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| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-03, 15:36 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
 Post: #1181 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Some minor fallout from Bullseye update: mpv will no longer stream anything requiring youtube-dl because the latter won't run anymore in Bullseye because of Python crap:The bug-du-jour today is: the /usr/bin/python symlink is no more as of Bullseye due to Python 2 being deprecated, and the world expecting to be fully settled on python3. While youtube-dl will work with either major Python version, it tries to guess using a symlink you would expect to be there on any sane Linux distro, but Debian folks decided to remove it because they Know Better Than You™. Thaaaanks but no thanks. The solutions, in order: - youtube-dl is deprecated, dead upstream, and nobody should be using it anymore - the new hotness has been for months yt-dlp. Except that yt-dlp is not a drop-in replacement due to subtle commandline changes (so renaming/symlinking yt-dlp to youtube-dl won't work - it will die with some Lua-related vomit). Instead, you need to update to mpv 0.34, which brings proper yt-dlp support. Guess what version ships with Debian Stable? 0.32! And apparently mpv is one of those packages that never get backports (0.34 is on Testing right now!), so I'm fucked right there. - Compile mpv from source. Sorry, but I'm not doing that anymore. Since I retired from the anime encoding scene and the "running EOL'd distros for lulz" club, I have absolutely no desire to deal with FFmpeg and friends, so that's NOT happening. - Modding whatever Lua script mpv uses for invoking youtube-dl. Nope, can't really do that either, those things are extremely undocumented and upstream would not like you to do that but to bug your distro to update. - Fix the /usr/bin/python symlink. Easy, but there is a more elegant, Debian-style solution: install "python-is-python3" package. That will make youtube-dl work again... until Youtube and friends break it for good. - Call yt-dlp directly and pipe that to mpv - that has always been an option since the early days of youtube-dl: You miss proper integration, but at least it pleases the Troo UNIX® Way™ crowd, since that will ALWAYS work as long as yt-dlp manages to stream something. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-05, 00:36 in I still HATE smartdevices
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Dinosaur
Post: #1182 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
If USB modes ever stop working on your KrapOS® handset... - and you're sure your cables are GOOD... - and the phone does not get detected at all by your PC, BUT the phone will charge the battery... - and the phone DOES get detected when powered down in charge-only mode (Gadget Serial / spreadtrum with musb-hdrc)... ...then it means KrapOS® internals are taking a dump on you. Here are the two ways I could find to "revive" USB modes (MTP / ADB / tethering): 1) Consider a factory reset (as this Reddit suggests). Yuck. 2) Open the Log Manager (*#*#0574#*#*), select "ADB Debug", then check the one and only checkbox (also named "ADB Debug"). Another Reddit suggests that it should be OFF, but in my case USB dies unless the checkbox is ticked ON! A side effect of this is that the useless virtual CDROM that pops up on boot (or when MTP is disabled) won't work anymore. Also: while KrapOS® phones beat your average dumbphone with unlimited storage for contacts/call logs/SMS, they're saved on whatever internal Mozilla database format they used on FF48, and those are extremely inefficient formats for relatively large datasets. My phone feels ridiculously slow every time I need to make a call or check my texts, but if I delete a few, performance improves slightly. And without a way to backup calls and texts, well... you'll have nothing and you'll like it! Oh, the battery is swelling on my Zoey Smart after 10 months of use. Joy. ...at least I finally caved in and paid the $10 tax to Movistar to finally upgrade this ancient 2G/3G USIM to a 3G/4G USIM, so when this KrapOS® turd dies, I can still salvage this phone line with either my Alcaturd and/or the free slot on my Xinniephone, now with a nanoSIM because Fucking Apple™. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-06, 14:27 in Mozilla, *sigh*
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Dinosaur
Post: #1183 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
It seems the GiggityHub WebComponents® polyfill addon for our beloved browsers has been largely abandoned, and GiggityHub now breaks every other week because of course the Microsoft-payroll crapcoders are too busy pushing hot new untested stuff to production. Instead, there is a new kid in the block: Palefill. Don't let the name fool you - it will not only work on Pale Moon, but also on many XUL/UXP-based browsers, including SeaMonkey. It's also designed to be easily extensible via rulesets: just add the domains and required Chromeisms to the ruleset, reinstall (sadly the ruleset isn't user-editable yet), and done. Works fine for GiggityHub... and Pixiv. Mostly. The War Against The Googlenet™ marches on... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-07, 19:56 in Mozilla, *sigh*
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Dinosaur
