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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "linux". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Laptop review of Acer A315-42

      So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school...

      So I bought this laptop mainly for web browsing, document editing, note taking and programming with perhaps light gaming although that's not something I've tried yet. So, really just for school work.

      Specifications

      Laptop Model : Acer Aspire 3 A315-42
      Laptop screen : 1080p IPS (with matte finish?)
      CPU : R5 3500U
      RAM : 8GB DDR4 (6GB available because of iGPU)
      Storage : 256GB SSD NVMe
      Wireless : Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377
      Wired : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 (According to lspci)
      2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI port, Audio jack, 1x RJ45 Ethernet port
      Battery : 36.7Wh

      Linux compatibility

      Everything worked out of the box, gotta modify TLP to not kill the touchpad and webcam. The touchpad seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to being detected, It seems to be a kernel bug, unsure what I'll do about it concretely but rebooting a couple of times makes it work. Nothing to install thanks to AMD's open source mesa drivers. Might need a kernel higher than 5.3 because of general Ryzen 3000 issues but I've not tried, it was already higher than that.

      Operating system tested

      Basically never touched Windows, directly installed Fedora 31 Silverblue.

      My Silverblue configuration is :

      ● ostree://fedora:fedora/31/x86_64/silverblue
                         Version: 31.20191213.0 (2019-12-13T00:42:11Z)
                      BaseCommit: a5829371191d0a3e26d3cced9f075525d2ea73679bd255865fcf320bd2dca22a
                    GPGSignature: Valid signature by 7D22D5867F2A4236474BF7B850CB390B3C3359C4
             RemovedBasePackages: gnome-terminal-nautilus gnome-terminal 3.34.2-1.fc31
                 LayeredPackages: camorama cheese eog fedora-workstation-repositories gedit gnome-calendar gnome-font-viewer gnome-tweaks hw-probe libratbag-ratbagd lm_sensors nano neofetch
                                  powertop radeontop sysprof systemd-swap tilix tlp
      

      Kernel : 5.3.15
      Gnome : 3.34.1

      Body and Looks

      The screen back has metal, I believe it feels quite sturdy. The rest is reasonable feeling plastic. The material used just loves to imprint grease / fingers which kinda sucks - the keys being the exception thankfully. There was also stickers on the inside which well, are somewhat standard but I thought they were pretty obnoxious so I removed them.

      Typing experience

      It's nothing amazing but it's good enough. I'm not really knowledgeable on keyboards so that's as much as I can say on it, really.

      Performance

      Everything feels quite snappy but I don't game at all on this machine so I'm not pushing it too much other than while I'm compiling or doing other things. The temperature does go up to 75°C and the fans get a little loud but it's not that bad. It's mostly the bottom getting hot so it's not something you notice too much while typing. It also cold boots quite fast, in about 10-20seconds I want to say but I've not benchmarked that. It's my first computer with an SSD so there's that.

      Battery life

      I get about 5hours with tlp installed doing web browsing, some programming occasionally, listening to music on the speakers and chatting. Personally I was kind of expecting more from this considering it's an APU but it seems to be what other people are getting on similar setups so It'll do.

      Conclusion

      Overall, I'm pretty happy with this laptop considering how I bought it for 575$ on sale. I made this review mostly because I wasn't finding much information about this laptop on Linux and well, I don't know, I guess I felt like it. If you have any questions, ask up!

      11 votes
    2. The PinePhone ($150 Linux smartphone) is now available for pre-order

      Some more info about the PinePhone Pre-order page on the Pine Store The early adopter edition of the PinePhone is now available for pre-order. This batch is 3000 units, from what I know ~1000 are...

      Some more info about the PinePhone

      Pre-order page on the Pine Store

      The early adopter edition of the PinePhone is now available for pre-order. This batch is 3000 units, from what I know ~1000 are already sold. These units are currently being produced, and are planned to ship in December/January. Mass production of the consumer edition of the phone is planned to begin in March 2020.

      I just pre-ordered mine, is anyone else getting one? Any thoughts on the state of Linux smartphones, whether it's the PinePhone, Librem 5, or something else?

      27 votes
    3. Best cheap GPU for a Linux desktop?

