#linux manjaro

[the-pink-hacker]

I am a Linux user, but I dual boot Windows. I keep saying to my self: “I can’t get rid of Windows just in case I need it.” It has been over 2 months since I last used Windows. I think I will be fine.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 67

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my ongoing quest regards Linux.  Well I did say I was getting frustrated with the slowness of Manjaro well due to having to fight with it virtually every time when I built something from the AUR.  I eventually had enough.  So now the i7 desktop is now running Archman Mate.

The problem with Manjaro as I said was it seemed to be sluggish to load, respond and generally work.  It did work but for some reason everything took far longer than it should.  Also building anything would be problematic.

I will explain what I mean.  Now Arch has a tendency to build from source which is not a problem.  However most Arch versions with the exception of Manjaro if they script is in the wrong order it will normally correct so it will be able to build the program.Manjaro will just stop dead make you find a series of libraries which itself could have made.  It's counter productive.  Now I know sometimes AUR scripts are not perfect but just installing say Fuse the spectrum Emulator.

It uses libspectrum now every other Arch distro I have used discovers this and build this first and then Fuse.  Manjaro just stalls, informs  libspectrum is needed and stops.  So now I have to go back to pamac install libspectrum first and now I can install Fuse.  I'm sure someone seems to think this is a good idea as you see what you need before building the program in question.

However I just need a program to work and find all these unnecessary install steps annoying.  If it needs such then like every other version out there install the library first and then build.  However it will stop warn and not install.

This is very much like the old issue I used to have with Debian when it will inform you of the dependencies but not where they are.  So you end up installing one library, then another, then another and still may not be close to being able to install the program you want.

It's inconvenient.  I really don't understand how Manjaro is listed and praised so highly.  I really don't.  I have found it slow, obnoxious and obstructive.  But for some reason people like it.  Well let's just say I don't.

If you like Manjaro that's your prerogative.  To be honest I admit I think I am pretty fussy about things.  This is why I have shifted many times and through many versions of Linux.

Don't get me wrong now I will at least attempt to see if their is a fix if there is an issue which previously I wouldn't.  Well I would but I have learned several things over time about symbol links going missing and how to sort them and that amending one or two files may be enough to save you having to totally reinstall the distribution.

As I have said before the reason why I use an Arch system over a Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora system is the applications are in a much more central location on Arch.  On the others you normally need to keep adding PPAs and pointing the distros to file servers you have no idea whether they are safe or not.

Admittedly several scripts at the AUR may not work so I'm not saying it's perfect but nine times out of ten I can get the programs I want either from the central repositories of  the distribution I'm using or the AUR.

Do they move their mirrors and files.  They probably do but that is sent with the updates normally so I don't have to manually enter the movements.

Obviously I understand that if I was running a server I would want a machine that I set up once and  then hopefully only have to do occasional updates the likes of Debian/Fedora are commonly used and I respect that.  If I was to setup a central server then I would be looking at them but I don't have a server need.

As a desktop user I like to install programs try them, love them or hate them, keep them or remove them so I need a pretty dynamic setup.  Hence why the Arch system suits me.

However I have discovered once I find something I like I will tend to stick with it.  For example my usage of Shutter to grab screenshots.  Sure there is Flameshot and Greenshot and probably others but they don't always manage to grab game shots very well which I normally can get Shutter to do.

Shutter hasn't been updated in a long time and getting it to build on various distros can be a long trek but Archman for example made sure it built without stopping by building the libraries in the right order which Manjaro could not do.

Maybe it's because Archman is using Mate where as when I was running Manjaro it was KDE.  Given Shutter is primarily based in Gnome and Perl maybe Mate just knows how to deal with it better as it's based on the Gnome system.  I don't know you see for all I am quite technically minded.

When it comes to complex programming my brain has decided it just doesn't want to get involved.  I tried programming many years ago and discovered it was not for me.  I just don't have the patience to find a missing semicolon or symbol in a several thousand lines of code program.  

As much as I like to investigate programs I really don't have the patience to sit and learn programs that are incredibly complex either.  I know Blender is an incredible tool and as well as being a 3D modelling software is capable of  producing animation and some even use it for video production.

I have sat and rendered a model from example files and sat and waited for several hours for what turns out to be a two minute animation.  Yes it's impressive but to be honest I know in my heart I would not sit and do such.

I love Emulation.  It fascinates me seeing a machine running on my PC which was never meant to.  Being able to try out programs and games I never could.

