0 X0.
Oxo, because I still want to have the symmetry in the name and the trig character.
So you know, that's, it's quickly to enter on the keyboard and it's convenient because
it is short on the command line.
Of course, things are always better than long things, long terms and long commands and
there are always more difficult to interpret than the short ones, of course.
So yeah, that's what the history about my name is.
Of course, not my real name, but hey, there is my cat.
And, but yeah, that's oxo, or you can also say 0.
So now my cat is laying here, besides me, she's such a nice cat.
Her name, by the way, is Kala and yeah, you cannot see her, but maybe you can hear her
purring some, some day, she's purring now as well.
Let's see if I can get my phone, and that, maybe you can hear her purring, all right.
So back to the topic, I told me you about my name, yeah, I'm working for a long time
with Linux, I started, I think, 15 years ago when I had a day time job, and yeah, I started
with Ubuntu at the time, I remember, I think, was it dapper Drake or something, I don't
know, for sure, but there were all kinds of interesting names that they, maybe they
still do, called them, the two, always two same starting letters, dapper Drake, stuff
like that, I don't know, but I used some kind of version of Ubuntu, I used it for a few
months, and then my colleague, who also had a proper education in computing, and was using
Arch Linux, and he was, in my opinion, very good at it, and he introduced me to Arch Linux,
and then I started to use Arch Linux as well, and yeah, it's a long time ago, I remember,
I couldn't get a graphical environment started, it was such a big pain, but I kept trying
and trying, and we had a little bit of help as well, but he was not so helpful, I said,
ah, you can do it yourself, check out the man page, so, and then I remember, the first time
when that graphical environment came up, the logo window, I don't know what it was at the time,
but I now don't use that anymore, so, but oh, I really got chills then, it was crazy,
I got it, I had it working, and yeah, it was a nice, nice, nice milestone at the time, and yeah,
from that point on, I always documented my stuff, and that is what I want to recommend,
new users for now, make a listing, and I have a listing, and still use it today, as,
now it's, it's called Speaculus on my system, and I press the button command Z,
and then I get a list of, I think there are now maybe 1500 entries in there,
of commands that I think are handy, I use a lot, or I don't use a lot maybe,
but are complex, and are, all the things that you want to look, put it in a file and log it,
and that's what, still, now, a Speaculus, it's a build up from 15 years of, of,
recording commands that I think it's handy, or good to know, or, must not forget,
and the same thing goes for the installation tool, Hajime, that's my installation tool,
by the way, you can find that stuff on codeberk.org, and then you enter slash, and my username,
so codeberk.org slash, O-X-O, and there are all my repositories, and
Speaculus, you can find there, and you can also find their Hajime, and Hajime is basically the same thing,
because I logged the way I installed by Arch Linux, because I'm not good at, I'm not so smart,
I don't think I'm the smartest guy there is, if sometimes I see guys on the internet doing things
with computers, or guys that work at the time, that working with computers are so smart,
and so fast with the keyboard, and I'm not fast at the keyboard, I'm clumsy, I think I'm very
clumsy, but, and that's why I need notes, and notes are also a part of the repository you can find
there, but Hajime, what I was talking about, Hajime, Hajime is the Arch Linux installation tool,
which is now a script of, I think it is about 3000 lines now, in size, and it started out with a
note, what to do, a time date, CTL, creating mount points, stuff like that, and I still have
old versions, you can find them probably on my repo as well, which are very basic, and probably
don't work when you run them as a script, but there were my mental notes, and then I thought,
if I make mental notes, I can also put a shebang
H on top of it, and then it is an executable file, and so that's the way that Hajime evolved,
and many notes there, so I recommend really, if you're starting out or a, also if you are
a long time user, make notes of things you do, because maybe it's inconvenient to,
yeah, it costs, it takes time to make the note of course, but it's so convenient, and if you
have a system after a few months, weeks or months, then you have a system, and it's getting faster
to create notes, or you make a note, which you have to improve upon later, whatever,
but put it in a note, and you can always find it back, and you'll have a reference and a quick
pointer to, okay, that's where I have to search for example, so yeah, making notes, I think it's
important thing, for me at least, where I work, I don't remember things, and I think it's
difficult to remember every command line item, tool, argument, option, whatever you call it,
yeah, because to speak for myself, I am not doing that, and that's why I use note, I recommend
you to do the same, if you want to learn, if you want to learn Linux and command line things,
and things with bash scripting, so that's a little bit about myself, and yeah, on the repository
codeberk.org, to go there, so you can enter codeberk.org, probably you know that repository,
it's a git, like a git repository, only then, it's hosted in Germany as a pulse, by guys who are,
yeah, I like them very much, they also have a mastodon account, they inform you very much from
when there are updates on their system, or if they are down, or whatever, so it's a nice group of
guys, I recommend you to have your repo there as well, codeberk.org, slash.org, and if you go
there, you can see the seven repositories, which are seven repositories for many, many years,
I see many repositories of, also, also, also old colleagues of mine who have many, many repos there,
all kinds of stuff, which they start, but don't finish, I think it's very good to,
if you have a repo, post it, and improve upon it, go back to it again and again, that's how my
repository is build up, and yeah, this is the result of those 15 years of, yeah, improving upon stuff,
and posting, or pushing regularly, what is also very convenient is that almost not all my stuff,
almost all my stuff is on this repository, so I have a backup there as well, if I own our other
machine in another location, whatever, I can always go back to my notes, do my tools, and do my stuff,
