Installing Virginia

I’ve been using Linux Mint for years, at least a decade, and it’s been my daily driver for many of them. Currently, I’m running it on four machines, my main computer, a laptop dedicated to my finances, another laptop that used to be my main laptop, and a desktop I’d intended to replace my wife’s Windows 10 PC. I’d upgraded all of them except my main machine soo after Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia was released, and these upgrade went quite well, with few, if any, problems. And they’ve been working well.

Generally speaking, the updated and new features that have been included in the Mint 21 point releases haven’t had anything that excited me or anything I had a particular need for. Mostly, they were minor cosmetic changes, although I can see the usefulness of the some of the changes made to the Cinnamon desktop and the Nemo file manager might have for someone who primarily uses a GUI interface. I, however, spend most of my time in the terminal and don’t use the GUI all that much. I keep up with the new releases mainly to make updates and upgrades easier down the line.

Yesterday I decided that it was time to upgrade the main machine. The upgrades to the other three Mint machines had been relatively quick and easy, so I didn’t anticipate any problems. Prior to starting the upgrade, I’d installed updates to the other Mint installations, and among the updates was Firefox. Linux Mint, because of their dislike of Snap packages, mantains their own version of Firefox which, I’ve noticed, usually takes twenty to thirty minutes to download and install. I’ve been surprised on occasion by a quick download, but that’s the exception, not the rule., and the latest updates followed the rule.

In over thirty years of working on computers I’ve found that an easy, problem-free upgrade is a rare event, so I should have been wary. While the previous upgrades to Virginia had taken less than an hour, this upgrade took over four hours to complete. (I probably could have installed it from the ISO quicker.) On average, the download rate when downloading packages was about 25 kilobytes per second. I occasionally saw it go as high as 52kb/s and drop down as low as 3kb/s. I do have reasonably fast Internet and while my computer and my network topology isn’t the latest and greatest, it’s quite adequate for the task at hand. Other than the download speeds, the upgrade was otherwise trouble-free.

Already, I’m starting to see information about Linux Mint 22 which will be coming out sometime this summer, and I’m having reservations about my future wth Linux Mint. It has worked very well for me over the years and I really like it. The biggest irritation I have about it lately has been the overall slowness of Firefox updates. Firefox hasn’t been my primary browser for years, preferring chromium-based browsers.Right now, I’m only using Firefox on mly main PC as the web interface for my git repositories.

Yesterday I began an experiment on a Mint laptop where I removed the Mint version of Firefox and replaced it with the Mozilla DEB package. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how well it goes.

When Linux Mint 22 Wilma is released this summer will I upgrade to it or try something else as my daily driver? I have Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) running on a couple of machines and it has been working quite well. I can actually see myself living in LMDE on my ‘production’ machines, particularly when considering Canonical’s and Ubuntu’s increased emphasis on pushing Snap packages for applications. It’s going to be increasingly more difficult for the Mint team to work around that.

Debian has become the dominant operating system on my network in the past year or so. I’m running minimal Debian installations with i3WM on several machines as well as Debian-based distributions such as Bunsen Labs, MX Linux, and LMDE. Migrating from the Ubuntu-based Mint to LMDE would likely be a natural transition. As a near term project, I’m planning to install i3WM on one of the LMDE systems as an alternative to the Cinnamon desktop.

So far, Virginia seems to be working well and I’ll likely stay on it until after Wilma is released. Mint 21 will be supported until April 2027, so I don’t have to be in a hurry to upgrade or move on to something else.

i3 on Bookworm

I’ve been planning to upgrade my Debian systems since Bookworm was released earlier this summer. Of course, I plan to maintain i3wm on those systems that already have it, and I spent a lot of time researching what I needed to be done to accomplish that.

Drew Grif’s (JustAGuy Linux) video and scripts were very beneficial in helping me get i3 up and running on Debian 11, and I was thrilled wihen he came out with a video where he installed several window managers on Debian 12. I cloned his scripts from his GitHub repository and studied them, but found a ittle difficult to separate the the i3 specific files from the rest. I’m not really interested in the other windown managers, although I may install all of them in a VM or on hardware, to check them out.

What I ultimately decided to do, was to take my current install script and update it to install i3 on Bookworm. I added the appropriate Polybar file, and make the necessary adjustments to the i3 configuration files. Then I upgraded one of my test laptops, a Dell Latitude E-6500, installing Debian 12 on the root partition and keeping the home partition. It took some work, but I got Polybar working with it, and it’s running great. I’ve since updated my local i3-Debian repository, so I think I’m ready to try it on another system. This time I’ll probably do a clean install and then restore my home folder from the backup.

