Linux Life Episode 31
Hello ladies and gents and welcome back to the my twisted world of me and Linux. So as I said recently I have rebuilt an i7 desktop and for a few weeks I admit I was running Windows on it for a while. I have nothing against Windows 10 but after fighting with malware for a few weeks. I was getting tired of it.
I intended to dual boot the system with a Hackintosh system. Now I admit I have not used Clover for a while so I was willing to be forgiving to it as I had problems in the past. I hoped it had improved but apparently I was wrong. I installed a secondary 1TB drive into the machine so I did not interfere with the Windows installation. I had been messing around with certain games I could not play on Linux.
However I admit I screwed up the installation and formatted the wrong drive and wiped out the Windows drive (some would say no loss). Then when I installed the kexts (driver files for OS X I needed) Clover locked me out of the installation. This is why I stopped using it in the first place. I hoped it had updated and stopped doing that but apparently not.
So what has all this got to do with Linux I hear you ask. So with now no working Operating System as I had destroyed my Windows drive and the Hackintosh had failed I decided it was time to go back to Linux where I had less issues. OK, gaming was slightly limiting but to be honest I am not a huge gamer and playing these modern games realised a lot of them were not much cop.
Now I originally did not install Antergos on the machine because I was having issues changing from Nouveau to NVIDIA drivers which would not allow me to change the resolution of the screen.
Since then I have changed my video card connection. I was connecting the NVIDIA card via the VGA connector but I seem to get less problems using the DVI-D connector on the card. So I changed cables and now the issue seems to resolved and I can set my monitor to 1280x1024 which is the designated format for this Dell monitor I am using.
So as I had no OS I could get working I went through a few options. I looked at Druager which is a particularly new distro which is aimed at gamers. It has a low latency kernel in order to speed up response. Now I am sure this is handy but because its a new distro it still has a few bugs and the store was a bit dodgy. I did not like they were trying to create an interface that was very gamer orientated for example the start bar was about a third of the way down the page.. Now I am sure if you are a regular game player you think this is ideal. Sure it could be moved but that was their ideal position decision. Strange so after about an hour I decided it was not for me.
I then installed Linux Mint and while it is more than functional I think as I have got used to a rolling distribution many of the programs were way back and as soon as I had to start adding PPAs just to get things up to date. For all Mint 19 has this new rollback system I find it inconvenient.
So I downloaded Antergos again. Now I have documented many times for all I like Antergos. Cnchi its installer is very broken but once past it you never use it again. Some will give up at this point and to be honest I would understand if you did so.
It can be amazingly bad regarding things screwing up. So I can understand many who don’t like it and go elsewhere like Manjaro. however Manjaro I have explained my issues with it. However Antergos do keep trying to fix it, sometimes breaking it worse.
So I downloaded version 18.9 of the ISO and upon starting the installer it searches for an update to Cnchi. It found the update but as soon as the update went to run it crashed. I said I have had issues with Cnchi, so I immediately pulled up the terminal and attempted to run it in terminal.
The updated version of it (version 16.2) it seems to be missing certain archives. I install the ones it lists but still it is not working. I head back to the internet and find a solution after about ten minutes if searching the Github entries. It seems the guy has forgot to put the things in the PKGBUILD when compiling.
Now he realised that 10 minutes after I started the installer and provided a quick fix until he managed to put the package correct. So I actually managed to get the Cnchi installer running. Its bad when you have to search through bug reports to find a solution just to get the OS installer to work. but as I knew I liked Antergos I was willing to do so.
If I had been new to Linux I would have abandoned it long ago and gone onto something else. Put I persisted then it installed but due to me being so distracted I installed it with the Gnome desktop. i tried to switch to MATE by installing the certain files and changing the setup but the icons would not display so i must have missed a step or something.
So I had to reinstall it. Cnchi still had not been fixed so I had to run through the Live CD quick fix again but finally I got Antergos installed using the MATE desktop and everything was good. As I said earlier I have changed to the DVI-D connection so it defaults to 1280x1024 I did not even have to set it up.
Also the Cnchi setup included the option to install the NVIDIA driver automatically so saved me a lot of time having to download it and play with it. The reason why Cnchi had updates is 16.2 now includes a few more Window managers. It now included Deepin, i3 and Openbox which it didn’t before.
They probably have fixed it so it works now but I think I caught in while it was changing over. I eventually managed to get it installed and set about installing all the usual programs I use.
All was fine until I tried to install Shutter (which is a screen capture tool). Previously I had issues with Perl when trying to get to install from the AUR but they resolved that. This time I hit issues with two libraries that missing and would not download so I could not build Shutter first was Orbit2 (a CORBA client) and the next one was Libbonobo which used the Orbit2 library.
So I browsed around the Antergos forum to no avail for answers. So I had to figure how to install these libraries as the new ones did not want to install. Luck would happen and on Archive.org they keep an archive of old libraries from the Arch Linux set. So I managed to find older versions and install them using pacman.
Finally I managed to get Shutter to build but it was a nightmare that I had to search all over before I could compile a program that should have been reasonably simple. Now if this had happened to me at the beginning of using Linux say back at Episode 1 I would of abandoned trying to do it.
It’s funny I definitely have a much higher tolerance to dealing with errors which I didn’t have previously. Reason being I guess once its working it very rarely goes wrong. I tried other screen capture tools but I found Shutter the best so it was worth the hassle.
People say rolling releases break a lot. I have had a few programs cock up but nothing major. Even then it is normally fixed the next day so it is not a problem for long.
So now the i7 desktop is running Antergos which previously I could not really do. sure I could reinstall Windows but to be honest I really don’t have any desire to do so. I unlike many Linux users do not have an outright hatred for Windows it has its uses. But I admit I have less grief with Linux.
When it has its issues they can be harder to solve but nine times out of ten. Issues are very few and far between. Or if there is an update issue it’s solved quickly. Which is why I like a rolling release as opposed to the Mint/Ubuntu models.
I was trying to play All the Mods 3 on Linux but the Twitch program available for Linux does not include the Minecraft mod plugin. The FTB Launcher does not include All the Mods 3. Eventually I managed to use MultiMC 5 and by using a zip containing the list I have managed to get it running on Linux.
Anyway I think that’s enough waffle for this episode. So until next time... Take care.