Forem: Ben Herbst

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Ben Herbst — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 17:25:06 +0000

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Alternative to Medium - Work in progress

Ben Herbst — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 23:16:47 +0000

Hello Guys,
as I can't post it on Reddit, I now post it here.

I am currently 14 years old, and I started building a Medium alternative, here you currently only see a screenshot, as it is a work in progress.

I want to ask for UI improvements. Likewise, I already know a lot of improvements myself that I am currently working on - but I am looking forward to all suggestions 😃

There is some kind of demo already running at https://devsfordevs.com, but it is also my old portfolio and yea, not that updated.

My current portfolio is https://www.benherbst.net/

"ChatGPT" locally for everyone

Ben Herbst — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 00:35:52 +0000

https://github.com/BenHerbst/Dalaix

Hello guys, I saw a very interesting project on GitHub a few days ago ( Dalai ) that uses this language model LLaMA or Alpaca to create a local web server with something a bit like "ChatGPT".

As Dalai needed lot of stuff to set up, python, git, npm, node, ...
I decided to just create a simple installer with Electron.

You just fill out a form and press install.
That's all. Dalai gets installed.

On top of that, I implemented start menu entries for Starting and Stopping Dalai. Awesome. Even autostart.

I created the whole project with Vue.js, Bootstrap and Electron.
If you like it, please check it out, try it, file issues, and please give me a star on GitHub. 🌟

Thank you guys! ❤

This is actually my first Electron project, while I did Vue.js already in past like at my personal homepage https://www.benherbst.de/

Electron was a great experience, and I am going to improve the app and add support for Linux and OS X too. Also add dark mode and a whole management console. Expect great new features!

I am currently 14 years old, you can check out my other GitHub projects too: https://github.com/BenHerbst/

Happy Hacking and have a good day!

Use Manjaro rest sucks

Ben Herbst — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 19:36:09 +0000

I have been a long time Debian/- Ubuntu based distribution user, and they all suck! Only good distro is Manjaro.

Where is the problem with using Ubuntu???
We mainly use Ubuntu cause of its package manager, APT.
APT has big issues: With kernels.
Apt is not rolling release, that means it doesn't always gets updates for all software, only for the important stuff, so your System gets more outdated everyday, until you upgrade to the next Ubuntu version. You only get updates when whole new system upgrade is available.
You might say now: But this is way more stable then using rolling release distro like Manjaro??

Nope, this is often not true

You say APT is trash??
I give you an example: Your Ubuntu updates to a new kernel, ( cause apt updates important stuff like kernels ), then you also have Nvidia drivers. And after the update, your Nvidia drivers don't work, then I removed the old version and installed a version for the new kernel, then Wifi broke... And this happens quite frequently - Why? Cause Apt requires lot of packages to depend on lot of other shits and then kernel upgrades have the issue that they need newer software but installing that would remove older software that is required by other kernels etc. - On Arch base distros like Manjaro, I never had an issue like that, cause as the software gets updated always to the newest version, really most of the stuff doesn't requires older versions, as they can't know what version you have, as the versions on Manjaro are all unmatched.

Same issue with using PPAs: You, for example, want the newest Inkscape or GIMP version, so you add it via PPA, then they get a newer version, require some newer stuff dependency packages, and you can't get the newest dependencies cause apt doesn't updates - you would have to install all dependencies and everything also as PPA - which is going to get complicated and mess up your whole system...

Also same issue with downgrading packages: You want to downgrade a software to an old version - but you can't, as it needs dependencies that can't be installed on Ubuntu anymore - on Arch, this is usually no issue, as you can install anything with any version, as software gets upgraded - as rolling release.

Ah I understand, so why Manjaro and not Arch or other rolling release?
Cause, in my opinion, Manjaro is the best rolling distro:

It is easy to install, so if you mess up or get new hardware, you can get up and running in no time
Manjaro has great shell and grub out of the box
Manjaro comes preinstalled with pretty plain gnome but ton of extensions and tweak tools to customize it
Manjaro has a big community
Manjaro comes even preinstalled on some devices

And disadvantages of using Manjaro??
When you use rolling release, your important software could break after an update or completely change - so you may have to handle problems - but overall it mostly worked fluent and stable as fuck.

Conclusion
If you don't rely on Windows or MacOSX or you have multiple PCs for multiple software - and you want to use a gnu/Linux desktop operating system, then Manjaro is by far the best, and it can easily replace Ubuntu. You can also easily install the Ubuntu theme etc. so it looks and works exactly like Ubuntu - but in better.

