Linux

It’s FOSS promo time.

December 20, 2022November 14, 2022 by S-Config

(FOSS) – Free and Open Source Software.

It’s the duty of a blogger who writes about freeing oneself into a state of web independence to eventually talk about all of the software that is used in accomplishing such a task. That you must use, contribute, promote, and ultimately let others know about said software so that the user base grows and becomes better each and every year. Because sadly. The clear-net search engines are no longer on the side of these people. It’s up to bloggers, businesses, and other websites to drive the point home that a name of a free piece of software isn’t some shit ad space that you sell to the lowest bidder.

Read on if you want to hear my diatribes and rants.

Nginx and the Image format wars.

September 8, 2022September 21, 2021 by S-Config

We’ve talked about the videos, we’ve talked about the images. Now we talk about the web server, Nginx.

In this entry, we’re going to get crazy technical with how we deploy all of these new image formats that are being introduced in what feels like “The Great Video/Image War” to finally put GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs, and MP4s to bed. But instead, we’re going to talk about a section that seems skipped a lot. How do we actually implement these new formats? Because if we do a review on an image format, it’s good. Then as bloggers, it would be hypocritical to not apply these formats to our site. It however opens up questions. How do we maintain the security of our readers while at the same time giving them the very best image with the lowest bandwidth conceivable? Thankfully since we have a VPS a lot of the encoding is handled via CRON. While a lot of the deciding factors of which browser gets served and what file are all in the hands of NGINX web daemon.

Read on if you want to know more.

Linux, ADB, Raspberry Pi, Ouya? Lineage? Really?

February 20, 2023August 30, 2019 by S-Config

Linux ADB into your Ouya via the Raspberry Pi? With SSH even?!?! It’s more likely then you think!

With Razer finally pulling the plug on Ouya’s servers on June 25 of 2019. June 25, 2013, marks the birth date of the Ouya’s initial release (not bad for a console that was only designed to last for a few years). Users and preservationists have been scattering the net to find a way to keep these silver boxes running into 2019 and beyond. Of course, a lot of them have found our original Cyanogen blog entry. This article is helping people to this very day in getting rid of the Stock Ouya firmware and loading it with something that no longer requires Ouyas Authentication servers. For all of those who have come to our blog for help. Allow us to thank you for visiting this independent blog and hope that you found the answers you were looking for.

But as time progresses so does the way we think, and the way we hack our android boxes.

Read on if you want to know more.

Section 5: Restoring your Ouya Firmware.

May 23, 2023April 30, 2019 by S-Config

Firmware restore on the Ouya.

When playing with android OS there needs to be an “Undo” button when it comes to the Firmware. The Ouya is no different. Perhaps as a user, you’ve grown tired of playing with Lineage. Perhaps you are going to sell your Ouya on eBay and you don’t want any data left on the thing. Or you’re trying to bring a soft-bricked Ouya back to life. Whatever the case may be this tutorial is here to help you wipe whatever is on your Ouya and bring it back to factory defaults.

This is considered “Section 5” of a long tutorial about Ouya because like all of the previous sections we’ll be relying on the Raspberry Pi or a Linux box to perform these tasks instead of going through the sheer pain of using ADB on a Windows environment. Also, some of the beginning sections are required for those who have never used a Linux box in their life.

Without further delay, let’s dive in shall we?

Section 3 : Method 2: ADB “Push” Lineage from Raspberry Pi to Ouya.

May 23, 2023April 29, 2019 by S-Config

ADB Sideloading Lineage onto your Ouya via Raspberry Pi.

This tutorial assumes that you have already set up your base Raspberry Pi OS and that you are either operating locally on the Pi or via SSH from another PC. This tutorial uses a more traditional “Push” method that we’ve used in previous tutorials such as Cyanogen but updated for performing the same task underneath Lineage. This tutorial also assumes that This is our current 2019 method of flashing and programming Ouya and Android devices due to the nature of commercial OS’s locking the security down on hardware devices. If you have already unlocked ADB on your commercial OS and you have the ADB bridge drivers installed you can follow along on that OS with this tutorial.

Read on if you want to learn more.

Section 3 : Method 1: ADB Sideloading Lineage from Raspberry Pi to Ouya.

May 23, 2023April 28, 2019 by S-Config

ADB Sideloading Lineage onto your Ouya via Raspberry Pi.

This tutorial assumes that you have already set up your base Raspberry Pi OS and that you are either operating locally on the Pi or via SSH from another PC. This tutorial dives into the ability to sideload all of the packages required for the OS known as Lineage, which is a rebirth of the Cyanogen project in previous tutorials that we have done. This tutorial also assumes that This is our current 2019 method of flashing and programming Ouya and Android devices due to the nature of commercial OSs locking the security down on hardware devices. Read on if you want to learn more.

Section 2: SSH and Samba on the Raspberry Pi.

May 23, 2023April 26, 2019 by S-Config

Using SAMBA and SSH on the Raspberry Pi Title.

Adding SSH and Samba onto the Raspberry Pi.

Now it’s time to add SSH and Samba. For those who do not know what that is. SSH is a secure shell system that allows us to remote into our pi from any computer capable of loading an SSH client such as PuTTY onto their system. SSH can also be used for FTP transfers as a way of uploading files such as apk’s and images to your Raspberry Pi so you can then access them via ADB to your Ouya. But instead of SSH-FTP, we’re also going to load Samba which is a windows network sharing protocol allowing us seamless transfers from our PC or MAC over wireless to our Raspberry Pi.

Now, for those who are using the Raspberry Pi as a desktop or don’t care to use it in a headless manner like we do having it hooked up in our living room to the Ouya. You can probably skip this tutorial altogether! However, for those who are using it as a headless unit then read on as we provide all of the instructions down below.

WebP image format wars.

June 13, 2022November 6, 2016 by S-Config

WebP from Google will deliver faster internet to you. But at what cost?

WebP is something I found out by total accident when asking the simple question of:

Why does Google Chrome not support animated .PNG files?
– S

It turns out Google instead of including the format into the library on their browser decided instead to exclude it. Although you can simply download an animated PNG plugin for Chrome here. That’s not the point. The point is it should be natively supported which it is not. ~~If Google finally did support animated PNG files then~~ Google now supports APNG which now we can put an axe into animated .GIF files. A Format which is still in use since the late 1980’s! Animated GIF files are now old enough to run for president of the United States! However, Google’s attitude was as follows:

Why spend any more time on other formats like PNG and JPG when WebP will be cooler!

Note: This issue with Google Chrome as of 7/25/2017 has now been resolved but the entry still stand for archival reasons.

Read on if you want to see more.

Pine64 Pine A64 impression.

June 1, 2022May 1, 2016 by S-Config

Pine A64 with just a hint of Orange aftertaste!

I just received my Pine A64 or Pine64 from our good friends over at PixelDust and decided to not really do a review of it because it’s way too early in the kick starter process to give a full scale review. So instead, I am just going to do an article about my impressions about this single-board computer. I should note that whenever I take a look at any piece of hardware on this site it is never a paid endorsement or advertisement from the original manufacturer and often times we’ll use our own funds to purchase the hardware we write about.

Goodbye Raspberry Pi – Hello Banana Pi

November 1, 2019December 24, 2014 by S-Config

After many years I have made the switch to Banana Pi.

There was so many different companies trying to mimic the success of the Raspberry Pi when it made its Kickstarter goals and people were waiting (impatiently sometimes) to acquire one. This will be a short little blog post about walking away from Raspberry Pi and supporting the Banana Pi. Read on if you like.

previously