I was able to install Polybar on my HP Elitebook laptop which is working out great. I’m not sure if the current version of Polybar actually supports applets in the taskbar , but I have them loaded by my i3 autostart script after Polybar has loaded, and it seems to be working okay. The Elitebook is a production machine and will probably among the last to be upgrade.

It’s strange that I can’t find Polybar in the Debian 11 repositories on the other systems running Bullseye. That’s not a big deal since the Bumblebee-Status bar works well on those systems, and they’ll all be upgraded to Bookworm before too long.

Drew Grif’s videos and repositories:

• i3-gaps Installation using shell script on Debian Bullseye minimal. – YouTube
• GitHub – drewgrif/i3gaps-debian
• Speed Challenge: Install 5 Customized Window Managers on Debian Bookworm – YouTube
• GitHub – drewgrif/bookworm-scripts
• GitHub – drewgrif/dotfiles: current configuration files

Thoughts on Linux Mint 21.1

In January, I upgraded two desktops and three laptops, from Linux Mint 20.3 Una to 21.1 Vera. Overall, I’m happy with upgrade on my main desktop computer, but not on the laptops. The laptops, all HP ProBook 6570b’s, are a bit underpowered for it. Applications are slow to open, some updates take an excessively long time time download, and when streaming video from YouTube and other sites, there’s a lot of buffering.

Firefox updates on all of my Mint 21.1 systems are slow. The file itself is about 70 MB and it’s downloaded from the Mint repositories. I’ve noticed that their mirrors are generally much slower than the Ubuntu mirrors. Still, it shouldn’t somewhere between 6 and 15 minutes to just download the file. It’s almost like being on dial-up.

Part of the problem may be that the laptops all have third-generation i5 processors, 8 GB of RAM, and spinning drives. More memory and SSD drives would undoubtedly speed them up, but I’m not willing to make that investment in them, at least not right now. The desktop machines have newer processors and more memory, and they’re running well.

For now, I’ll thinking about installing Linux Mint Debian Edittion (LMDE) on one of the laptops and minimal Debian with i3WM on another. The third one is kind of a production machine, and for what I do with it, I can live with the performance. I’m curious about the performance increase I’ll get by switching to a Debian-based environment.

I’ve been thinking about transistioning some of the Mint computers to either LMDE or Debian i3 for a while, wondering if I could live in them. I’m starting to think I could. My recent experiences with Mint 21.1 and the contortions that the Linux Mint team have to go through to circumvent all the changes that Ubuntu has introduced over the past couple of years, are definitely leading me down that path.

I’ve getting much more comfortable with a tiling window manager and with the Mint 21 updates, I’ve gotten away from using the Ubuntu PPAs. Flatpaks have found a place in my environment whenever I feel I need current software. I’m finding that maybe I don’t need the Ubuntu base. I haven’t messed around much wth Arch-based distributions, but I’m sure I could adapt without too much effort and it might be fun to adapt my scripts to worth with either.

Debian 11 with i3-gaps

This weekend I took on a project I’d been putting off for a while. I installed a minimal Debian installation with i3-gaps on my HP EliteBook 850 G3. The installation wasn’t quite flawless, but I never expected it would be. For the last couple of days, I’ve been installing applications and utilities, and tweaking the configurations. It has been a learning experience to say the least.

In preparation fo rthe project, I did a couple of upgrades to the laptop itself. I replaced the keyboard since the original keyboard was missing its F1 key. The key sitll functioned but since I had a spare keyboard lying around, I figured I might as well.

I’d been using a 128GB SATA M.2 drive with Debian 11 and i3. That was my first experiment installing minimal Debian 11 and the i3 window manager. It was very minimal, but it was a good learning experience. I decided that I wanted to make this laptop my primary laptop, so a larger drive was in order. I found a 500GB NVMe M.2 on Crucial’s web site for about $50, then found the same drive on Amazon for $41. I ordered it from Amazon for a total cost of about $55 and change. That included shipping and sales tax. I ordered it on Monday morning and it arrived on Friday afternoon.

Friday evening, I installed minimal Debian 11 and i3-Gaps. I was inspired by a video by Drew Grif (@JustAGuyLinux) on YouTube. I watched his video, i3-gaps Installation using shell script on Debian minimal, then cloned his drewgrif/i3gaps-debian repository on GitHub for the necessary scripts. I made a few changes to the scripts to fit my own needs and preferences. For the Debian installation, I did add the SSH server package during the install because I knew I’d need it on my network. The installation when very well. The only problem I had was after I rebooted, it booted into a with a default session with a small terminal window over a Debian wallpaper. I was puzzled at first, but I found where to select the i3 session. After that, there hasn’t been a problem.