For example MAME includes MESS so it can run several computer systems as well as arcade games so I was able to play with Irix as there is now SGI Emulation in there.  It's far from perfect and obviously not a huge amount of stuff is widely available to download for it.

However I have always wanted to see the Irix system in action and unless I was willing to pay the silly amounts asked on eBay for machines such the Octane and the Indigo.  This is the only way I will get to try out such.

Hence why I now have Previous on most of my setups.  It's an Emulation of  the Next Systems so I can play with NextStep.  Once again software is pretty limited and getting some of the stuff to work is a bit of a challenge.  However seeing it and how you can see Mac OS X has integrated many of its features and improved makes it fascinating to me.

It never ceases to amaze me how the emulator programmers keep getting things working.  I wouldn't know where the hell to start.  Seeing them get things like Yusu, Xenia and Citra which are running emulation of Switch, Xbox 360 and 3DS games respectively.  OK they are not perfect but the fact they have done so just proves how incredibly dedicated these people are.

I have always said my ideal desktop operating system which would never be possible.  Is a machine where I can run Linux, Windows, Mac, Amiga, Next, BeOS and more from one desktop with one simple double click.  Integrated Emulation at desktop level.  Integration between clipboards and software.  It's very idyllic and would never happen as the companies responsible for said technology would vehemently prevent such.  But hey a man can dream.  Either that or I'm just lazy and want everything under one roof to save me leg work.

Anyway I think that's enough waffle for this episode.  So until next time ...take care.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 65

Hello ladies and gentlemen to my ongoing quest in the world of Linux.  Well since we last were here I have changed the i7 potato from Manjaro to Archman Linux.  Reason being I was trying to get Manjaro to build Vectr as I used to regularly use Xara Studio on Windows so I thought I would look at it.

However it was having an issue with Pango.  So I went to use the git version.  Which was more in line with the requirements but when it removed the main Pango program it then removed half of the main programs of the OS and broke itself rather than making me aware of such it just removed like half of the programs it uses.

So word of warning do not play about with Pango on Manjaro or you will totally wreck your system without any immediate warning of what damage it can do.

I have installed Archman Linux Mate for now on the i7 potato and for now decided against installing Vectr from the AUR.  The i7 desktop still has Manjaro running on it but to be honest I don't know how long that will last.

I'm sure people are thinking I should just find a distro and stick to it rather than playing around and breaking stuff.  Well nine times out of ten I end up breaking something on the account of trying to find new items to look at.  If I didn't find things of interest then this blog would be very short.

So it's swings and roundabouts I guess.  In order to try new software sometimes you risk buggering up your entire system.  However what's the fun in having a big standard setup with no risks.  It's all part of the game.

I'm sure I should set up something like Time Machine or whatever the equivalent is called.  I know Mint created one for the Linux community but I have yet to use it.  I really should so I have a backup of a working system in case things keel over but sadly I don't have enough hard drives with large capacity available to me to do such.

However that would mean I have a long term plan which nine times out of ten I don't.  Most of the time I just see something of interest, attempt to install it, break something, then have to spend time sorting out my system to put it right.

Well that's when things go wrong but most times things install without issue.  I guess I'm not as organised as I probably should be.  Anyway I'm waffling so moving onto the next item.

So this time I have decided to look at two platformer type of games for some amusement.  The first is Secret Maryo Chronicles.

As you can see from the screenshot is a Mario type clone but it has its own little character instead of the titular plumber.  If you have played a 2D Mario game then there is no real surprises here.

It's a good little time waster and includes plenty of levels to keep you amused.  It's available at secretmaryo.org or maybe it will be in your software repository.

I had to download the git version from the AUR which is a Version 2 build as I could not get the original 1.9 to build due to source issues.  But you may have more luck with that one than I did but worth a look in any case.

Next up is Retux...

Have you ever played SuperTux?  Want more levels and new challenges then Retux is the game for you.

Basically you play Tux and the Snow King has imposed a Fish Tax on the world.  This is also a 2D Mario style platformer just with lots of ice and snow.

Retux has taken the existing SGE Engine used by SuperTux and with added python scripts has managed to add in a variety of extra features such as hazards and power-ups.

If you have played SuperTux it is nice to see someone extending it adding 41 new levels.  If you haven't not a huge issue as it's more than playable without knowing the previous story.

You now have a health bar as opposed to the usual one or two hit kill of the previous one.  There are a few new power-ups and more things to probably either intrigue you or drive you insane.  Also secret areas are more prevalent so be on the look out

Also I'd you are feeling creative you can create new levels using the Tiled map editor.  So Retux breathes a new life into the SuperTux world.

