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DJ Ware - The CyberGizmo
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DJ Ware - The CyberGizmo

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DJ Ware

Technology did not begin yesterday.

CyberGizmo explores Linux, security, networking, servers, network storage, and modern computing through the lens of history, experience, and real-world architecture. Many of today's "new" ideas are not new at all—they are old lessons rediscovered, forgotten, or repeated.

Through analysis, storytelling, humor, and practical experience, I examine what works, what doesn't, and what we can learn from the past before making the same mistakes again.

Welcome to CyberGizmo.

DJ Ware
My VPN was up and my real IP was hidden, but websites could still tell what computer, operating system, and even GPU I was using. That's browser fingerprinting, and a VPN does nothing to stop it. 

I ran LeakBench privacy tests on browsers across macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux. In 25 of 31 runs, the browser still exposed a canvas fingerprint, even with the VPN working perfectly. The VPN protects the network. The browser decides what it tells the website. 

The biggest surprise came on Linux. The browsers that protected me best weren't the ones that scored highest. They were the ones that refused to play along: Mullvad Browser blocked the test's JavaScript entirely, LibreWolf threw away the requests, and Bluefin warned me before I could even install Chrome. 

Your browser has the right to remain silent. The best ones use it. 

00:00 - Intro
01:40 - MacOS
02:23 - iOS
03:01 - Android
04:39 - Windows
05:24 - Linux
10:11 - Wrapup
Fedora 45 Beta is here — but an operating system does not run by itself. It needs hardware.

So instead of doing another straight Fedora review, I installed Fedora 45 Beta on the Origimagic Comet Series C7 and looked at the relationship between the two.
BOSGame supplied this MiniPC to me at no cost in exchange for a review. They had no editorial control over this video.

Click here for the link to the Origimagic  Comet Series C7 : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGTS8YVK

Discount for my viewers
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR4TSF2N?th=1
Discount Code: T1VBYQU6

Deal Price: $299.99
Discount Code: T1VBYQU6
Start: October 6, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT
End: November 6, 2026, 11:59 PM PDT

In this review I test:
- Intel Core 3 100U performance
- 6 cores / 8 threads
- 16 GB DDR4-3200 memory
- the single-DIMM memory configuration
- internal PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe storage
- 2.5Gb Ethernet
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
- USB-C and Thunderbolt support
- real Thunderbolt storage under Fedora
- cooling and thermal behavior
- Fedora 45 changes under the desktop
- UnixBench and Phoronix benchmark results
- how the C7 compares with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 system
The Thunderbolt-marked USB-C port was tested with a real Thunderbolt 3 storage device. Fedora recognized it through boltctl, mounted it normally, and I successfully used rsync, BorgBackup and IOzone against it.
One of my pet peeves is hearing, “You should be using this distro.”
Software cannot run on your desk or your chair. It needs hardware.
This review is really about the marriage of the two.
Is Fedora 45 and the C7 a happy marriage?
I’m not ready to answer that yet. Fedora 45 is still in beta, so I’m waiting for the final release before I make that call.

Disclosure: BOSGame supplied the MiniPC at no cost in exchange for a review. BOSGame had no editorial control over this video.

Content
00:00 - Intro
01:21 - Can You Actually Live with these Two?
01:39 - What's Actually Inside?
03:33 - Does Fedora Feel Smooth?
04:19 - Does Everythnig Comment?
05:15 - Can it Keep Cool?
07:55 - What Changed in Fedora 45 Beta?
09:27 - Benchmarks
12:34 - Hardware + Software = Systems
15:13 - Can You Live With These Two?
Snapdragon Summit 2026 did not launch a new chip. X2 Elite and Extreme were announced in September 2025 and shipped in the spring. This week Qualcomm put Linux on the port list.

A year ago Cristiano Amon said Qualcomm would concentrate on Windows for now. September 2026: Linux is official, starting with X2 only. Debian by the end of 2026 — the image already used on the red developer laptops. Ubuntu certification aimed at the first half of 2027. ASUS dated the Zenbook A14 and A16. The X1 is not in that sentence.

