I will frame the question in terms of a specific C# objective that I am working on right now but I imagine the question is a pretty general one related to the Dunning-Kruger effect, in a way - how do you know how to build an application when you don't know all the issues you are supposed to prevent?

There is a message hub and I am developing a consumer for it. The original plan was to just create a few background services that get initialized alongside the application, that have a loop to load new messages/events and then process them.

Some time has passed and it feels like I am knees deep in Wolverine, Quartz, Hangfire, MassTransit, transactional outbox and all manner of different related things now. The potential issues are dealing with downtime, preventing loss of messages by storing them in a separate table before processing them, and everyone on the planet has a different idea on how to prevent and solve them and none of them sound simple and straightforward.

Honestly at this point I don't know enough about which problems are going to appear down the line and if I need to use third party libraries, but I am guessing they exist for a reason and people aren't supposed to just manually create their own amateurish implementations of them instead? But how do you know where to draw a line when you don't know exactly the problems that you are supposed to be solving?
What are the problems with having a table for the message queue over a whole 3rd party library for it, or what's wrong with the MS BackgroundService class? How are you supposed to know this?

I'm a bit confused whether I'm doing this right because every resource I google for has a different way of setting it up.

Some of them initialize the dbContext right in the test class, some do in the WebAppFactory's ConfigureServices (or is it ConfigureTestServices?).

Some do it in the IAsyncLifetime's InitializeAsync, some do it as a dependency injection and other examples just put it as a member variable in the factory.

I don't wanna code dump my project here and ask for someone to solve it but I am not sure anymore what to do. My current attempt is using an sqlite database and it is breaking when I try to run all the tests at the same time due to this.

Makes sense since they are all using the same db in this case so I tried following a guide and just letting them use the :memory: one but that one, for some reason, doesn't seem to initialize the database at all and tests fail because the database doesn't have any tables.

I also added a CollectionDefinition with an ICollectionFixture for each individual test class (one per controller so far) thinking this might cause each test to have its own separate database (or factory?) but that didn't really do anything.

I'm hoping someone experienced can probably immediately recognize what am I missing, or at the very least give me a solid resource that I could read to figure this out, but any help is appreciated.

I've been migrating to linux recently and next headache on the list are my starr apps (sonarr, radarr, etc). On windows I just had them installed as background services but I wanted to give (rootless) podman a try on linux since everyone kept recommending it and saying how much better the experience is than on windows.

Anyway, I've set everything up and some of the services work, but specifically sonarr and radarr can't write to the main media folder with the error: Folder '/data/media/tv/' is not writable by user 'abc'

So, first of all, I didn't make user 'abc', it is some internal docker/podman/starr user allegedly and it's supposed to be mapped to my real user, which I did by providing the PUID=1000, PGID=1000 env variables.

Second, I tried to give read and write permissions to everyone for the placeholder folders but it didn't change anything. I don't think this is the issue since other services like the one for sabnzbd or jellyfin had no problems using folders I created.

Googling for the issue brought up some topics about NFS shares but I don't know anything about this - this is not a NAS or even some external drive, it's just podman installed on fedora.

Any help is appreciated, here's a pastebin of my compose file if it's relevant https://pastebin.com/uX9Saqvj

I could swear that my mouse is lagging on my second monitor but I don't how how to actually "prove" it, if there's even a way. I am dual booting windows with fedora workstation gnome and there is a noticeable sluggishness to my mouse control whenever I switch back and forth, but only on the secondary monitor. It is slight but it's messing with my muscle memory and constantly making me overshoot clicks and buttons. The main display seems to be fine, or at least it's less pronounced due to higher monitor refresh rate.

Is there any way I can measure it objectively and find the root cause? A diagnostic tool or an app that could test if something is wrong? It's a recent fedora installation and I've gone through all the nvidia driver and media setup steps at this fedora post-install guide but honestly I don't even know if this is a fedora, gnome, driver or wayland issue (or something else completely)

Dumb title but I didn't know how else to put this into words, bear with me for a sec - I am not just looking for the definition.

