Random Thoughts

It's been a while since I've posted so this is an amalgamation of things that have been happening.  First of all, I now have a MacBook Air and the adjustment has been minimal.  All my Linux desktops have sort of been modified to have a quasi-OSX like setup with the arrangement of the close, minimize, maximize buttons.  At worst case, the terminal gives me back that Linux touch and gives me a lot of power back when OSX's UI fails me.

I love the touchpad gestures.  It's probably the most unique aspect of OSX.  Taking the cool computing ideas from Linux and giving it that Apple take on things gives me a good perspective on what can be done to make desktop computing more efficient.  That being said, I just really don't like the regressions that happened.

Getting my PS/2 keyboard with the USB converter to get recognized in OSX is mindbogglingly difficult.  I scoured multiple websites screaming at me the words: "No, it doesn't work." But I refused to believe.  It turns out that the solution is to turn off my MacBook and plug the keyboard in while the device is turned off.  Why?  I don't know.  If the keyboard is supported, why on earth would you want to make it harder to support such devices?

The USB ports are way too few and the Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) really blows here.  Suddenly, I can't use the extra monitor sitting here and I have to buy some fangled adapter to get it going (It's on the way...).  Lastly, the SSD drive is way too small, but that's to be expected.

Despite all of this, I am at peace with the Mac.  It's a nice device and gives me more experience as far as using other computing environments.  All that being said though, my next laptop will definitely go back to Linux.

Next stop, I reformatted my HP laptop that was running Linux Mint.  To be honest, I had been very disappointed with Linux Mint's performance here.  By the time I reformatted it, it had slowed down to a crawl on boot and on GDM login.  It has never ever happened before in any Linux desktop I've used and I have gone through quite a bit.  I tried to analyze the boot sequence and the GDM login process but to no avail.  It was just pitiful to see Linux perform this bad.

I installed Linux Mint 17.3 and that was a mindboggling choice.  The boot was as bad as when I had the bloated Linux Mint 17.1 install.  I was willing to forego that to see what the desktop had in favour.  Secretly, I hoped it would just simply disappear.  When I setup fglrx, I noticed that running amdconfig wouldn't detect any proper supported GPU (Mine is Radeon HD 7670M) which prompted me to look for the xorg version.

Linux Mint 17.3 runs on xorg 1.17.1 which seems to be .1 version above the latest fglrx version from AMD's site.  So I figured I should just ditch this.  I went back and reinstalled Linux Mint 17.1 on the HP Laptop.  I also installed fglrx and not fglrx-updates (which didn't work the last time I tried it).  After running amdconfig, I am treated with the same error which boggled my mind.  I checked xorg and the version was 1.15.  So, NOW, I'm really confused!

I rebooted anyway and fglrx seemed to load right.  I installed cairo-dock and the rest of my usual setup and everything seems set.  For some reason, Linux Mint 17.1 boots up faster than Linux Mint 17.3.  As long as it doesn't bog down, I can live with this.

Speaking of fglrx, I was also reading up if amdgpu and amdgpu-pro will have support on my Radeon GPU.  I think 7670M is still Southern Islands and that support 'should' be coming in the future.  Cross fingers!

Missing Caption and Dialog Box Messages on Cairo-Dock

I've been using Linux Mint 17.1 for quite a bit and its configured to using the fglrx driver.  When I first installed Cairo-Dock as a way to emulate Ubuntu's Unity, there had been missing text and captions on several items in my menu.  It's bothered me but I've tolerated it for a long while till I had had enough and did some research on it.

This thread gave me a hint that this is a known issue and that setting the font may fix it.  The suggested font to use was Ubuntu Mono 12 but that didn't work in my case.

By right clicking the cairo-dock, you can configure the Dialogue Boxes and Captions.   You can set the custom fonts to use for both.  For my Linux Mint, the font that worked was Andale Mono 12.  Now all the text appears.

My Eken Android Bootloop Fix

I want to keep this a little brief.  My Eken W70 was suffering from a bootloop issue after factory resetting the tablet.  This tablet had gone through a previous update to Jellybean although I suspected that the update was an unofficial one.  So, noting that if I don't fix this, I might as well toss this to the bin, I was emboldened into tinkering it in an attempt to fix it.

Linux Messaging Commands

It's embarrassing but I keep forgetting commands to communicate with other users logged inside the Linux server. So, I'm writing it all here for me.

• wall - broadcast to all logged in users.  This is the only one I always remember.
• write - sends a message to the specific user.
• tty - displays the ttyname of the users among other things.
• When writing a message, input, Ctrl+C, or Ctrl+D sends the message.

Sketchbook Random Thoughts

I don't do this as frequently as I should be, but ever since I picked up the ASUS Zenfone 2, I've been slipping in some time to practice a bit.  Nothing serious and they are pretty terrible works, but I like that I'm not using up paper on this.  So, on to some of my random thoughts while doing this latest piece...