      I'm building my first desktop computer, and Linux is my operating system of choice. I know video cards sometimes can be a pain and wish to avoid any issues. Dollar-priced items are very expensive...

      I'm building my first desktop computer, and Linux is my operating system of choice.

      I know video cards sometimes can be a pain and wish to avoid any issues.

      Dollar-priced items are very expensive down here, and I don't require playing the latest games on the highest configurations. Just something to “put me on the map”, so to speak, so I can have a somewhat current machine that doesn't give me much trouble. Any suggestions?

      9 votes
    4. What's a cheap laptop that works well with Linux and is available wordwide?

      Because I'm in Brazil, highly specific brands that do not ship to my country are out of the question, and even the ones that ship usually cost more than I can pay due to currency exchange rate and...

      Because I'm in Brazil, highly specific brands that do not ship to my country are out of the question, and even the ones that ship usually cost more than I can pay due to currency exchange rate and shipping costs themselves. What are some universal brands and models that I can probably find on my location, that won't give me much trouble running Linux?

      I don't require playing games or top performance (4GB 8GB RAM, a nice/vibrant screeen and an i5 processor would be the minimum requirement. SSD would be nice, but for my budget it's a plus. Just something that is durable (with a good guarantee) and works reliably under Linux, especially when it comes to HDMI output, video graphics adapter support, booting from USB, hibernating, sleeping, power management etc.

      Thanks!

      11 votes
    5. How to build a desktop computer (tower) for Linux with pieces that are easily available worldwide (most especially South-America)?

      This post is related and in some part a repetition of my other topic on how to buy a laptop for Linux. Because I'm in Brazil, many brands and stores that do not ship to my country are out of the...

      This post is related and in some part a repetition of my other topic on how to buy a laptop for Linux.

      Because I'm in Brazil, many brands and stores that do not ship to my country are out of the question, and even the ones that ship usually cost more than I can pay due to currency exchange rate and shipping costs themselves. What are some universal stores, brands and models that I can probably find on my location, that won't give me much trouble running Linux?

      I don't require playing games or top performance (8GB RAM and i5 processor would be the minimum requirements). And SSD would be nice, but, for my budget, it's a plus.

      I just need something that is durable and works reliably under Linux, especially when it comes to audio and HDMI output, video graphics adapter support, booting from USB, hibernating, sleeping and power management.

      Thanks!

      6 votes
    6. First release of my native Markdown notes app, Notementum (v0.1.0)

      Screenshot I posted a few days ago about a notes app I was working on called Notementum, and I'm happy to show you the first release (0.1.0). Installation instructions are available on the Github...

      Screenshot

      I posted a few days ago about a notes app I was working on called Notementum, and I'm happy to show you the first release (0.1.0). Installation instructions are available on the Github repo: https://github.com/IvanFon/notementum

      There's still lots of things I'd like to add, both big and small, and definitely a few bugs here and there, but I've been going for too long without sharing it, and I find it's best to release as early as you can to start getting feedback, and perfect it later.

      One things that's missing is documentation. I'd like to start on this soon, but I'm probably not going to share this anywhere other than Tildes just yet, so this comment will do for now :)

      Right now, the app only runs on Linux. I'd like to add Windows support, and it almost works, the problem is that WebKit2Gtk, the embedded web view I use to show note previews, doesn't support Windows. I'm going to explore some other options in the future, whether that's figuring out how to compile it, or allowing other preview methods (user's web browser, PDF, etc.).

      The app is also very much in alpha, so you shouldn't use this for anything important, there may be bugs that can cause you to lose some of your data. If you do use this for anything, make sure you backup your notes database.

      If you want to use it, here's a wall of text on usage:

      Usage

      The notes database is located at ~/.notes.db. When you launch the app, it'll load it, or automatically create it if it doesn't exist. I'd eventually like to allow choosing different locations, but it's hard coded for now.

      The interface is fairly simple. The leftmost sidebar displays a list of notebooks, and the "middlebar" displays a list of notes. Selecting a notebook will display the notes within it in the notes list. Selecting a note will open it in the editor, which is to the right.