Years ago I tried Ubuntu which used GNOME and assumed that its desktop layout was "the default" GNOME. I later tried PopOS which also uses it and it was the same, and when eventually I installed Mint I saw that it's still fundamentally the same with some slight tweaks or different tools.

Well, few days ago I installed Bazzite (Fedora) which is also GNOME. It doesn't look anything like anything I've seen before, either in terms of mindset or technical layout. I've gone from an admittedly old-fashioned, but efficient and reliable!, layout and workflow to something that reminds me more of an apple product - its stylish, minimalist yet inefficient and utterly frustrating to get anything done with because of how opinionated it is.

When searching for common problems I often found comments saying stuff like "but try it out! it's in the spirit of gnome, it takes a while to get used to it but the philosophy is valid" and frankly I don't understand anymore what exactly gnome is and what are its design principles, if there even are any and every distro just does whatever the f it wants and call it "a gnome experience".

I need to remote desktop connect to a windows PC on a local network. This works flawlessly when done from my windows PC but I'm having issues on Linux Mint.

I'm using Remmina since it was the most common answer to a linux RDP client. I imported the RDP file from windows but I also created a connection with manually filled info.

First issue is that linux can't connect to the machine by its name - on windows ping MYPC-321 works, on linux mint it throws an error. However, ping MYPC-321.local does work, but if I try to use that as the address in Remmina, it fails again. Is there a way to connect using just name since I dont want to have to recheck the IP address every day?

But let's say this is for now resolved if I just use the local IP address. The second, main problem, is authentication. No matter what I put into the username and domain fields of Remmina's authentication GUI, it always instantly fails and Remmina reloads the screen without giving me any error. The credentials are the same as when connecting from the windows PC (although I dont have to specify the domain there) so I have no idea what could be the problem here.

Is there something else I'm missing, something fundamentally different about how this works on linux? I wasn't expecting for such a simple and straightforward thing to instantly cause issues.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/18636248

I've always approached learning Linux by just diving into it and bashing my head against problems as they come until I either solve them or give up, the latter being the more common outcome.

I wouldn't take this approach with other pieces of software though - I'd read guides, best practices, have someone recommend me good utility tools or extensions to install, which shortcuts to use or what kind of file hierarchy to use, etc.
For example, for python I'd always recommend the "Automate the boring stuff with Python", I remember learning most Java with that "Head first Java" book back in the days, c# has really good official guides for all concepts, libraries, patterns, etc.

So... lemme try that with Linux then! Are there any good resources, youtube videos, bloggers or any content creators, books that go explain everything important about linux to get it running in an optimal and efficient way that are fun and interesting to read? From things like how the file hierarchy works, what is /etc, how to install new programs with proper permissions, when to use sudo, what is a flatpak and why use it over something else, how to backup your system so you can easily reconstruct your setup in case you need to do an OS refresh, etc? All those things that people take for granted but are actually a huge obstacle course + minefield for beginners?

And more importantly, that it's up to date with actually good advice?

I've always approached learning Linux by just diving into it and bashing my head against problems as they come until I either solve them or give up, the latter being the more common outcome.

I wouldn't take this approach with other pieces of software though - I'd read guides, best practices, have someone recommend me good utility tools or extensions to install, which shortcuts to use or what kind of file hierarchy to use, etc.
For example, for python I'd always recommend the "Automate the boring stuff with Python", I remember learning most Java with that "Head first Java" book back in the days, c# has really good official guides for all concepts, libraries, patterns, etc.

So... lemme try that with Linux then! Are there any good resources, youtube videos, bloggers or any content creators, books that go explain everything important about linux to get it running in an optimal and efficient way that are fun and interesting to read? From things like how the file hierarchy works, what is /etc, how to install new programs with proper permissions, when to use sudo, what is a flatpak and why use it over something else, how to backup your system so you can easily reconstruct your setup in case you need to do an OS refresh, etc? All those things that people take for granted but are actually a huge obstacle course + minefield for beginners?

