#linux arcolinux

Hello folks and welcome back to Linux Life.  Well since last episode I was still having issues with ArcoLinux B Cinnamon due to issues with mirror lists.  I changed them I reset them and I was still having issues regarding updates.  Also Cinnamon kept crashing at random intervals for no apparent reason and had to be restarted.  So it was being a tad problematic.

So I have now gone back to Antergos using MATE on the i7 desktop.  First I had to write my USB stick to install it.  I used Etcher under ArcoLinux which has normally not been a problem but for some reason it did not set up the stick correctly and it failed when I tried to boot it into the UEFI version.

Given my BIOS does not like Legacy boot systems it can do them but is very reluctant to do so.  I tried to install the old way but it refused to start Grub 2 correctly.  Ironically I had to now go and use a Windows system to rewrite the USB stick using Rufus and the UEFI setup worked.

Once installed I setup all of my regular programs without a hitch and was actually surprised the MATE could use the theme I had downloaded for Cinnamon called Cinnamox Heather without any conversion or problems.

Due to me having my home directory on a separate drive I also did not have to setup Steam, Thunderbird or Firefox plug-ins as they were already in the home directory config files, Handy.

So within a matter of under an hour I was back up and running without a hitch.  Updates seem to be working fine in Antergos and Cnchi did not crash on me even once which is an absolute achievement as it used to be unstable as hell.

It did give me a few more Window Manager options to play with such as i3, Budgie and Openbox which I don’t believe were in the list last time I tried to run Cnchi.  Ultimately I went with MATE because I know it works quite well and is quite low on resources usage compared to Gnome 3 or KDE.

So Antergos is back for now.  We will see how long it lasts.  Something didn’t work I think it was Davinci Resolve 15 but that I have discovered is due to you need the Nvidia 390.xx drivers as it does not work using the 340.xx ones.  The 340.xx drivers don’t work well with OpenCL and CUDA which is what Davinci Resolve uses.  The 390.xx ones are fine with it.

I planned a video experiment using OBS and certain emulators to do a comparison of a game between systems.  Now I managed to install Fuse (ZX Spectrum) and VICE (C64) emulators no problem.  However when it came to Amstrad emulation it was a bit of a pain.  First I tried to install Caprice32 from the AUR but it refused to build due to issues with an alleged missing freetype-config.  Also it was looking for pkg-config so I installed pkg-config then as soon as I ran the AUR build it uninstalled it and reinstalled pkgconf.

After lots of trying to get it to build playing with Makefiles and PKGBUILD files which the AUR uses I eventually gave up.  Eventually I installed Arnold which seems to work.  As a man who has not really emulated Amstrad machines I have no idea which one is a good emulator.  They did say CPC4x is not bad but I could not get it compile as it uses TCL/Tk and I had no idea how to get it to build.  I kept claiming it was missing old GCC v5 libs which I could not be bothered to install.

Especially as Antergos is using GCC version 8 if I remember correctly so it would have been a major step backwards and would probably break something.

Now that I have the three emulators working I can do my comparison but I must remember if I am using OBS not to capture in MP4 as the free version of Davinci Resolve does not include the H264 codecs, for them you need to buy the Studio version which is $200 I believe.

Unless Kdenlive can use MP4 considering I have not used any video editing packages beyond Adobe Premiere for about 5 minutes.  I can try them and see if I can find one I like. Natron I believe is more like After Effects and is used to add filters and transitions but I have no idea as I have not tried it.

So now I have all of the necessary tools I can start playing with my video project.  I can’t guarantee I will be happy with it or that I will even release anything but it will be a learning experience.  I am sure I will keep you informed of the joys and pitfalls if I do so.

Hello folks and welcome back to the world of Linux Life.    So as I said last episode I have been running ArcoLinux B Cinnamon.  Now most of the time it's been without issue but lately it is not always playing ball.