I bought an ASUS Vivobook S 15, S5507QAD-PS96, Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, because ASUS looked first. On Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ARM: HDMI and multi-monitor work. Freedreno works, and is faster with the vendor firmware. USB-A works. Bluetooth audio works. Speakers do not — PipeWire sits on dummy. Fans move and never ramp. No RPM. Thunderbolt does not bind. 

With the blob pack, the USB-C fallback for a disk is gone. A CPU is not a platform.
Official means they will say the word and put dates on it. It does not mean the machine behaves like one product.

Contents
00:00 - Intro
00:55 - Snapdragon Summit 2025
02:28 - The X2 Promise
02:57 - Linux is Officially Supported on Snapdragon X2 Elite
06:56 - How Well Does the X Elite Work on Linux in 2026?
10:32 - What does Linux Support Mean to Us?
12:55 - Conclusions
14:01 - What Worrys me the Most
I started to make a video on Omarchy, but I discovered something that wasn’t asked by any Omarchy reviewer.

Who decides what your Linux screen is allowed to mean?

A window manager is a clerk. A desktop environment is a furnished office. 

X shipped a stack of manuals and said good luck. Vendors put badges on the clerk. Linux multiplied both churches. Neither won. Windows won — because Microsoft made the decisions and handed you Tuesday. Not efficient. Forty clicks or less.

Omarchy is a window manager on Arch. Wayland. Agentic AI on the session. That distro exists for people who want to explore local agents on Linux. Their goal. Not mine. 

I tried Hyprland for two months. It got in the way. I use a desktop environment because I want to get work done and because I prefer the mouse for navigation.

Contents
00:00 - Intro
00:36 - A Month Late
01:12 - Who Decides?
01:21 - Back Story
01:27 - PLATO IV
02:01 - 1983 Special Project
02:48 - Project Athenea
03:52 - twm
04:28 - ibm 3277
04:59 - ibm 3290
05:52 - Motif
06:00 - CDE
06:32 - The UNIX Wars
08:45 - CUA Model
09:13 - The Nice Thing abuot Standards...
09:43 - X11
10:36 - Desktop Environments
11:27 - Tiling or Dynamic WMs
11:34 - Dynamic WM
11:36 - Tiling WM
11:46 - KDE was first on Linux
12:20 - GNOME Announcement
12:50 - Who Won the War?
14:50 - My WM and Hyprland
16:27 - Omarchy
17:52 - Tying up some Loose Ends
19:29 - The AI Controversy
Ransomware did not start with Bitcoin. It started with a floppy and a Panama PO box.

IIn this video I show you the one tool which beats ransomware.

Homework: one folder that would ruin your month, copied to a disk you unplug.

Next: living off the land — stealing the same box with tools that already shipped with Linux.

1989 AIDS/PC Cyborg Trojan (Joseph Popp)
This is a demonstration on an isolated VM. Do not run destructive commands on a machine you care about.
Most people still treat a firewall like a front door. Lock it down, keep the bad stuff out, and call it done.

That model is incomplete.

In this video I walk through why “build a firewall from scratch” is close but not the right question in 2026, and what actually matters instead:

- The dual role of a firewall (ingress + egress)
- Why outbound control belongs at the edge
- How to approach default-deny without unplugging yourself
- Why high-value hosts still need their own controls
- A practical sequence that won’t drive you crazy

I’m not going to hand you a 200-line ruleset. I’m going to show you the architecture that makes the ruleset worth writing.

**Chapters**
00:00 - Intro
00:51 - Decade 1990
01:00 - egress firewalls
01:17 - packet filter firewalls
01:51 - Stateless Firewalls
02:31 - egress filters
03:19 - Unified Threat Manament (UTM)
03:30 - Threats ni 2026
03:39 - PROMPTFLUX and PROMPTSTEEL
04:07 - Checkpoint Says
04:28 - NGFW
05:10 - Another Way
05:41 - egress
07:23 - Nexus Says my Computer isnt Genuine
09:13 - nftables + egress
09:32 - PiHole and pfBlockerNG
12:43 - Egress Monitor
I’ve been using Linux for three decades (In November 2026).

Is Linux  perfect?
Is Linux Easy?
...and the lessons I finally learned.

