April 11 2016: BASH for Windows, Linus Torvalds and other matters
David S had hoped to be able to demonstrate BASH for Windows though he had found that he had to sign away all his rights to register on the Windows Insider Program and, when he had done that, found that the relevant option had not being installed on his tablet. So all he could do was point to the BASH on Ubuntu on Windows site.
We then watched the TED interview with Linus Torvalds after which we discussed a wide range of topics which easily filled the remaining time, including:
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SHA1 and why support for it is being discontinued (its hash is 40 digits long which is easy to crack and which was all the US would allow US companies in the 1990s which in turn led to all encryption work, e.g. PGP, SSH, moving to Europe);
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how to start a program at boot, for example, an SSH session;
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how starting a BASH command with a space causes it to be omitted from
.bash_history(true for openSUSE, not for Slackware); -
the three alternative menus in KDE Plasma 5, namely, a Gnome style full desktop menu, the more recent KDE 4 default menu or the Plasma 5 default, a single menu displaying all the options available under one heading;
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a brief discussion of SUSE/openSUSE covering topics previously covered on Monday,18th February 2013 but not including the acquisition of SUSE from Attachmate by Microfocus which, in the 1980s, was the leading COBOL software house! SUSE’s main business is large enterprise systems such as the London Stock Exchange and no sales figures have been issued for it since it ceased to be a separate company. However, it donates a percentage of its profits every year to openSUSE and this amount has been increasing over recent years indicating that SUSE is making more profits.
