mighty-snitch VS multipass

6 months in to my first pc build. had one other pc for past 2 years from letsbld.

the build is easy, but it will take a full day. it is also a bit nerve racking, but mostly that’s just inexperience. parts are all sturdy and snap together. i will be building every nvidia generation from now on.

i used to code on laptops, then game on a pc. now i have to ssds, one windows one linux. bios boot option is unborkable. it’s a great setup.

it’s nice to be able to play fortnite, compile the linux kernel[1], and do gamedev[2] all in a single session.

be aware ddr5 amd boards boot kind of slow. i’ve heard intel is faster.

if you can afford it, go god spec. otherwise spec down into your price range. letsbld and originpc have good configurators to choose parts. newegg prices will be 30% less.

check out fractal torrent cases and dh15 coolers! 4090 fe fits in the nano and 4090 pny fits in the compact.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/tree/master/kernel...

2. https://r2.nathants.workers.dev/jetpack_hand_animations.mp4

learning cloud is not necessarily using cloud for all things.

cloud adds legitimate new capabilities to every engineer.

if i’m on coffeeshop wifi with my low power laptop, and i need to do something intense like compile linux, i’m sol.

unless i know aws. then i can open a new terminal, spin up a massive spot instance for 19.27 minutes, get that done, then self destruct. [1]

being able to test lambda to s3 io, or ec2 to s3 io, with the same ease one uses grep and sed, is for great good. also it’s fun.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/blob/master/kernel...

you jest, but this is actually fine.

do this via mighty-snitch[1] on any postmarketos phone. any network request passing through the linux kernel gets filtered.

still hosed if it’s hardware level nonsense unfortunately.

the only reason i’m not daily driving postmarketos if lack of gpu acceleration for firefox. hopefully soon!

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

i just built 6.2 for arm64. what timing!

https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/releases

use a network snitch[1] on desktop and mobile. The original slogan says it all: makes the invisible visible. i’d love to use a disk snitch too, but no exist yet afaik.

it’s interesting to see firefox or any other legitimate app i’m using make many unsolicited requests to weird domains. it feels good to interactively deny those connections.

make sure that cloud[2], which includes git hosts[3], are untrusted. unencrypted data should never hit remote. keys should never leave local.

consider the tradeoffs with online interactions. engaging with other humans in public on github and hackernews is likely worth. engaging in impassioned op-ed debate with bots on engagement monetization platforms like twitter or youtube is likely not.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

2. https://cryptomator.org/

3. https://github.com/nathants/git-remote-aws

Install Multipass from https://multipass.run

Multipass orchestrates virtual Ubuntu instances

Multipass I love Multipass for quick Ubuntu instances spun up for testing or as a playground. Wish I would have known and used of it sooner.

If you just need Ubuntu then you can try "Multipass" from Canonical (https://multipass.run/). Works quite well on my M2 Air. I haven't tried using Linux GUI with it though as I need only terminal based VMs.

Multipass is pretty clutch for trivial VMs on MacOs for sure. I use it for a bunch of ssh jump boxes running vpns to different sites. The macOS build does not support custom images (lest not without [some truly insane hacks](https://github.com/canonical/multipass/issues/1260#issuecomm...) , which doesn’t really matter for what I use it for but it is kind of a bummer. If you need something with a little more grunt but don’t want to go full blown with writing your own QEMU tooling or fussing with something like UTM or Parallels, [quickemu](https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu) is a really nice qemu wrapper with sane defaults that can expose a whole lot of power if you need it.

I would be cautious or even distrustful of using anything from Oracle. VirtualBox components come under three different licenses - GPLv2, personal use & evaluation license, and an enterprise license. Their VirtualBox license FAQ [1] gives them enough leeway to change future licenses at will. If an exploit is discovered in your old VirtualBox and they've changed the license, you're out of luck.

We've moved our development to KVM and Virtual Machine Manager on Linux [3] and UTM on Mac [4]. There are other options to run your VM, such as Multipass [5] or VirtualBuddy [6].

On a digressive topic - it was fun migrating our legacy application server stack from Oracle Java (old & poorly considered decision) to OpenJDK, thanks to their license [2].

[1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ

[2] https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/jdk-faqs.htm...

[3] https://ubuntu.com/blog/kvm-hyphervisor

[4] https://mac.getutm.app/

[5] https://multipass.run/

[6] https://github.com/insidegui/VirtualBuddy

How does it compare to https://multipass.run/?

If you have a reasonably beefy computer, you can always try setting up Multipass and set up 2-3 nodes for a k8s cluster, it's how I'm doing my own certification training. I do have a k3s Raspberry Pi cluster, but with Pi prices being what they are still it'd almost be cheaper to do a cloud setup. ☹️