One of my Gentoo make.conf files

 Please use cation if you use this

##  Find your CPU Make and Model

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Safe_CFLAGS

grep -m1 -A3 "vendor_id" /proc/cpuinfo

##  Find number of threads that your CPU has

nproc

### Configuring compile options

nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf

###For my AMD laptop

COMMON_FLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"

CFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"

CXXFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"

FCFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"

FFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"

FEATURES = "candy parallel-fetch parallel-install"

ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"

MAKEOPTS="-j16 -l17"

INPUT_DEVICES="libinput"

VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu radeonsi"

USE="X gtk -gnome qt5 -kde dvd alsa cdr -systemd elogind pulseaudio dbus daemon corefonts bluetooth"

Void Linux, Elogind, Pcmanfm Trash and Mounted Dirives in Sidebar, and Ignore Laptop Lid Closed

Please do your own research, following some strangers advice on the internet can end up with a broken computer.

With that said here's my two cents worth.

Elogind manages user logins and system power, as a standalone version of systemd-logind. elogind provides necessary features for most desktop environments and Wayland compositors.  This comes from the Void Linux "Session and Seat Management" section from the Void documentation website.

Elogind and Pcmanfm

Normally on a systemd Linux likeArch or Debian I would just install udiskie, gvfs, and ntfs-3g and call it good.  This would auto-magically have the trash folder show up in the sidebar.  I then would have udiskie -ta & in my autostart.sh program and this would take care of having mounted disk drives like thumbdrives show up in the sidebar.  Void is a little different.  I do the above but I need to do a little more. I installed elogind and enabled the service creating a symlink from the /etc/sv/elogind to the /var/service/elogind (sudo ln -s /etc/sv/elogind /var/service/).  You might have to start the service by running sudo sv up elogind.  If you are using window manager like dwm or bspwm and using a login manager like sddm or lightdm which uses /usr/share/xsession/bspwm you would simply change the line exec=bspwm to exec=dbus-run-session bspwm.  Using startx you would make the same change.

Elogind and Ignoring a Closed Laptop Lid

Again, normally on a systemd Linux install you would go to /etc/systemd/logind.conf and edit a line to HandleLidSwitch=ignore.  On Void using elogind you do the same but it would be editing /etc/elogind/logind.conf.  Just edit the line to HandleLidSwitch=ignore.

The Void part of this comes from The Void Linux man page for logind.conf.

Getting Synaptic Touchpad Working in Linux

Take these directions at your own risk.

Sometimes setting up a laptop on a "window manager (wm) only" Linux fresh install with no Desktop Environment (de) installed can be fun sometimes.  Things that we take for granted, let's say touchpads on our laptops can be hard to set up.  As the title says, let's get our touchpad working.

Like a good Linux user we go to the Arch Wiki, so let's steer our browsers over to the Touchpad Synaptics page to get things working.  This worked on both my arc install using my Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14ALC7 and also my Lenovo Thinkpad T520.

Using the xinput --list I get the following output:

[larry@void ~]$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                                    id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                   id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              id=12    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                       id=13    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                                 id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                      id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                           id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                                       id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=11    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                       id=14    [slave  keyboard (3)]

This identifies your touchpad among other devices on your laptop.  If you don't see your touchpad then you probably have other problems that I haven't had to deal with.  

Another tool that might help is use this to view all your input devices.  You will get a long list, too long for me to post.  The cat command simply prints out the contents of a file.

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

Here's the output of the above file that shows the information on the touchpad.

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0007 Version=01b1
N: Name="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input24
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event17
B: PROP=9
B: EV=b
B: KEY=6420 30000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800011000003

Following the Arch Wiki page in section 2.1I created the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf and pasted the following:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "touchpad"
    Driver "synaptics"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "TapButton1" "1"
        Option "TapButton2" "3"
        Option "TapButton3" "2"
        Option "VertEdgeScroll" "on"
        Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "on"
        Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "on"
        Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
        Option "CircularScrolling" "on"
        Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2"
        Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "40"
        Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinW" "8"
        Option "CoastingSpeed" "0"
        Option "FingerLow" "30"
        Option "FingerHigh" "50"
        Option "MaxTapTime" "125"
EndSection

Make sure you remove the . . . from what is listed on the page.  It's just above the "EndSection"

On my IdeaPad I had to remove more lines to get the speed correct.

