Thursday, December 20, 2018

...Annnnnnnnnd back to Pop.

Yeah so I tried out a few distros again after breaking my Pop!_os build...  I KNOW that Pop is basically a gussied up version of Ubuntu, but it feeeeeels different!  I cannot explain it.  It should not feel any different (except for obvious visual and widget differences) but it does.

So anyway, back to POP!!!!!!!  And I am happy.  I will resist upgrading my kernel to the latest and greatest builds.  :)

LG V30 vs iPhone 8

This is not REALLY a comparison, sorry if you thought that.  What this is:  I am getting rid of my V30 and I purchased an iPhone 8 to replace it.

I've owned my V30 for almost a year now and in that year it has been a pain.  It has never worked smoothly, picture quality has been sketchy, terminal pay has been sketchy, it has forced reset to factory settings on me once (lost everything on the phone), the screen occasionally goes black and the only way to fix it is to power off/on, etc.

Hate.  This.  Phone.

So I went back to the old "stand by" and purchased an iPhone 8.

That is all.

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Oops! I did it again...

I can't believe I used that as the title to this post...

Anyway, so I ran MX for a total of a few hours and realized... I've actually become attached to GNOME.  I can't believe it really.  When GNOME 3 came out I was totally turned off by it.

Now I have actually become fond of it, even though it sucks up RAM like crazy.

Sooooo... I am running Manjaro 18 Gnome version.  Closer to Pop!_os.  Still have the latest Pop!_os image downloaded and ready to burn... just in case.  :D  I am thinking of poking around for "the best gnome implementations" for linux distros.

But I like Manjaro because it has some pretty huge repositories, allows for the latest drivers (MX is still behind on Nvidia drivers), and it generally looks nice.

So we shall see... if anyone has any recommendations let me know.

Friday, December 14, 2018

Oops!

Soooooooo maybe I broke my Pop!_OS build.

Actually, I thought I was more clever than everyone else out there who has tried this but... I tried anyway.  I tried building in NVidia drivers to a low latency kernel that I installed.

Yeah.  No go.

So in order to start from scratch I decided to install the latest BETA version of MX Linux (if you look back in my blog you will see I used it for awhile and liked it a good bit, still do).

I may yet go back to Pop!_os... remains to be seen.  I really did enjoy it.  MX Linux, if you remember, is an XFCE, debian-based distro.  It is known for being nimble but attractive.

So, for the moment, or until further notice anyway, I will be back on MX, albeit on their beta 18 version.

Monday, December 10, 2018

Mini and Pop

Still on Pop!_os, probably a record for me, except back in the day when Ubuntu was first released and the year I used PC-BSD for work.  I know it is mostly just a gnome distro but something about it just feels ... I don't know, it just stays out of your way.

I recently updated my 4.19 kernel to a point release.  Working fine.  I DID have ONE freeze episode.  I had been playing Borderlands 2 early in the day, but just paused the game and left it running while we went out to run errands, then went to a church event...  so basically for hours.  I came back, fired it up to finish a quick mission and it froze.  So, not a huge deal since basically I kind of abused my poor system for hours.  I give this one a pass.  :)

Our Mini Coopers are great.  My wife's is a Countryman Park Lane, not much more to say about it except that it is a pleasure to drive in.  I've been driving top-down in my Roadster every day.  So much fun!

I will update more about the Mini soon.

...off to work.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Pop!_os Kernel update

Told you about my upgrade of the kernel recently, well that kernel had a number of issues regarding video / system freezes.  A new kernel came out not long after and had a number of changes but none of them screamed "fix for video freezes" to me...

Even so, I have not had (knocks on wood) a freeze since then.  No idea why.  Makes little sense to me.  But for reference:

Linux 4.19.6-041906-generic #201812010432 SMP Sat Dec 1 09:34:07 UTC 2018

I *did* have one strange thing happen, while doing several things which included backing up files, downloading files and installing software my system started slowing down drastically.

Network showed fine, I could view directories in my file viewer fine...  so I rebooted and when it came up I had systemd logging errors flashing across... so I rebooted AGAIN and since then everything has been fine.  No files lost, as far as I can tell.  It was just strange.

ANYWHO... for the most part the system has been running very well.

Friday, November 30, 2018

Continuing with Pop!_os

So the other day I wanted to try the latest release of Manjaro Gnome (18.0) so I did a backup of my home directory/sub-directories and installed Manjaro.