We are Core!

Ben Herbst — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 19:16:50 +0000

Hello!
We are the Core project:
We build applications, frameworks and other stuff!
Lot of different projects ( 30+ ) and currently 4 people.
We want to get around 40 people, and build the next generation apps and frameworks.

Freedom
Our project will get open source soon, and we work on the open source platform Gitlab!

Freedom is not just about software freedom, also about developer freedom, that's why you as developer and tester can do what you want ( 99 % Rule, you can do what ever you want in 99 percent cases, like you can program and implement what you want, no restrictions )

Our mission
Our mission is Freedom as in code and developers
Our mission is to push Open source
Our mission is to create an Open platform for everything

Core project examples
We work on Corefx, a fork of Javafx, that tries to improve it a lot

We work on Core license, our own license

We work on CorePad, a text editor in Swing

We work on CoreCalculator, a calculator written in Tornadofx

We work on CoreWeb, a Chromium fork web browser

We work on CoreClient, a Minecraft client

And a on a lot more projects!

How to join?
Join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/jdkzEtmwDV
Contact me on Discord: BenHerbst#1522
Or via E-Mail: ben.herbst@web.de
Or via Github issue: https://github.com/BenHerbst

How to be Productive - The 3 steps

Ben Herbst — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 16:17:30 +0000

So this is a step by step list for me I want to share with you guys on how to be productive and do things instead of just always think about doing them:

1. Phone. Enable Airplane mode and put phone away from you. At least 2 meters should be between you and your phone if you want to be productive

2. Put your mind of. Hear some relaxing music or so to get down and be focused. For about 1-3 minutes

3. Count from 1 to 3 and start!

Good luck! You can do it!

How I got the LONGEST NAME on DEV.TO

Ben Herbst — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 14:32:38 +0000

Dev.to only allows users to have a maximum of 30 characters in the name.
So I wanted to trick that and get the looongest name...

I just went to the dev tools and go to the change profiles name entry. I set it's Max length to 100 instead of 30 and put in my name.

Now I have the longest name!

Why I switched from MINT to MANJARO

Ben Herbst — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 11:54:18 +0000

I have been a long time Linux Mint user.
It was easy to install, nice to use, cinnamon is a great desktop and the applications are very stable as based on Ubuntu LTS. So why did I switch?
With the time I discovered TILING WINDOW MANAGERS like i3 or my favorite HERBSTLUFTWM.
As I have a big 43" 4k display, a tiling window manager works very great. Herbstluftwm even goes deeper and allows to split the monitor in different "virtual" monitors, where full screen applications for example don't expand over the given virtual monitor size. I used dzen2, then lemonbar / barpyrus and in the end switched to the great polybar.
And this is where Manjaro comes in.
To get the latest and greatest version of Herbstluftwm which supports single floating windows or to get the polybar without the need to wait two years, I had to build these applications my self. This was time consuming and bad.
Then I discovered that there is Arch Linux, but it is harder to install then Manjaro and doesn't have much preinstalled applications or a desktop. But Manjaro is easy to install, has some preinstalled things and comes with three desktop to chose from: Gnome, Xfce, Kde.
I sometimes use a desktop environment when something is broken in my configs for herbstluftwm etc. I like it more than using a tty as I find it easier and better to use as fallback.
Manjaro has always the latest and greatest applications via the official repos or AUR. I can also use Snap or Flatpak without issues. Pamac is a software store ui that has flatpaks, AUR, official repos and snaps at the same place with the same install procedure. Something I searched on my Mint for months. I always had mint-install, gnome-software and synaptic.
Installing apps is just so much better to use and Debian, which Mint uses as a backend ( yes it uses Ubuntu but Ubuntu is based of Debian ), did some weird and non acceptable decisions like kicking out Norbert Preining who helped Debian a lot and did nothing wrong in my opinion. Cause that we should leave Debian as fast as possible.
Updates are also easy to make on Arch / Manjaro. Everything works fine and Firefox has some cool skinning.
Zsh also has a great preconfig. I used Zsh on Linux Mint some time ago but didn't had time to configure it so I switched back to bash. Picom is also easy to install just from the software center pamac.

Bing Wallpaper Xfce - How to get new daily wallpapers in Xfce

Ben Herbst — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:30:33 +0000

Screenshot from https://github.com/German-git desktop using the Bing Wallpaper script

Gnome, Kde
So there are a lot of flatpak and snap apps for wallpapers which work on Gnome and Kde, but they almost never work on Kde except Variety which has some critical bugs on Xfce.

