Debian Linux on a GPD Win

2018-01-05 22:09:17, In: Linux, Debian

OK, so I bought a GPD Win. Small, Intel-powered computer with 4GB of RAM, Atom processor (2-core, 4-thread?) and 64GB of SSD. Unfortunately, with Windows 10 by default.
Because I found Windows 10 unbearable even when following the manuals to optimize and make it smaller, I decided to try with Debian.
Unfortunately this device is a completely closed UEFI machine so it doesn't allow much modification. However, I found Debian USB sticks, when not touched, bootable.
This is a set of notes which are based on Hans De Goede's blog entry about installing Fedora on GPD Win.

What will be needed

Installation of Linux on GPD Win is quite specific and different than typical Debian installation. Many drivers for things like Wi-fi or sound chip are absent, improperly installed or misconfigured so it's needed to patch the system up. To do it, you need
- A GPD Win
- A 4GB USB stick or bigger
- USB hub. The faster the better.
- USB wi-fi adapter...

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Memory usage of different desktops in Linux (UPDATE: 32-bit)

2017-08-02 14:02:11, In: Linux, Debian

While installing Linux on older machines a very popular question is "What desktop environment should I use?". With older machines, usually the biggest bottleneck is not a CPU, but RAM. Too small memory causes swapping, and it slows Linux even more. On the other hand, more free RAM makes system run faster. I decided to install Debian 9 (Jessie) in different configurations to measure memory usage of different desktop environments. All measures have been made on stock installation offered by Debian installer, by installing on virtual machine.

Linux and memory

There is a large difference between memory reported by "free" and "htop" programs. It is coming from the method of using memory in Linux. The main rule here is that unused memory is wasted memory, so Linux uses free memory for buffers and caches, making system faster. While "free" shows buffers and caches memory as used, htop doesn't, only shows buffers on memory usage bar in blue/green color, while number indicator shows amount of RAM actually...

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Eee PC 900 as ultra-portable computer

2017-05-03 17:38:06, In: Linux, Debian, Retrocomputing

Few weeks ago I bought a damaged Asus Eee PC, model with widescreen and Celeron processor. These computers were sold about 10 years ago as "netbooks", which were a transition between notebooks and tablets, when companies were not so sure that they will force users only to consume ad-filled "content" from the Internet. The computer has been repaired and now it works. I decided to make some use of it. Let's look what is inside:
- Intel Celeron processor at 900MHz
- 1GB of RAM in DDR2 SODIMM stick
- 4GB on-board SSD disk
- 16GB SSD disk using proprietary connector.
- Wi-fi, sound, Intel GMA950 video card, SD card reader and battery - all which modern laptop should have.

Previously, the computer had Windows XP installed, in its Home edition. There is a sticker for it so someone bought a license. Unfortunately, even fresh install of Windows XP on this machine works terribly, it is slow, overuses hard disk and suffers of few-second freezes. I decided to go with Linux as these...

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Building Ted under Debian Jessie

2016-11-25 21:30:22, In: Linux, Debian

Ted is a Linux rich text editor which has one significant good side: It is not bloated. It is written in pure C/C++ and offers everything a simple word processor may offer: Pages and margins, choosing font, attributes (bold, italic etc.), saving to text files, RTF and even simple HTML format. But the most important thing in TED is that it is not wasting memory and CPU cycles for useless things. Editors which need GTK require few GB of libraries. AbiWord likes to pull significant part of Gnome from repo. Ted is just working on basic libraries. It is possible to have a program to write being focused on writing without gigabytes of libraries! However, the biggest problem with Ted is that it is not supported anymore in Debian, as well as in many other distributions.

Unfortunately Linux is a system for programmers, and programmers like to write code. WYSIWYG software has no chance here to be maintained. So Ted became difficult to build. In this text I'll show how to build Ted in modern Debian Jessie...

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Perl::Tk and "is not a hash" error

2016-08-09 19:23:13, In: Linux, Perl, Debian

In Debian 8 (Jessie), after installing Perl::Tk, all scripts return the following error whenever Perl::Tk main loop is called:
2773678 is not a hash at /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.20.2/Tk/MainWindow.pm line 53.
Line number may be different depending on Tk library version. Path usually will be different too (your architecture may differ), the most important thing here is this is not a hash error. The source of this problem is with using legacy form color parameter. In earlier X Window versions, colors responsible for window theming were stored as X Window system resources. This was never done completely in Linux, and the last desktop which done it in larger part was CDE from 1990s, and most Linux software just ignored parameters if there were any. However, some definitions survived until few years ago X have been updated. But Perl::Tk still needs some colour definition in order to generate a dialog window - it needs to know the background color.
To solve this problem, edit (or...

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