Linux Rants

It's been an amazing journey with Fosstodon, and I can't believe we've been doing it for five whole years now. I'm super proud of the community we've managed to attract to our instance, and I can't wait to see what the next five years brings.

Five Years Of Fosstodon Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

Today Mycroft announced a complete redesign of the years late Mark II. I’m a big fan of Mycroft, and I was anxious to see what they’re doing with the physical design of the appliance. What they’ve done looks… familiar.

So, first things first, the new Mark II.

There it is in all it’s… glory?

I don’t want this to be misconstrued. I don’t hate it. It looks fine. It looks dramatically different than what was originally presented when they did their fundraising, but it doesn’t look bad.

Honestly, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw it was the Mac Plus.

I have one of those in my garage someplace, and in theory it still runs. I just didn’t expect to get a smaller version for my desk.

The reasons they gave for the redesign also make sense.

We focused on simplicity from the beginning of the redesign process. To do that we concentrated on developing an effective and easily manufactured Mark II. We decided to use Raspberry Pi 4 and created a custom circuit board (PCB) to interface with the Pi that provides all of the audio interface (audio front end, mics, amplifier) and physical user interface (buttons, LEDs). The size of the Raspberry Pi and custom circuit board influenced the form factor. The combination of the PCB and the Pi is necessarily bigger than a single custom PCB seen in many products. Our previous designs were more curvilinear in nature, but we could not mimic that design with these new constraints . In every concept the curved forms made the design unnecessarily larger and created unused gaps.

We also made a drastic change by turning the screen orientation from portrait to landscape.. Since most screens in this size and price point are landscape the best option for an “off-the-shelf” product is a landscape design.

I’m not going to cancel my order or anything over the new design. I do have to admit that I’m a little bit disappointed by the change, but maybe it’ll grow on me. The new design seems very retro. Almost like something you’d see in an old episode of Get Smart, or an antique radio or intercom. Hopefully the changes we’re seeing will aid them in finally getting a shipping product. Based on the roadmap they originally put out with the Mark II, we should be past the Mark III by now, but the II hasn’t even shipped.

At the very least, it makes me more interested in a custom build that could put Mycroft into a more modern looking device. Maybe the Mark III in 2030 will look more like the original Mark II design?

Day 28 of the 2021 Series.

Introducing The New Mac Plu.. Err... Mycroft Mark II! Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

Earlier today, The Verge published an article with supposed leaks of a new interface that’s coming in a hypothetical “Windows 11”. To be perfectly clear, The Verge claims that these images are verified. Maybe they are, but I’ve seen a variety of interfaces come out of Redmond that never make it to the final product. Acknowledging that these ideas may never see the light of day in any meaningful way, I have some thoughts.

This is the new desktop (maybe). There’s very little about this that I find interesting. Virtually nothing in fact. Moving everything over to be centered on the bottom of the screen like that takes the worst parts of macOS and Windows 10 and combines them together to be worse than either. I don’t like it. I’d rather have the application menu in the traditional Windows location or in a top menu than centered like that. To me, it just feels awkward.

The appearance of the Start Menu is fine. I wouldn’t use that layout, but it’s fine. There are several options for using almost that exact thing already existing in Linux. I don’t use those either, but they’re fine too.

There is one thing that does interest me, and that’s this:

I really like that option. It’s a good option to have and a great way to implement it. I hope I’ll see DEs start to implement that feature soon because I like it but not enough to use Windows to get it.

Day 27 of the 2021 Series.

Thoughts On Windows 11 Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

“It’s here! Twitter Blue is here!” There’s my hyperbole for the day.

If you’re a Twitter user, and you’ve been waiting, you’re in luck. If you’re like me, you probably don’t care a whole lot.

So, what the heck is Twitter Blue?

Well, it’s Twitter’s latest attempt to make money. It’s a subscription that for about $3 American you can get yourself some extra features. Features like:

Folders

Honestly, I feel like this one is a super strange feature. If you’re a Twitter Blue subscriber, you can organized all your saved tweets into folders. Do a lot of people save tweets that way?

Reader Mode

Again, this is just a weird feature in my mind. People that tend make long “posts” over many, many tweets can be consolidated down to look more like an article. I suppose that’s helpful? Occasionally? Maybe?

Undo

This is probably the most useful of the new “features” that Twitter is announcing. It’s really just a “stage” post where you can proof read before you hit Send a second time. Less an “Undo” and more a “Are You Sure” screen.

