Debian: Stretch(ing) to Buster

I had this on my TODO list for quite sometime, so, this a lousy grey, rainy Sunday that kept me from pedaling seeing the GF, thought of it as an ideal day to undertake this monumental task...

- Updated the system on Stretch.

- Edited the file /etc/apt/sources.list, changed "stretch" for "buster".

- Updated the system: sudo apt update

- Upgraded the system: sudo apt upgrade

- Full upgraded the system: sudo apt full-upgrade

- Reboot

- Profit

Everything seems to be running just fine, but I have to configure some stuff (for instance adding the Genmon plugin to the XFCE Panel).
The whole thing took about two hours, and it downloaded something like 1 GB of files.

Debian Buster on The Optiplex 755 (USFF)

Or: (Almost) Spring Cleaning & Update
Yesterday it was time to upgrade the little monster, the Optiplex 755.
I was using a HDD of 80 GB and it a major PITA, always at 99% capacity or so; a new, or at least, a bigger HDD was in order, and, since I'm updating, bumped the thing from Stretch to Buster (not Sid because I found out that installing updates all the time it is ball breaking business).
Also, since this particular Optiplex can only handle up to 4 GB of RAM, ditched XFCE for a plain i3 solution.
Installation (64 bits, on an encrypted LVM as usual) went smooth as silk.

The Current Debian Desktop

Nothing changed much, but nevertheless, I love the current setup on my beloved Optiplex.

The Current Debian Desktop

My lovely desktop, on the ultra trusty Optiplex 755. Debian Stable, XFCE and the Adapta theme, pure joy, a lean and mean Linux desktop experience, my daily driver.

The Current Debian Desktop

Another screenshot of how my Debian (daily driver) desktop looks nowadays on the trusty and lovely Optiplex 755 and sporting some Adapta love!

Compton: Funky Double Shadow on Evolution menus

 
Started playing a bit with Compton, and I've noticed an annoying double shadow with the menus on Evolution (picture on the right).
To get rid of those, add this to the ~/.config/compton.conf file:

 "class_g ?= 'Evolution'",

On the shadow exclude options section of the configuration.
Close Evolution, restart Compton and start Evolution once again and the menus will have a proper drop shadow (picture on the left).
Be aware that after issuing this snip on the config file, you'll loose the drop shadow effect on all Evolution windows, but, IMHO, that's a small price to pay to get rid of that awful double shadow on menus.

The Current Debian Desktop

I love my current setup.
The OCR font, the Adapta theme and the Papirus icons everything goes along just fine and dandy.

The Current Debian Desktop

My lovely desktop on the trusty Optiplex 755.
Sporting some Adapta love on the theming, and the new (to me) but hugely popular Papirus icon set.

The Current Debian Desktop

Haven't posted one of these on a while...
So here it goes.
The desktop on my beloved Optiplex 755 with the Apple Cinema Display.

Note To Self

Never update when running low on battery...
In order to get apt-get to a working condition, I had to issue a:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

And then:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get --fix-broken install
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
And finally, things got back to normal.

Back to Mint, Back to Life

Yesterday and part of today was devoted to migrate to Linux Mint two lappies that were sporting Debian Stretch.
Not really a problem with Stretch, in fact, it was really cool and light, but since I needed to re-install on those two, decided to go ahead and install a release that will get updates up until 2023, instead of Stretch's 2020.

So... Cinnamon...

Yeap... Some tests were performed... Need to replace the OS on a couple of lappies around here sooner than later, so, testing time!
Following a a very brief and very disastrous stint with Sid, gave a shot at Cinnamon, first on Debian Stretch and then on Linux Mint 18, mostly because that is the last Cinnamon version that I like, it is stupid, but that version is the last one AFAIK that still has the pointy menu.
Yeah, I know, it is stupid, but what a hell, the Computer is Personal since 1981 or so, right?
Kinda like my ongoing obsession with mouse cursor icon customization.
Cinnamon looks great (specially on the high resolution screen of the T60p) but compared to XFCE, the lack of options it is big, big no-no.

The Current Debian Desktop

Been a while since I've posted a screenshot, so here it goes.
How things look at the Optiplex as of yesterday.
As usual, the lovely Numix icons, a long time companion of mine.
The window manager theme, Victory Med Dark, its been used because it offers better separation for the windows, since I'm not using an compositor and drop shadow effect.

The Current Debian Desktop

Another Linux Desktop screenshot post, gonna try to be more consistent and post the current desktop more often, as a record of what I'm running.
A loving theme, at least IMIHO, flat and nice, Adapta, truly a favorite of mine, the Terminal theme is Nord, the icon set, of course, is Numix Circle.

The Current Debian Desktop

A bit of Mint on my Debian setup.
LM 19 theme on XFCE Stretch setup.

At What Price Backups? (II)

A little update to this post At what price backups? (it's been 7 years man!!!)...
The thing is last week had a similar problem, but the solution posted there didn't help at all...
That means that issuing a:

sudo dmsetup remove udisks-luks-uuid-50508a07-7d38-4be4-975e-ee1d048c1cd6-uid1000

Did nothing at all, refused the umount the encrypted drive.
so What I had to do get rid of the hang volume was:

sudo lsof | grep xxx,x

And then issue a kill:

kill -9 xxx

Without sudo, it was my regular user the one executing what got hung, which incidentally, was the process that generates thumbnails in Thunar.

The Current Debian Desktop

The setup on the Optiplex as of today, it's been a while since I've posted a desktop screenshot here.
Numix glory all around!
I love how everything looks on the Apple Cinema Display!

The Current Debian Desktop

It has been a while since I've posted a desktop screenshot around here.
A nice dark cool theme called Greeny Dark, that goes really well with Numix icons.

Juggling RAM Around (3)

Or Reduce & Reuse... Time to shuffle the RAM around, once again.
This time it was the turn for the Dell XPS M1330 and the MacBook White, the XPS went from 8 GB to 6 GB, and the MacBook White maxxed to 6 GB.
So far so good.

The Current Debian Desktop

A little something, it has been a while since I've posted a screenshot of my daily driver, the Mighty Optiplex, around here.
The wallpaper it is from a picture I took today... Summer is blooming all around...