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  • Linux: Lubuntu: system requirements

    Lubuntu is a lightweight Linux distribution. What exactly are its requirements?

    The following is my understanding.

    I’ve loaded Lubuntu on numerous computers. To my knowledge, it’s got everything a user would typically need. One of my “daily driver” PCs is Lubuntu.

    Lubuntu, it seems, has the following basic requirements: 1GB Ram, 1GHz speed, and 10GB hard drive. Yet, 2-4 GB Ram, 2GHz speed with dual-core, and 20GB is recommended.

    Right now I’m running a fresh install of Lubuntu, with no user-created files as of yet.

    For this PC, the CPU max speed 2.6GHz, with five cores: 2C+3G. df -h suggests the installation is 8.1GB, while free -h suggests RAM usage of 1.8Gi, with another 2.4Gi used for caching. (1Gi ≈ 1.07G)

    This PC is from 2017, but on Lubuntu it’s as zippy as one of the i5 PCs I use, from 2022, that are running Windows 11.

    Source:

    lubuntu.me

    invgate.com

    stackoverflow.com

    techpowerup.com

    -js

  • Linux: how to get system specs from terminal

    Examining a Linux system, one might wonder about the computer it’s installed on.

    The following is by my understanding.

    In Linux, to find system information from the terminal, one might use the following commands:

    free -h, to find the RAM

    df -h, to find disk/storage capacity

    lscpu, to find CPU info (speed, cores, model, etc)

    Source:

    man7.org: lscpu

    man7.org: free

    linux.die.net: df

    -js

  • Web, Linux: lightweight browsers, part0

    Especially with Linux on an old computer, one might seek a lightweight browser.

    The following is by my understanding.

    I loaded Lubuntu onto a Vista-era computer two days back; perhaps I will mention more about that in another post. However, for earlier mention of Lubuntu, there is my post from June 19, 2026.

    Lubuntu comes with Firefox. On this Vista-era computer, which runs Lubuntu fine, Firefox takes a few seconds, after clicking, to load, but it does. However, a given web page might take a good deal longer to load – perhaps ten seconds or much more.

    I looked into lightweight browsers and loaded Falkon. While I was impressed with its minimal design, the web pages didn’t seem to load faster on it. Falkon seemed to work about as well as Firefox.

    It seems to me that a lightweight browser won’t solve the problem of navigating the web on a slow computer, because the web pages typically use a lot more resources than the browser itself does. High-resolution images and JavaScript, both on the page itself and in subframes, can easily bog down an old computer.

    -js

  • WordPress: plugin update says failed, yet json response says success:true

    Working with WordPress, plugins continue to raise questions…and perhaps mixed messages.

    The following is by my understanding.

    Today, when I went to post to a WordPress site, I was told by a plugin that an update was available. One is meant to update a plugin when possible, similar to other updates, because often updates are motivated by security. So, I updated the plugin.

    I got a response back: update failed. Yet, in the json response, I read “success”:”true”. Was the update a failure or a success?

    I went to Tools->Site Health, where it would be indicated if a plugin update were available: none was. I decided that, in fact, the update had been successful.

    -js

  • Electronic lifestyle, web: Cookies, part 1

    It seems that, with some new laws, we are often asked to accept cookies. But, should we, and to what extent?

    The following is according to my understanding.

    In my post from May 30 I mention some ideas about cookies, their tracking potential, etc.

    To me, cookie banners can be a little much, sometimes, because some ask the visitor to agree to questionable (in my opinion) or even outrageous cookie usage.

    Today I was on a site where this offer was made on a cookie banner:

    If you accept all cookies, you can be shown personalized ads on other sites beyond our own, since we can share your interests with our partners.

    One might wonder how many partners could be involved; I’ve seen one cookie banner that suggested over nine hundred.

    Somehow, being asked to agree to such things can be somewhat off-putting.

    I guess these cookie agreement banners stem from the GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, out of Europe. For websites, it seems, they came into effect in 2018. As a result, sites need visitor consent to use said visitor’s data in certain ways.

    Lots of people probably just click “Accept All” on the cookie banners. I usually customize them down to the minimum necessary unless I like the site.

    Source:

    commission.europa.eu

    cookie-banner.ca

    -js

  • Web: what is tunneling?

    Regarding VPNs and web security, one often hears about tunneling. What is it, and why is it used?

    The following is by my understanding.

    In broad strokes, a protocol is a way data is sent and received. The sender and receiver need to agree on a protocol before data exchange starts, so each can package the data the way it needs to be sent, then unpack what’s received, etc. The http protocols are examples (see my post from June 22 about that.)

    On the Internet, information is sent in packets, typically large enough to contain only 500 to 1000 characters. Therefore, typical communication depends on sending many packets back and forth. The server and browser organize the packets; the user needn’t know about them.