So it seems the Arch database system is being a little problematic.  First it would not update due to it not finding the appropriate servers.  So I adjusted it so it was searching the UK servers rather than the Belgian ones it was.

Now I figure it uses them as the guy who maintains the ArcoLinux distribution is Belgian hence why I had strange keyboard issues when I installed the other versions.

However once I changed to the UK servers all seemed fine for about a week or so.  Sometimes it just stalls while trying to access the servers.  Whether that's a servers issue or an issue with my WiFi I have not been able to ascertain.

However after a few restarts it seems to resolve itself but is annoying to say the least.  I will need to investigate further.

Also it seems certain times when I delete files.  Cinnamon decides to crash and needs to restart.  This I can not fathom why.  Maybe it's a bug in the new Cinnamon 4.0.2 and will be fixed shortly.  The crazy thing is it doesn't happen every time which is confusing.

Also it seems the AUR has changed its setup.  It seems to be using GCC version 6 and now everything seems to be compiled using g++.  It still works but is weird when you are used to walls of text when compiling stuff.

I had to uninstall Focuswriter  (a plain style word processor) and reinstall it using the new build method as it actually stopped working.  This is the first time I have had the Arch issue of updating breaking something but it was easily resolved.

Now as a man who has championed  the Arch system and always said I did not have the issues others had.  It slightly concerns me when it starts happening to me.

As I said before I have kind of got used to a rolling release and up until recently I had only minor issues more to do with my preference to the way certain things looked rather than software issues.

Now I don't know if this is to do with Cinnamon, Arch or ArcoLinux itself.  I will keep an eye on it and hope nothing else breaks.  Everything I normally use seems to work.  So I figure Focuswriter just needed a file that was missing due to update.  The recompile must have rebuilt it.

I did have a look at something different using Virtualbox (which I had to manually update the Vbox extensions to the latest ones).   The distribution in question was Fedora Jam it seems very similar to Ubuntu Studio which I used previously for a short while.

It is a Fedora version with a low latency kernel designed for people who want to use Linux for audio creation.  Obviously the lower latency the kernel the better the overall recording response is.  It comes with Pulseaudio and Jack preconfigured so you don't have to play around with settings.

It uses KDE and is based on the latest version 29 build of Fedora.  Now me and KDE in the past have not seen eye to eye.  The last time I ran it, it regularly crashed on me or corrupted the display.  So I have no desire to return to it.

However Fedora Jam is an interesting idea.  I may run it on one of my other machines such as the Xeon for a bit of an experiment.  Although I don't really like fixed distributions.  Fedora has a good reputation.

Obviously being a Red hat derivative they have a reasonably good record.  Mind you people swear by Debian but I have had nothing but trouble with it and will avoid it like the plague.

I really hope I don't have to go back to a fixed distribution but if ArcoLinux does not fix itself I may have to resort to looking elsewhere.

Shame really as I was going to start playing with Davinci Resolve 15 now up to version 15.2.1 and try out playing with the LaTeX system which I have not messed around with since the Slackware days.

It's been a while so maybe it has improved.  However I am reluctant to mess about too heavily until I can figure why my system keeps having silly moments.

Normally issues like this resolve themselves in a few days at most a week so not too worried at the moment .  Bugs are normally fixed quickly in Arch which is why I like it.

Also installed Natron which they say is a video editor with interesting effects available.  It's no longer updated but will be interesting to see what it's all about.

Hello folks and welcome back to my eternal Linux quest. Well since last episode I have changed my desktop i7 from ArcoLinux B Budgie to ArcoLinux B Cinnamon.

Reason being for all that Gnome 3 was functional if you wanted to use a one off program I really did not like it’s main icon manager. The icons are sorted alphabetically and there is no grouping what so ever.

Now I am sure there is some out there who like this phone icon style setup after all some people like Unity when it was in Ubuntu so each to their own.

Now lets put it in perspective Gnome 3 worked flawlessly otherwise, whether that was due to the modification by the Budgie setup I can’t say but it really didn’t have any major problems.