I am familiar with Manjaro albeit the XFCE version.  It was my OS prior to going to Pop!  It installed easily and I fired it right up and began configuring the things I use most frequently.  But honestly?  While there are some aspects of the implementation of Gnome I missed, it didn't really offer any better performance or features compared to Pop!  So today I wiped it and reverted to Pop!_os, restored my backups (or at least part of them, game saves mostly since I already store my major folders on other disks) and then went a little overboard.

Well, not REALLY overboard but, I decided I wanted to try and update the kernel.  This felt risky since I believe System76 does some kernel tweaking, but I figured why not?  So I installed uvuu, selected the latest linux kernel and clicked install (and also had the grub configuration rewritten).  When it completed (without error) it told me to reboot.  I did, and well... in all honesty I thought it would fail miserably and I would have to reinstall Pop!_os but... it worked!  I am now running (per uname -rsv) Linux 4.19.5-041905-generic #201811271131 SMP Tue Nov 27 16:33:46 UTC 2018.

It has the module[s] for Nvidia drivers, my network seems to be fine, and I could almost swear memory usage is down on average, at least from what I remember from HTOP over the previous weeks.  But without recorded data that is hearsay.

I will have to play around with it for a week to see how it really does.  But so far so good.

Monday, November 26, 2018

Politics, ugh

I had this nagging feeling that I wanted to update about something I had said in a previous log entry but... for the life of me I cannot remember what it was.  I need to go back and read through them I guess.  Maybe that will trigger a memory.

But politics...  I really hate where the divisions are heading these days.  I have noted before I am very conservative, and I have friends who are liberal.  We get along.  We don't always agree but we kind of don't care and understand that it is OK to not agree about everything.

But SO many people are just... I don't know, crazy-hateful.  They get angry if you voted for one person or another... or if you criticize someone they admire, or... well you get the idea.  When did this start?  When did people despise others so much just because they believe things should be done in a way you might disagree with?

The thing is, I have strong opinions, but I also understand where my friends come from when they DON'T agree with my opinions.  I do, I get it, and the funny thing is we very often agree about the END GAME.  We want the SAME things,  but we want to go about them differently.

That is not ALWAYS the case of course, some things we simply don't agree on and you know what?  If I really want them to believe what I believe, then that is on me to convince them, but I won't do that by getting in their faces and telling them they are idiots.  Right?  I mean, does anyone really think that is the best way to convince you of something??  Of COURSE not.  But it seems like many people really DO think that because there is a lot of that going on, and NOT just "online."  I have encountered real people at work who repeat the same rhetoric and spit out a lot of hateful words.

Eh, I blather on, I apologize.

If you are curious what I believe...
1) I believe that charity should start at home.  We should be giving and try to help people who are in need.  It should not be a government function.  Yet I also understand that in some cases that may be necessary.  This stems from my faith, which is also currently unpopular if you believe the popular media, Christianity.
2) I believe that abortion is wrong.  The baby is NOT the mother's body, it is purposely kept separate with systems that nourish the fetus (it is supposed to be the safest place in the world for the growing child).  I believe that the moment 2 strands of DNA join the pattern is laid out and the construction begins.  That construction is a potential human being and no one should have the right to terminate that life.
3) I believe less government is better, but I understand that some oversight is necessary regarding interstate commerce regulation and stuff like that.  I believe that some oversight is necessary for corporations as well.
4) I honestly have NO IDEA how to solve healthcare/insurance issues.  Same for drug companies, etc.  I freely admit that.  You want to convince me about what should be done, have at it.
5) The media... it really does stink.  No idea how to fix it.
6) I believe men are men and women are women, but I also think that you should have the right to behave however you want as long as it causes no harm, and as long as you don't negatively affect my children.  Short of committing crimes, of course.
7) I am anti-death penalty.  But I understand that if the law is pre-meditated murder comes with a death penalty, that is the law and so be it.  There is, by the way, no inconsistency in that in comparison to my disdain for abortion.  A fetus is innocent and defenseless.  An adult murder is neither of those things.
8) I believe that science and religion are NOT incompatible, and people who do are wrong and, like politics, people get VERY angry about that topic.
9) Global warming.  Honestly I don't care.  Our planet has been on one of its coldest periods for millions of years now, we could use a little more heat.  Just 50 million years ago the average global temperatures were 14 to 16 degrees Celcius WARMER.  That's a lot.  And it was not due to just atmospheric debris.  It was a combination of things, and more of it was the position of the continents and the oceanic and air currents and how the heat was distributed.  Same can be said for now.  I AM concerned that pollution is harming our lungs and our more sensitive animals.
10) Trump.  Well he is a double-edged sword.  The good part is that he DOES have a fresh perspective of sorts.  He also appoints constitutional and somewhat conservative judges.  I think that is a good thing.  He is also shaking up our economy and bringing some serious issues to the forefront.  On the other hand he is kind of obnoxious and not super stately, if that makes sense.  He was not my candidate of choice.  In the end I did vote for him though because I felt we needed conservative judges and honestly, I did not trust Mrs. Clinton as far as I could throw her.  Not a bit.  I really think that if the Democratic party had chosen someone else, ANYONE else, they would have won that election.  But they wanted to push and have the first madam president and... well, there were better female candidates but they pushed Clinton.  Huge mistake.  And Trump?  Well he is kind of down to earth and many people can latch onto that.  So... turned out alright for conservatives.
11) Saudi Arabia... yeah probably not a hot topic for most but... oil not withstanding, I don't like them, I don't like how they govern, I don't like the things they say and do and I don't think we should ally ourselves with them.
12) Israel... I DO like them, I do like the fact that they are scrappers.
13) Paul Hollywood has more bark than bite.
14) Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Media bias?  Can they be called media?  If so should there be regulation, more regulation?
15) Love.  My religion has two (well three but the first two are primary) commandments that are above all others, and even the famous "10 commandments" hinge on them:
a) Love the Lord with all your heart, your mind your soul and...
b) Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