A word of caution.  Typos or unknown commands can cause boot problems.  If you have a problem drop into a tty (ctrl + alt + F2) and remove the file and try again after you reboot.

I am just a hobbyist and this is mostly for future me in, well the future.

NixOS & I3 Gaps

 

AwesomeWM with ArcoLinux

 

 

I've got to where I am satisfied with my outcome on ArcoLinuxD installing Awesome WM on my old Acer laptop and it looks pretty good with the theming colors I picked out to go with the wall paper.  To me Awesome is one of the easier to work with if you use the ArcoLinux way to do your set up and then tweak things over the way you like it.  I've themed out Dmenu to match the powerline bar at top. 

 

Probably the only thing I don't like about the ArcoLinux way of install is the amount of packages it installs, about 800 more than what I have on my Arch I3 and the memory usage is higher, but it hasn't run like it's bloated.  Now all I have to do is upload my dot files to Github so I can use this again if I need to.  Other than that it's pretty vanilla and runs like Linux .  Enjoy!

i3 Window Manager With Arch

It's been a while since I've installed i3 window manager and this weekend is the first time I've got it installed in a way that I like it.  I say it's been a while but last week I tried to install i3 on an Arch install, Arco Linux, EndeavorOS and then settled on just installing on a vanilla Arch base.  I settled on Arch because something finally clicked and everything fell in place for me.  Usually I just have to settle with what I have installed and not be able to customize it to where the OS works the way I want it to.  Take something easy like the screen timing out and going black when you haven't touched your keyboard in 10 minutes, which makes a movie hard to watch if your screen goes blank every 10 minutes.  In a desktop environment like Mate you just make a change in the settings, but in i3 there are no GUI settings manager so to cure this I wrote my first bash script without having to use something someone else had already done and posted on the internet.  I'm sure it's been done before but everybody else's was more complex than I could understand, so I came up with a two line script.   The only thing I haven't set up that I need is Bluetooth, but I don't really have to have that.  If I lived in a world that I carried this laptop around I would need the power savings program installed to extend battery life, but all my laptops are old and the batteries aren't going to last long even with that.

I've got the i3blocks (the i3bar or the top panel) working with transparency, and the system is only 520 packages, with things like an office suite still needed to be installed, and my memory usage at idle is around 300MB but if I'm watching a movie on Amazon or another streaming service I'm only running around 1600MB, which is about 1000MB to 2000MB less than when I run Ubuntu Mate.  Mate has to run Gnome in the background and that can be heavy on the resources and on my machines that causes them to start lagging after a day or two,  Also on my memory usage I  haven't had to use any swap usage which I like.

Now my next project is to install i3 on my main box, but use Debian instead of Arch. just to see if I can.

Linux Mint 20 Ulylana Cinnamon Edition

In the past few months I've found that I really like Cinnamon Desktops.  Back in the beginning of Linux Mint, I never really felt the love when I tried LM, to me it lacked the ability to customize the way that I could on XFCE.  Starting in June of 2019 I finally got of Ubuntu and installed Manjaro XFCE and never looked back.  I've tried lots of different desktop environments and window managers and I discovered two things.  If I had the know how to better understand a  window manager then I would install the Awesome WM.  But for me even when I use a pre-designed WM it seems to be more work for the way I like my desktop to flow.

So to start over, I've really been living in two desktops since February.  Debian Cinnamon and Ubuntu Mate.  I did give KDE a go but I found I just liked these two the best.  Now I'm on Linux Mint 20 Ulyana Cinnamon Edition.  It's not perfect but then a gain there is no such thing as a perfect desktop. So first, here's my negatives.

First it's the community.  LM's Forum is outdated.  When you compare the Linux Mint Forum to Ubuntu Mate's Community page you see how outdated the LM's Forum page is.  It's easy to sit back and complain but compare the two and LM's forum is not for beginners.  LM's forum is huge, with over 16 million posts.  I doubt that Ubuntu Mate's community has 10 thousand posts, so this might be the reason why UM's community site seems better.  I had a problem and made a post and within a day the Linux Mint's Forum swallowed it up and digested it, probably never to be heard from again.  I don't blame Linux Mint for this or the users, it's just so big it's probably impossible for every user to get help.