I have criticised Gnome 3 in the past but it performed reasonably well. The only thing that annoyed me is when it originally installed the main bar was at the top and the only way to shift it was to install an extension.

Mind you a lot of Linux installations seem to stick the main bar at the top. I know that it is due to Apple Mac doing so but the truth with OS X you use the bar sparingly.

You don’t open apps with it as most are on the dock. Why Linux feels they want to put their menu button in the top left hand corner I have never understood.

So I installed ArcoLinux B Cinnamon and sure enough everything was as it should be. Then an update happened and Cinnamon was updated by pamac to version 4.0.0.

Now when I restarted Cinnamon had moved the log out, lock and close buttons to the top of the apps menu. I spent about an hour looking around the internet trying to figure if there was a way to move them back to the left panel which is where it was preferable.

After finding out how to change virtually everything in Cinnamon but moving these icons I gave up and figured this way obviously the new layout to go with the new version but it meant the programs menu was now unnecessarily wider than it should be.

Resigned I gave up for the day and wondered if I had made the right choice going to Cinnamon. I started looking at other Window Managers or Desktop Environments and could not find one that really I was happy with. Cinnamon just seemed to do what I wanted. Oh well.

So I returned to my machine the following day and pamac had its usual array of updates but in the list I noticed Cinnamon 4.0.0.1 well I proceeded through the updates. Sure enough it seems I was not the only one who did not like the top icons idea as sure enough they are now back to the left side panel where they previously were.

Normality has now been restored. I also discovered something about Steam and Davinci Resolve. I have mentioned before in my i7 desktop is a NVIDIA 630GT graphics card. Its one of the last Pascal cards not the later version which used the Fermi chipsets.

I wanted to install Steam but you need to have the Nvidia 3.40 xx series of drivers installed. After installing Steam which works fine now I tried installing Davinci Resolve 15. Now it keeps crashing using the 3.40 xx drivers which it didn’t when I was using the 3.90 xx set.

I am yet to see if Steam still works if I upgrade to the 3.90 xx set but it should not be an issue. I can’t use the current 4 xx series driver as my card is no longer supported in that version.

One day I may eventually have a go at making a video. I have got OBS installed on the machine and I would like to do something in the video world but to be honest I have no idea what to cover or really what I am doing with video editors.

I remember before I moved to Linux playing with Premiere Pro but to be honest I had no idea what I was doing. My video was in the middle of the clip and nothing I did moved it. I really did not have a clue.

Maybe I should sit and watch some video production stuff on Youtube or find a Udemy thing I can study. I could try and produce a Linux based video series but there is an awful lot of those out there already.

I am not really a game player and even when I do it seems when capturing using OBS no matter how well I normally play I seem to play really badly when I know I am capturing footage.

Now I know I could just play several times until I get a video that’s not too bad. However then I will have silly amounts of useless footage on my hard drive which is not worth the space it’s taking.

Well here we are again my friends back in the world of Linux. So since we were last here I have been trying to install NextStep in Qemu. I spent several hours trying to do so when I actually examined the Qemu Wiki to see if I was doing something wrong.

Apparently I wasn’t doing anything wrong whatsoever it is just that NextStep 3.3 has issues with Qemu where it will randomly stop for no apparent reason which was exactly what was happening to me.

So it seems I am not a complete moron. So having to abandon that project I decided to see if I could run Openstep 4.2 in Virtualbox. This I was able to do and have now managed to find certain software from Archive.org I downloaded the Peanuts Next Archive. Which is 5 CDs worth of software and documentation.

I don’t know if this is the last archive but there is an FTP site with Next software on it. I will eventually have a chance to look through it but for now I have managed to get it running fine and it is using the Vesa driver so I can run it at 1280x1024 should I want to.

At the moment I have got it running at 1024x768 and it looks fine. I managed to install Pacman, Tetris and a game called Firestorm using the Peanuts Archives.