After setting up my wireless connection, I noticed that there was no wired connection in the Network Manager app. I set up my static address manually in /etc/network/interfaces. This worked fine until I connected to another wireless network. I found that I wasn’t able to connect to the Internet because the system was looking for, and not finding, the default gateway on the wired interface. Disabling the interface solved the problem temporarily. Later, I went ahead and created a wired connection in Network Manager and commented out the the entries in the interfaces file. Everything seems to be working well now with the network.

Once installed, I began installing some of my favorite programs and utilities. Once I had some of the basic things installed, I began looking at major applications like an office suite. Knowing that Debian would have an older version of LibreOffice, I opted to install Flatpak and FlatHub, then installed the Flatpak version. I really haven’t used Flatpaks much, but LibreOffice seems to be working well so far. I’ll problably install a few more programs yet.

So far, I’m really enjoying the i3-gaps experience. It’ll take me a while to get used to it and remeber the keybindings. On my main desktop computer which runs Mint Cinnamon, I’ve been working with workspaces and keybindings to navigate them, it should be a relatively easy adjustment.

Penultimate Day 2022

I don’t have much to talk about as the year draws to a close. Most of my tech efforts have been forcused on Bash scripts. I’ve kept myslelf busy writing new scripts to install software or to solve problems that come up. Last year I wrote a script to retrieve the latest version numbers of the programs I download from GitHub. This year that script has undergone a lot of changes, mostly enhancing how the output is displayed.

My Windows 10 installation died on me , and I decided that I really didn’t want to go through the effort of reinstalling it. I took out the Windows drive in case I needed to get any data from it. In October, I installed Debian 11 on the HP 8300 and set up a Gitea server as a local repository for my scripts, configuration files, and other projects. It has been working out rather well, and I’m pushing changes on a nearly daily basis.

I’m still playing around with the i3 window manager on the 850 G3 laptop. I cloned an i3 setup I liked with plans to put it on that laptop and maybe a couple other machines. I still need to incorporate a few things into the configuration files. I cloned an Openbox set up on minmal Debian that I want to try out on one of the laptops as well.

Recently, I discovered that BunsenLabs release a new Openbox distribution (Beryllium) based on Debian 11. I installed it on the HP Mini 110. I wish I could say it went well, but there was a problem with the network. The wired connection sort of works on the local network and the Internet, but it won’t resolve domains on the Internet. I installed Debian 11 on it with the same results. After reinstalling Beryllium, I disconnected the wired connection and set up a DHCP reservation for the wireless. Of course, I had to modify a few of my scripts to accommodate that adjustment. I suspect the problem may be a driver issue since the ethernet device is Realtek. I haven’t put it on the Gateway laptop yet, but I don’t expect any problems since both network interfaces are Intel.

As of this time last year, my main machine was running Mint 20.2 and I was thinking about upgrading to 20.3 which was still in beta at the time. This year, I’m on 20.3 and thinking about going to 21.1. No matter how I do the upgrade, it’s going to be inconvenient. If I go straight to Mint 21.1, I’ll have to wipe the SSD and install it from scratch. The alternative is to use the upgrade tool to move to 21, then do an inplace upgrade to 21.1. I don’t really want to upgrade, but it needs to be done eventually..

I made the switch from https to ssh for pushing commits to my GitHub repositories, but I haven’t been able to get it to work. I obviously missed something but I have no idea what I missed. The repos up there are all terribly out of date, but at least I have my repository on my local network. I suppose I’ll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, I can still access it and I can keep on eye on the repositories I follow.

Back in August GitHub announced they were sundowning the Atom Editor on 15 December. Shortly after the announcement, I started looking at alternatives. Geany looks good and I’ve put on a few systems using a script that also adds some themes to it. I began using VSCodium, the open source version of VS Code without the telemetry. I’ve decided to make it my primary GUI editor. There are a few feature missing that I liked in Atom, but they’re not deal breakers. Still, I will miss Atom.

What’s the plan for 2023?

• Put revamped i3WM on the 850-G3, upgrade the storage to a larger M.2 SSD, and make it my primary laptop.
• Upgrade the 800 G2 SSF to Linux Mint 21.1, even if I have to do it from scratch.
• Screen on ProBook # 20. Either replace it or swap drives between the 3 laptops.
• Install Debian with Openbox on the HP 2650p.
• Install MATE on the Gitea server. Hopefuilly, that will add X-org and Network Manager.
• Install ThinLinc or some other remote desktop software on all machines for GUI remote access.