All in all, the features of Twitter Blue in no way encourage me to become a member. I’m already more of a fan of Mastodon, and this isn’t tempting me to go back to the cesspool that is Twitter. I wouldn’t pay $1 for this, let alone $3.

But hey, maybe I’m the weird one here. Maybe Twitter will be overwhelmed with subscribers immediately and this will become a runaway success. Maybe.

Day 26 of the 2021 Series.

Twitter Blue Is Coming Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

I’ve seen recently that a new version of JingOS is now available for download. Back in February, I wrote a personal review of JingOS .6. The new version is .9, so there’s probably been quite a few changes since my earlier review. Despite that, I’m not going to review the new version.

Why am I not going to review the new version you ask?

I have very little faith that this thing is going to go anywhere. Not that the company itself isn’t working hard, or that their ideas are not good ones. There’s just a couple things that are weighing on me regarding this distribution. The biggest for me are these:

How they’re paying for it. Crowdfunding a tablet? I’ve seen that crowdfunding thing tried and failed by companies bigger and more experienced than Jingling Tech. I have serious reservations that this is going to pan out.

Apple. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it looks like the makers of JingOS really love Apple. In fact, I think they love it a bit too much. JingOS looks so much like iPadOS that it could easilyi be mistaken for it. Even if JingOS manages to gain traction, I think Apple’s more litigious nature will be a major obstacle to it going anywhere.

Those are the big ones for me. A Linux based OS on an open source tablet sounds like the promised land, but this feels like it’s something that would disappear just as fast as it appeared. I’m seriously hoping I’m wrong.

Day 25 of the 2021 Series.

A New Version Of JingOS Has Been Released Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

I was on IRC a bunch my first few years in college. Day and night and everywhere in between. I started getting busier and busier when I got a full time job before I’d even completed my studies, and I spent less and less time on IRC. Eventually I found that I couldn’t even remember when I stopped doing it. It wwas never a concious choice to leave, it just kind of faded away.

Recently there’s been a pretty noisy debacle regarding the leadership of Freenode. I didn’t have any personal investment since virtually all of my personal IRC time was spend on the Undernet, but it did inspire me to give IRC a little bit more of my time.

When I started college back in the early 90s, I’d never been on the Internet before. The closest thing I had was a BBS that I used that was part of a network of other, similar BBSs. They exchanged posts between them, allowing communication between people of different networks. I’d never seen the World Wide Web, and honestly had very little experience with computers in general.

I was majoring in Computer Science, and quite a lot of our class material was discussed on the university’s NNTP server. Talking to other students, I found out that sometimes teachers and students would discuss class related stuff on something called Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. I copied the application directory a friend of mine had on our Digital Unix server, and updated it to my preferences and connected.

It was pretty eye opening to me. I’d spent years and years talking to people on other networks, but theere were specific times during the day that the BBSs synced up. You’d get dozens of posts at a time, and then nothing for hours. IRC was a whole new experience. I know it’s no big deal looking at it today with all the services we have, but typing something in and getting a live response back from someone virtually anywhere in the world was crazy to me. It was weird to think that as I was sitting at my computer typing, there was someone else sitting at their computer at the exact same time typing back to me. Not hours separated, real time.

I spent an uncomfortable amount of time on IRC my first few years in college. I met many people I still consider friends. There were other students, doctors, dentists, authors. People from all walks of life all over the world. I’ve kept in touch with many of them. One of them I eventually got the courage to ask out on a date, and then another, and then another, and eventually married.

Needless to say, IRC holds a fond place in my heart. I’ve never FULLY left IRC. I’ve popped in here and there over the years. Some of my old friends are still there in the old places, but it’s not like it was before.

Recently IRC has been in the tech news because of an “event” with the Freenode server. Freenode is the IRC network that many open source projects call homee. After a really public breakup between the owner of Freenode and a fair number of the people working for the network, a new IRC network was created call Libera Chat. I thought that maybe now was a good time to try some new channels on a new IRC network.

Honestly, I haven’t decided if I’m going to try to create a new Fosstodon IRC channel for the Mastodon instance, but it’s really crossed my mind. If I heard that there was enough interest in a Fosstodon channel, I could probably be convinced to create an “official” channel over on Libera Chat.

What do you think? Is now the time to really make an “official” return to IRC?

Day 24 of the 2021 Series.

