#linux arch

I prefer Ubuntu, but I believe Arch is also a Linux distribution, so I'm in for it!

My parents are programmers (sort of, my father works more with Moodle nowadays), and they were insistent we use Linux for some reason. Ubuntu was my first OS, and while I used a computer with Linux Mint for a short time... Well, that's actually more or less a type of Ubuntu, so it hardly counts. What I'm trying to say is, I didn't decide to transfer to Linux because Windows sucks. I barely ever used Windows, which is a bummer because most of the video games I like to play are only available on Windows. Don't talk to me about Wine, that doesn't always help. A virtual machine as well, I just don't trust it.

Hello everyone and welcome to my ongoing piddling about in my corner of the world of Linux. Well this month I have been playing around with Wayland and trying to work out whether I am ready to switch to it.

I admit that I recently switched back to X11 when using KDE Plasma 6.2 as several tools don’t work well in it under Wayland.

When in X11 I use Cairo Dock as a program launcher which does have a version that allegedly works with Wayland but the team of Cairo Dock admit its alpha and is buggy. Indeed it worked for a while then it started messing up shortcuts. Also in X11 I can move the bar up above the main KDE panel so I can still see the icons and switch tasks etc.

In X11 it works fine. In Wayland it is just too basic and the coders of it are in no hurry to create a full version until Wayland setup some standards regarding key bindings etc.

Which I guess is fair enough but annoying.

When it comes to collecting screenshots I normally use Shutter. I have tried others such as Flameshot and others but they seem to have issues when grabbing certain screenshots such as Steam games and Shutter just works.

However under Wayland. Shutter has been hacked to work but will only allow you to grab the desktop only and none of the other options are available.

So I have been using X11 to allow Shutter to continue to work.

Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned but I like to have things that work. Also OBS Studio works with Wayland but apparently has issues when selecting input sources and areas.

In time they may fix this but at this time it doesn’t quite work as it should.

So I admit if I am using KDE Plasma I won’t be using the Wayland version.

Taking a slight side step ...

I have recently decide as I was noodling about in the Wayland compositing wibble I decided to try Hyprland.

Well I must admit at first I really didn’t get on very well with it and to be honest while I could open a few windows and I managed to use ghostty as my terminal.

However after a bit of a play I didn’t know how to close all the open windows and had to faff around just to get the slightest thing open.

So I was about to give up. However I decided to look up the wiki and it gave a few preconfigured options. I admit I downloaded and installed the JaKooLit dot files.

I must admit that it has actual made Hyprland useful and with a bit of playing I finally managed to get most things working and yes it can be fun and it’s pretty fast but I really don’t see me using it regularly.

It has allowed me to capture screenshots using certain keys so Hyprland has solved my requirements and Shutter is not needed using it but until OBS Studio issues in Wayland are sorted I will have to go back to KDE Plasma 6 X11 if I want to capture video.

I really didn’t understand Hyprland when i first started but I admit that the preconfig has made it useable once you get used to the quirkiness. I am even willing to live without a dock.

Hopefully OBS Studio will manage to get around its issues and who knows I might even switch to Hyprland and stop using KDE Plasma.

I’m sure someone will advise me better Hyprland tricks but for now I have it working and it is not bad. In time I could get used to working with Hyprland. Once you get the hang of it, it is quite fast and useable.

Wayland is good but not quite 100% there. Not far its about 95% workable, it just needs the last few things to get working.

Hello folks as I have managed to get myself a quiet moment it’s time to check in with the blog.  As I said I will be a bit more sporadic with the posting here this is due to family situations.

So what have I being doing with Linux since the last episode.  Well my Kingston 120GB SSD I was running Linux on decided to have issues and for all of the attempts to save it I had to swap it out and replace it with my Integral 120GB SSD.

Luckily because I don’t keep my home directory on the SSD but on a separate 1TB Seagate hard drive no data was really lost.  So I had to re-install Namib Linux onto the new drive.  This was a bit odd but I got it working.

The installation went smooth but upon restart GRUB would start and then pixelate the screen as the video didn’t initialise correctly.  So I went in using mode 3 to just a text prompt but upon signing in this way MATE actually started which was odd but handy.

At first I could not update as Pamac would not download any of the required 538 updates from the base Namib.  So I opened a terminal and tried to use pacman.  First attempt using ‘pacman -Syu’ it just sat there after updating the main repositories as it failed to download just as Pamac had.

In the end the way I managed to get it working was to use the ‘pacman -Syyuu’ which forces the update.  So finally I managed to get the system updated and working.  I also managed to install the Nvidia drivers while I was there and all of the previous programs I was using which luckily was not many as I have been pretty quiet on Linux at the moment.

After installing Grub Customizer from the AUR I was able to put Grub into a mode that I knew would work with my ageing monitor.  I really must get a new one although this works it’s an old Dell 19 inch monitor with a max resolution of 1280x800 so it really is showing its age.  It works fine however and there is no pixel damage so I really can’t complain.

So within an hour I was back up and running and even managed to get my desktop back including my Cairo Dock at the bottom of the screen with all its icons restored and reworking including the Vulkan drivers and DXVK to get games working through Lutris.

However I have not really been playing games lately but it is nice to have that capability should I start using it.  

I have however been messing around with stuff.  I was playing with the Previous emulator.  If you remember I discussed this NeXT emulator before.  Well I managed to get a few programs installed using ISOs of the Peanuts Archive including a few games and a few applications.

I have also been messing around with DosBOX and I decided to have a bit of fun playing with some old programming stuff to see if I can remember any of it.  I honestly can’t but I installed Borland Turbo Pascal 6.0 for DOS and Borland Turbo C 3.0 for DOS and I was playing with them.