How I found a solution
I was searching for weeks time to time for a good and easy to use solution. I installed a lot of apps, but they all didn't worked fine and were broken for Xfce or Propriety Software like Wonderwall. Then I discovered a python script on Github which was created 6 days ago.

How to use it?
I just did git clone https://github.com/kazuki/xfce-bing-wallpaper in my terminal and then cd xfce-bing-wallpaper and python3 bing-wallpaper.py to execute it. 2 Seconds later the daily Bing wallpaper showed up on my desktop. After that I went to the Xfce-Settings-Panel and opened Startup-Applications and clicked on the plus button to create a new start app / script. Then I wrote there python3 /path/to/script/bing-wallpaper.py and at the next day after rebooting my machine I got the next daily wallpaper.
Thank you for creating this awesome script!

Forge: By far the best tiling extention for the Gnome desktop

Ben Herbst — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 19:36:49 +0000

I recently discovered the Forge extention for the Gnome desktop environment. Before that I had been using the Material Shell, but it had no dock, works ugly and buggy with other extentions etc.
Forge does not has this issues. It is well integrated into the desktop, it respects title bars and it works pretty well and fast, without issues. You can also say things like: Let window 1 and 2 be in a stack layout and window 3 is floating. You also don't have static layouts like grid or horizontal or vertical, you have "your own" layout with forge. You just need to move the window over other windows and you get snap assistants.

I tested the Forge extention https://github.com/jmmaranan/forge in Gnome 3.36 on Linux mint.

Why switch from Windows to Linux.

Ben Herbst — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 21:31:26 +0000

Many people ask me:

Why should I switch from Windows to the Linux.

And it is hard t o tell Windows users why to switch, if they never sawed anything with Linux.

What are the reasons?

Freedom, you can do whatever YOU want to do with YOUR system if you use Linux. You don't like that specific menu? Just go and replace it.
Tiling window managers, as our screens get bigger and bigger and we use more space then ever,we need to handle that space great. That's where Tiling WMs or Extentions like Forge come in: Your Windows gets automaticly tiled, no more draging Windows around or overlapping things.
** No Money waste**, on Windows you have some good Applications, like Todoist etc. on Linux you also have Todoist, but there is also Planner, it looks so great, acts like Todoist but is completly free. That's how you save a lot of money, as you don't have to buy commercial Applications as there are much better free and open source Applications on Linux. You can put your money into the hardware instead of the software.
Linux is the future, there are App stores since decades on Linux, where they are now new for Windows users, just like virtual desktops.
Darkmode, on Windows you have some System applications etc. that don't respect YOUR theme on YOUR operating system. On Linux you have tons of themes, not just dark and light, and when you set your gtk theme, all Applications and System applications will use that specific theme.
Security, Google and other websites choose to run on Linux, often just for security and maintance. There are not much viruses on Linux, you can safely download files again.

Where should I start when I want to learn Linux?

I suggest you to download the Linux Mint iso and follow the install instructions, it's quite easy. You can also get a power user on Linux Mint, as you can install things like gnome, kde and tiling window managers.

I hope you also learn Linux and like it.

Best open source todolist app and much more - Super productivity

Ben Herbst — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 23:09:13 +0000

What is Super Productivity?
Super Productivity - I like this app so much. It works on linux, windows, macos, android and ios and helps me getting better organised. I just write all my todos down there and they get synced from my pc to my phone and other devices. I can also look them up in the web, just as a browser tab while I am searching. It also supports note takeing, has a pomodoro timer and time tracking. It also has a habit tracker build-in, how nice is that. And the best part - it is FOSS, so I get all features for free, unlimited projects and I can read and modifiy the source code, hosted on github. It is avaible in the Microsoft store, so it gets updates automaticly but you can also download it from the website.

What I have tried before
I tried todoist, zenkit, any.do and much more before, but non of this apps get me. Thats why I got the neovim org mode plugin. But I had so much text then there in the .org file and it wasn't really organised, when you have 25 todo tasks a day. I have a backlog in super productivity and it is also synchronised with github issues and my ical calendar. It also supports gitlab and jira sync.

Best parts of the software
I think the best things of the software are:

Nice design, you can switch the wallpaper to your own and have a clean look
Good gestures for mobile
Great pomodoro features
Awesome habit tracker with click count and timer
Good sync
Free
Open source
And much more

Note
I will still use this software in the future and I plan to write an article on dev.to after using it one month, so you can see if I still love this wonderful software. I will also use it for school stuff.

Have a great day.