Return To IRC Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

In recent years, I’ve been able to indulge in my gadget hobby a little bit more than I used to. This has taken me into the realms of Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other crowd funded campaigns. I can’t say that this has worked out badly for me since I’ve never had a product not ship. Sometimes, I’ve found myself waiting a very, very long time. I haven’t gotten anything new lately, and I’m still waiting for some of the things I’ve purchased to arrive. Maybe after these get here, I’ll look into new and interesting projects.

First and foremost, the biggest offender. I’ve been waiting for the Mycroft Mark II for years. It was supposed to ship in December of 2018, but here we are in May of 2021 and it hasn’t seen the light of day. They keep saying they’re getting closer and closer to shipping. I think that’s true, and I actually still expect to have a Mark II on my desk at some point. I’ve made it no secret that I wish Pine64 would come up with a Pinecroft as I think they’d do a better job with the hardware aspects of a Mycroft unit and then Mycroft could be left to focus on the software. Honestly I think that’s their strong point. Hardware hasn’t been a strength of theirs in the past. Seriously, both the Mark I and Mark II are based on a Raspberry Pi. It’s taken them three plus years to figure out how to do the Mark II and most of it is based on off the shelf parts. I’m anxiously waiting for it, but I half wonder if I could have saved time by just installing Mycroft on the CutiePi.

The CutiePi is another device that I’ve ordered that has yet to arrive. Unlike the Mark II, I order this one back in March, and it’s expected to ship in July. I’d like to give Mycroft a little bit of wiggle room here as the CutiePi is another Pi based device with many off the shelf parts, but the CutiePi also has a custom PCB and is based on the Pi compute module and not a standard SBC. From the sounds of things, the CutiePi people have a much more organized hardware unit and they’ve been able to turn this around on both a hardware and a software front much more quickly than Mycroft has. On top of that, a CutiePi might be as good of a Mycroft device as the Mark II. That remains to be seen, but I’m anxious to try that out. Also, since it’s portable by design it has a lot of tablet potential as well.

The last one that I’m waiting for is the Pocket P.C. from Popcorn Computer. Again, I’ve been waiting on this guy for a while. I put the order in last May. It’s been almost a year since that order was placed, and as of the end of April they were expecting to ship in June. I’m kind of regretting not going for the LORA version of this device, but at the time I didn’t think it was worth the extra expense, and I’m just not motivated enough to go back and change up my order now.

Sadly, of the three devices I’m still waiting on, I expect the one I’ll be waiting on the longest is the Mark II. The other two companies seem to have a better grasp of the requirements of shipping “custom” hardware. I do expect there to be a date, maybe even this year, where I have all three of these devices sitting together on my desk. Sooner is obviously better, but I’m still waiting.

Day 23 of the 2021 Series.

I'm Still Waiting Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

Last month on his blog, Martijn Braam asked the question “Do you really want Linux phones?” It’s a fair question, and I think one that deserves to be asked, but I disagree with how he did it.

See, the problem is that Martijn (rightly btw) pointed out some flaws with the existing Linux phone market. Currently, Linux phones are in their infancy. They’ve got a lot of work that still needs to be done. I have a Pinephone, and while I really like it for what it is, it’s far from perfect.

Martijn also points out that the application development isn’t where it should be, and there are a lot of distros that are being developed. And he’s not wrong.

Several times through his post, he asks the question, “Do you really want a Linux phone?” Speaking for myself, the answer is still yes despite all the issues that Martijn rightly points out.

I want the freedom that Linux brings me, and the privacy that comes with an open source OS and application stack. I don’t want to leave my phone in the hands of Google or Apple. Both are happy as a lark to screw me over if it makes them an extra dollar. I don’t want a phone that someone in a far off city has decided will be obsolete in eighteen months, or twenty-four months, or thirty-six months.

I want a Linux phone, and I love that there are people trying to build one. Are they perfect? Not by a long shot, but hopefully people trying to get us there will continue to do that.

Day 22 of the 2021 Series.

Do I Really Want A Linux Phone Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

It’s pretty rare that I find myself excited for a new Windows feature on Windows itself, but here we are. Last year Microsoft announced that they were going to be bringing Linux GUI applications to Windows. This year, they’ve demonstrated it. You can even test it out yourself if you have the right stuff on your computer.

Like many people who are fans of Open Source Software, I’m still forced to live and work in a Windows environment for my job. I’m more fortunate than some because I don’t require a lot from my computer, so I could easily switch to macOS or Linux at the drop of a hat, if corporate gave me that opportunity. So far they haven’t, and I’m stuck in Windows.