Other than that I do have one big problem (for me) and one not as big.  The biggest is that when I start or restart my computer is my screens don't mirror.  I use a laptop that is always closed and a TV/Monitor.  On my monitor I get the top panel, which works and a black screen, I have to open the laptop and then close it and then I get my desktop.  Call it laziness but I've never had to do that on any other DE.  My other problem is the video is not as clear as it was on Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix.  Not bad but not as good.

My Independence Day Desktop, Linux Mint 20 Ulyana Cinnamon Edition

Now my likes.  I really like the LM desktop.  I don't have to go out of my way to customize it and it looks good.  I like the way Warpinator works, or at least I like the final outcome.  Unless there is a way to set permissions you have to okay the send and okay the receipt of the files.  Maybe I should learn how to remote into another desktop through the terminal and then I would be happy.  but until then Warpinator is pretty good.

My Desktop today, Linux Mint 20 Ulyana Cinnamon Edition

This is also the first time I've had a printer in a long time.  Linux Mint set it up okay but thankfully Epson had the drivers for the Epson Expression Home XP4100 printer and scanner online and the are just easy to install.  The printer driver is a deb file you just click and install and the scanner file is just a tar.gz file you extract and right click on the folder background and open in terminal (or you can CD to where the file is unzipped) and run sudo ./install.sh then enter your password and the driver will install.  After setting up the printer's wifi it was easy to set it up as a wifi printer and no wires.

 Rofi installed on Linux Mint 20 Ulyana Cinnamon Edition

 I did install Rofi as a launcher instead of Plank and I'm giving that a try.  The jury is still out on the launcher part of it but I don't like Rofi as a replacement for ALT-TAB window switcher.  To me it has an extra step by having to arrow down to select which window you want switch to.

I've been on Linux Mint for about a week and there is nothing that wouldn't keep me from leaving it, other than my own fickleness.  So until the next Big Daddy Linux comes with something I want to try then I staying here.

Neil Tyson Demonstrates Absurdity of "Flat Earth"

Not that I ever doubted the earth was round, but I believe Neal deGrasse Tyson nailed it on the head why flat earthers are either believers in freedom of speech or proof our education systems has gone in the tanks.

Do yourself a favor and subscribe to Star Talk along with 1.19 million other people and get some education

Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 20.04

I really enjoy 5:00 PM PDT every Saturday night by watching and sometimes participating in the Big Daddy Linux live YouTube stream every week.  In the past BDL would have a distro challenge and feature a Linux DE that would normally last 2 weeks but since the release of the new Ubuntu flavors they've changed it to a new DE every week to highlight all the Ubuntu releases.  Rocco, the host of BDL, does not make it mandatory to review a DE if you want to participate and the show also covers other topics that involves Linux.  I just want to say that the participants are normally very knowledgeable when it comes to Linux and most know the ins and outs of what makes a DE good.

This week the review is on Ubuntu Cinnamon 20.04 LTS, which I installed Sunday.  For me this release is probably the 3rd best release in the Focal Fossa releases, right up there with Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Budgie, but there are a three things that make Ubuntu Cinnamon stand out as a top notch release.  

First is that it is a really well done and put together version of the Cinnamon desktop environment.  The developers use version 4.4.8, which is a little behind the latest stable release of June 2020 which is 4.6.5 but expected by Ubuntu.  I don't think they change any of the DE's versions except on point releases. 

Second is the fact that this is not a recognized flavor or Ubuntu, meaning Ubuntu has not officially adopted Cinnamon but there a things that the developers have to prove out before this version will be one of the chosen flavors.  To me by the looks of this release they should not be far behind.

Third is that I am really impressed with Joshua Peisach, the lead developer of the project.  At this time he is still a teenager and seems to have real understanding of how a DE should look and feel.  With that said one person does not make a DE, it takes a community.

If you like Ubuntu and want a nice desktop like Cinnamon, then give it a try.  I know lots of people are down on Ubuntu but it works nicely.  Ubuntu Cinnamon is a nice move to people that like the Ubuntu side of Linux Mint, which is probably the most loved of all Linux DE's but always seem to keep themselves in the news.

C. J. Box, Long Range, Joe Picket Series Book 20 (2020)

I haven't posted any books since last September because of my health and just couldn't find anything that would get me excited about reading.  I would read during lunch at work but like I just said, everything seemed blah, and no excitement to really write anything about what I was reading and just couldn't write anything about what I was reading, which now I can't remember much of what I read.