If you want to check it out you can download it from retux.nongnu.org

Well that's it for this episode, short and sweet for a change.  So until next time...take care.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 60

Hello people and welcome back to my ongoing series about my time playing with Linux.  Since I originally started this blog it is now been going for 2 years.  That is unreal.  I never thought it would manage to last this long, which makes it my longest ongoing project I think I have even done.  Scary...

Anyway enough waffle onto the task at hand.  Since we last spoke I have once again changed things with the Xeon.  Over the last few months it has been many things.  I have ran EndeavourOS, Namib Linux, Windows 10, Haiku, Hackintosh (Mac OS X High Sierra) and now the latest Linux Project it is now running is BlueStar Linux.

BlueStar Linux is another Arch based Linux from the team in the USA.  It is using KDE for its main Desktop Environment.  Now me and KDE have had a very strange relationship  as it normally has crashed spectacularly on me.  With about a million segmentation faults.

However this one I am using is working no problem.  Maybe it’s because every time I have used KDE it has been with an Nvidia card and this is an AMD Radeon.  It seems to be working fine, the transparency is working and all the programs are running fine without keeling over which was my main complaint.

Another thing I must say is that it seems to running things much faster than it did with Namib or EndeavourOS even though they were both installed on the same 240GB SSD.  So KDE is working quicker than MATE which is something I never thought I would ever see.   I know they have been working on refining it but it seems they have done a damned impressive job.

When it installed it included a dock called Latte which was quite nice but its icons were incredibly small for some reason.  So after a bit of fiddling I in the end just changed across to Cairo Dock which is what I have been using for quite a while.

It initially covered the screen with quite a few widgets but they were quite easily removed.  I don’t like my desktop been full of clutter I know some people like having CPU monitors and other extraneous stuff on screen I just find them annoying.

So I ended up with just a digital clock in the upper right and I can live with that.

Now I normally sit and try and get Vulkan and stuff working which means changing all of the drivers.  To be honest I can’t be bothered as its not as if I play games on this machine given it’s the test bed machine so I have decided just to stick with the base Radeon driver and it is working fine for most things.

It manages to run Hedgewars and Gdash which is fine for me.  I spend far too long trying to get games to work under Lutris and then never play them.

I did not like the original colour scheme of BlueStar Linux it was a Dark Green almost black setup with Yellow text and a very hard to see black cursor.  Don’t get me wrong it looked aesthetically nice but not very practical.  I also changed my cursor to Red Diamond which is still black but it has some nice red inflections and animations making it very visible.

It originally comes with Octopi to install software and update but I quickly changed it to Pamac as that’s what I prefer.  Don’t get me wrong the Synaptic type installer is more than functional but very basic.  

To be honest I really thought I was going to hate BlueStar but to be honest it’s actually quite impressed me.  It runs quite smooth and to be honest hasn’t crashed on me once which is quite a surprise.  SO I have to give credit to the KDE team who have obviously done a damned good job fixing bugs.

Would I say the same if it had a Nvidia card in here.  I honestly can’t say.  Considering when I had tried to install BlueStar Linux in the past on a machine with Nvidia I could not even get to the main desktop to install it would crash out as at the time Nouveau didn’t support the card I had.

One minor caveat I could not get it to install Shutter which is my preferred screen capture program due to not finding half the libraries similar to what i had with Manjaro but I installed Flameshot instead and can live it.

So what version of Linux would you like to see on the Xeon next?  Let me know at [email protected] after all it is the test bed machine so it is designed for distro testing.

On the i7 due it being Christmas I have had very little time to sit in front of the machine.  All it has been is regular system updates which I have had no problems with.  I did play a few Commodore 64 games using VICE but other than that it has been having a quiet holiday.

Well that brings us up to date with everything that has been going on in My Linux Life.  So thank you for reading and until next time, take care....

PS : I never thought I would manage to blog for 6 months, never mind 2 years and beyond...

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 50

Hello and welcome back to the world of Linux Life.  Sorry for the delay between episodes but I’m afraid family life has been pretty hectic and I have not really had time to sit down and do much.  I was intending doing something special like a podcast or a Youtube video but I never got time.

When I have had free time I have had I have been pushing through playing Path of Exile but I finally got to a point I can’t progress without totally rehashing my character as I didn’t go for a particular build.  So I’m screwed.  Proving that as much as I like Path of Exile it’s skill tree system is broken.