The option to use Linux GUI tools in Windows is kind of a big deal for me. Almost all of the applications I use on my work machine have Linux versions. Whether it’s justified or not, I just don’t feel as safe using those applications in Windows as I do in Linux. Is there really a significant difference between Firefox in Windows and Firefox in Linux? I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter. I’d just much rather use it in Linux if I have that option.

Along comes GUI support for WSL.

I already use WSL quite a lot on my Windows machine. It’s an environment I’m comfortable with at the very least. It’s also an environment I’m comfortable with. I take care of several Linux servers, and I’ve supported Windows servers in my career. Despite that, I’m just a “normal user” when it comes to my desktop and corporate IT policy. That means I need permission to do even the smallest thing on my own computer. I’m happy to not be supporting Windows machines (especially on the desktop), but I’m kind of annoyed I don’t have access to my own computer.

Now, assuming Microsoft actually pulled this off and this is going to work reasonably well, I’m going to get the best of both worlds here. Since WSL isn’t controlled by our corporate policy coming from AD, I can do what I want to do in there. I can install all my Linux GUI tools and work with applications I feel more secure with.

Admittedly, this situation isn’t optimal. I’d much rather be using my Linux based GUI applications from an actual Linux machine, not a Microsoft based system. Until that’s an option, this seems like the best opportunity for me to get as close as I can.

Day 21 of the 2021 Series.

Windows Subsystem For Linux GUI Applications Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

I don’t think I’ve done this before, but maybe I have. I’m too lazy to go back and look, but it doesn’t really matter in the long run. I just finished a book and I thought I’d put up a review of it here. The book is called Klara and the Sun.

For those that are interested, here’s an Amazon Link to the book.

The book was written by Ishiguro Kazuo, a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He’s also one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in English. He has received four Man Booker Prize nominations and won the award in 1989 for his novel The Remains of the Day. Time named Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go the best novel of 2005 and one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

I know this because Wikipedia told me so, and I copied it and pasted it here. It’s not plagiarism if you admit you copied it. Probably.

Klara and the Sun is a story told from the point of view of an artificial intelligence named Klara. In the story, she’s called an “AF”, which I don’t recall being defined in the book, but I believe stands for “Artificial Friend”. Everybody else seems to have come to the same conclusion, so I’m running with it.

AFs are designed to be friends to children who are lonely for whatever reason. Avoiding spoilers as much as I can, the story starts with Klara in the store and details her extraordinary observations about the world as seen from the confines of her store. It later continues after she is chosen to be the personal friend of a young girl named Josie. Josie lives in the country and suffers from a mystery illness that is the result of her being “lifted”, or genetically modified for increased intelligence.

All in all, I loved this book. The perspective of Klara made the story really unique at least in the history of books I’ve read. Klara is designed to deal with early teen children, and sometimes her perspective can come across naive, and sometimes the conclusions she reaches seem almost child like. Sometimes her perspective can be weird, and her view of events is often described using boxes.

After reading this book, I’m going to suggest it to my brother (who’s an English teacher). I hope he reads it so I have someone I can talk to about it. I’d definitely suggest it for anybody. An interest in technical material isn’t a requirement by any stretch, and the writing style makes it very available to just about anybody from young adult on.

Day 20 of the 2021 Series.

Book Review: Klara and the Sun Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

The news came down today in a big meeting with our CEO that we will be returning to the office in at least a limited capacity in July. That still gives me several months to prepare for what I’m going to need. This time, being in the office is going to be a little bit different. I’m not sure how different, but there are things that at a bare minimum, I want to do differently.

OK, let’s get this bit out of the way first. I have no idea how things are going to look regarding COVID in July. It’s still March for one more day, and which gives me three full months and some change before I’m expected to walk through those doors again. What’s going to happen with vaccinations or possible outbreaks in those months is anybody’s guess, so I’m going to assume we’re going back in July just like they said that that everything is going to go swimmingly until then. Assuming things are going to continue on their current path does not mean that I’m not going to take precautions.

My company issues all of us laptops because we are fortunate to have the option to work from home. The pandemic wasn’t the first time that I’ve worked from home. The last time was when my company was building a new building for us, and they miscalculated how long that would take and let their current lease expire before they finished the new place. Oops. Unfortunately, despite the fact that they issue us all laptops, they tend to issue us crappy laptops. Mine is an HP ProBook 640 G4, with a 1.7GHz i5 and 8GB of RAM. It’s not fast, but it runs the latest version of Windows 10 (unfortunately required). Its keyboard is passable, but the touch pad is quite literally the worst thing I’ve ever used. I hate it with a capital hate.

