What are some of your most recent small technical accomplishments you are particularly proud of?
I consider myself tech cursed, a good portion of things i want to try to do not work (pihole) or require a lot of trial and error (also pihole but also other stuff ).
I bought a raspberry pi 4 a good while ago, the reason i bough it for, pihole, didnt work, a few other things didnt as well, than i tried recalbox, i got it working flawlessly with netplay and minimal trial and error of retro-achievements.
Hopefully this qualifies as a small technical achievement, at least it feels like one to me. Earlier this year I failed to understand EndeavourOS on my first run of it back in June. Tried for a day or two, couldn’t figure out some issues I had after some troubleshooting and threw in the towel. But a few weeks went by, I reinstalled it with a set of fresh eyes and a determination to get it right this time, and I was able to fix the few issues I did have. The issues I had weren’t that hard to even fix for someone familiar with an Arch-based distro, but for myself at the time, nothing made sense. Fast forward to know, and I’ve deep dived as much as I could into EndeavourOS and my system and I’d say to a certain degree I’ve become more competent and confident in using a distro like EndeavourOS, which is not something I would’ve said a few months ago. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s don’t give up trying something if it makes you happy or you have fun with the experience. Sometimes things do work out and sometimes things don’t work out, but that’s okay because that’s life. I think I might’ve stole that from Star Trek
I don’t have a background in tech. I am not a developer, I don’t deal with code at work, and like you, I’ve had a lot of hiccups setting up tools like Pihole. But it has become easier with time, and learning how Docker containers work in particular proved to be immensely useful in this regard.
I have my own server which runs Jellyfin, Flexget, Pihole, Transmission, Joplin, Nextcloud and a bunch of other tools, and setting them up and maintaining them used to be such a hassle and I’d run into problems I couldn’t solve without hours of searching, and if I screwed up one tool there was a chance it’d affect another.
With Docker, these tools become a one command install, and if something is wrong or stops working, I can recreate the container without risking the host system or interference with other tools. If you want to run your own server on your pi, learning the basics of Docker can save you a lot of time.
As for small technical accomplishments, well, since installing Linux a few years back I’ve been learning something new every week. Often as a result of browsing this forum, or whilst attempting to solve some minor problem I’m having.
I recently wrote a small shell script to back up, install and configure all the things I’d need on a new system. I’m sure most people here could do that with their eyes closed, but it was something new for me and I’m quite pleased with it.
Running 7 different distros on one machine (all linux) using full installs on usb sticks.
Great for testing hardware.
Rescuing a 13 year old Compaq Presario CQ60 from being scrapped. Installed Antix/Debian 11 (bullseye). Ordered more memory, has only 2 1gb sticks atm. Will be 4 gb total tomorrow. Then will try EnOS XFCE.
Right now perfecting my EnOS install on an old HP Pavilion m9340f.
Here’s something of another type of technical: I managed to service a suspension fork for my bike, and change its travel with a custom part bought for the purpose.
I’ve been learning to program very simple programs in x86-64 assembly (AT&T syntax). Learning how the CPU works is very rewarding, and you also start to appreciate how high-level a language like C actually is.
Here is a hello world example (with a simple loop):
# helloworld.s in x86-64 assembly for Linux
#
# Outputs a message to stdout, returns 0
#
# To assemble & link:
# $ as helloworld.s -o helloworld.o
# $ ld helloworld.o -o helloworld
.section .data
message:
.ascii "Hello, world!\n"
message_end:
length = (message_end - message) # lenght of message = dist between labels
.section .bss
.section .text
.global _start
_start:
# write(fd, &msg, len) : fd in %rdi, msg in %rsi, len in %rdx
movq $message, %rsi # address of msg
movq $length, %rdx # value of length
movq $1, %rdi # stdout
movq $5, %rbx # loop counter
write:
movq $1, %rax # sys_write
syscall
dec %rbx
jnz write
# exit(0):
movq $60, %rax # sys_exit
movq $0, %rdi # return value
syscall
My Maytag top-load washer stopped agitating and stopped spinning. I troubleshot the problems to a worn out (plastic) spline gear inside the agitator and a stuck brake on the spin basket. I fixed it myself in a single evening for $70 (the cost of a new agitator). It runs like new again!
!
