The Current Debian Desktop

This time with a bit of a flashback.
A favorite icon theme of days gone by, GNOME Colors, particularly GNOME Human, a theme I've used and abused some 11 years ago (Boy... Time surely flies when you use Linux...).
Also sporting a "revisited" (modified by yours truly) favorite wallpaper, the Ubuntu wallpaper from Hardy Heron (8.04).
I used to love the "Ubuntu Browns", back in the day.

The Current Debian Desktop

Well. yes, I'm creature of habits, I keep going back and forth between Adapta and Numix, and that's just that.
I love both of them, Adapta seems a little more modern, while Numix reminds a lot to Ubuntu Browns that were all the rage around 8.04, and that I loved, of course.

No $HOME Encryption For You! (Ubuntu 18.04)

So, the new Ubuntu LTS release doesn't provide with the ability to encrypt your $HOME during the installation:

The installer no longer offers the encrypted home option using ecryptfs-utils. It is recommended to use full-disk encryption instead for this release. 

Link

What a bummer, man! I was using that option since I don't remember when... And, on top of that, I was using an encrypted LVM too.
The beauty of the thing was ho easy was to do the whole thing, right from the installer, without much fuss you ended up with a fairly secure setup right from the get to...

Frankuntu Ye Olde Sony Vaio PCG FRV37

A bit of a Frankenstein experiment with the really ancient Sony Vaio... Sort of a continuation of my stupid and time wasting experiments with slimmed down Linux installations on old boxes, just because it can be done.

Installed Ubuntu Server 16.04 from a Mini CD install, and then added a minimal GUI.
The base installation took about an hour choosing: Standard System utilities, OpenSSH server and Basic Ubuntu Server.

As usual, the installer detected the PCIA WiFi card, but after the was over it left me with a system without Wifi and using 1.3 GB of HDD (from a 60 HDD one).

Setting up the WiFi card manually took a minute, and on onto the GUI install we go!
Issued a:

sudo apt-get install xorg

That downloads 44.6 MB of files, and then expands those onto 256 MB.

Executing a startx (and not X you old fart!!!) starts X Window with no window (the thing actually looks like a full screen xterm), the mouse pad works, but I can't type dink on that huge xterm.

Switched to a virtual console, and killed X. or, you know, startx :p

Installed a window manager, and the program to configure it:

sudo apt-get install openbox obconf

That downloads 21 MB of files, and then expands those onto 104 MB.

Installed a little panel and a small Calendar program:

sudo apt-get install tint2 gsimplecal

It downloads 2 MB of files, and then expands those onto 8 MB.

sudo apt-get install thunar thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin thunar-media-tags-plugin gvfs gvfs-backends

The thing downloads 22 MB of files, and then expands those onto 103 MB.

Logged out of X Window, restarted it, but still no Tint2 Panel nor a way to access Thunar yet.

So copied the file "/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart:  to "~/.config/openbox/autostart".

And then added to the bottom of the file:

tint2 &

thunar &

And then startx once again!

Out of the box, the whole thing looks as if a demon from hell has vomited scorpions on my eyes...

Nano Xubuntu on The T60

Damn I'm impressed!
Last Friday made a "Xubuntu minimal installation" on the T60, just for kicks and shit.
Really snappy and also looks good, will keep using it, the only thing that sort of kills this thing is that the LTS release doesn't have a five year shelf life, but three.
I'm considering building a FrankenXFCE, using an Ubuntu Server as the base, and then install the minim desktop packages.

VLC: vdpau_display errors

So, like I've already posted, installed a customized mini Lubuntu from an Ubuntu Mini CD the other on the Dell XPS M1330, after cleaning and de-gunking the hell out of its guts.

Pretty much everything went A Ok with the install, but I've had problems playing videos with VLC.

It refused to play any video (audio was OK) all videos went to a black screen, and generated this continuously onto the log:

vdpau_display error: output surface creation failure: A catch-all error, used when no other error code applies.

The solution?
Set VLC to use OpenGL video output.

Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330 (II)

Made an upgrade to the "Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330" project.
Installed Lubuntu's key components on the little lappie.

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-core

After that apt-get, downloaded 221 MB and once extracted, used 805 MB of HDD.
With the whole thing on (Chromium, VLC, etc, etc) I'm using about 5 GB of the disk.
After that, pretty muchs everything works on the lappie, and, BTW, it performs amazingly, but really amazingly well for the hardware it has, (I mean c'mon, it only has 2 GB of freakin' RAM!!!!!).
I had to fight a bit with VLC to get it to play videos, un-mute by hand the sound card, and edit the "/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf" to get the WiFi card to work using the GUI, but things are golden so far...
Also, in order to customize themes easily, had to install this too:

sudo apt-get install lxappearance

Openboxing The Trusty Dell M1330

A little fun with the old and trusty Dell M1330, yes it returned home after Mother got her Chromebook.
Slapped and old SATA drive and installed an Ubuntu MIni, after that:

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vacui--vg-root  291G  1.1G  276G   1% /

Just a little bit over 1 GB of HDD was used.
Added X Window, Openbox, Emacs, Elinks, OpenVPN, Tint2, PCmanfm, after all that, HDD usage jumped to:

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/vacui--vg-root  291G  1.7G  275G   1% /

Now comes the fun part... Configuring Openbox, hell, the whole system to my likings...

