Linux on Adam Hacks

Revisiting My Automated Linux Backups With Restic

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 06:31:03 -0600

Last year, I wrote about how I automate my Linux backups with Restic and B2. Tl;dr, I used a shell script to automate creating my backups and sending them to Backblaze B2. The script runs via a Systemd timer and uses Helthchecks.io to alert me if something goes ary. A lot of what I describe in that original post still applies to the new setup, so be sure to check that post out before continuing with this one if you want all of the details of how that original setup worked.

Fixing Ghidra Annoyances on Linux with High-DPI Screens

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At this point, I’ve written quite a bit about how I’ve switched completely over to Linux as my primary OS. As with any change in workflow, this has required solving a number of annoyances on my new computing platform. Among the annoyances I’ve had to solve is getting Ghidra working smoothly for me.

The Problem

Let me start by explaining the problem. You see, I’m no stranger to running Ghidra on Linux. I’ve been doing it literally for years at this point. As of the past few years, I’ve simply used the Flatpak version of Ghidra. Typically, this works just fine. The problems arise with trying to use it on my desktop computer, which has two large, 4K screens connected to it.

How I Automate Backblaze B2 Backups with Restic on Linux

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Update

I’ve since made a number of updates to this setup to better align with the way my needs have changed. I highly recommend checkout out that post to see how I’m currently doing my Linux backups.

It has now been a few months since I wrote on my photography blog about finally removing Microsoft Windows from my photography workflow. Being that I was already a very heavy user of Linux who only really used Windows on one machine to run the Adobe suite, this has been a pretty painless transition for me. Beyond having to figure out how to make my Photography workflow function under Linux (which is still an ongoing process), I had pretty much everything figured out.

I've Been Trying Cosmic Desktop For a Month

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 15:52:57 -0600

It has been nearly a month now since System 76 released a beta build of Pop OS! 24.04 with their new Cosmic Desktop. Up until this point, I had largely avoided playing with the Cosmic Desktop as I’m generally not interested in putting alpha-quality software on my main devices. This seemed like a great time to slap the new Pop OS! onto my System 76 Pangolin laptop and give it a spin, however.

Improve Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse Support on Arch Linux

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Previously I had written about how I improved my Logitech peripheral support on PopOS using solaar and libratbag. This method worked just fine when I was running Pop, but I’ve recently switched to an Arch Linux setup on my main desktop. Unfortunately, this previous method wasn’t working for getting my Logitech MX Master 3 mouse fully working.

The Problem

Out of the box, the MX Master 3 mouse mostly just works with Linux. That is, until you want some of the extra buttons to function or to edit things like the mouse’s DPI. In this case, you’ll need to turn to some third party solutions to fully take advantage of the hardware.

Taking a Dive into Linux's /proc/kcore

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Proc filesystem (procfs) on Linux is quite an interesting thing to take a deep dive into. This virtual filesystem is generated on-the-fly by the Linux Kernel and contains all kinds of juicy information about the system. Two very interesting files that I recently found myself exploring are /proc/kcore and /proc/iomem.

Whilst poking around on a Linux system recently, I came across the kccore file for the first time. Up until this point, I remained blissfully unaware of what it was, but on this day I had reason to dig into it. Through my research I discovered that it’s possible to access the entire memory of a Linux system via this file. Being that this is an interesting proposition, I went ahead and developed a proof-of-concept tool to dump the memory to a file on disk.

Improving Logitech Peripheral Support on Linux

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout highschool and college I daily drove Linux as my main OS and loved it. As time went on, however, I began to get deeper and deeper into Photography, which inevitably lead me to becoming entrenched in the Adobe suite of tools. Despite my love for the Linux operating system, this lead me to begin daily driving Microsoft Windows.

Over time, however, Windows has only continued to get worse. The constant bloat, forced advertisements, and spyware-like behavior of the OS has made it nearly unbearable to use without investing a significant amount of time into customizing it. This, combined with Microsoft’s disastrous announcement of Recall and Adobe’s privacy policy shenanigans have finally pushed me over the edge.

Enable Fingerprint Authentication on PopOS

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I recently switched to trying out System 76’s PopOS Linux on my Thinkpad laptop. So far I am extremely happy daily driving this distro but, out of the box, it doesn’t seem to have built-in support for my laptop’s fingerprint reader. Luckily, it’s extremely simple to fix this.

Installing DWM on Ubuntu 20.10 LTS

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

DWM is a dynamic, keyboard-driven, tiling window manager developed by Suckless. It’s a great, light-weight window manager that perfectly fits the bill for my malware analysis lab machine.

Unfortunately, it isn’t a simple apt-get away in Ubuntu, but it’s still an easy process to get up and running. Here’s how it’s done.

Adding a Custom Launcher to Gnome Shell

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I have a long history of using Linux and it has always been my preferred operating system. Due to the needs of my photography workflow, however, I’ve been using Windows as my primary OS for the past few years. That’s until recently, however.

While I don’t quite have the photography workflow fully figured out on Linux yet, I’m back to using it as my primary operating system for the first time in probably 5 years. I went with my go-to setup of Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop (I could write a whole additional post as to why this is my go-to, but I digress).

One of the things I’ve found that I’ve needed to do a bit of while setting everything up is adding my own custom launchers to the Gnome applications overview. Like most everything else on Linux, this can be easily done by creating a file.

Let’s take a look!