I have set up networking but I am yet to test it to see if the bridging connection has worked.

I also installed a browser called OmniWeb 2 but I am yet to test it to see if it works.

I may actually see if I can run OpenStep 4.2 on actual hardware as I do have a 1Ghz Athlon machine which I originally was going to use for DOS games but it would be interesting if I could get it working on this.

As for Budgie or Gnome 3 I am getting used to it. I don’t know it I will ever truly like it but I can’t be bothered to change WM at this time.

Maybe I should change to Cinnamon or Mate but given the weird way ArcoLinux set up Mate last time I am not so sure. Also part of me wonders whether certain things are working because of Gnome 3 I guess there is only one way to find out.

For now I can live with it, it’s not the end of the world. Who knows in time I actually might get to like it but to be honest I won’t put money on it.

Maybe what I may do is since I have Virtualbox installed I might try out a few WMs in a virtual environment see which one I decide I like. To be honest I am quite particular in the way things work.

This is why I am the worlds worst at getting any project done I am never complete until I have it just right. This is why I have about 12 half arsed novels, about 3 podcasts in various states and a few ripped videos which I intended to edit but never actually sat down to do.

I am not happy with the projects and rather than complete them and then move on. I stop them, leave them, come back tinker with them then get frustrated and abandon them.

Why am I such a perfectionist at times it can be rather frustrating. Anyway I am getting off topic so time to return to the Linux stuff.

I have been challenged to see if I can get MorphOS running using Qemu. Apparently it can be done. So that is the next challenge for me. Qemu can emulate up to a G5 so will be interesting to see what happens.

You know I can’t help it. I always try and make a machine be able to do something its not supposed to be. I make a Windows machine pretend it’s a Mac. I run Openstep, Amiga OS 4.1 FE and Mac OS 9.2.2. on Linux. Its also capable of playing DOS games and Dreamcast games through emulation.

Maybe I just can’t decide which machine I would like as my ideal setup to be so I play and noodle with many different setups until I find one that sticks.

Will I finally find something I can live with or will I keep playing until I find a desktop I can be happy with. One thing for certain as much as I am taking slightly to Gnome 3 there is nothing on this earth would take me back to KDE Plasma.

The way they have changed the setup it can go and take a run and jump of a long pier. Anyway that’s enough waffling for this episode. We will see what is the next stage of my Linux Life journey.

Hello folks and welcome back to Linux Life.  Well since last episode I have changed the i7 desktop version of ArcoLinux from Mate to Budgie.

This was because the way Mate was handling certain programs minimised was being a bit problematic.  Some times programs would not reopen once minimised.  Also because I have plans to dual boot the machine,  I did not install this version via UEFI so it was causing issues with the Multi boot setup.

Now I admit the last time I used Budgie was with Ubuntu Budgie and the Software store app crashed every time I installed a program so it did not last very long on the test machine I used it on.  However because ArcoLinux is based on Arch it’s primary source of installing software is through Pacman or Pamac.  It still has the Software app but I will come back to that point in a bit.

Now Budgie is a complete lightweight rebuild based on Gnome 3 what has been changed I have no idea but lets just say me and Gnome 3 have not had the best relationship.

Antergos used it as its installer base and due to the issues with Cnchi it caused many a headache to get it installed.  I also don’t like the huge icon launcher thing that looks like it fell out of the Fisher Price factory as it has no category sorting and you have to search through tons of icons to find what you want.  OK there is a search bar but that’s fine if you know what the app you want is called.

Now Budgie still has this horrible icon launcher but because I use Cairo Dock I have moved the most used apps to it so I very rarely use the launcher and on my CD dock it has an Application Menu applet which has a categorised listing of programs should I need it.

Anyway installation was painless but when it loaded the first time after install I could not get my wifi to connect.  It would not accept the key.  I had entered it about five times and was getting frustrated.  I pulled up the settings for wifi and sure enough it could see my router.