    Let’s imagine that a server and client want to exchange information using a private protocol, one that servers and browsers don’t understand. The motivation may be for security, for instance: if someone intercepts the communication, they won’t know how to decode it or rebuild it. Therefore, a hacker can’t derive meaning from the communication.

    Yet, said information still needs to be broken down, prepped for transport over the Internet, received by the client’s browser, etc. This is accomplished by enveloping the packets from the private protocol in an outer protocol that is standard.

    There are agreed-upon, secure protocols that can act as the “private” ones in the above example. Said protocols generally offer encryption besides what the outer protocol might offer.

    Source:

    cloudflare.com: What is tunneling?

    cloudflare.com: What is a protocol?

    blog.apnic.net: “The size of the packet”

    -js

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  • Web: what is head-of-line blocking?

    Reading about internet protocols, one might encounter the term “head-of-line blocking.” What does it mean, and why is it important?

    The following is by my understanding.

    Head-of-line blocking is the idea that until one resource is fully received, the next one in the pipe has to wait.

    The http1.1, protocol, the main internet protocol from 1997 to around 2015, was susceptible to head-of-line blocking. Then, with http2, multiplexing was introduced, meaning that over the same connection, several lines of communication could occur at once. This reduced head-of-line blocking, but didn’t eliminate it. The reason is that although separate files that will make up a page can load in parallel, the whole page still has to load, eventually, before the next task in the pipe can start. Therefore, the slowest resource that loads in parallel can eventually stall the connection from being available for its next task. (This may be a bit simplified, but conceptually is what can happen.)

    The http3 protocol uses totally different ways to send information, and is more or less immune to head-of-line blocking.

    As of June 1, 2026, http1.1 and the older http1.0 make up about 28 percent of internet traffic, http2, about 51 percent, and http3, 21 percent.

    There is much more to discuss about internet protocols.

    Source:

    developer.mozilla.org: Evolution of HTTP

    developer.mozilla.org: Head-of-line blocking

    technologychecker.io: “We analyzed HTTP protocol adoption in 2026….”

    -js

  • Linux: grep, part0

    The grep command is a Linux shell one for finding strings.

    The following is by my understanding.

    The grep command is used to find a string and will print out each line that contains it.

    grep “log” a-file.txt

    will print, to terminal, each line from a-file.txt that contains the string “log”.

    grep log a-file.txt

    seems to work the same as if “log” is in quotes.

    The grep command can be used with regular expressions. For example,

    grep -E gre”e|a”t a-file.txt

    will find “great” or “greet” in a-file.txt. The -E switch means you don’t need to escape the | operator.

    Source:

    linux.die.net

    -JS

  • Web: browsers: how to find memory usage by tab in Firefox

    Especially on a light-resource system, one might want to discover which tab(s) are using a lot of juice.

    The following is how I see it.

    Right now I’m using what I’d call a Linux crunch box. It’s a computer from around 2017 that can’t run Windows 10 or 11 but can run Linux – specifically, Lubuntu.

    With my Windows PC, I commonly have 50 tabs open, sometimes on three different browsers(!), so 150 tabs total. [I am trying to cut down, though.] However, this low-resource crunchbox, whose distro included Firefox (as Linux commonly does, it seems), can’t run more than ten tabs without getting boggy. It depends on the tabs (the sites on the tabs), of course, but when I get to around ten tabs, I follow the “open one then close one” rule.

    That said, there are some sites that simply use a lot of computing power, likely because of ads. If I go to one of those sites, this PC’s fan ramps up. I either have to wait until I’m on the Windows PC to visit them, or else close more tabs in Firefox – maybe down to three or four – before visiting one of those high-resource sites.

    Some browsers, when you mouse over a tab, it shows that tab’s memory usage. What about Firefox?

    To find per-tab memory usage on Firebox, one goes into the application menu (top right, the three horizontal lines), then into More Tools, then Task Manager. You’ll see:)

    Source:

    support.mozilla.org

    -JS

  • Electronic lifestyle: forgotten username, part 2

    Sometimes, the username is the hard part to remember.

    The following is by my understanding.

    I mention in my post from June 13, 2026, a situation where I knew the password but not the original email (username) I’d signed up from. I had to go looking, but eventually discovered it.

    One thing I didn’t mention is that I quickly found recent communication from that service on a different email account. However, I couldn’t log in using that email.

    The interesting point is that sometimes one might change their email with a service, so then communication happens with the new email. However, the log in, aka username, doesn’t necessarily change; it might still be the original email the client signed up from.

    Therefore, changing the email to a more convenient one may make it more likely that, one day, one won’t recall how to log in.

    -JS