Went Full XFCE Desktop

 

And via "tasksel" no less... It installed about 400 packages and about a GB of hard disk space usage.
Then, after that, swapped the HDD from the Optiplex (a plain vanilla 2.5" 500GB HDD) to the Thinkpad X201T, in order to make that lappie my daily driver from now on.
And why did you swapped the HDD you say? Why didn't I just use the installation I did last week?
Because I'm moron and last week's install was 32 bits... What can I say? I'm MF moron...

A New Adventure Begins

Debian on the newest of the new... The X201T

Installed it last night, on a plain vanilla HDD (the one that came with the Macbook Pro back in the good old days, before The Plague, when humans roamed free around the globe).
Will how this goes, etc, etc.
The idea is to replace the trusty and beloved Optiplex 755 as my daily driver with the X201T, as well as getting rid of the Apple Cinema Display, in order to get a bit more table real estate.

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.

Budgie Briefly

Installed Budgie Desktop on the T60 today, just for kicks, giggles and shit.
Along side my beloved XFCE, of course.
I did not like it, not my cup of tea... Just like GNOME 3, everything looks gigantic.
Going back to my trusted and loved XFCE.
Installed Budgie on Devuan typing this:

apt install budgie-desktop budgie-indicator-applet

It pulls about 200 packages, some 110 MB and it expands to 320 MB.

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.

The Current Debian Desktop

Not much has changed this week... Switched to the Adapta Window Manager theme, and that's it.
I fucking love this setup and my Optiplex 755 + the Apple Cinema Display as my daily driver, comfy, practical and useful as hell.
As a side note, wttr.in has run out of available queries at the moment.

Devuan Once Again

And so, just like that, it was time to go back to Devuan.
Selected the always trusty T60 and as usual, XFCE as the Desktop (onto of an encrypted setup).
The install went smooth as silk, and the system works A Ok, but that was what I was expecting, overall, I'd say that it feels just a little bit snappier than Debian on the same T60.

The Current Debian Desktop

On this scorching fucking summer day went back to my beloved Adapta, the black variant, to see if it helps a bit to reduce the fucking heat...

Debian For Old Computers

No matter how many Linux or BSD distros or version I try, I always go back to Debian.
By far the snappiest of all the ones I've tested.

FreeBSD 12.1 on The Thinkpad T60 (2)

Finally last Friday got a little time around to play a bit more with the FreeBSD install I did on the trusty T60.
Installed (via pkg) XFCE -as usual- as my Desktop Environment- things went really smooth and fast, matter of fact, took less time to install XFCE than xorg, everything thru pkg, go figure way... Maybe the XFCE packages were stored on a nearby cache of my ISP?

Disk usage right after the base install:

Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on

zroot/ROOT/default    287G    433M    286G     0%    /

And after installing:

pkg install xorg xfce firefox emacs-nox

HDD usage climbed to:

Filesystem            Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on

zroot/ROOT/default    286G    2.4G    284G     1%    /

The systems feels snappy, specially compared with the same setup running OpenBSD, and, it doesn't have those pesky problems I was having (WiFi drops & XFCE crashes),
Will see if next week I have time to configure things the hell up on this FreeBSD/ XFCE setup and see if this is a daily driver.

A Puffy Christmas

Spent great part of today (other than finishing a few chores and some stuff from work) playing a bit with OpenBSD on the T60.
Yeap, the quest goes on and on...
This time exclusively running CWM and taking Firefox for a spin, the thing still doesn't cut it for me.

Thinking in giving FreeBSD a complete run on the T60, that is, finishing the Base Install I did, with XFCE and all the whistles.

The Current Debian Desktop

Yeap, another one, keeping record of what my desktop looks like.
This time, the one from the glorious T60p...
There is no much change from what I have setup on my Optiplex as of today, but, this is what I like at the moment, a plain and comfy XFCE setup, all across my boxes, yes, even boring... But ultra predictable, on top of Debian Stable, and usable.

OpenBSD on The Thinkpad T60 (2)

A little follow up.
The WiFi seems more robust, at least compared to how OpenBSD performed with the WiFi card of the T60p.
Played a bit with the Window Managers that come pre-installed 9or part of the base system), TWM, CWM & FVWM, but in the end installed XFCE.
The problems I had before, apps crashing are still here, even tho I've raised the limits on the "/etc/login/conf" file.
Also, and this might be small potatoes for some folks, but it is really annoying how the mouse cursor icons changes all the time while running XFCE on OpenBSD... It simply refuses to honor the way I've configured those, they keep changing to the .
A total and royal PITA.

The Current Debian Desktop

Again, not much has changed since the last one, but, hey, this is my daily driver and I like it.