      To create a new note, press Escape to focus on the searchbar above the notes list, and start typing a title. If no existing notes are found, press enter, and a note will be created with the title you entered.

      To rename a note, double-click on it in the notes list.

      The editor has a toolbar with 4 buttons, from left-to-right:

      • Toggle between editor and preview (shortcut: Ctrl+E)
      • Assign the current note's notebook
      • Add an attachment
      • Delete the current note

      The green circle all the way to the right turns into a loading indicator when you have unsaved changes. Once you stop typing for a few seconds, your changes will be saved, and it'll switch back into a green circle.

      Notebooks

      Notebooks aren't created directly, they're based on what notebooks your notes are assigned to. This means that, to create a notebook, assign it to a note. To delete a notebook, just delete all the notes contained within it, or assign them to a different notebook.

      Clicking on the notebook toolbar button brings up this dialog. To create a new notebook, double click on <New notebook> and type in a name.

      Attachments

      The notes database also stores attachments. This means that the entirety your notes can be contained in your database. Clicking on the attachment toolbar button brings up this dialog. The toolbar allows you to upload an attachment or delete it respectively. Pressing Insert Selected will insert the image at your cursor in the editor (![](image.png)).

      Theme

      The screenshots show the app with my desktop Gtk theme, Arc Dark. On your desktop, it'll use whatever your theme is. It should look good with any Gtk theme, but at some point I may bundle Arc Dark with it.

      The note preview currently has it's colours hard coded to look good with Arc Dark, so it may look a bit off on other themes. I'll try to sort that out at some point.

      Planned features
      • load/save database to/from different path
      • Windows support
      • note exports
      • database encryption
      • changing syntax highlighting theme
      • note tags
      • full-text search
      • proper documentation
      • more keyboard shortcuts
      • integrated sync
        • although you should already be able to use Git, Synthing, Dropbox, etc.
      • Vim mode for editor
        • maybe somehow embed a terminal to allow using vim/emacs/whatever
      Boring technical stuff

      The app was made with Python and Gtk+ 3. I've done this before and I really enjoy the development experience, especially with Glade to design the interface. There are still some Gtk features that I should really be using to make things simpler (GtkApplication, actions, and accelerators) that I'll be adding later.

      The database uses sqlite 3. This is convenient, as it allows for storing everything in one file, and will make fast searches easier in the future. Attachments are stored as base64 directly in the database. This makes it easy to have all your notes be contained entirely in the one database, but I may have to think about a more efficient method in the future.

      Markdown rendering is done using mistletoe, which has been great to use. Syntax highlighting and MathJax renderers were already available, so it was just a matter of combining both and adding custom image loading from the database, which was very easy. Mistletoe has a very easy to use API, so this was no problem.

      For LaTeX math rendering, I'm using MathJax. It supports pretty much everything, which is nice, but it can take a while to load. I'm currently loading it from a CDN in a <script> tag, so I'm hoping once I load it from a local file it'll be a bit faster. If not, I may have to find another solution.

      Like I said, the app still has a few bugs that need to be fixed. If you find any problems, it would be great if you could leave a comment here or open a Github issue (or if you have any feature requests).

      21 votes
    7. Has Wine begun to remove the need for linux software?

      I started using wine in about 2013 and I remember back then it was quite patchy and only worked on some programs/games. I used to have a rule that I stuck hard to that I would not buy any games...

      I started using wine in about 2013 and I remember back then it was quite patchy and only worked on some programs/games. I used to have a rule that I stuck hard to that I would not buy any games that did not have a linux version. But now in 2019 I have found that everything I have tried to run in wine has been so seamless and close to flawless that I hardly know its running in wine. I semi regularly buy games that only have windows version because I am mostly sure it will work and can get a refund if it doesn't.

      What does everyone else think about this?

      8 votes
    8. Friendly Linux Chat

      I'm having some problems with a notebook I want to set up for a friend. And its the first time in a long time I'm not able to solve it just by myself. So I tried asking at #manjaro and...