Kernel Crud Delete Mode For the T140

This time for the GF's lappie, the faithful T410.
Reclaimed 7 freaking amazing GB of HDD space after this.

Say Hello To 2003

So today I got to play a bit with the old (really old) Sony Vaio PCG FRV37...
Wanted to test a bit the whole "Ubuntu Minimal install thing" (once again and just for old time sakes...) and make me a nice, slow, over burned and noisy Openbox lappie.
Well, yeah, no problem at all during the install, pretty much stock setup for nowadays (Encrypted LVM & encrypted $HOME) all things honky dory.
That is until the installation finished and the WiFi driver nightmare started...

Back to 2004 or so stuff...
The dreaded ath5k refused to give an stable connection, not even a ping to my GW, not to mention 8.8.8.8... Drop packets all around, 70% to simply begin with...
And no matter what options I gave to the /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf file and how many times I'd modprobed -r the module back and forth...
The same laptop with Linux Mint 17 works A Ok, will keep shitting with this, just because, since the hardware is way, way more than prehistoric...
Funny thing, once you enable the WiFi Card during the install, it works flawlessly...

Stupid crap that drives nut...

...  every time I re-install and configure a box to my likings...

• Firefox favicons

Makes me go bananas... There used to be a Firefox extension that simply combed your Bookmarks, and dloaded every single favicon, as well as testing your Bookmarks for broken links...
But the developer got pissed off with Firefox and removed that extension.

• Date column on Evolution

This one seems stupid enough, but nevertheless, it really fucks my workflow up, specially on tiny screens like on the X140e...
The Date column on Evolution is HUGE! It steals a huge amount of screen real estate just because, and AFAIK, there is no way of setting this on a global way, you have to change the width on every single directory you have.

Lubuntu Minimal Installation

Yesterday the GF had a "Sunday Girls Out" so I took the time to play a bit with the Ubuntu Mini CD installation...
Pulled out the SSD from the T60p, loaded a plain vanilla SATA, and then the real fun started!
Choose the "Lubuntu Minimal Install" on the menu, and, after installing 697 files, a plain desktop showed itself...
A damn ugly one, sporting the Debian logo nonetheless...
I won't stay much on the LXDE land...

Installing Themes on Emacs (nox)

Piece of cake, at least, on my experience...

Emacs 23:
(Tested on "GNU Emacs 23.4.1" (nox) - Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS and on "GNU Emacs 23.3.1" - Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS)
Get the theme file and copy/ upload it to the box, and then add this to your ~/.emacs file:

(load-file "~/emacs/lisp/zenburn-theme.el")

Pointing -obviously- to the theme file.
Start Emacs, enjoy.

Emacs 24:
(Tested on "GNU Emacs 24.5.1" (nox) - Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS)
Get the theme file and copy/ upload it to the box, and then add this to your ~/.emacs file:


(setq load-path (cons  "~/emacs/lisp/" load-path))
(require 'labburn-theme)

I've placed the *-theme.el file on the directory listed above.

Stop ~/.bashrc From Telling Your Username

By default, Bash will print your username on every Terminal you open (as well as the hostname)... I hate that, I find no reason to do so, really, it uses screen real estate, and, besides whoami is just a type away.
In order to stop that, edit the file ~./.bashrc as in the picture above, basically, remove all of the "u@" from that file.

Unity-less (Once Again...)

Well, guess is time so say good by to Unity...
I've tried, I really did... And I said this same thing before...
But it is definitively not my thing... No matter how I try, I still hit a wall on a daily basis, something small, stupid, but it breaks the work flow...
Everything looks like I'm going back to Cinnamon.

The Unity Desktop

Another desktop screenshot...
This time on the T60p, showing the hyper trendy Papirus Icons.
The Linux Desktop look sexier and sexier...

Evolution on Xenial: TLS belches continuously

The reported error was "Error running STATUS: TLS connection closed unexpectedly".

I'm getting this error all the time on Evolution (on Xenial)...
Its driving me nuts.
Happens on all my Xenial boxes so far, and on any network I happen to be connected, so its not a problem related to a specific box or place...
Another one of those hints... I'm sure no one uses Evolution anymore...

The Unity Desktop

The hunt for the perfect Ubuntu/ Unity theme (on Xenial) continues...
This time Arc Black Ubuntu, a dark, yes, but not as dark as the theme I was testing a week ago or so: OSX Arc Shadow.
The icons are still the Moka magnificence.
Like I said, this new theme is not as dark as the previous, it seems it has just the right amount of darkness... The later had a couple of problems dealing with web forms, you know, black text on black background, which made things rather annoying to deal with.

Xenial Wallpapers

Guess I could say that any of those, I mean the stock ones, are my cup of tea...
On Trusty at least, there was one wallpaper (see screenshot) that IMHO was rather good, and I've used it a lot.
Now on Xenial I don't get to stay on any of the stock wallpapers, all of them are sort of boring.

The Unity Desktop

My trusty T60p, Stilgar, now with a new Xenial Xerus install on its SSD.
Running a long time icon companion here... The Moka icons, but this time with the OSX-Arc-Shadow theme.
I would say the thing looks rather nice.