In this video I walk through eight of them:

• Why I run different distros on different machines
• How I decide how fast things change
• Why I learn the operation instead of the command
• When I use the GUI and when I drop to the shell
• How Linux once showed me a project was going to fail — and I listened
• How to make Linux fit the job
• And why, after all these years, I’d still choose it again

It’s the hard-won perspective that comes from actually using the thing for a long time.

Timestamps 
00:00 - Intro
00:49 - Linux Gives Me Choices
03:42 - Decide How Fast Things Change
04:46 - Learn the Operation
06:23 - GUI and Shell
08:57 - I Can Build THings in the Shell
11:00 - Linux Let's Me See Hwat Happenning
15:55 - I Can Make Linux Fit the Job
19:50 - Linux Keeeps Me Learning
I tested ext4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS, and F2FS on the same hardware to answer a more useful question than simply, “Which filesystem is fastest?”

Instead of dragging you through 26 benchmark charts, I distilled the results into four real-world workloads:

Gaming • Workstation • Server • NAS

The testing includes small and medium workloads, single-user and multi-user behavior, and several different kinds of read and write activity.

But graphs are never the full story.

A filesystem may win a throughput benchmark while consuming more memory or CPU, behaving differently as the workload grows, or introducing operational tradeoffs that matter more than a few percent of performance. Your workload may also be very different from mine.

The workload model used in this video is new, and it needs more data points before I’m comfortable treating it as anything more than a useful decision-making tool.

So this isn’t “here’s the winner.”

It’s what do you gain, what do you give up, and which filesystem makes sense for what you actually do?

If you want to see the raw benchmark charts and the work behind the scoring model, let me know in the comments. I may do a behind-the-scenes or live session and go through the data.

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:24 - Methodology
00:54 - EXT Filesystem
02:12 - XFS
02:47 - BtrFS
02:58 - ZFS
03:58 - Test Machine
05:36 - WD SN850X Specs
05:59 - Which one Won?
06:07 - Use Cases
06:27 - Gaming
06:50 - Workstatoion
07:14 - Servers
07:33 - NAS
07:50 - Small File Size Performance
09:53 - Medium File Size Performance
11:37 - Wrapup
This Mini PC Idles at 4W… Then Hits 90°C (GMKtec M3 Pro + Aurora Linux Server Test)

Today I’m putting the GMKtec NucBox M3 Pro (32 GB DDR4-3200 + 1 TB NVMe) through a real server-oriented test using Aurora Linux — an immutable Fedora Atomic-based system.

GMKtec Official Website:
https://tinyurl.com/DJWarre-GMKtec-M3Pro

Amazon:
M3 Pro 16+512:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3HKXNKD?maas=maas_adg_AD875FB724D0CBA4A78526984D3B5F17_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas

M3 Pro 32+1:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLJSB6KC?maas=maas_adg_4CD62DC5193D5A71ACE6549FE5A73069_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&th=1

50$ OFF Code: M3PROKOL

We cover:
• Full Aurora Linux install as a headless server
• Phoronix benchmarks
• Detailed thermal testing with s-tui + stress-ng
• Real power draw numbers (idle & under load)
• Cooling behavior and recovery times
• A short post-mortem on the Void Linux + KDE attempt

Key numbers from this unit:
• Idle power: 3.3 – 4.4 W
• Full stress: 40 – 45 W
• Peak temperatures under load: 86–91°C (Thermal Max 100°C)
•  Metal case helps dissipates heat and aids in cooling
• Cool-down behavior:
   Distrobox: 4 minutes
   rpm-ostree: 2 minutes

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:18 - Testing GMKtec Nucbox M3 Pro and Audria Linux
00:42 - M3 Pro SPecs
00:55 - Test Methodology
01:11 - Specs
01:38 - GPU
01:43 - Expansion
02:10 - Portd
02:36 - Networking
02:58 - Dimensions
03:10 - Cooling
03:14 - Who is this for?
03:33 - Aurora Linux
06:33 - Benchmarks
08:08 - Summary of Benchmarks
08:58 - Conclusions
10:26 - Pros and Cons

Links:
• Aurora Linux → https://getaurora.dev

If you found this useful, drop a like and let me know in the comments what mini PC you’re currently running as a server or always-on node.

#GMKtec #M3Pro #MiniPC #AuroraLinux #Homelab #Linux #Server
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