      I'm having some problems with a notebook I want to set up for a friend. And its the first time in a long time I'm not able to solve it just by myself. So I tried asking at #manjaro and #archlinux-newbies but I got no answer at all. It just seems that IRC changed a lot in the last 15 years. Or maybe my IRC manners are not up to date?
      Anyway, do you know a place where there is a nice Linux-crowd? What are your favourite Places to get help? (besides the archwiki) ;-) I'm out of the loop for 10-15 years now because most places got pretty toxic.

      12 votes
    9. Tildeverse - association of like-minded tilde communities

      So we have many communities and everyone gets free *nix shell access, you can ssh into the remote server (mostly ubuntu) and do whatever you want! I mostly go there to talk with other users. It is...

      So we have many communities and everyone gets free *nix shell access, you can ssh into the remote server (mostly ubuntu) and do whatever you want! I mostly go there to talk with other users.

      It is all old school, we use the command line and there is no gui that you can work with. You have to use the cli for everything you do (easy to learn).

      You can -

      • learn programming
      • make webpages
      • make new friends
      • play games
      • learn more about *nix

      and much more.

      See https://tildeverse.org to get started. (https://tilde.team/wiki/?page=other-tildes for more tilde servers)

      I'll suggest you to join ctrl-c.club or tilde.town and then try other servers. You can make account everywhere ofc. I am ~cyaniventer on tildeverse, see ctrl-c.club/~cyaniventer

      Edit: Not related to tildes.net

      8 votes
    10. Seeking help on how partitions will work when dual-booting

      I plan on dual-booting Linux soon, and I am wondering on how to handle partitions. I have 3 drives in my computer: an SSD that Windows 10 boots from, a second SSD with one partition and some...

      I plan on dual-booting Linux soon, and I am wondering on how to handle partitions. I have 3 drives in my computer: an SSD that Windows 10 boots from, a second SSD with one partition and some unallocated space intended for Linux, and an HDD.

      When I install Linux on that SSD, how can I prevent Windows from messing with the Linux partition and vice-versa? Can Linux and Windows both read and write to the HDD partitions without complaining about the other modifying them?

      4 votes
    11. Linux users: after finishing distro hopping, where did you land?

      I've been running Linux for a little over a year now and, after a recent conversation on Tildes, I decided that I need to wipe and re-install so that I can enable full-disk encryption. Thus, right...

      I've been running Linux for a little over a year now and, after a recent conversation on Tildes, I decided that I need to wipe and re-install so that I can enable full-disk encryption.

      Thus, right now I'm shopping around for a distro and trying out different live environments to find something that works for me. My question isn't necessarily for right now though (my hardware is old enough that I'm definitely going to need to use a lightweight distro, which severely limits my options). It's more for the future, in that I plan to replace this computer in a year or two with something up-to-date, which means I'll be able to run any distro under the sun! Any!

      So, I'm curious to hear from people who have found their "forever distro." What do you run for your everyday use, and why? Also, what's your level of technical expertise? I am very far from a power-user at present, but I'd like to be somewhere closer to that when I replace my computer.

      44 votes
    12. What are the best practices regarding personal files and encryption?

      Over the past year I have done a lot to shore up my digital privacy and security. One of the last tasks I have to tackle is locking down the many personal files I have on my computer that have...

      Over the past year I have done a lot to shore up my digital privacy and security. One of the last tasks I have to tackle is locking down the many personal files I have on my computer that have potentially compromising information in them (e.g. bank statements). Right now they are simply sitting on my hard drive, unencrypted. Theft of my device or a breach in access through the network would allow a frightening level of access to many of my records.

      As such, what are my options for keeping certain files behind an encryption "shield"? Also, what are the potential tradeoffs for doing so? In researching the topic online I've read plenty of horror stories about people losing archives or whole drives due to encryption-related errors/mistakes. How can I protect against this scenario? Losing the files would be almost as bad as having them compromised!

      I'm running Linux, but I'm far from tech-savvy, so I would either need a solution to be straightforward or I'd have to learn a lot to make sense of a more complicated solution. I'm willing to learn mainly because it's not an option for me to continue with my current, insecure setup. I do use a cloud-based password manager that allows for uploading of files, and I trust it enough with my passwords that I would trust it with my files, though I would like to avoid that situation if possible.

      With all this in mind, what's a good solution for me to protect my personal files?

      26 votes