So lets get something out there straight away Antergos Linux has been closed.  The forums and updates will continue for the next three months but the project is now declared as over.

So not happy as it was the Linux I have reliably used for a long time.  Sure the community claims they will continue it in the form of the Endeavour project.  However that’s going to take a long time to put together and get organised so Antergos is off the cards.

So I went on a spree of trying to find a version of Arch Linux that was comparative and worked with no issues.  Hence I had a three day search which lead me even at one point to install Linux Mint 19 (I was getting desperate OK).

First I tried installing CondresOS which installed the main system and dependencies fine, but refused to start if I used the Nvidia drivers.  It would only work with Nouveau which meant I could not use Lutris to play Path of Exile as I needed DXVK to get the game to work.

If you even installed the Nvidia driver it refused to start up and would not let me get back into GRUB to get into text console mode.

OK so next I moved on to Manjaro MATE version.  Now it installed fine but for all it would load the Nvidia drivers.  For some reason would not allow my GTX 1030 to use Vulkan so once again DXVK was not possible for some reason even after installing the Vulkan libraries and tools.

So another distro down I next took on Netrunner Rolling 1905.2 which was just released OK now it did use KDE but once again upon installation would only use Nouveau and refused to work with the NVIDIA driver.  Regardless of how I installed it using Octopi, Pamac, Pacman or Yaourt using the text terminal from GRUB.

OK onto now my fifth distribution of Arch in the form of Archman Linux this went all the way through the installer then upon restart refused to do anything as graphics would corrupt on start.  I even tried going via text mode and regardless of what I did it would not get beyond the initial kernel and file check.  At this point I was totally fed up and was running out of Arch distros to try.

I tried BlueStar Linux and once again installs fine but refuses to run if using the Nvidia driver.  I am sure many can get by using just Nouveau but I am not one of them.  It was at this point I was about to give up for the day so I went for a system I knew would install and downloaded Linux Mint 19.2 MATE edition.

Sure enough it worked and I gave up for the night feeling rather annoyed but I knew I had a working Linux system.

So I attempted to use Mint first I could not find the PPA for Nvidia which took 3 attempts to find the right one.  Reason I needed the latest PPA because the one listed in Driver Manager wont work with DXVK. However it did find it eventually.  OK it works now for Lutris you equally need Wine guess what the one in Mint is too old so I have to find a PPA.  I  could go on but to be honest I got so sick of searching for PPAs in the end I went back to Distrowatch and back to the Arch Linux section.

So BlackArch and MorpheousArch are backup/security penetration versions of Arch so not designed to be used as a daily driver as that is not their purpose.

So that left me a small list many use Openbox or XFCE which are more than capable but not my thing.  Finally I came to Namib Linux which is a Canadian distro I had never heard of but I was at a point where I would try it as it was one of the few that allowed MATE to run from install.

Trust me I have installed a different Display Environment (KDE) then tried to install MATE before and the issues it causes is unreal.  So if i can get an installer that can run MATE from the start all good.

Well Namib Linux uses MATE as it standard desktop so all good.  Installed it and first boot I get a graphical corruption and I am thinking oh not this again, but I restart it and this time it works fine.  I manage to install the Nvidia drivers and it works fine.

In fact everything works fine so I have now for the last few days been running Namib Linux and everything is back to the way it was before I changed from Antergos.  I am now happy and everything I was using I have managed to reinstall and because the data was in my home directory which is on a separate partition, no data was lost.

Also to add insult to injury during this time my 3TB external hard drive had issues and the SATA to USB bridge failed.  I had to move it internal and after 18 hours of running TestDisk it found the partition that had gone AWOL but then refused to boot it. Then when I managed to restore the boot header the file table was corrupted.

So I lost over a terabyte of backup files.  Also it corrupted one third of the drive as now it only lists as a 2TB drive not 3 so either it can’t see the rest or it’s damaged beyond use.

The drive is back working, but is no longer external or 3TB in capacity.

Although I have not been doing much in the way of apps in Linux.  I still have been spending a lot of time messing about trying to get Linux to work.

Anyway this is already too long and if you managed to get this far.  Thanks for putting up with me this far.  I appreciate those who have read this nonsense no matter whether you came in at Episode 1 or this very episode.  

So until next time ... Take care.