and a few years ago, I did a course, a robot engineering, and that was, we were issued a laptop
with Windows 10, or whatever Windows it was, on it, terrible, terrible experience, I don't want
to go back there again, because I get chills of it, but what I did was I used the Windows
Shops system for Linux, so I could start a terminal, or connect to the internet, and then I could
download all my stuff there, and run it for a big part as well, so it was cool, I could develop
my Linux stuff on that stupid Windows machine, but yeah, all right, that's more of a side story,
so you can see there on codeberk.org, let's auction my repositories, the first one,
GMA is my art Linux installer script, which you can use as well, if you use the last script of the
last repository ISO latest, with that one you can create an USB stick with an art ISO, the latest
art ISO on it, put it in any machine, I have tested a lot of machines and put the USB stick in
run art Linux from the USB stick, then have a second USB device at hand, which on which you put
HGMA, and then you follow the HGMA guide, and you will have, yeah, basically my system that I
use on a daily basis, if you run through all the modules in HGMA, which are six modules in total,
from zero to five, and first you have a zero is an initial module, which connects to the internet,
and if necessary, because you can also run it offline, and then you can have a base install,
which installs the base packages and creates the environment to make the configuration, which is
the second module of HGMA, there you configure your system, so creating your username, your local,
locals, your directories, your mount points, stuff like that, and then you reboot into the
bare bones art system, basically, and you can continue with post, in which you finish up,
after your first boot, finish up the system, and then be ready for installing whatever desktop,
what you call the Windows manager, or desktop environment you want, I always continue with apps,
my apps module, which is module number four, in which I install the most basic applications,
and then finally, I can run the module five, which is dot files and configuration,
and if I then reboot, I have my system up and running, and I only have to do my private data,
for my private repository, or encrypted on the internet, and if I put that on, it's 10 minutes work
on a very slow machine, and then I have a whole system up and running again, so it's great.
I worked a lot of it on the HGMA for the last,
yeah, two and a half months I think, you can check out the repo for how much I did a lot of work
for on that, but I like it very much now, and basically it's now an unattended installation,
which is very, very nice, so that is HGMA, and well like I said, my notes are on there,
on the repository on codeberg, and then I have two, in two I have a lot of batch tools,
which are used daily, and also update daily and improve on daily, if I have two and I use it,
and I run it, and I think, ah, tweak it this and there, and then push it up again, and so the,
yeah, always improving on stuff, be critical on your own stuff, and make things as easy as possible,
and it's convenient as possible, as safe as possible as well, and that's often not so easy to
combine the security and the convenience of things, and we have dot files, which is also related
to the HGMA modules, the dot files are used, yeah, to create my environment in which I work on a
daily basis, and then we have source and network, two repositories, the source repository is used for
pieces of batch scripting that I use a lot, for example, reply functions, or creating
the text colors, or both text stuff with text appearance, things, and yeah, that's in source,
and then in network I have stuff to connect to the network, and to get network information.
So that is basically what I do, I talk to about who I am, and I've talked to about what I do,
I've talked to about where I am, codeberg.org, so it's my main repository, I have some mirror repositories
on git lapping, and what you call it, git hub, I think, or bitbuckert, I don't know, but there are
pushed to there as well, but this is codeberg, it's my main one, so go to codeberg, it's
there all at today, because I push automatically to all those
reposts, but go to codeberg, and there you will find my stuff, and now you can also see
my mustardon address, if you have any questions or comments, you can post a message to me at
atsignoxo, atcoto.org, which is at oscar, actually oscar, and then atsign again, and then
Quebec, oscar, tango, oscar, and then a dot, full stop, org, which is oscar Romeo Gov,
and you can find it on the codeberg page. I also have a proton mail address, which is
to the number two, oxo, 2oxo, it's protonmail.com, but I don't check that one out very regularly,
because it's, yeah, it's, well, it's active, but I don't check it out so much, and this mustardon,
these messages, I will receive on my mobile phone, so I check that every day,
not every hour, every minute, but every day I check a mustardon. All right, I'm also, by the way,
at elements, if you happen to be there, my username there is oxo, but I have a very difficult
code. I think the base 64 encoded version of cito pija, cito pija is an old user name of mine,
but if you want to contact me on elements, send me a message to mustardon, and you can contact
me to element, and on element as well, but it element is more for joining groups and stuff like
that, I think, and this is, mustardon, I use more for, for personal messaging.
So, yeah, that's about it. The plans for the future for me on Hacker Public Radio are
taking my codes, snippets of code, or pieces of my scripts, and then go through the workings
by I use it that way, and yeah, how it works, and yeah, stuff like that, so just have fun with
creating scripts in bash, I think, and besides that, also a goal of mine is to improve my English,
I'm not a native English speaker, and also to improve my teaching skills.
I find it interesting to teach people about Linux, and yeah, I want to improve on that as well,
and we'll see where it ends up. I have not scripted, I've not planned to script my
podcast, so that's why I'm stumbling maybe a lot, but yeah, that's what you have to do with as
well, because I'm not going to script, at least that's the plan for now, I'm going to do it
on the fly, if I think, oh, now for a little bit, half hour of time, I press the record button,
and go through some things that I think are interesting, I leave it for this time for this
introduction, and I hope you will follow me a little bit, and then we see each other next time, goodbye.
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