Typically no, the top two PCIE x16 slots are normally directly to the CPU, though when both are plugged in they will drop down to both being x8 connectivity.
Any PCIE x4 or X1 are off the chipset, as well as some IO, and any third or fourth x16 slots.
So yes, motherboards typically do implement more IO connectivity than can be used simultaneously, though they will try to avoid disabling USB ports or dropping their speed since regular customers will not understand why.
Most firewalls are at their safest when you first get them i.e by default they block everything coming in. As you start doing port forwarding and the like you start making the network selectively less secure; that’s when you have to pay attention.
I had an EdgeRouter X for years before I started my job. They are solid devices, and I’d definitely put them above most consumer routers.
Because they only charge for the hardware, they will eventually run into the same disincentive to provide consistent timely updates. If you do buy an Ubiquiti or similar enthusiast brand, do still keep an eye out for the CVEs that don’t get patched.
I build Linux routers for my day job. Some advice:
your firewall should be an appliance first and foremost; you apply appropriate settings and then other than periodic updates, you should leave it TF alone. If your firewall is on a machine that you regularly modify, you will one day change your firewall settings unknowingly. Put all your other devices behind said firewall appliance. A physical device is best, since correctly forwarding everything to your firewall comes under the “will one day unknowingly modify” category.
use open source firewall & routing software such as OpenWRT and PFSense. Any commercial router that keeps up to date and patches security vulnerabilities, you cannot afford.
It opens the door to more manufacturers since there is no ISA licence fees. While the AMD/Intel duopoly is being fairly competitive at the moment, it really doesn’t have to be. Only think back to how bad it was late 2000s to 2015.
I imagine a plethora of core designers, soc vendors and platform creators filling their own niches; lowest cost, lowest power, HW accelerators, highest core count etc.
I don’t see the raw performance of AMD/Intel being surpassed soon, just because of the sheer total R&D years each has, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other areas better suited to a different architectural approach.
I don’t see the problem, I also don’t see how this is a novel situation.
The technical merits of system level protocols only really affect the user insofar as they make it easier for userspace application writers to make their software. This is why we have the distinction, so that users never have to change the underlying software, and when they choose to it’s because everything just works.
Sure but why open their code without getting the integration benefits?
Likely a combination of 4 things:
They have third party firmware in their blobs that they are under NDA regarding the source code.
They believe in the source code is a large part of their success and don’t want to reveal it.
They believe giving out the source code will allow many inferior variants of the software, impacting their brand.
Control; the more source code they have in mesa the more of their code can be rejected by mesa. Keeping their stuff as blobs allows them to put in whatever hacks they want.
NT is not the majority of windows code though; for windows to be multi architecture, all of windows needs to work with the new architecture; NT, drivers & userspace.
For Linux, if an existing userspace application doesn’t work in aarch64, somebody somewhere will build a port. For windows, so much of their stuff is proprietary that Microsoft are the only ones able to build that port.
Not because “windows bad”, just a consequence of such a locked down system which doesn’t have anything open source to inherit.
Memory safety is likely to prevent a lot of bugs. Not necessarily in the kernel proper, I honestly don’t see it being used widely there for a while.
In third party drivers is where I see the largest benefit; there are plenty of manufacturers who will build a shitty driver for their device, say that it targets Linux 4.19, and then never support/update it. I have seen quite a few third party drivers for my work and I am not impressed; security flaws, memory leaks, disabling of sensible warnings. Having future drivers written in rust would force these companies to build a working driver that didn’t require months of trawling through to fix issues.
Now that I think about it, in 10 years I’ll probably be complaining about massive unsafe blocks everywhere…
Until it marks you as unlicensed because you used a new motherboard.
Setting up the PiHole device as a DNS server & DHCP server still won’t make all traffic flow through it, you need it to be a gateway for all traffic that isn’t destined for an internal subnet.
To do that, you’ll need to set up your device as a router, with the necessary entries in iproute2 and iptables in order to keep lock out external connections without conntracks. You might be able to route to a turnkey container of some kind.
Are you trying to route your DNS queries through your VPN device or all of your traffic?
Just your DNS queries is easy, set up the VPN as the default route for the device (using netplan or iproute2), then all queries from PiHole will go via that.
All traffic is a bit harder, unless your PiHole device is the only thing between your regular devices and the internet.
They made a smart call that has probably increased the long term privacy of their users.
People were using port forwarding to host illegal shit, and governments were getting pissed off about it. Mullvad has been able to prove in court that they don’t keep logs, but that’s not a perfect deterrent; a properly motivated government, perhaps if somebody is using Mullvad to host CSAM, might attempt to legally force Mullvad to put logging in and add anti-canary clauses.
Preventing port forwarding keeps customers as consumers rather than hosters, and avoids this issue.
Not necessarily, plenty of good programs written in C89 for example.
With something that is heavily library dependent, having a more recent development stack may mean better maintained libraries but definitely not a sure thing.
Do you just care about privacy, or is it your primary focus?
There are Linux distros like Tails which will be very hard to use day to day, but if you are laser focused on privacy, it’s between that and CubesOS (not Linux).
Most Linux distros will give you reasonable privacy from an OS standpoint, from there it’s up to you to have good practices with your data.
I started using Linux maybe 5 years ago, just before DXVK and proton became a thing. The difference between now and then for gaming is night and day.
If it’s on steam, there is a pretty good chance it’ll work. If it’s not on steam, it still might work through lutris.
There are some holdouts like Riot games, but I haven’t owned windows in almost two years.
Interdependency is a large part of issues; If you have an aur package that breaks but has no other packages that depend on it, you have a minor problem. If you have an aur package that breaks which many packages depend on, you have a major problem. Keep your libraries as unchanging as you can; out of AUR if possible, definitely not -git packages.
An AUR pkgbuild can also perform arbitrary actions to install the package, the security implication is obvious but many also miss that, yes as you install more AUR packages your system will diverge from the expected Arch state. Normally this is minor and fine, but it could trip you up here and there.
You may run into a few hurdles until ACPI support for RISC-V devices matures a bit, but hopefully it’ll be better than the situation with ARM boards.
Man if I was concerned about sinking the time to make a configuration for the compositor with a bus factor of 1 man-child, and a toxic community; I can’t imagine anybody investing the time to make a compositor is going to want to hitch themselves to that cart.
The compositor is really solid and makes for a great user experience but I’ll be fucked if every word vaxry writes doesn’t make me want to move to sway or niri.