Meanwhile in Linux kernel

2020-07-12 22:17:41, In: Linux, Rants

As the Kernel is constantly changing, the search is for 5.7.8 sources obtained 2020-07-10. In commit 49decddd39e5f6132ccd7d9fdc3d7c470b0061bb they introduced the following commit:

Merge tag 'inclusive-terminology' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/djbw/linux

Pull coding style terminology documentation from Dan Williams: "The discussion has tapered off 
as well as the incoming ack, review, and sign-off tags. I did not see a reason to wait for the 
next merge window"

So it means that the terminology will be phased out with successive commits. Do what you want, if I could suggest something, the master/slave terminology has been called active/passive in Polish since beginning of literal "computer engineering" instead of "building cybernetic machines" (read: early 70s) and went back to English only with...

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Logitech N395 numeric keypad for Linux

2019-12-31 22:15:31, In: Hack, Linux

#Logitech N395 numeric keypad for Linux
# For =, ( and ) keys, version which does "Alt" combos.
#USAGE: Write this to a text file, run at start: 
#          xbindkeys -f /path/to/file
#
# WARNING: THIS WILL UNFORTUNATELY NOT WORK IN MANY TERMINALS.
#    due to Alt being used...
#
# Some definitions from: 
# http://users.skynet.be/linux-rixensart/3_peripheriques.html#keypad

#Keypad (
"sleep 0.04 && xdotool type "(""
m:0x18 + c:90

#Keypad )
"sleep 0.04 && xdotool type ")""
m:0x18 + c:87

#Keypad =
"sleep 0.1 && xdotool key BackSpace && sleep 0.04 && xdotool type "=""
m:0x18 + c:85

#Some other things in N305:
# - The "Excel" key runs Win+R then blindly types "excel" and presses 
#   Return. This seems not to be changeable in hardware. Symlink 
#   LibreOffice/OpenOffice/Gnumeric to "excel" and it may run in X.
# - The calculator launches XF86Calculator key.
# - The "Window" key fires single Alt-Tab.
#
# Good Luck as this is really poorly configurable. MCbx

...

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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Making KiCad work offline

2016-10-26 18:22:31, In: Electronics, Linux

KiCAD is distributed in many Linux distributions repository or as Windows installer package. Unfortunately most of these installation types have one problem - they don't install, or don't register, component footprint libraries. These libraries used by CvPcb are downloaded from Git repository each time user launches CvPcb. Although theoretical goal of this approach was to offer the user always fresh libraries, in practice it results in few minutes of lag (when the files are downloaded) and few hundred MBs occupied on disk each time. More, if someone used a library which is not available anymore, e.g. has been renamed or joined with another, there will be error message. Or maybe you don't have access to the Internet? So you won't design a PCB. Let's get rid of this Git support at all and use locally-stored libraries updated on demand. In this tutorial both Windows and Linux screenshots will be used.

Windows version

After launching KiCAD, create a blank project and open Eeschema. Now open CvPcb by...

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Two ways to work remotely on Linux

2016-09-08 00:26:03, In: Linux, Hack

At work, I have my Linux laptop and Linux workstation. Usually both are running. Sometimes I want to work on my small (12.1-inch) notebook using a nice Full-HD display and full-sized keyboard of my Workstation. Because both of these computers are in the same LAN and "see" each other IP addresses, I can use different open source solutions to connect them for remote control. Typical and well tested one is VNC (Virtual Network Computing) while older and not commonly used is X forwarding, popular in scientific software in 1980s and early 1990s (later replaced by proprietary client solutions). For some time I was working with VNC, now I switched to X forwarding. Here I'll show these solutions, their positive things and problems with them. All tests have been performed on Linux, a 64-bit Debian Jessie with TDE window manager (if you don't know, it's an older KDE). However, a test has been made to show that, contrary to common myth, it is possible to connect by X-forwarding using Windows...

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Using dead multimedia keys in Linux.

2016-08-20 20:46:22, In: Linux, Keyboard, Hack

For years I was using a KeyMaestro keyboard connected to PS/2 port. This keyboard is a normal AT keyboard with a set of multimedia/Internet keys. When I switched to Linux, I decided to still stick with it as most multimedia keys were working OK.
But not all the keys. Let's try to make them all running.
First, you should know how the keyboard is used in Linux. The user presses a key, then the keyboard emits the code. Driver in Linux kernel emits the SCANCODE, and Linux program responsible for keyboard mapping maps it to KEYCODE. The keycode may be then used by the system (to be translated to letter as keysym, but we don't go up this level). This way many different keyboards for different platforms may be used by only altering the scancode-to-keycode translation method.
To make key do things we want, we must get its keycode. The most simple method is to use xev and, after seeing the window, pressing the keys. In the console, you will...

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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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