The Current Debian Desktop

And another one this week...
The previous one bored me, too much chocolate/ green and not enough contrast.
As usual, Adapta delivers.

The Current Debian Desktop

This time with a Linux Mint, or Mint-Y, twist.
Nice and dark, just like the 109 days of quarantine.

My Current Setup

This is how I'm rolling thru the CV19.
The old and beaten T410 has replaced the Optiplex 755 for the last couple of weeks.
As I have the need, the need for speed :p
The Opti was slow as a dog or at least it felt that way.

The Current Linux Mint Desktop

Yeap... Another month, still on quarantine.
Haven't seeing the GF since March 16th, but, luckily we are all Ok.
Not in the mood to post much, but I'll try to.

Spotty WiFi with The Wireless 4965 AG or AGN

The internet browsing experience on the little Dell M1330 was beyond awful, slow, intermittent, etc, a real PITA.
So a big of Google, and then, the magic started...
Had to edit the file:

/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
And then reboot the little lappie.
The file ended up like this:

[connection]
## wifi.powersave = 3
wifi.powersave = 2
So, a reboot later, and things look much, much better... Will keep testing for a couple of days to see how this goes.

The current Linux Mint desktop

Been a while since I posted the Linux Mint desktop on my beloved Dell XPS M1330, to be honest, nothing has really changed a lot, except for the weather...
On the screenshot of the last Linux Mint desktop post, Buenos Aires was "enduring" an amazing 5 degrees Celsius nowadays we're ten degrees above that...

The current Linux Mint desktop

In the same track as to what my desktop looks on my other lappies and Linux distros at the moment.
The lovely and mighty Adapta theme, with the Papirus icons and a flat wallpaper with a pretty decent font (for my old tired eyes that is).

Mind You, Buster!

It was time.
Today along the days chores got to replace the old, now unsupported, Linux Mint 17 XFCE installation on the old and trusty Acer TravelMate with a brand new and shiny Debian Buster install.
No problems with the install, did a really bare-bones one, nothing except SSH and Standard System Utilities.
i3 as the WM, VLC, Firefox and Transmission... the poor little lappie can't handle much else than that, and then some...

XFCE + i3 (on Sid & LM 19)

So, installed i3 on both Sid and on Linux Mint 19, as an add on of XFCE, just as an experiment and to see how things how.
I do have a full i3 lappie, the glorious T43, but I wanna see how everything goes running i3 along XFCE... There are a couple of site on the internet with instructions, but those are sort of "Xubuntu centrist" and they also give you advise regarding installing third party PPAs, but I don't want to do that.
What I did was to install a "minimal i3", like this:

sudo apt install i3 --no-install-recommends

After that, simply disabled (set to Never) "xfwm4" and "xfdesktop" on Session and then on Application Autostart, add an entry to start i3.

Logout and back in and you are done.

Or almost...

On Debian Sid:
You can use the Windows key as the $modifier.

On Linux Mint 19 (XFCE):
You have to use Alt as the $modifier. or all Hell breaks loose.

On both of them:
Edit the "~/.config/i3/config" file and comment the 'bar' entry, it is at the end of the file, if you don't you'll have the i3 Status bar (printing an error) as well as the XFCE Panel.

Kernel Woes on Linux Mint 19.1

I'm having problems with the latest kernel released on Linux Mint 19, it seems to boot, but I get no video at all, not even on a TTY.
The kernels that aren't working are:

4.15.0-48
4.15.0-50

Currently booting an older kernel (4.15.0-47) with which everything works A Ok.
The same thing happens with the T60 and the T60p.
Annoying as hell.

Linux Mint 18.3 on The MacBook White 3.1

Yesterday updated Linux Mint (XFCE) on the MacBook White to 18.3.
The update, of course, went smooth but, after the update, came the newer kernels.
And that's when the problems started.
The newest kernel (4.15.0-48) works, that is, the lappie does boot and you can use it, WiFi works, etc. etc.
But it took ages to boot, and then, once on the LightDM login manager it also took quite a while to actually be able to type anything and then again it took quite a lot of time to get a working Desktop, once past the login manager.
It was unbearable a true PITA.
What I did was to revert to an older kernel, but it took a while since I wasn't able to access the GRUB menu (via Shift key upon booting) not sure if that was because I'm running an encrypted LVM or waht a hell, but the only option was to boot the newest (and slowest) kernel and then edit the file "/etc/default/grub" and add the option GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE="menu" to the end of the file, and then, after a sudo update-grub and a reboot I was able to choose the kernel I want to boot.
Didn't have time to investigate the slowdown for the moment using an older kernel on the lappie let me regain control of it.

The (Sort of) Death of The T60p (II)

My beloved T60p is once again, giving me some problems...
Today it took something like 10 boot attempts until I finally got a working system, strange thing, since I got to the LVM passphrase input Ok (it obviously accepted the typed input and passed as correct), but after that nothing happened, just a black screen.

XFCE: Start Dropbox on Login

This drove me nuts, because it failed randomly, so, a quick one liner added to the Session Startup seems to take care of this problem.

So... (Goodbye) Cinnamon...

The Cinnamon thing didn't last long...
Slapped an SSD on the T60p, and went the XFCE way today.

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

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

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.

Un-encrypt Your $HOME

This is how I move my $HOME from encrypted to un-encrypted,  in order to be able to keep using Dropbox... Yes, in the end, choose to keep it.
Done this on all of my Linux Mint boxes that had an encrypted $HOME (still running an encrypted LVM, tho).

- Login as your regular user thru GUI.
- Disable Dropbox autostart.
- Logout.
- Drop to a TTY, login as the root user .
- Issue: umount /home/$USER
- Edit the text file "/home/.ecryptfs/$USER/.ecryptfs/Private.mnt".
Change "/home/$USER" to "/home/$USER/Private"
- Issue:

mkdir /home/$USER/Private
chown $USER:$USER /home/$USER/Private
chmod 0700 /home/$USER/

- Reboot
- Login regular user (TTY), issue:

  shopt -s dotglob
  mv Private/* .

Be sure there is enough free space on the disk.
I have run out of space on a couple of boxes, no sweat, simply delete the partial one, and then move once again.

- Login thru GUI and start Dropbox, it'll force a re-connect thru the webfront once again and then sync everything, but not a download.

Upgrading the Little Monster

Maxxed the RAM on the Acer...
To a whooping 2 GB!!!
It was running on a meager 1.5 GB/