[daily-castaway]

Typing hangul (Korean alphabet) on Linux Manjaro

step1: install ibus

reference on the Arch wiki 

in terminal: sudo pacman -Syu ibus ibus-hangul

then type: ibus-setup

click yes a few times and this brings about the iBus setup where you can add other languages and configure preferences.

step2: install korean locales

go to Settings --> Manjaro Settings Manager --> Locale Settings click on “Add” and look for 한국어 (see? i could type this! lol) go through with this installation

step3: 

again in the Manjaro Settings Manager, go to Language Packages. Here you should see the option to install ko_KR language packages. Do that.

Now iBus should work. I had a problem that upon restaring the system, i had to go to terminal and type ibus-setup again so that the icon would appear in the system indicators (that’s where the icon for time and wi-fi etc are) So, go to Session and startup --> Application Autostart. Click on “Add” name it iBus or something and the command should be:

ibus-daemon -drx

Trigger: on login. Now iBus icon should appear upon login.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 29

Well hello again folks and welcome back to the world of Linux.  Been a strange time in Linux for me lately.  As I mentioned a little time ago I have an i7 desktop to play with.   Well it has been a bit of an odd one as I tried to use the Nvidia drivers as it has a GT630 card that’s when things went awry.

So I had it with Antergos on it.  I realised it was not using the Nvidia driver but the nouveau driver and would only allow me to run at 1024x768.  So I installed the 340.xx drivers as the GT 630 wont work with the latest 390 series as the GPU uses the Fermi chipset no longer supported by current drivers.

Strangely enough Antergos won’t start so after a bit of faffing around setting it to a text boot and removing the Nvidia drivers I manage to get it back to nouveau.  Still 1024x768.  So I start playing with CVT and xrandr manage to get it to 1280x1024 using xrandr but it wont stay.

Apparently needs a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d called 10-monitor.conf or something like that, set up a certain way.  OK so I do that after having to sudo -i to get as root to allow me to write to the directory.  File sorted time to reboot.

Antergos fails to display anything.  OK back to text boot mode and remove added file.  Back to 1024x768.  Getting frustrated.  I took a break and went to play a game in Windows as the machine is dual boot.  While playing game Windows resets due to update as I forgot to turn off that option.   Update fails kills EFI partition for some reason so cant boot either OS.

OK time to try Manjaro after all its #1 on Distrowatch and is Arch based maybe it can do what Antergos can’t.  Well it installs fine, Sod Windows for the moment.  OK install usual programs all fine until I get to Shutter.

Now I know I had issues with Shutter due to Perl but I figured what was wrong and sorted that.  But this is a new installation now in Antergos it realises it needs certain dependencies and pulls them down so it can build Shutter.  Well lets just say Manjaro doesn’t it just admits you need these dependencies and dumps itself out installing nothing.  OK so I systematically have to install each individual piece to get Shutter to build and work.  What an annoyance.

For the Number 1 distro on Distrowatch it sure is annoying when it comes to building things from the AUR (Arch User Repository).  One of its central advantages and it makes it awkward, Way to go Manjaro.

OK try and set up Nvidia drivers now it has its own driver detection system called HWND so off I try.  It finds the Nvidia card, installs drivers, asks to restart.  Restart and fails to load video.  Apparently it has installed the 390xx series drivers  and I have already explained they don’t work with this version of the graphics card.  Fail number 2.  Back to getting a text boot and restoring nouveau.  Unfortunately it won’t return to nouveau even though I removed the file it added to the /etc/x11 etc. nonsense.

Oh well back to Antergos, or so I thought.  Installing Antergos gets stuck at search inter conflicts every time I try to install and no matter how I set it up Cnchi won’t finish the install.  Aha good old Cnchi I have covered it’s being an arse before too.

So now I have no working Linux OS. So using Live Antergos and External Hard drive I manage to write Linux Mint 19 Mate Edition ISO to USB.  Well that installed fine and is what I have typed this entry in using.

Had to update but would;d not let me do so until i used the new Timeshift program to make a backup restore point.  Interesting but not bad idea.  Not complex to do so I do so and then update.

It has a driver manager so I install Nvidia this time it gives an option which drive to use.  So I select 340.xx series and it installs and restarts fine.  Still in 1024x768 but a quick play with the Nvidia settings I manage to get it 1280x800 but wont let me set 1280x1024.  Oh well it will have to do.

So that’s the annoyance I have been having.  still running Antergos on i7 laptop and it’s working fine, just not used it much as been playing with this daft desktop.

Well that’s enough waffle for now.  So until next time ... Take care.