data1701d

joined 1 year ago
[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 14 hours ago

Someone else brought up Virt Manager here, which is my preferred; if you’ve ever used VirtualBox, you’ll probably be fine on Virt Manager. I like Virt Manager for using GTK3, as I’m in XFCE. I wouldn’t be surprised if both applications have similar settings, as they’re both LibVirt front ends, it seems.

Also, DistroBox, while a different sort of thing, is great for the sort of thing OP mentioned in that last paragraph. I usually just use command line, but there seems to be an unofficial GUI out there.

I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

Also, isn't ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've never run an installfest, but I've been to my university's Linux Users Group installfests, and here's what they did:

  • Brought USBs with Fedora and OpenSUSE, which are their standard noob recommendations. Personally, I've used Debian for a long time, but I can get why Debian might not be something they want to recommend for noobs.
  • Be there to help them
  • If they're a bit squeemish about it, have them install in a VM software like VirtualBox on Windows or something like UTM on macOS.

Also, I'd recommend you bring extra USB peripherals in case the internal devices need a little bit of work; bring some extra mice, keyboards, and ethernet adapters. You hopefully won't need any of them, but they'll certainly make life easier if you do.

As for time, I'd imagine doing the basic install and ironing out some (not all) of the kinks probably takes less than it takes for a group to stat D & D characters, if that's a helpful comparison for you.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It's pre-T2, so it should be very easy to install a Linux distro on it. The only bit of misery you're going to encounter, as others have said, is the Broadcom drivers. Except for a select few distros, you'll probably need a USB Ethernet adapter for installing the operating system and adding the drivers.

Also, I'd rather put my hand in the circle saw than try running a rolling release on this laptop because the driver uses DKMS, meaning that kernel updates sometimes break it.

I only know this because the desktop I'm typing this on has a Broadcom Wi-Fi card from when I used to bare metal Hackintosh this machine. I've since moved to a nice house with an Ethernet port in every room; also, I just use macOS in a VM these days anyways.

As others have said, OCLP is a thing and a well-oiled machine from what I hear, but also, the oath I have made to the Church of Linuxology demands that I at least recommend Linux. Wink

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

As said by @iii@mander.xyz, bog standard Debian Stable.

You really don’t want a rolling release distro for something like this - major software updates might change the behavior of your software, break your configs, etcetera. Stable distros do as much as they can to make sure that software behaves the same, only porting security fixes.

This way, you don’t really have to touch it except for updates with a nearly nonexistent chance of going wrong (and there’s stuff like unattended-upgrades so updates are automatic) and major upgrades.

You can go several years without a major upgrade just fine - Debian versions are supported for 5 years, and we’re only a few days from getting Trixie, which will last into 2030. New versions come out every two years, and it’s not that hard to upgrade between consecutive ones; I don’t think sitting down on a weekend every two years is that bad.

I kind of hate Ubuntu, but it’s pretty based in this case due to really long support. This might be a really great case for Rocky Linux though, as it also gets 10 years support.

Luckily, I can probably live with using mine a few more years. Mine's an early AM4 system with a Ryzen 5 2600 in it. My CPU performance isn't a huge bottleneck (although I'd like a couple more cores for faster compilation).

Really, it's my graphics card. The 580's fine for some basic gaming, but it sort of got left in the dust with ROCm support - it's kind-of-sort-of supported, but not well enough for Blender to work with it.

I think the situation's improved with ROCm on consumer GPUs enough now that so long as I buy a newer card, I should be fine. Debian support's improved a lot as well - for many GPUs, it should just be a matter of sudo apt install hipcc now. However, Debian is still a few versions behind in experimental and doesn't support the latest AMD cards, but I suspect that getting it packaged was the hard part, and that once Trixie releases, Forky/Testing will catch up in a few months.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I didn’t even know there were still cases bundled with power supplies! But yes, in general, throughout the history of PC building, I’m pretty sure included power supplies in any brand tend to be very low wattage. The power supply probably isn’t even broken - I’m just guessing the PC’s was upgraded to an RX 580, and the RX 580 was more power hungry than the original graphics card and the power supply just wasn’t designed for it.

