2023-01-15
My second intentional permacomputing project and first proper Linux learning project is getting Arch Linux on a refurbished Asus Vivobook 2020.
This project has been a weird ride with lots of metaphorical running into walls, but I don't hate it and every tiny bit of progress has felt very rewarding.
Pain points were (*still are):
Here's how it went:
1. Arch turned out not to be the right choice. I found out what "rolling release" actually means, and realised I'm just not technical enough to deal with untested updates. Manjaro popped up as the tested-updates version of Arch, and it comes with a community-built package with the i3 window manager[3] instead of a full DE.
To be honest, I still don't understand the difference. i3 has a bottom bar with the time, date and other info like the OSX status bar. There was a wallpaper background that loaded by default. And when I type mod+d, it opens something called a dmenu (?) where I can search for apps the way OSX's mod+space let me do. So it's still spiritually the same thing, kinda. Am I a heathen for saying this, or is it actually good news from an end user perspective because switching would be less of a leap?
Note: I wanted something Arch-based because I really like their wiki. Yeah, that's probably silly, but it's really nice having good documentation while trying to learn. There aren't a lot of people I can ask for help with this stuff, so accessible self-study materials is important to me.
2. Manjaro/i3 comes with the Pale Moon browser and configs for other browsers that aren't installed. It took me awhile to figure out how to use the AUR (Arch User Repository)[4], how to avoid haivng to use the AUR directly by installing a helper called Yay[5], then getting my head around the difference between building a package and installing a binary. That's ten minutes of my life I'm never getting back, but now LibreWolf is running just fine instead of Pale Moon.
3. Copying from OSX to Manjaro is a poo. My short-term solution was to reformat a thumbdrive to FAT32. My long-term solution has been to sign up for a pCloud account and use their folder sync feature.
4. Configuring my environment and making programs run the way I want them to is a work in progress. So far, I've managed to:
5. The experience of trying to connect to Rawtext.club was painful. For starters, I couldn't just ssh-add my key like on OSX, I have to `eval "$(ssh-agent)"` first for reasons I still don't get. Only then can I ssh-add.
Then after connecting, I couldn't run certain functions because RTC couldn't recognise my terminal. Turns out when you SSH to a server, the server uses info about your terminal to figure out how to render stuff (or something like that), and Manjaro/i3's default URxvt wasn't being picked up. Eventually after a lot of confused best-guessing of search keywords, I landed on adding `export TERM='xterm-256color` to my profile dotfile on the remote server. RTC worked a treat after that.
So, why a second laptop, you ask? My partner has taken over the Bodhi machine with plans to learn Linux too. They are otherwise very embedded in a BigTech ecosystem, so this feels like a win for broadening horizons.
I'm very happy with an 11" machine. At just under 1kg, it's comfortable to carry around and fits nicely on my lap. Manjaro runs very snappy, although to be fair when I first booted up this machine, Windows 10 ran pretty snappy too. We'll see what happens as it ages and accumulates more cruft.
Permacomputing: Early thoughts and first steps
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