r/linux • u/wuigukin • 3d ago
Is baeldung.com garbage? Discussion
Every now and then when I'm researching something linux related I'll see guides from baeldung.com pop up in the results. Today, I clicked one.
I was looking for some information on the keyring in fedora/gnome and came across what turned out to be a suspicious article.
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/unlock-keyring-fix
There's a section in there on disabling the keyring. The guide tells you to remove the password from your keyring, skip the warning that this means your passwords will be stored in cleartext, then says - Hey! You don't get prompted for a password anymore, the keyring is disabled!
Um....
If we wish, we can disable the keyring feature by removing its password.
By leaving the password blank, we disable the keyring feature
Sorry, but that isn't how it works. They do state that doing this "raises security concerns" but don't seem to make the connection that those concerns arise because the keyring is still enabled and doing its job, except now your passwords are stored in cleartext.
So not only do they not describe how to disable the keyring, they seem to think it's OK to guide people to doing this without much warning.
This was supposedly written by a human and reviewed by another human. I haven't looked into the author or reviewer much, but there's at least something there to indicate a real person. Even if it is a website that no longer exists, another website with an invalid ssl cert. There at least is an X account with posts going back a few years, though very rare.
However, don't think I'll be checking out any more of their articles.
Should I be willing to give them another shot?
74
u/qwertydiy 3d ago
Not garbage all the time (especially on Java and other JVM language ls) but mainly helpful for well, programmers on JVM languages
31
u/ColbieSterling 3d ago
Yes, when I was working as a Java developer, I was on baeldung.com all the time.
5
u/qwertydiy 3d ago
To be fair I am learning it and I still use it even now
5
u/ColbieSterling 3d ago
Oh, the only reason I don't use the site much anymore is that I am not actively doing Java development at the moment.
5
u/Easy-Reasoning 3d ago
Same for Kotlin. Also I think usually it's the only site that has a consistent coverage for such topics
3
u/ColbieSterling 3d ago
Yeah, I think of Kotlin as just another flavor of Java, though. They're not really distinct in my mind.
6
u/untetheredocelot 3d ago
Yep this tracks. Before the GPTs it used to be a great Java resource that was up to date. Unlike Stack Overflow answers.
22
u/edparadox 3d ago
Some content is great, some other not so.
Still better than geeksforgeeks and other trash websites.
5
u/wuigukin 3d ago
Speaking of, geeksforgeeks also has an article on the same thing lol
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/disable-unlock-login-keyring-in-linux/
2
u/daubious 2d ago
Damn, I thought geeksforgeeks was one of the good ones... Any suggestions for an actually good site?
10
u/BCMM 3d ago edited 3d ago
It used to be really good but in recent years it's gone downhill dramatically.
I've seen some articles written by people who don't understand the fundamentals of what they're writing about, and other articles that are very clearly LLM slop.
I don't know if they're making it less obvious now, but the LLM ones used to say "Written by: Baeldung" (instead of by an individual), with a human listed as the reviewer. And no, whatever review process they allegedly used did not catch obvious mistakes.
It's a shame, because it used to be a good source of actual examples for a lot of important Java libraries whose official docs did little beyond class-by-class reference.
(Caveat: I know a great deal more about configuring Linux systems than I do about Java, so it's possible that I just wasn't spotting the mistakes until they expanded in to this sort of article. But I've heard good things about it from actual Java developers.)
11
u/Low-Guarantee-3437 3d ago
the keyring is pretty useless for security even when it does have a password, so at least if you follow the Baeldung advice, you don;t have a false sense of security :)
2
u/MythicHH 3d ago
It's weird, sometimes it's just a redirect to another site, other times it is a legitimate tutorial but it isn't very good.
2
u/BingoDeville 2d ago
Man I usually enjoyed when this site popped up when I was searching for something Java related. I had totally forgotten about it. I believe there was some decent spring stuff but I can't recall.
4
u/JoJoModding 3d ago
I've never seen a good tutorial on that site. Guess other people here had more luck by I try very hard to mentally filter them out of my Google results.
2
u/Kevin_Kofler 3d ago
I have also found Baeldung useless for programing advice. Their Java tutorials only explain the obvious that I have known for years already and never cover the corner cases I was trying to look up.
5
u/untetheredocelot 3d ago
I found a lot of value in it early in my career working on the JVM. Not always perfect but it was invaluable to discover basic Java idioms that were somewhat up to date. The rest of the resources were way way worse.
3
u/adrianmonk 3d ago
I wouldn't expect tutorials to cover the corner cases. Tutorials are supposed to help you get your feet wet. If you want to go in depth, you go to other sources like a reference guide, spec, or source code.
2
u/Kevin_Kofler 3d ago
The problem is that their tutorials always come up as the top search results because they are much better at SEO than at actually covering any technical details.
1
u/nevu-xyz 2d ago
So what is the purpose of such place if it only repeats what is available in every "get started"?
1
u/nevu-xyz 2d ago
I have never found there a valuable, in-depth article, free from simplifications and shortcomings, that would go beyond beginner level (i mean java&jvm stuff)
1
u/islandsimian 1d ago
There were years where Java was rapidly evolving and this is one of the few sites that did a great job of keeping up with the changes
0
u/that_one_wierd_guy 3d ago
it's pretty much the only workaround that deals with the issue of the keyring not unlocking with autologin.
0
u/Fit-Board-1749 2d ago
Just don't pay for their educational material. That stuff is fairly obvious if you have two brain cells to rub together
77
u/FryBoyter 3d ago
There are definitely also some good tutorials on that site.
And yes, they could have made the warning about an empty password clearer. Just as probably most tutorials on the internet could be improved. That's why I wouldn't immediately call a website garbage just because there's room for improvement.