I vaguely managed to get a basic “Hello World” type program that cleared the screen and then waited for a key press to exit but it took me far longer than it should have as I have totally forgotten how to program Pascal and C++ and to begin with could not even remember the keywords.

This could be because the last time I actually did any programming in DOS has to be more than 25 years ago.  However I did have fun playing with them and although it won’t lead to anything serious.  Trust me I don’t desire to become a programmer as I just don’t have the patience, it is fun to mess around and do small things with.

I did create their own dosbox.conf files so they auto-start in DosBOX from a launcher and now they sit on my Cairo Dock bar along with everything else.  I’m sure in time I will kill them off but for now it keeps me vaguely amused in this tricky time.

Hello everyone and welcome to my ongoing journey in the world of Linux. I admit its been pretty quiet on my laptop. However I have been using Hyprland a lot more than normal. I still fall back to KDE Plasma 6.4 X11 occasionally but I admit to be honest I am living on Hyprland and Wayland.

I managed to add a few things to the configuration files. The first thing I added to the config files was I added a way using Super, Shift and Up or down means I can move programs between virtual desktops.

So I can take a split window to its own desktop if one is free or I can bring a separated one down if I want to combine them both on screen. So it seems I am learning some things. All hope is not lost…

I also managed to auto run Crystal Dock. Now apparently this is not a new program rather than a one that disappeared for many years but now version 2.2 works with Wayland which many others don’t.

So once again I now have a dock. Its odd you have to run a program then pin it to the dock. It’s the only way you can get them to work. However many programs although you can run them many won’t allow you to pin them so some I normally have on the dock can not be done.

They still work under Hyprland you just have to launch them using ROFI (set on Super +D) rather than the dock. However quite a lot of the programs can be pinned so that was why I added it to the the autoexec section of the config files.

As I said Crystal Dock is not perfect it’s Auto hide and Intelligent Autohide gets stuck but to be honest hopefully in time that may get fixed but then again I have no idea as Crystal Dock has only just returned so I have no idea if it going to continue to be worked on now it works for Wayland or if it was patched just to get people off their back.

I am going to hope that they have returned and Crystal dock will be fixed to work correctly. I admit if you flick between the two on startup it does get over minor issues of sticking, but it’s annoying that I have to do that.

Obviously in time I hope they address how to add programs and manage to add ways I can add certain emulators and stuff but the fact I even have a dock at all in Wayland I really admit is impressive as I was about to think finding one would be impossible.

I have been over the issues i had with the Cairo Dock version that works with Wayland as it has its own issues. Primarily it sometimes adds duplicates or after a while just resets its own config and buggered its self up but the guys behind Cairo dock admit they have made it basic and don’t intend to go any further until they are forced to do so. Which is entirely their prerogative.

I admit I have returned to using Firefox after quite a while using Brave. I did like Brave as it continued to block ads on YouTube when Firefox had its fail moment for a while. However Brave kept signing me out YouTube every other day and it was getting bloody annoying keep having to 2 step authenticate which requires opening my phone and getting to Gmail just to say yes it’s me.

Firefox is supposedly now keeping data on people and selling it off to the highest bidder which did give me some objection but I figured well if Google who are running my email have not sold my info I guess the remainder can be split up between the various social media and Firefox. If anyone truly believes they have any form of privacy or that your data isn’t been given willy nilly to anyone who is willing to pay then you are deluding yourself beyond belief.

Admittedly under Linux its not as evasive as say Apple or Microsoft but people still ask for telemetry data and people opt in to help.

KDE admitted that 78% of its users are on Wayland now thats from the telemetry opt in people have given them. Audacity has an opt in to give info back to the Muse group who now own it.

Data is worth a lot of money. If you think only the Muse Group or only KDE will see the telemetry you opted into then you need to be much more aware of how the corporate business world works.

Even Free Open Source Software isn’t talking about price… its talking about free as in the freedom to be modified its not proprietary and going to charge you for licensing. Many get this confused and are thrown how Linux companies can charge for service contracts.

As it happens most Distros don’t charge so the free as in monetary does apply but things like RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and SuSE Linux and there is more that charge fees for customer support on a monthly basis. It’s supporting businesses who need someone to phone if the server goes down at 3am.

Can’t imagine Red Hat will help you much if you call up asking how to run Monkey Pants Solitaire 3 on Steam using Proton even if you have paid for RHEL. They might but i don’t think it’s one of their common issues. I could be wrong…

I can’t remember if I opted into or out of the KDE study. I more than likely if given a choice will have opted out but honestly I can’t remember.

To be honest why I still bounce back to KDE is normally when something goes awry. For example I once in a blue moon play Extreme Tux Racer and it’s only one track I play.

For some reason it stopped working with SFML version 2 and the only way to get it working was to build it using a patched one from GitHub that allowed it to use SFML 3 so now it works which it had stopped doing for a while.

This is sometimes where Arch can be pain when programs you don’t use regularly suddenly stop and don’t inform you and then you have to figure how to get around that luckily it doesn’t happen that often.

For all people say Arch breaks things regularly, that’s not true. OK, it breaks the odd time or two. However normally someone fixes it or suggests a fix virtually immediately.

So very rarely are you completely stuck without a program. I’m sure someone is going to give me an example of something in the AUR that no one maintains anymore and has gone completely tits up which I don’t use just to prove a damned point.

I’m sure there is lots of dead ends with various programs in the AUR luckily they just tend not to be the ones I happen to be using.