#slax

Duckvember Day 30: Nostalgic Duck

"It's Quackula! He's back! In plush form!"

I had another idea in mind with these two ducks but their faces got complicated. I had forgotten what the teeth of these two ducks looked like. And the duckling plushies didn't turn out as cute as I wanted.

Geextah and Slax are the protagonists of the series: X-DuckX. They are two best friends who like extreme sports.

Unfortunately, the series is a Lost media, both in English and Spanish.

If you’re like me, you hate the idea of throwing away perfectly good electronics just because they’re a bit outdated. That’s why I’ve been experimenting with various Linux distributions over the years to get the most out of my old machines. I’ve tried everything from Ubuntu to Puppy Linux, but the one that’s stuck with me the longest is Linux Mint. As my daily driver, Linux Mint has proven to be…

This post is a summary of my journey to find a replacement OS to Windows on my new computer.

Technically the computer is just contemporary 2022 by any account, it's not bleeding edge nor antiquated. It's no speed demon nor slouch I think: -> Intel N6000 + UHD Graphics -> 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD -> 1080p OLED touch screen -> WiFi + BT -> Front + rear cameras Nothing that any modern OS couldn't handle.. right?

I do have a little list of what to look for in the OS that is going to run this computer: -> light on RAM, CPU, SSD -> sprightly touch friendly UI -> easy-ish configuration -> supports the hardware i.e. CPU, GPU, WiFi, BT, etc. -> pi-hole + unbound to make the internet pleasant-er -> runs Google Chrome & Brave browsers Not terribly demanding by any measure.. right??

So off to DistroWatch.com to check out what's on offer in the world of Opensource OS!

>>> Long story short, I spent weeks experimenting ... >>>

Never have I thought that I would cycle through so many OS to find so few that works with my hardware.

I've cycled through MX Linux / Debian / Manjaro / Slax / Slitaz / PopOS / EndeavourOS / FreeBSD / NomadBSD with no success.

For a time I felt that Manjaro was going to be the OS to be. It supported most of the hardware sans the cameras, ran all of the apps I need .. but pi-hole + unbound somehow always didn't end well. pi-hole would work and unbound too, albeit not in tandem, I just couldn't get them to play together, that's probably my fault for not knowing to configure each that well. It was also rather heavy on RAM at almost 4GB which probably is GNOME's fault. Yes I used GNOME, only because it has better touch screen support than the other Window Mangers and Desktop Environments.

Manjaro GNOME has its quirks, sometimes, something glitches and the UI craps out on me, but generally it works well, is sprightly, but it sips quite a bit of battery juice when in Sleep mode., and Hibernating is almost akin to rebooting which doesn't bode well for just picking up the computer to do a quick search or read or watch something.

The Debians and BSDs were wrote off shortly after their first boot. The problem was they couldn't detect the OLED display. I couldn't control brightness, set resolution or adjust color at all, which Manjaro somewhat managing with exception color adjustment.

Alas poor Slitaz .. honestly, I was hoping that it would be the one that works, but it didn't even manage to boot. I was quite dismayed.

So that is why I almost resigned to using Manjaro seeing that it was the only Linux that actually-mostly-worked on this computer, but .. there was one more OS I wanted to try on this computer, it came on my radar only because it can now run Linux apps, so just maybe, it could fare slightly better than Manjaro..

-> ChromeOS Flex

Back in the day, I'm already aware about Neverware and what they were doing to bring ChromeOS to the average Intel / AMD x86 / x86-64 computers. When they were bought over by Google, their product, CloudReady, became ChromeOS Flex. Now that it is Google-fied, tehre is a whole lot of convenience in keeping my browsing preferences in sync across different computers.

With Google incorporating Linux containers in ChromeOS Flex, this was one avenue I was keen to explore to satisfy my desire for OS-wide ad blocking & DNS identity privacy.

It was pretty late at night but Slash couldn’t sleep, so he simply stared at the ceiling.

He almost didn’t hear the soft knock on his door. Confused as hell, ( because who the fuck would knock on his door at 3 am?), he decided to get up and to open it.

In the doorway was standing Axl and, as soon as the singer saw Slash, he bolted into his arms. Slash was a bit taken back, but he still embraced the older man.

“Are you okay, Ax?” The guitarist asked.

Axl shook his head and then hot tears started to streaming down his cheeks. The younger man brought him even closer, and gently they walked towards the bed; they both laid on it, Slash spooning the crying redhead while he was stroking his hair to calm him down.

They stayed like for a bit, Axl’s sobbing the only thing that could be heard, but eventually he calmed down enough to have a normal breathing again. Slash had never let him go, his arms tight around the other man’s waist as they could shield him from any danger in this world.

“What did happen, babe?” Slash asked but the older man didn’t answer, his back facing his boyfriend.

“Did you have a nightmare?” the guitarist whispered and Axl simply nodded, turning his head to look the curly man into the eyes.

“ I just need to remember what hugs feel like, right now” he said, his voice breaking a bit. Slash looked at him in the eyes, then he brought him even closer and started to hug him tightly. Why did his beautiful angel have to suffer so much?

“ What was it about?”  Slash said softly.

“You left me ‘cause you saw the real me. And he was there and he told me that I didn’t deserve any love and that was the living proof. He said that my soul was poisoned, that I’m too broken to be loved. He said that I’ll never know what hugs feel like, because nobody would ever hug me.”

Slash didn’t need to ask who “he” was.

“I’ll never leave you ! I’ll never stop hugging you. Did you get it? I won’t go anywhere, I can’t.” Slash replied, hugging Axl even more.

“You won’t?”

“I love you too much. I can’t live without you !”

Axl kissed him on the lips, then he nuzzled his head into the other man’s neck.

“Could you never stop to hug me?” the redhead asked.