I’ve been putting up with this thing at home because it lets me do things like work from my couch without issue, but going back into the office is going to be putting me back at a desk. Keyboards, mice, and monitors are supplied for our computers, but their tendency to buy crappy hardware extends to those kinds of things as well.

Besides the fact that they’re crappy, the COVID situation doesn’t give me warm fuzzy feelings about using a keyboard and mouse that anybody could be licking in their off hours. It creeped me out pre-COVID, and I have no desire to do it post-COVID.

So, I’m going to starting bringing my own hardware into the office so I can feel a little bit more comfortable. More comfortable because I know where that hardware has been and who has been using it, and more comfortable because it’s not crappy hardware that my company spent as little on as they possibly could.

Mouse wise, I’m probably going to go with a Razer. Why? Because I like them. They’re comfy to use and meet my needs.

Keyboards are a little bit more complex. There are a myriad of different things to consider when it comes to keyboards. I like mechanical keyboards. The feel of them is just better in my opinion, but I have to take into consideration the noise factor and how that will impact people sitting around me. At home I’m using blues, but I think that might be a little loud for corporate America. I’d like to get a keyboard that’s small enough to conveniently fit into a backpack, but not one that’s going to feel cramped when I’m typing on it. I’d also like to get something off the shelf rather than fall down the rabbit hole of custom keyboard builds, which I just don’t have the time to do right now.

I’m hoping the combined knowledge of the Internet can give me a few suggestions that will meet my needs and not break the bank, though I’d prefer to get something nice and not skimp just to save a couple dollars.

Day 19 of the 2021 Series.

Preparing To Return To The Office - Keyboard Recommendations Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon

I’ve recently migrated from write.as to a Jekyll site. I liked write.as, but this version is free and I’m getting more control over the site in the long run while keeping things simple and straight forward. One thing that I’m not currently getting is any form of analytics of traffic. I’ve been looking at several options, and this is what I’ve decided to do.

Years and years ago, I used to use Google Analytics on my website. Forgive me for that, it was a really long time ago. Say what you will about Google, they’re really good at analyzing web traffic. It’s pretty much what they do after all.

Eventually I moved away from Google out of sheer laziness. I don’t really recall why, but I think I migrated hosts or something like that, and I just never bothered to set it back up again. I was using WordPress to host my site at the time, and there were built in analytics that, while not as good as Google’s, was good enough. I used that for quite a while until I really just stopped blogging. I suppose I technically was still using the built in analytics during that time, but zero is zero no matter what solution you’re using.

As anybody who reads this blog probably recalls, my friend Kev issued a challenge last year, . I liked the idea of the challenge and I had been wanting to fire the old blog up again, so I took him up on the challenge. I migrated my blog from the dilapidated WordPress installation it was on over to write.as and the rest is history.

So, back to analytics.

During all this time, I’ve had some form of analytics at least giving me a glimpse into the traffic patterns on my site. Until I moved to Jekyll. Now I don’t. I’ve been thinking of adding some kind of analytics back to the site. Of course I’m not going to go back to Google at this point. I’ve been making an attempt to move away from their services due to their constant spying. After a little bit of research, I was leaning towards Plausible, which is both lightweight and open source. I may still go this way eventually.

There’s only one reason I’m not going with Plausible right now, and that is this: During my research, I had to ask myself exactly what I planned to do with the information I was going to be getting from the analytics. The honest answer is I was going to look and see how many people were reading the posts I was making. That’s it.

Am I going to change the content I post? Nope. This is a personal blog and I’m going to write what I’m going to write. I’d love it if people found it interesting, but if they don’t I’m still going to write it. I’m not tailoring my content to maximize clicks or anything weird like that. I’m not making money from this site by selling advertising, so what is having analytics on the site really getting me in the long run?

That’s a question I just couldn’t answer with any satisfaction. So, regarding analytics on this site, I’m currently planning on sticking with none. If I change my mind, Plausible is at the top of my list, and if you’re looking for an analytics solution, I highly recommend them. That is, of course, assuming anybody read this. I can’t tell.

Day 18 of the 2021 Series.

Analytics On This Page Mostly The Lonely Howls Of Mike Baying His Ideological Purity At The Moon