What does that last one mean?  It means do you not feed and cloth and clean and house yourself?  Then that is what you should do for other people.  You "love" them... love is an action, it is taking care of someone's needs.

Anyway, good night again.

Still on Pop!_os...

Honestly, I am surprised myself!

Pop!_os is looked at by many as an Ubuntu re-spin.  I think it really does offer some significant tweaks over Ubuntu to customize the look and feel and workflow a little, yet it still offers the ability to customize Gnome to be more how you prefer it.

The color scheme[s] are good, and are attractive without being distracting.

For the most part, 99% of the time, it just works.  I HAVE had a number of the infamous "video system freezes".  Those are the mysterious freezes that occur while watching some video or even playing very old games in Wine.  Has SOMETHING to do with the video aspect of the system.  I had thought it was perhaps the scheduler used in the linux kernel.  Still might be.  Don't know for sure.

It is frustrating when it happens but... I still am not sure what triggers it.  It could be during times of low CPU or Memory usage, and sometimes during high memory or CPU usage.  Doesn't seem consistent.

I thought about building a different kernel but, I've read that System76 has modified the kernel a little... so not sure I want to mess with that.

Recently I have downloaded Antergos, Namib, Sabayon and Gentoo and am considering messing with those.  But ... I hesitate because Pop! has been pretty nice to work with and I have had no issues (except the aforementioned) with it at all... it updates seamlessly, has all the apps I need on it, I have the latest version of Steam running on it and the games I have chosen to play so far work great...  I have PlayOnLinux up and running with one game I like on it, need to get Diablo installed though and that is always a challenge.

Anyway, I can heartily recommend Pop!_os as your daily driver because it has snuck up on me as far as the amount of time I have been using it, and have been CONTENT with it.  That's the key...  I have distro-hopped a lot, but since I have been using Pop! I have not had the urge to do so as much.

Well, good night!  I'll update soon.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Pop!_os and politics

I won't say much about politics but, much as Jesus warned about how belief in Him would turn families inside out because some members simply would not understand or tolerate difference, much the same could be said about the political state of our union.

And I will stop there.

POP!  Wow, I just realized that it has been a stealthy 3 weeks of Pop!_os.  The operating system as just stayed out of my way.  I have been pleasantly surprised that I have suffered the dreaded "freeze" only twice (watching youtube videos seems to wreak havoc somewhere low-level, causing the system to die) over the past month, so that is good.

Updates have occurred regularly and without issue.  I have made it a practice to reboot whenever it seems like a major library or GUI or Kernel-related file is touched.  That seems to work out fine.

All in all I still find the distro to be attractive, clean, functional.  It feels well-worn and comfortable.

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Pop goes the weasel!