However I have no idea why but my keyboard layout was set to Belgian instead of UK English so it was set as an AZERTY keyboard with odd accents.  Once I set the keyboard to the right language I could enter my wifi key and I could now connect to the internet.

ArcoLinux still won’t automatically sign you in even though I did set it in the installer options.  Don’t know why that is but it’s not the end of the world.

Now because Budgie is pretty much Gnome 3 in sheep’s clothing the application menu was at the top like Mac OS.  Now for the Mac that’s fine as you can use the icons but Gnome 3 does not have any icons on screen unless you add an extension to put them on screen.

Now this brings me onto extensions, why Gnome 3 does not keep all it’s settings in one place like everyone else I will never understand but the base settings is just rudimentary and if you want to change Appearance of things like themes you have to go to separate setting menu using the Tweaks app.

So I wanted the Application panel bar on the bottom of the screen I tried dragging it but no joy.  It would not move.  So I had to find an extension to do so this is where it uses the Software app.  I had to install an extension called the MMOD loader then turn it on using Tweaks before I could move it.  What a carry on.

I’m sure there was another way such as using the SUPER key which is apparently the Windows key and Shift probably but I never tested that method as I only learned that much later.

So now the Applications bar was on the bottom and the MMOD added the Favourites next to  it which was handy, however when it moved down.  Where in the top it said Applications so you could click it was now just a blank space.

After a bit of fiddling around looking in Tweaks and finding no joy I went to the internet and guess what it needs another extension of Application settings which gives yet a further setup panel.

However I managed to get an icon back and it allows you to customise the text it displays so not complaining. You can also change the icon used so now I have a metal Arch logo.  Which looks quite good so bonus points there.

Now I wanted to change the look certain other bits such as the icons so I had to go back to Tweaks.  Now I managed to change from the dark look to Adwaita which is a more standard white.

I know Dark Mode is the in thing due to Mac OS Mojave and at times I don’t mind it.  However for all the theming changed the main bar was still black.  Adwaita was not available for the Shell which is what the bar is known as.

So off I went to Gnome-Look.org which has the largest selection of Gnome themes including Gnome Shell.  Every one in the list was either black or some weird colour I did find the Adwaita-White theme but the download button was disabled for it for some reason.

After a bit of searching about I settled on a theme called Square Glass which made the shell look like transparent glass. OK so after downloading I had to figure how to install the theme.

Now as I had User themes turned on via Tweaks apparently there should be a .themes directory in my home directory there wasn’t.  Even when I created it and moved the theme in there no joy.

OK off to the Internet I trot.  Eventually I had to log in as root move the extracted theme to /usr/share/themes and finally it worked.  Only thing that is a little annoying is the shutdown buttons when you close the panel is transparent as it should be but the Shutdown, Restart and Cancel buttons are black.

I’m sure there is a way to change this as technically the theme is just a CSS file I believe so there is probably a way to change it. If you know how to alter them.  I am sure there is a guide somewhere on how to do it.  I will have to see if I can find one.

Since I was changing themes I decided to change the Grub theme as ArcoLinux does not use a graphical boot it’s a text one which looks rather lame.  Gnome-Look.org has a selection of Grub themes and I now have a nice green Shodan for System Shock 2 ASCII style theme.  Luckily Gnome 3 has a nice tool called Grub Customiser which makes it simple to change theme one you install them to /etc/boot/themes.

So that has been my journey through this change.  Reason I discovered the SUPER key move trick was because when I installed Davinci Resolve 15 it did like the Mate version did and the application was off the end of the screen.

When you move the app using the SUPER key (their capitalisation not mine) method rather than dragging like any other it seems to jump in stages.  Which is odd.

Now that I have it set up with all the extensions and I have managed to set the themes  and stuff it’s actually working fine.  Sure it still has that silly icon launchpad  but due to me using Cairo Dock I very rarely have to use the silly thing.

So why it is known as Budgie I don’t know as it’s really just Gnome 3.  However for all I have criticised Gnome 3 but it does the job once you get it how you like it. It seems pretty stable.