And more importantly, that it's up to date with actually good advice?

I understand the basic principle but I have trouble determining what is the hard line separating responsibilities of a Repository or a Service. I'm mostly thinking in terms of c# .NET in the following example but I think the design pattern is kinda universal.

Let's say I have tables "Movie" and "Genre". A movie might have multiple genres associated with it. I have a MovieController with the usual CRUD operations. The controller talks to a MovieService and calls the CreateMovie method for example.

The MovieService should do the basic business checks like verifying that the movie doesn't already exist in the database before creating, if all the mandatory fields are properly filled in and create it with the given Genres associated to it. The Repository should provide access to the database to the service.

It all sounds simple so far, but I am not sure about the following:

• which layer should be responsible for column filtering? if my Dto return object only returns 3 out of 10 Movie fields, should the mapping into the return Dto be done on the repository or service layer?

• if I need to create a new Genre entity while creating a new movie, and I want it to all happen in a single transaction, how do I do that if I have to go through MovieRepository and GenreRepository instead of doing it in the MovieService in which i don't have direct access to the dbcontext (and therefore can't make a transaction)?

• let's say I want to filter entries specifically to the currently logged in user (every user makes his own movie and genre lists) - should I filter by user ID in the MovieService or should I implement this condition in the repository itself?

• is the EF DbContext a repository already and maybe i shouldn't make wrappers around it in the first place?

Any help is appreciated. I know I can get it working one way or another but I'd like to improve my understanding of modern coding practices and use these patterns properly and efficiently rather than feeling like I'm just creating arbitrary abstraction layers for no purpose.

Alternatively if you can point me to a good open source projects that's easy to read and has examples of a complex app with these layers that are well organized, I can take a look at it too.

Let's say I am making an app that has table Category and table User. Each user has their own set of categories they created for themselves. Category has its own Id identity that is auto-incremented in an sqlite db.

Now I was thinking, since this is the ID that users will be seeing in their url when editing a category for example, shouldn't it be an ID specific only to them? If the user makes 5 categories they should see IDs from 1 to 5, not start with 14223 or whichever was the next internal ID in the database. After all when querying the data I will only be showing them their own categories so I will always be filtering on UserId anyway.

So let's say I add a new column called "UserSpecificCategoryId" or something like that - how do I make sure it is autogenerated in a safe way and stays unique per user? Do I have to do it manually in the code (which sounds annoying), use some sort of db trigger (we hate triggers, right?) or is this something I shouldn't even be bothering with in the first place?

Let's say I have a method that I want to make generic, and so far it had a big switch case of types.

For an simplified example,

switch (field.GetType()) {
case Type.Int: Method((int)x)...
case Type.NullInt: Method((int?)x)...
case Type.Long: Method((long)x)...

I'd like to be able to just call my GenericMethod(field) instead and I'm wondering if this is possible and how would I go around doing it.

GenericMethod(field)

public void GenericMethod<T>(T field)

Can I use reflection to get a type and the pass it into the generic method somehow, is it possible to transform Type into ?

Can I have a method on the field object that will somehow give me a type for use in my generic method?

Sorry for a confusing question, I'm not really sure how to phrase it correctly, but basically I want to get rid of switch cases and lots of manual coding when all I need is just the type (but that type can't be passed as generic from parent class)

To clarify, I mean writing scripts that generate or modify classes for you instead of manually writing them every time, for example if you want to replace reflection with a ton of verbose repetitive code for performance reasons I guess?

My only experience with this is just plain old manual txt generation with something like python, and maintaining legacy t4/tt VS files but those are kind of a nightmare.

What's a good modern way of accomplishing this, have there been any improvements in this area?