So in my efforts to try out many distributions of linux to find that "perfect" one for me...  (so far I have a few favorites:  Solus, Manjaro and MX Linux), I have installed Pop! OS.

Pop! is the Ubuntu based spin created by System76.  The same group I am waiting patiently to announce their next-gen ARM systems... very excited about that!  Pop! is supposed to be a "better Ubuntu" in the sense that they have listened closely to their customers and have woven their suggestions into the OS.

So my impression so far is mixed.  It is actually pretty snappy, and it is a nice implementation of standard Gnome, but it doesn't encourage modifications (and was not meant to) as readily as other distros do.  But you CAN, you just need to poke around a little and figure it out.

I did not like the default fonts and changed them.  Also, the one thing that drew me to Pop! was a line in the release notes stating they did some work to help eliminate any UI / video freezes in this release.  Well, within an hour of using it, my computer froze and had to be rebooted (while playing a game).  But to be fair, I had not done any updates, so I did apply updates after that and the freeze has not yet recurred.  So we shall see.

It has a good implementation of Steam, and lots of useful apps in the app store.  The command line (apt) works well too.

Too early for me to really say, but it is a decent system, I just need to work it out for a few days.

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Another general update

My son's play finished, my wife's has begun.  Always busy here.

Work has been super duper busy.

I have distro hopped back to Manjaro... but this time I opted for the GNOME Beta 4.  Not RC yet, but wow it has been very stable.  And their implementation of GNOME is pretty well thought out and as unobtrusive as possible.

Performance is also quite good for such a heavy UI.

So!  I have already decided what my next build will be... even though I imagine it will be spotty for awhile:  ARM.  Supposedly ARM will be coming out with a desktop CPU designed to compete with AMD and Intel and they claim competitive speeds/throughput.  So I am very much looking forward to that.  How can anyone NOT want a RISC machine?  :D

Been plugging away at Borderlands 2... I am so not a good first person shooter gamer.  I was screaming at the computer the other night because I had just about killed the boss that kidnaps Roland and he started firing out turrets like it was popping corn in an open pan.  I was a couple shots from beating him then the turrets came out so fast I spent all my time picking them off (my life was low) that he was able to target me with one of those flying things... I was so mad.  So then I leveled up again and went to the Hyperion prison and took him out there, in his home base.  :P  Felt good.

Now onto whats-his-face...  I forgot the robot's name... eh.  Anyway off to face him.  There's another one who rejoices in spitting out other robots to distract you.

So far, in game, I have not gotten past the eagle, again forgot his name, but I am trying a new build and hoping I will be able to take him this time... Bloodhawk?  I think that's his name.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Caught the first episode of the most recent regeneration of Doctor Who, with the kids...

It wasn't bad.

I like that a) she did not act overpowered and crazy, although there was a little of that "I will stop you" attitude...  I liked that it wasn't that clean and tidy.

So I would give the first episode a C+ (they took some liberties with the whole "I just regenerated" bit...)

We plan on continuing to watch it.

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Today's Rattlesnake Encounter

So, rattlesnakes are pretty commonplace here in Arizona... we see a fair number of them each year.  Rattlesnakes, Coral snakes, Gopher snakes...  Today's encounter was kind of cute.

It is a cool morning for AZ, in the upper 60's, low 70's when we started walking.  As we walked the trail my wife spotted a snake laying flat on the trail, unmoving... kind of looked dead.  In fact we got within 6 feet of it and stopped, and realized its head was actually lifted off the surface.  It was just sunning itself (the sun is ALWAYS hot in Arizona).

We started talking to it, and it realized we were there, tongue started flicking.  We asked it if it wouldn't mind moving and sure enough, it sloooooooowly started slithering off the trail for us.  (Well, we like to think of it that way; rattlesnakes are actually pretty shy).  We thanked it and continued past it once it was off the trail.

I expected to see more on our walk but we didn't.

One of the reasons I like Arizona so much is because of how tough all the native animals are.  We have carnivorous mice, crazy birds (watch a cactus wren some day), poisonous toads, venomous snakes, scorpions, giant centipedes, dangerous spiders, tarantulas... such an amazing place to live and observe wildlife!

That's all!  Have a nice day!

OH!  And baby creosote bushes are popping up everywhere.  :)

Friday, October 5, 2018

Gaming on Linux

I stayed home yesterday, feeling sick, and today I went to work but had to leave early.  So now I am on my computer and was thinking about gaming on Linux-based operating systems.