Small Projects

I’ve been playing around with updating scripts and several small proects since my last post. Updating scripts is a constant endeavor, one that I really enjoy. I’m always learning something new and finding better ways to accomplish a task.

Upgrades

In Feburary, I did an inplace upgrade of my Dell laptop from Debian 10 to Debian 11 which worked out very well. There were only a few minor issues and a few packages that had to be replaced, but it’s been working quite well.

Since then I’ve upgraded all of my Linux Mint systems to Linux Mint 20.3. Two were inplace upgrades from 20.2. There was one laptop where I needed to change the partitions, so that was essentially fresh install. I had two computers that were still running 19.3 and I did a fresh install from the ISO on both of them, preseriving the home partitions. Those are both working well.

I have three machines running LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and I’ve upgraded two of them. On the first one, I did a fresh install from the ISO, preserving the home partition. There were no problems with that. When I upgraded the HP 6005, I did an inplace upgrade using the beta of the Mint Upgrade tool. That worked perfectly with no problelms whatsoever. I still haven’t upgraded the Lenovo desktop but when I do, I will wipe it completely because I want to set up separate root and home partitions. I don’t anticipate any problems, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Other than the Lenovo, I have only two laptops running a distribution based on Debian 10, the Gateway and the HP Mini. Neither of them is a priority. I’m thinking about putting MX Linux 21.1 on the HP 2570 which is currently running Lubuntu 20.04. It’s on my To-Do list.

Back in November I installed Debian 11 and the i3 Window Manager on an HP EliteBook 850 G3 laptop to play around with i3 and get used to a tiling window manager. I’ve redone it a couple of times since then and now I think I have an overall confguration I like. I found a video on YouTube that walked me through the entire process and I’ve only had to add a few extra packages. Eventually, I’ll create an installation checkiist for it.

One of the biggest issues with the this project had been getting the wireless adapter to work. The system would see the wireless card but I could never bring it up. A couple of weeks ago, I got working by installing the wpa supplicant package and using it to configure the WiFi. I kind of stubled through it, so I’m not exactly sure how I did it. Perhaps Network Manager should be installed in future attempts.

Printers

Both of my printers became unusable recently. I found that I could no longer connect to the HP 1505 laser printer over the network. It served me well over the past 11 years. Then the HP 3150 DeskJet printer stopped working. I replaced them with an HP Envy 6052e inkjet printer and I love it. Once I got my main computer to recognize it, every computer on the network has atuomatically connected to it. It’s awesome.

Scripts

Of course, I’ve been working on scripts, either modifying them or creating new ones. I recently discovered the getopts shell builtin and I’ve incorporated into many of my scripts, particularly installation scripts, along wiith some configuration scripts.

I did a major rewrite of the ip-info script without using the nmcli command and ended up going back to it. The reason I’d changed it was to accommodate the 850-G3 which doesn’t have Network Manager installed. Now I have the script check and if Network Manager isn’t present, to go to the alterate method of getting the information.

Speaking of scripts, I have been neglecting my Github repos. I need to bring them up to date. I haven’t decided how I want to maintain them. I’m considering using Github as a repository and backup for my scripts and configuration files primarily for my own use. They would, of course, be public so anyone could download an use them as they see fit.

Debian 11 with i3WM

I wanted to learn more about using a tiling window managers, so I decided to load Debian 11 (Bullseye) on an HP Elitebook 850 G3 laptop I had lying around. I did a base install, loading only the core utilities and SSH server. I had to use the non-free Netinstall because of the hardware. Once I had Debian installed, I installed i3 along with several packages to support it as needed

The only serious problem I’ve run into was the wireless card (Intel 8260NGW). The system detects it and knows what it is. I can scan available wireless networks but it will not connect to them. I check the Debian support forums and the Debian Wiki, and it seems that there is a driver for the card but it only supports its Bluetooth functionality. Interesting. So far, I’m only using it with a wired connection, so it’s not a big deal. I suppose I could disable the card and use a USB adapter.

I’m using Terinator for my terminal and it seems to work rather well and it’s what I use on all my other systems. I did run into a problem where it would open in a normal window which I wouldn’t be able to maximize. That turned out to be a setting in the Terminator configuration file.

I’ve spent most of my time with the system in the terminal and I haven’t decided what applications I want to install. I do need to learn more about dmenu and Rofi. That should be fun.

For now, I’m playing around with it and getting a feel for it. Window managers are an entirely new work flow for me.