Just a tip - next time you build or upgrade a PC, use this tool to estimate what power supply you need; https://www.newegg.com/tools/power-supply-calculator

You can get a 700 watt PSU that should work in the $50-70 range, although honestly, it might be worth it to go a bit bigger so you can cannibalize it for a future build when the time comes - even the RX 580, which is newer than your CPU, is getting a bit old and I hope to replace it if I build a new PC in 2028.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Just to clarify, this almost certainly won't be better on Mint for several reasons. One, PopOS! and Mint are both based on Ubuntu, so they would likely run into a lot of the same issues. I also have an RX 580, and while I haven't used either of these distros on that machine, I have run Debian Testing for several years, and since both these distros descend from Debian, I have run similar package versions and would likely have known years ago if a major bug occurred for my GPU.

As said by @Mordikan@kbin.earth below, I would be inclined to check the power supply, and maybe even make sure the PCIe card is properly seated.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've been running with an RX 580 on my desktop with Debian Testing for three years, and I've had no problems like this.

I'm running with a 750W power supply, so I'm inclined to agree that the the OP should pop open their PC case and check their wattage. Assuming this is an ATX box, it's probably just a matter of removing two screws and sliding off the side of the case and reading the wattage. If it's a reasonable wattage and it's still giving issues, then try the aforementioned undervolting.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 3 days ago

I think that's true, but permissions might come into play and really cause pain; it's probably best to just reinstall.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 11 points 3 days ago

Scared

On a more serious note, as others have said, you'll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by "sensitive matters" on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it's not a great idea:

  • If you're talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it's probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
  • If it's more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I'll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you're careful, it shouldn't be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don't and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you'll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This is less like buying a bigger car and more like upgrading the stereo in the car - 256GB in 2025 is somewhat akin to having only AM radio, and I've found it gets annoying real fast when doing anything serious.

I would hesitate to put anything smaller than 1 TB in something that's supposed to be a daily driver.

 

In case anyone is using Debian Testing/Unstable and experiencing audio issues, I thought I'd share this.

Until the bugs get fixed, there are two workarounds:

  1. Uninstall FluidSynth
  2. Add systemctl --user restart pipewire to your session startup; this eliminates the problem.

As I want FluidSynth, I went with the latter.

 

I made Cathode - don’t vote for it (or at least, don’t give it a high rank, since Debian uses ranked choice). It kind of sucks, honestly; I was just having fun.

I have a feeling Juliette Taka’s going to keep being the de facto face of Debian for a long time - I ranked hers first in the voting.

 

I guess for the thrill, same reason that I’m attempting LFS?

 

Personally, to keep my documents like Inkscape files or LibreOffice documents separate from my code, I add a directory under my home directory called Development. There, I can do git clones to my heart's content

What do you all do?

 

Half of these exist because I was bored once.

The Windows 10 and MacOS ones are GPU passthrough enabled and what I occasionally use if I have to use a Windows or Mac application. Windows 7 is also GPU enabled, but is more a nostalgia thing than anything.

I think my PopOS VM was originally installed for fun, but I used it along with my Arch Linux, Debian 12 and Testing (I run Testing on host, but I wanted a fresh environment and was too lazy to spin up a Docker or chroot), Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora to test various software builds and bugs, as I don't like touching normal Ubuntu unless I must.

The Windows Server 2022 one is one I recently spun up to mess with Windows Docker Containers (I have to port an app to Windows, and was looking at that for CI). That all become moot when I found out Github's CI doesn't support Windows Docker containers despite supporting Windows runners (The organization I'm doing it for uses Github, so I have to use it).

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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

Continued From: https://startrek.website/post/13283869 https://startrek.website/post/14075369

I managed to fix the one biggest gripe about my Thinkpad E16: the RTL8852BE Wi-Fi controller randomly dropping out. I actually found this a few days ago, but I had forgotten where I put the file I had edited. You put a file in modprobe.d called 70-rtw89.conf. Both /etc/modprobe.d/ and /usr/lib/modprobe.d work - I used the latter, but for the sake of conventions, you should probably use the former.

You then put in these options for the rtw89 module: options rtw89_pci disable_clkreq=y disable_aspm_l1=y disable_aspm_l1ss=y

Now, my Thinkpad is a fully functional Linux laptop. I will be docking it to an 8 from my initial score of 8.5, but I'm back to liking it for now. If you apply the fix, be sure to update the firmware as well - some older distros have an old version that works but returns a lot of journalctl error on this card.

Update: What do you know! The updated firmware-realtek just went into backports!

Thanks, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-6.1/+bug/2017277

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

Original Post: https://startrek.website/post/13283869

Update: Nope, I'm still having the problem. It seems to be an ACPI problem. I found a potential solution, which I will test soon. The issue seems to only occur when using the charger and Bricklink Studio. These seems to be a common issue on Lenovo.