Anyway that’s enough waffle for this episode.  Man this was a long one.  So all I need  to do is install the Hackintosh as the other operating system so that it is set up to dual boot.

Well hello folks and welcome back to Linux Life.  Since the last episode I have been getting to grips with ArcoLinux B Mate on the i7 desktop.

I have installed a few things since we last spoke but mainly to get things working.  For example I am now using Cairo Dock instead of Plank or Docky and I must admit it is definitely better than the pair of afore mentioned programs it can be offset so it does not need to on an edge this means I can finally move it above the task manager bar.

In fact I did so for a little while but I had issues with its hiding so its back at the top of the screen like all the others.  I solved the issue of it highlighting entries apparently I had not installed the plugins but once I did that it seems to work fine.

Now to admit the not so fun part of ArcoLinux and Cairo Dock.  When you minimise a program it seems to default to Cairo dock and not to the actual Task Manager dock meaning that if you want to reopen things you have to go up to the Cairo Dock.

While not the most convenient thing in the world it does work.  However even before I ran Cairo Dock minimising programs is a problem as sometimes you cant get them to reopen by clicking the icon.  Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.

This is a major pain when you are trying to switch between apps as you have to manually restart them to get back in.  So for all that ArcoLinux is quite functional it does have its quirky moments.

Will I stick with ArcoLinux is a bit of an unknown at the moment.  it seems to work well with the NVIDIA drivers and OpenCL works in it which it doesn’t in Antergos but at the moment I am not really taking advantage of the fact as I was intending to try video editing with Davinci Resolve 15 I just have not got around to doing that so a bit pointless.

One thing I did install was a Dreamcast emulator in the form of Redream.  Now I downloaded it from their site as the version in the AUR did not want to build even though it was allegedly a GIT version.

Mind you this isn’t the first time I have had issues with GIT versions I remember trying the version of FocusWriter and although it worked it was a tad weird and kept a chevron cursor on screen at all times.

Its strange as I think I have also tried FlatPak images and others and they are not very well liked by Arch but then again they are really designed for Ubuntu so not a huge surprise.

Well Redream works really well it even detected when I connected my joypad.  OK I had to rebind the controls to the pad but it took no more than a minute to do so then all was good.

Only game I did not get running was Metropolis Street Racer but there is unstable versions of the emulator I could use that may allow me to play the game.  The intro video would play but then it would crash out back to main menu with no error messages.  If I ran it in a terminal I am sure I could find out what the issue is.

It did however run Crazy Taxi, Crazy Taxi 2, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Ikaruga perfectly fine. In time I will try it with a few more Dreamcast games and it ran 60 FPS with out an issue.

Part of me wants to run the i7 desktop as a Hackintosh but I have no idea how to do so in a dual boot format with ArcoLinux. I am sure it can be done I just don’t know how to go about it. can Grub2 see Hackintosh?  or can Clover/Chameleon boot Linux partitions. It probably can as I think it is based on ISOLinux.  Don’t quote me on that.

Hello again folks and welcome to Linux Life.  Well I admit I have had a minor change since we last spoke.  As you know if you have read more than one entry I have been running Antergos on the i7 desktop for a few weeks.

Well I tried to install CUDA in order to use it with the Nvidia drivers.  This then installed stuff which then totally snarled up the video setup and all hell broke loose.  Next thing I know Antergos will load but no graphics driver will display on screen.

So I tried going in non graphically from Grub to correct it.  Long story short after much faffing around using various pacman commands and editing various xorg scripts I could not get it restore.

Don’t know what it changed as I could not get back into see what it had buggered up.  OK so good job I back up my Linux files regularly so I think I lost one download which I can get again.

I was about to get Antergos down to reinstall when I decided to use ArcoLinux after all it had worked rather well on the Celeron.