Debian Buster on The Thinkpad T43

Installed Buster on Saturday, wiping the Sid install I've made back on Juǹe.
Got fed up of installing updates all the time, every time... The T43 is wayy too slow and I use this one quite sparingly, so Sid will eventually break, besides, I love the predictability of Stable, what can I say?
Even tho I've used the non-free installer, with the extra proprietary drivers, and that the installer did recognized the T43's WiFi card, it was impossible to connect to the AP, so, in the end, did the install using the old and trusty PCMCIA WiFi card, simply removed it after the install is finished, and things went kosher.

OpenBSD: Sayonara

Well, at least for now, the OpenBSD test on the T60p goes onto the freezer.
Two really annoying problems arose:

+ The WiFi connection dropped all the time every time
+ XFCE programs crashing

The first one was amazingly annoying, it started, or I first noticed it, when I was installing packages after the initial base install -and after issuing a syspatch and a reboot-.
This one is, obviously, a major deal breaker

The second one was nuance, but a problem nonetheless.
It happened with the Settings program, specifically with the Window Manager one, it dumped a core every time I've switched a theme and the other one was trying to open the "Session and Startup" one, it simply didn't happen... No matter what, it was impossible to open that program.

No time to debug any of those right now.

OpenBSD on The Thinkpad T60p

Installed OpenBSD today on the T60p.
The installation took about 2 hours (including XFCE, which BTW, it is the latest of the latest 4.14 go OpenBSD go!!!...)

Welcome to the OpenBSD/i386 6.6 Installation program.
(I)nstall

I choose install, of course!

Choose your keyboard layout? L
us.swapctrlcaps

Great Scott! This was a great find, don't remember this layout option the last time I've installed OpenBSD.

System hostname? t60p

Original, right?

Which network interface do you wish to configure?
em0

IPv4 address for em0? 10.120.10.14
Netmaks for em0? 255.255.255.240
Ipv6 address fro em0? [none]
Available network interfaces are: em0 ath0 vlan0.
Which network interface do you wish to configure? (or 'done') [done]

Choose em0, and setup a fixed IP address, I was under the impression that em0 was the WiFi NIC, but I was wrong! See below.

Default Ipv4 route? 10.120.10.1

The default gateway

DNS domain name? arenales.lan

My own ridiculous domain inside my home.

DNS nameservers? 8.8.4.4 8.8.8.8

Thanks, Google.

Which disk is the root disk? sd0
Use (W)hole disk or (E)dit the MBR? [whole]

This is another new, IIRC.. Auto partitioning! Used the default, although, for a personal use lappie, I don't like to have other partition than /, in order to maximize the available HDD space.

Let's install the sets!
Location of sets? (cd0 disk http or 'done') [cd0]
No filesystems found on cd0
Location of sets? (cd0 disk http or 'done') http
HTTP Sever? (hostname of 'done') https://openbsd.c3sl.ufpr.br/

Sets: Installed all of them except for comp & games

Reboot the lappie, and then:

syspatch

So you update the system, and then, again reboot.

usermod -G wheel MY_USERNAME

Add my user to wheel, so I can use su.

pkg_add zile

Installed my lightweight Emacs, so I can edit "/etc/rc.local" and "/etc/rc.conf.local"

Then installed XFCE a login manager and some needed packages:

pkg_add xfce-extras slim slim-themes consolekit2 polkit

WiFi setup:
Like I said, I was under the impression that em0 was the WiFi NIC, but it turned out to be ath0... So, to use it simply create the file /etc/hostname.ath0 and set it up (there is no need for extra firmware).
To make it use a fixed IP address, edit the file mentioned above like this:

nwid SID wpakey PASSWORD
inet 10.120.10.14 255.255.255.240 NONE

Reboot

The Current Debian Desktop

Nothing really new on this one, this is pretty much how I like things on my desktops these days...
A lot of Adapta flatness to the world, as well as FontAwesome as icons on the XFCE Panel.

Not Sid Anymore (2)

And this time it was the turn for the beloved T60.
Changed the HDD and then made a Buster net install with XFCE, bye i3, thanks for all the tiling, most definitively not my cup of tea.
A first one this time, tho... Had a IP address conflict that prevented downloading all of the necessary packages to finish the installation, so I had to go back on the installer, and setup a fixed IP address for the T60 (on the Ethernet port, since the WiFi card of the lappie isn't recognized by the plain vanilla installer, it needs the non-free drivers added)

GenMon: Date Script (2)

A little enhancement on the previous script to show the date using GenMon on the XFCE Panel.
The script is basically the same, but this one has a couple of benefits as well.
Here is the script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo """ | "$(date +"%A %d %b %Y")""
echo """"

echo ""xterm -hold -e /usr/bin/cal""

## EoF ##

And these are the benefits:
It prints the date on the format I like (plus a pipe for separation with other indicators) but also disables popup message when mouse over it and also, when clicked, it executes an term with a calendar showing the current date and month.