Comment by eggy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eggy | Hacker News Reader

I have a Lenovo T430u running Kali, and it is rock solid. I love the keyboard, and I use the TrackPoint for CAD work in FreeCAD. I never feel like it is going to slip from my hands when I pull it from my backpack. It is so easy to open up, that I open it twice or more a year to clean out the fans, which are usually clean anyway; I like seeing the internals like a car mechanic who likes to check under the hood ;)

I considered the Lenovo Carbon X1, but it is pricey, doesn't have a number pad, and is at the ultra-slim form factor of a MBP or other similar notebook form factor.

The Lenovo T580 has the num pad, but the graphics card is the NVIDIA MX150, a mobile but faster version of the GeForce 1030. Not really an issue for me, but my son's Lenovo Yoga came with a 1050 two years ago.

Anyway, I've owned all sorts of notebooks, including MBPs, and have found the Lenovos to be my workhorses, and getting out of my way to get things done. Yes, the battery is only 4 to 6 hours, but for me, even traveling and living all over the world, it has never bit me work wise, only when playing.

Why in God’s name are you using Kali as a daily driver? Anyone who does this has no idea what they’re doing. Kali is made exclusively for pentesting, with a modified and insecure kernel specifically for running certain pentesting apps better.

Can't you tell? he's hacking e-corp

I still haven't watched the show. Is it good?

By far the best onscreen „hacking“ I know of. He does use Linux Mint as daily driver though...

Definitely going to binge watch soon. I have thought of using Redox and writing my own tools. An obsucre OS, but still running across interent/ethernet...oh, wait, spawn a drone node on a Windows machine using MOSREF/Wasp Lisp in Rust or Shen (shout out to doublec/sdunlop!) [1,2]

[1] https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/02/19/spawning-windows-comman... [2] https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp/releases/tag/v0.8

And what have you found to be the issue(s) with running Redox as your OS?

I am not using Redox. I am looking into it currently for its potential of easily porting standard utilities and other programs.

I thought he was a KDE fan

https://youtu.be/_cjfvH9UekA

When does he say that he uses Linux Mint?. From what I've seen, his desktop looks like Gnome 2 with a dark theme, or a heavily modified Gnome 3.

I liked it initially but the later episodes of the first season go off into la-la land which didn't do it for me. Haven't watched the second season.

I think it's great, but the show changes a lot from how it starts off in the beginning, which understandably puts off a lot of people who were in love with the early bits.

Your username matches your reactive, hyperbolic and concerned response. I never said daily driver. The T430u is only one of my many laptops, and I have been coding and hacking, since the 70s. I was running MkLinux on Apple PowerPCs in the mid-90s, early Linux distros thereafter. I did some binary analysis and disassembly work back then, and still dabble, as well as other activities that make Kali a great system for this laptop and for what I use it. I also run Windows 10, Ubuntu, Minix, and MenuetOS on other systems, so don't worry.

AFAIK the Kali kernel is Debian unstable modified to allow wireless tools like aircrack-ng suite to do injection and other fun things. So it's just as insecure as any bleeding edge nix, the risk factor really depends on what packages you install and services you run. I wouldn't really recommend it as a daily driver either, but I also wouldn't frown on someone who does.

I've as well always been happy with Lenovos. I'm currently using an X1 Carbon (4th gen, FHD screen, ~6-7hrs battery) and a P71 (4k screen, in-built nVidia disabled, ~4-6hrs battery) and their fans run only when I'm stressing the CPU (e.g. compiling) and even then I only hear the flow of the air.

I would like to try an X1, but I think the P71 is more my speed. I wish they offered an X1 with the same rubbery feel as the T430u I am using now. I am not a fan of low-frictive surfaces, since my nerves are shot in my left hand, and my right is very insenstive, which has lead to me dropping things lately.

Just some small warnings:

the P71 is very bulky (somehow more than how it looks in the pictures) and its case feels a bit cheap (the case is "real" plastic and if you tap on it below the keyboard it really makes the sound of an empty plastic case) => personally I expected a bit more as it's not cheap (the components I chose are basically the cheapest ones with the exception of the 4k panel and the backlit keyboard).

Additionally some weeks ago, while I was typing, the backspace and "t" keys stopped working out of the blue => I switched the laptop off but 1 day later the keys were still not working => I then opened the laptop and extracted the keyboard (veeery easy - compliments Lenovo) to read the model number to order later a spare part, touched a bit the connector cable of the keyboard and after putting all back together they keys magically started working again.

Saying all this just because I have the feeling that overall it could be that in the case of the P71 the quality might be a bit lower than what's otherwise the case for other models. Cheers.

Thanks a lot. I really prefer the solid feel of my T430u, so I will probably go with trying an X1 for once, or the smaller P51 I believe.

How did you learn freecad? I really want to switch to it from auto desk inventor but have spent hours messing around and can't even make a cube. The YouTube videos I was watching assumed I knew too much.

Same here, glad I am not alone. I wasn't sure if I had a bad build or something so I built it from source but even then I couldn't get it to work.

I use Autodesk Fusion 360, which if you are a startup or business making less than a certain amount of money is free to use, and it now includes what were once extras: analysis (FEA), machining, and other features. It really is amazing.

I use FreeCAD, since I have been familiar with it for years. It was once clunkier and had less features, but now it can be used for a lot of the things I need to do.

For a quick start in making a cube, make sure you are in the correct workbench Part or Part Design in the tutorial. The only two issues I have are that it is difficult to interface with clients that use Autodesk, Solidworks, or Rhino products. I have done FEA with the Calculix backend in FreeCAD, and used Paraview to create my FEA pictures for reports. If you know Python, you can even create a cube in the console below. Check out the scripting tutorials. I am not a fan of Python, but I use it in FreeCAD and Blender3D.

You use kali as a daily driver? Wow.

Do you use a non-root account?

It's not my daily driver. See my detailed response above.

Lenovo/Thinkpad + Kali sounds like a match made in heaven. May I ask what wifi chipset is on board? 'lspci | grep Network' should show it. The product page just says a/b/g/n which isn't terribly useful.

It's a 2013 T430u with an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 chip. It only supports 2.4 GHz, and not 5 GHz. I use a second, external USB WiFi dongle for Wireshark and other uses. It's six years old and great to use for more than I thought it would be.

What WiFi dongle do you recommend for good Linux wireshark support?

If you’re looking for something bigger for aircrack etc I use al alfa networks “AWUS036NHA” which is 5dB and you can pick up off amazon for about 30 euro.

For normal dongles a search for “Anadol Gold Line Wifi AWL150 Micro 150Mbit/s USB WLAN S” shows the one I use in various bsds/linuxes with no problems.

Both re0/run0 chips.

It depends on your needs and budget. I picked up a Netgear dongle years ago for $25 that still works fine. Just Google for your linux distro, netgear, and wireshark to find any gotchas.

It all depends too if you are in managed mode or monitor mode. See this: https://github.com/nmap/npcap/releases

Here's some more info. on modes and your capture setup: https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/WLAN/CaptureSetup/WL...

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