Another update: I fixed it, but I can't remember what I did. I'm having a great experience again. I'll see if I can find the fix for other owners of this laptop.

Update: I remember what I did, and have detailed it and where I found the fix here: https://startrek.website/post/14342770 . You should probably update the firmware for the sake of a clean journalctl, though.

After using this laptop a few weeks, I have one important note. I was having a problem for a while where, usually after waking from sleep, in some rooms my Wi-Fi card would disconnect and I'd have to reboot to get my network connection back. Based on journalctl, it seemed to be some sort of weird firmware error.

I found the fix was to install updated firmware, specifically the version of firmware-realtek from testing, upon which the problem has stopped ocurring. As firmware packages tend to not have a lot of dependencies, I do want to see if I can get a bookwork-backports package uploaded so it's easier to install.

 

I'm writing a program that wraps around dd to try and warn you if you are doing anything stupid. I have thus been giving the man page a good read. While doing this, I noticed that dd supported all the way up to Quettabytes, a unit orders of magnitude larger than all the data on the entire internet.

This has caused me to wonder what the largest storage operation you guys have done. I've taken a couple images of hard drives that were a single terabyte large, but I was wondering if the sysadmins among you have had to do something with e.g a giant RAID 10 array.

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by data1701d@startrek.website to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

Another update: https://startrek.website/post/13283869 I found a fix for my issue. I'm annoyed that I had it in the first place, but I overall still like my laptop.

Important update in this post: https://startrek.website/post/14075369 I still consider this a good laptop, but this is an important fix if you're using this on Debian 12. When 13 comes out next year, the out-of-box support of this laptop should be basically perfect.

Anyhow, back to the original post: I recently got a brand new laptop, a Thinkpad 21JT001PUS, to consolidate/replace my array of various on-the-go-Linux devices, and I have to say, I'm impressed. I know Thinkpad and Linux aren't news, but for such a recent device, I am surprised how well it works. The price wasn't bad (which makes up for the fact that it's a Zen 3 chip with DDR4, in my opinion), it has good upgradability (I'll touch a bit on my experience later), and hardware support was really good.

I initially tested hardware support with Debian Testing Trixie XFCE (as that was the Live USB I happened to have on hand, since I often test devices and also keep it around as a backup for my desktop, which runs Testing). At first I couldn't get it to boot, but then I found the BIOS setting to enable non-Microsoft certificates. After that, I booted in and found everything worked out of the box (except the fingerprint sensor, of course, but that's extremely rare for any laptop anyway). However, after experience with my previous portable devices, I learned I prefer stable distributions on those, as during some parts of the year, I can go months without opening the laptop.

Thus, I retested with Bookworm. Almost everything worked still, except for the Wi-Fi (which seems to have been introduced in later kernel versions). Luckily, this thing has an ethernet port (From which it is HECK to remove cables - I've found I had to twist the end up a bit to get it out), so I was able to do an install and then add the Backports kernel to get Wi-Fi working.

One minor issue I had (a software fault rather than a hardware/kernel one) was Bluetooth headphones, but as it turned out, it was just that PulseAudio was installed instead of Pipewire, so after switching, it worked flawlessly with Blueman).

As for battery life, so far it seems okay (as I write this, it says 3:29 left at 51%), but I haven't rigorously tested it yet (though I threw on the usual tlp and stuff like that for good measure).

For performance, I once again haven't tested it too rigorously, but I did play some Civ VI, which it was keeping up with just fine.

The upgrabability of this laptop does have one caveat, though. The bottom is a bother to remove, and most Youtube crap conveniently glosses over them. For one, some of the screws would get loose but not come out all the way. I eventually found the trick was to throw some pry tool under the screw head to hold it up so I could get it the rest of the way out. After they were all out, the bottom cover STILL wouldn't budge. This too ended up being a matter of jamming a pick in one corner of the case and running another one to slowly pry up the bottom case on all sides. I lost a plastic tab or two in the process, but that doesn't show up on the outside, and I think 24 GB of RAM (and 2 TB of NVME 2280 storage + 256 GB, the Windows drive that I left in the 2242 bay) will be plenty for a long time.

Overall, I would say this is a great laptop for those who don't want to go the route of purchasing a used laptop for Linux. I'll say an 8.5 out of 10 due to the hard-to-remove bottom cover and weird ethernet port (Update: 8 out of 10 now due to the nasty Wi-Fi bug I had to fix with a few module options, see posts linked in top of page).

Here's the Linux Hardware probe: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=1e50fb1862

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