But yesterday I changed.  I had to go someplace that I thought would require me to be left alone so I loaded the newest C. J. Box book, Long Range and I had to force myself to put it down.  One thing I love about about Box and hate it when a lot of other authors do is when they use too many paragraphs or pages to describe what is happening without getting into characters or the story.  Too many writers seem to add too much fill to a book by describing what is happening at that moment and time.  Box spends the 1st chapter describing 3 seconds, talking about the flight of a bullet.  Long Range, hence the title.

Box really brings Joe Picket to life, and between Cassie Dewell and Joe Picket he has 2 of the best book series out there.  Every book he writes you think this is the best in the series which only a few writers can accomplish.  So if you haven't read any Joe Picket novels, get Open Range, the first in the series.

All I have to say about this book is that it makes me happy that I started reading again.

Kubuntu 20.04

Kubuntu has come a long way since the first time I used it.  The first time there was no such thing as Plasma  with the release probably around KDE 3.5 around 2006.  A little later KDE 4.0 was released and both the KDE 3.5 and 4.0 were basically unusable on the hardware I had back then, needing more resources than my system could offer.  I would keep trying over the years and I never had any good luck with KDE matching up with the economical laptops that I would own over the years, even the 8 year old laptop I'm writing on now.

I had better luck with 19.10, the resources  were OK but it didn't matter if I was using Kubuntu or Neon I would always have a plasmasession failure, resulting with me having to log out and log back in until I could get a working desktop.  Part of the reason for the Kubuntu problem was that I was backporting into a more recent release of KDE which was version 5.16.

A couple of weeks ago I was keeping up with Big Daddy Linux and installed Lubuntu 20.04 and I just couldn't get it to work and look the way I wanted it so I installed Kubuntu 20.04 and basically it's been pretty flawless on this old laptop.  My only complaint is that I feel that I need to restart it every couple of days because the memory doesn't seem to clear like it does on my Ubuntu Mate 20.04.  My mouse pointer would start to drag and skip and then become unresponsive for 5 or 10 seconds and then continue to work okay just to repeat the problem again  a few seconds later.  A restart would correct this. I'm really liking Kubuntu now and I just might start using it as my main distro.  I've always liked Dolphin, Konsole and Latte Dock and I don't game so I don't need a lot of resources like an expensive CPU or graphics card so this little laptop keeps chugging along.  Here's a look at my current desktop.

Enjoy!

Screenshot Time

I haven't posted much in a few months so here's what I'm running now.

I've been running Ubuntu Mate 20.04 on my main laptop.  I really like it.  This is the first time I've installed a beta and kept it without re-installing the official release.  Mate stays running for days without the memory going crazy.  This seems to be the norm for me on other installs I've had.

Ubuntu 20.04.  I'm still not a gnome fan so this might be the next laptop I scrub.  I might keep it if I like Gnome Boxes or if VirtualBox runs better on this than it did on my past Debian or Arch Installs.  My only dislike is that Ubuntu seems to run heavier on resources, which seems to be the norm for Gnome DE's.

 My Arch Cinnamon install on my 3rd laptop.  I think Cinnamon is my favorite but I might re-install this again.  This laptop is going to be my Arch machine.

 Debian Bullseye Sid.  This is now off my main machine which now has Ubuntu Mate.  I had problems getting VirtualBox or VirtMan to run correctly.

Arch KDE, previously on my Arch laptop.

Except for the Debian wallpaper, I made all the other wallpapers, kinda. The Arch badge I found and re-used it but I did the logos for for Ubuntu and Mate from existing wallpapers but I did create them in .svg format so they would look decent when I change the size of them without pixelating them.

Is This THE Year Of the Linux Desktop?

The short answer is 'no' but thing are looking up.

This week the Linux community received two very promising news stories that have bloggers buzzing. The first is about how Ubuntu’s market place growth went up 599% to a 1.89% share of operating systems. Linux as a whole went up from 1.36% to 2.87% of the share. These results are for the time period between March and April 2020, when Ubuntu just had one of their most successful point upgrades in their history.

The other side of the coin is that MacOS Catalina jumped from 3.41% to 4.15% which is a huge jump for the Apple MacOS as well. I bring this up is because people believe the reason for the jumps in Linux and MacOS is because of the end of life of Windows 7 in January 2020. It could be but there are lots of other things to look at.