There are a good number of native, linux-based games that have been produced over the years; but most people think of gaming as something else:  PC and Console games.

When I use PC, I mean a personal computer running Windows 7, 8 or 10.  Let's face it, the vast quantity of games are produced specifically with Windows in mind, and windows users play them.

Some linux users will dual boot Windows and Linux specifically for that reason.  I am not much of a "dual booter" and prefer to dedicate my hardware to one OS.  Because of that I do not have ready access to a large chunk of my Steam library, or a bunch of the games I own on CD that were meant for Windows (and a few for the Mac).

For mainstream gaming the options are few.  You can try to run them through WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) which ties windows libraries to native functions, allowing Windows games to play on linux.  This works well for some games, but not for all.  The other option is when a game developer actually releases a version built to run on linux.  Because the linux user base is minimal in comparison to Windows users, game companies focus on where they can achieve the biggest bang for their buck.

I do both.  I run games through WINE and native, I even run some STEAM games in WINE and some native.   The games I am able to get working through WINE run well, some games used to work and have stopped working with updates, which is sad.  It is possible they will work again some day.  Some games, however, are nigh on impossible to get working in this manner.  Anyway, here is a short list of games I am able to play on linux:

Vampire the Masquerade:  Bloodlines
Portal 2
Bioshock Infinite
Borderlands 2
Cities:  Skyliness
Saints Row IV
Civilization V
Civilization VI (with some issues)
Tomb Raider
Torchlight
Torchlight II
Skyrim
Bejeweled

...and a number of others...  That was just a sampling of the ones I actually play from time to time, there are many more in my library.

I look forward to the day when more game developers pay consideration to linux-based operating systems as a viable and worthy platform.  Linux has a lot to offer, and many people have this view of linux like it is a scary, command-line-driven monster.

Not the case... people need to give it a shot!  They may find they not only like it, but prefer it.



Wednesday, October 3, 2018

10 Years on Blogger!

I just realized that I have been weblogging on Blogger for over 10 years!

Crazy.

I've had huge lapses where I did not right for many months... but I did not realized I had written as much as I have.

Life in general...

Life has been busy, in general.  Home life, work life; I am in solitary mode.  Basically when I just get too much of the world I want to hide all of the time.  Not particularly good for my family but...  they love me and I hope understand.

My son's play is almost done, ends this week.  I am hoping he is able to take a few months away from acting to take a breather. 

As always, regarding my home computer, I have fallen back to MXLinux.  Really is a fine distro.  I had tried a number of 3 day flirtations with other distributions, like Fedora, Manjaro, LinuxMint, Solus again, and a few others.  MX just seems to be rock solid.  It does, however, suffer from the same malaise as many other distros do, and that is screen locking when watching YouTube Videos.  Seems random, not dependent on how long I've been watching (does not seem memory-related).  So, I just don't watch many YouTube videos, or now just expect a failure.

Oddly enough, I don't remember a single freeze when I was using Fedora.  The only thing I can put forth as a reason is that with Fedora I had to install NVidia drivers manually... installing supporting software, configuring startup settings, etc.  For the other distros I use, they tend to have an automated method of installing NVidia proprietary drivers, which I gladly use because it is so much more simple.  Could that be the issue?  Some strange thing going on with the automated NVidia driver install?  Who knows.

I've been playing a lot of Borderlands 2 lately, while I hide from the world.  It took me weeks, but I finally got past the first major "boss" in the game.  Squeaked by with just a tiny bit of life left!  I was able to beat the robot using the Mechromancer class.  Since I had success there I decided to go back, level up a Siren as best I could, and give it a try with her.  We shall see...

Peace!

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Well that was a fun excursion... back to our regularly scheduled show.

I enjoyed playing with Mandriva beta 6 for ... a whole day.  The 4.19 kernel and other subsystem components were simply not quite ready and weird issues popped up left and right.

EVEN SO, I will say this, it was VERY pretty to look at (I've never seen XFCE look so nice) and fast... it was very snappy.

So I shifted back to my now current love/stand-by in the linux world, MX Linux.

It is a rock-solid distribution and pretty darn configurable.  I mixed and matched the standard theme with some different icons and window manager widgets and have something that is quite nice to look at, still XFCE quick, and stable as can be.

I also wanted to re-iterate how helpful the MX Linux community was when I needed help with my natural scrolling issue.