So I actually downloaded ArcoLinux B MATE edition.  I installed it fine without any issues with monitor glitches as its using DVI on this machine so I don’t get problems with display configuration.

After playing around with the Appearance tab I finally managed to get it looking pretty good.  Off to install software.  So after setting the AUR on as is pretty standard I set about adding all of my usual programs.

This is where it went a bit odd.  Selecting all the files was fine and setting them to install was fine, but sometimes while it was doing this the list of files you could choose from would list as no files found.  It would still be installing but once done you have to close the pamac application and restart it.

I admit this a minor thing as everything installs fine just a tad annoying.  So eventually I finished setting up my software.  I realised I was using the nouveau driver so I installed the Nvidia drivers nervously after all this is what had killed my Antergos setup.

No bother it installed all the driver stuff correctly and the Nvidia driver works fine.  I did have one interesting moment as after installing the Nvidia driver I installed Steam.

Steam would not start.  Reason being I had forgotten to install the Nvidia 390xx utils but once that was corrected it worked perfectly.

I have also managed to get Davinci Resolve 15 working in ArcoLinux something I have not managed to get working in any version of Linux other than CentOS (which I think it was designed for) previously in other versions such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Antergos it could never get the OpenCL or CUDA driver working but it seems to have installed CUDA fine and the application works.

Only issue is I have to move the screen to use it and you cant just drag it you need to select move by right clicking the icon.  It seems to be designed for a wider desktop than 1280x1024 as the close window box is off screen even if moved to the far left.

It still works as you can just quit it from the Davinci menu on the menu bar.  Will I ever use it probably not but it is nice to see it run for the first time on Linux for me.

Instead of using Plank or Docky I am using Cairo Dock as my program launcher and it seems to work fine but it does have a quirk of when you restart Linux it will load but highlight a random icon on the dock and have it stand out.  Move the mouse over the bar and it will stop doing so but it’s odd don’t know why it does that.

So the only machine left still running Antergos now is the i7 laptop.  ArcoLinux seems to work quite well so for the moment it will remain the choice on the i7 desktop.

Would I recommend ArcoLinux definitely it seems to have a few quirks but overall it seems to work better than Antergos.  I’m sure the quirky bugs will be worked out with Arch it seems the way.

Admittedly Antergos seem to better orientated if you have issues as their forums are normally very quick to respond or the answer is already there.  So if you are having issue Antergos probably is better for you.

ArcoLinux has many options including ArcoLinux D if you want a base setup where you choose what you want.  I’m afraid I am not brave enough to install that one just yet.  It looks like it is done similar to the basic Arch Linux distro which requires a lot of setup and script work to get going.

If that’s your bag knock yourself out but I personally don’t want to do that just yet.  So which do I prefer ArcoLinux or ArcoLinux B Mate.  Well the basic ArcoLinux uses XFCE4 which I managed to use out of the box with no issues.

The MATE version needed a bit of tweaking to get it the way I wanted it but in the end it all seems to work fine.  So I guess it depends how much you are willing to muck about.  If you just want to install and go, then install the Arcolinux ISO.  If you want a certain window manager then install a ArcoLinux B ISO there is many including Budgie, Cinnamon, i3, Deepin and more.

One minor thing I had is I set the installer to Automatically log me in but for some reason this didn’t happen so I need to login at start-up.  There is probably a way around this but its not the end of the world.  Maybe I just thought I checked the box and I didn’t.

If you want a headache and feel like screaming you could install ArcoLinux D.

Overall go have a look at it ArcoLinux you won’t be disappointed.    

Hello folks and welcome back to Linux Life.  Well since we last time I have been playing around with my Celeron G520 desktop with 8GB of RAM.  Now it did have Antergos installed on it last time but I did try to install Haiku instead on there as they have updated to Beta 1 which is the first update to the OpenBeOS program in six years so I was keen to see what was new.

Installation went fine after setting up the drive to use the BE Filing System.  Sure enough once installed I rebooted the system and in about six seconds later Haiku had loaded.  I test a few things such as GL Teapot which runs at over 600 frames per second due to the Nvidia GT520 card in there.