Windows 7’s EOL might have been part of the reason but Windows is starting a gradual decrease in market share that will continue. More and more people are turning to more portable systems like Android tablets and Ipads and less to laptops as an everyday home appliance. Sure the Microsoft Surface is in this group but they were a little late getting to the show and this will hurt them. That is hurt them at the home level. The corporate world might be a long time from switching from Microsoft and more and more corporations are switching to Apple. Google Chromebooks will gain more due to use in the educational fields and with people moving from school to corporate jobs, are they going to stay with Chromebooks or are they going to switch to Macs (I’m old school so when I say Mac I mean any Apple OS in general) or to a Microsoft Surface? The thing that hurts Linux is that comparable systems is the availability and when they are available how do they stack up to the price of the others? For Linux, things like battery life and NVIDIA drivers are problems that are being resolved and just now coming into the market but you have to pay dearly for them. Also the difference in operating systems will have people that have been on Windows their whole life don’t want to learn new software.

As for software on Linux, one of the three biggest drawbacks might have been solved. One Ubuntu developer is running Microsoft Office on his Ubuntu computer, per this Twitter post, but will it be something that will be a workable solution for everybody? Yes, you can use the web based Office 365 on about any system but people really want Office on their computer, not on a cloud. But I expect that will change.

Another problem with Linux is the lack of Adobe support. Linux users say there are plenty of solutions that you can use, both free and proprietary but the problem with these is that you really cannot collaborate with people using Adobe Suites. Going back to Office 365, Microsoft will probably drop the installed version and move everything to the cloud. Adobe has proven that corporations will pay subscriptions for software, be it monthly or yearly and that will be more profitable for them in the long run, eventually only supporting one release and doing updates that will mean the only way to get up to date software is by subscriptions, and with all the collaborations between different companies on the same projects happen, then people will have to pay subscription fees to be able to keep competitive. Microsoft will be following this business model, it’s just a matter of time.

The third biggest drawback for Linux is gaming. This seems to go hand in hand with the market share. The only way this can be overcome is to get the market share up to around 5% and then that would put them around the same place Apple is in gaming. Not 100% but probably around 90%. This will in time come around, but probably not in the near future.

Even if Microsoft does something weird, like switch over to the Linux kernel it probably wouldn’t help Linux that much in the beginning. I bring this up because Microsoft will probably in the next few years switch over to the Linux kernel. It will be a locked down OS comprised of proprietary code surrounding the kernel, similar to Android but I just see Microsoft heading in that direction. I base this on the Microsoft / Ubuntu collaboration with WSL and also their dropping their Edge browser as we know it today to a Chromium based browser. Add this to more and more programs becoming cloud apps along with the fact that internet connections are a standard for life just like electricity, water and sewage and it does seem it will happen.

I said two things and never got around to the 2nd so here I go. Lenova will come out later this summer with a line of laptops that will be shipped with Fedora 32. This isn’t a stretch to add all this up, with Lenova buying the IBM computer laptop line a few years ago along with IBM now owning Redhat or RHEL and keeping their relationship with Lenova. Naturally the only way for Lenova to do this is to have a demand before they start offering these laptops, even though Lenova has been supporting Linux for a few years. Now add Dell into the mix with their Ubuntu computers. Neither company is making a special laptop for Linux, just re-tasking parts of their line and putting a Linux OS on them for the masses to buy. But this again goes to pricing. These are not entry level laptops. These are top of the line with cutting edge hardware that has been tested with Linux. My guess the pricing starts around $1200 for an entry level Linux OS computer and then the top tier lines probably $3500 or more, depending on upgrades. These are laptops that I am talking about. Towers are available at Dell. The laptop prices will put you in line with an Apple laptop so what would a Windows or Apple user buy for the same amount of money. Then there are companies like System 76 here in the US, that offer top of the line computers, but they don’t come cheap. So this adds to a whole new problem, price. Have casual users (hobbyist like myself) been priced out of buying a new laptop with Linux preinstalled on it?

All of this is my speculation, ramblings of an old guy that will probably never buy another new laptop or tower in his life. For me, this is what Linux is all about. Taking hardware and running an operating system that I choose, an operating system that I either install in a terminal like Arch or Gentoo, or if I run a live USB and install Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora, Debian or OpenSuse. Full disclosure I’ve never tried Gentoo. That will be a summer project.