OK time to install some software.  Haiku has its own repository knows as the HaikuDepot so I start it and nothing appears.  aha I think I have not set up the Wi-Fi so not surprised.  Off to the preferences section and select Network.  Well my Ethernet built in is seen which i don’t use but it is not seeing the Wi-Fi dongle plugged into USB.

Off to the Internet. I find on their site an article that says to run install-Wi-Fi-firmwares.sh in the Terminal app.  Try that no joy.  It is trying to download stuff from the internet which it obviously can’t do as it does not have a Wi-Fi driver, which seems to me to be kind of counter productive as in if you could get the internet you probably don’t need the Wi-Fi drivers.

A bit of further reading I discover that Haiku can also use the Wi-Fi drivers from FreeBSD 11.1.  after a bit of searching around FreeBSD I find out the driver I require is called rtwn (of course should have known that...err).  I download it using another machine and transfer it using a USB flash drive.

Unfortunately after unzipping it I discover you have to build it from source.  The download is just the source code.  Several failed attempts to build it later.  I return to the internet on the other machine to find a firmware build already made.

I attempt to copy it after unzipping it but due to the new version of Haiku the system drive area is now marked as read only as a new form of security protection so I can’t copy the things to where they should be.  in frustration I give up.  It’s a shame as it really is a nice fast system but can’t install anything without either connecting another machine to the internet then bridging the connection to Ethernet which means I need two machines running or find a different Wi-Fi card.

I later found out that even if I had got the rtwn driver working, Haiku has not got the ability to use USB Wi-Fi connections anyway so it was all for nought any way.

So I was about to reinstall Antergos when I thought I would try a different version of Arch Linux.  I decided to look at ArcoLinux  now it comes in three variations ArcoLinux, ArcoLinux B and D.  I decided to go with just the standard version as B and D while having more configuration options looked a lot more complicated to setup.

So one download and USB drive made up later I set about installing ArcoLinux.  I restart the Celeron and start from USB using BIOS boot menu.  Sure enough all fine until it comes to initialising video it starts at a mode my monitor does not like so I have a nice little message on screen from Dell saying set monitor to 1280x1024 60hz and I can’t see anything on display.  Great start.

So I restart the PC this time I intercept the Grub2 boot loader and set a command in there that video=1280x1024 and then boot.  This time it works fine and I manage to install ArcoLinux and it installs all fine.  I reboot and once again monitor won’t start.

Once again back to Grub loader and put in video command sorts it out.  Time to investigate why it seems the Display settings are set to 1280x960 for some reason which is the mode my monitor does not seem to like.  Bit of fiddling I manage to set it to 1280x1024  but when I restart the machine.  The machine sets the display to 1024x768 now.  Hmmmm getting a bit annoyed now.

So I start playing with xrandr I think I have gone into all the fun I have had with that stuff before so I won’t go through it again.  But this time I manage to get xrandr to work it will add the mode which is why I didn’t use Antergos before as no matter how much I set the xrandr driver it would not change but it seems ArcoLinux has no issue with it.

So one minor config entry added to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and it seems it now runs fine and in 1280x1024 with no further hassle.  It seems to be slightly to the left side on my monitor but fully visible so not playing with it any more.

So I installed all the usual stuff from the repositories and AUR (which I had to turn on, no big surprise).  Sure enough I now have a fully functional secondary Linux box and it is working fine.  Only thing I had to turn off was it installs Variety which is a wallpaper switcher by default but it was just a case of opening the preferences and telling it not to load on start up.

Now ArcoLinux uses XFCE4 and I must admit it seems quite functional.  Last time I tried XFCE was when I tried Peppermint Linux and it had a horrible setup.  ArcoLinux sets it up really well.  All I have to do now is figure out what I am going to do with the G520 as its now fully loaded and ready to go but I have no real plans for it.