Post: #1184 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Posted by NTI And here comes the problem, as the "web standards" these days are largely designed, written, approved and implemented by Google these days. The W3C just rubberstamps them for Google, and Mozilla these days are even lifting Chromium code wholesale to keep up with the latest Chromeisms. You may even say that there are no web standards anymore, but the "standard" is what Chrome does. Posted by NTI Welcome to modern IT in a nutshell: nobody cares about efficiency, or how it works under the hood. People only care how fast you go from zero to app. This same crapola is killing native development in favor of more Electron abominations, just because "move fast and break things" and "web is the new native". Quality costs money and it's even a bug, not a feature. After all why are you even using a budget Android phone and a 6-year old laptop instead of a iPhone 14 and a M2-powered Mac? Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-11, 19:03 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs) (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1185 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Posted by tomman And here we are now: the new NTFS kernel driver (named "ntfs3") has been shipping since kernel 5.15! But you won't find it on Debian, not even on Sid! The reasons seem to be: - No userspace tools: This is a dumb excuse, as you can still use NTFS-3G tools just fine - it's not a new filesystem, just an implementation of an already supported one. The only tool we're lacking is a proper fsck.ntfs, which doesn't exist yet even on NTFS-3G. In any case, Paragon has promised to develop a mkfs.ntfs3 at the very least, but that's not a priority yet. - Buggy implementation not suitable for showtime: This one is actually a good reason, since it seems Paragon has been dragging its feet along. It seems Paragon has a sole developer assigned to ntfs3, a guy that went MIA for months, and in general there hasn't been good interaction between him and lead kernel devs. At some point, even Linus himself considered dropping ntfs3 from the kernel if a new maintainer couldn't be found. Since then, development has picked up... sloooowly. So yeah, the situation is still unclear. Many distros DO ship ntfs3, but Debian wants to play it safe with a "wait and see" attitude. Some believe that NTFS-3G is now "deprecated", but at this stage it seems to be a pretty mature project and Microsoft hasn't rained over this party with yet another radically different version of NTFS. I'm not jumping ship for now, as the last thing I want is massive data corruption, or recompiling patched kernels from scratch. Too bad, because ntfs3 does tick almost all the relevant checkboxes for me, feature-wise: Posted by tomman Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-12, 21:30 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1186 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
If you use LXDE (I don't, but had to help someone that does) and find yourself to suspend or hibernate without giving your root password (WTF), well, that's because LXDE has no native power management applets/services and instead you have to rely on a 3rd-party power manager. A popular choice is XFCE's power manager (xfce4-power-manager), but that one often causes pain when the time to suspend/hibernate comes. How predictable. Here are some possible fixes: 1) Follow these convoluted edits linked from a bug report that has been open since 2014 (!!!). Your changes will be reverted next time there is an update systemd or elogind. 2) Modify XFCE's power manager policy file instead, to remove the stupid "need to be admin to suspend your own PC". Your changes will be reverted next time there is an update for xfce4-power-manager. In the case of $SOMEONE, fix 1 didn't helped, but fix 2 did. YMMV, consider switching to another DE, or buy a iPhone. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-17, 23:15 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs) (revision 1)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1187 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
The final boss of my Debian upgrades at home, the routerbox formerly known as Saki is now facing its fate. Presenting... Saki Mark II?! Yeah, I decided to just update in place and keep the legacy going on. Better harder faster shittier, etc. Made a bunch of full HDD images on a spare drive of both its current Jessie setup and ol' Wheezy install, just in case. Archived the current Jessie HDD on my disk vault, like a replacement banknote. Popped a fresh Hitachi (well, an ExcelStor actually, different label, same Chinesium guts - Compaqs only deserve the finest shitty parts but I'm out of slimline Maxtors here) and wrote the Jessie image to it, rearranged partitions a bit, and got the party started~ Jessie -> Stretch: Easy as pie, just a few minor gotchas: - apt will complain about expired/missing keys. You may need to update debian-archive-keyring with the .deb from Stretch's repo to prevent further errors - that will take care of the missing keys but not the expired ones (which at this stage are irrelevant) - Had to redo my sshd config (really just add an extra port) to let it enable all those fancy new crypto algorithms. - Samba required "ntlm auth = yes" on smb.conf to let my Windows machines connect again. - Had to get rid of NUT (Network UPS Tools) due to a circular dependency between nut-server and nut-client: any failure configuring one of the two will cause dpkg to not configure this pair. Since I no longer own a PC-connected UPS (my current unit is dumber than Cirno), NUT is irrelevant now for my setup. - atyfb stopped getting loaded at boot, so I had no fancy hirez framebuffer for my ATi Rage (not using the onboard i810 GPU for that as it's even slower than the Rage!). Decided to defer fixing that until the next upgrade. In general this update was painless, and boot times even improved a bit! But... Stretch is unsupported right now even by LTS. To the next stage! Stretch -> Buster: Oh boy, the BLOAT strikes! - Early during upgrade, systemd starts vomiting endless "Refusing to reload, not enough space available on /run/systemd" every time there is the need to reload something because Debian by default reserves 10% of the system RAM for /run (which is a tmpfs filesystem in RAM). In my case that means ~18MB, but only ~15.6MB are available yet systemd enforces a "safety margin" of 16MB for whatever godforsaken reason. This WILL cause things to break during setup, so you must workaround, pronto! * Quick 'n dirty solution: add "none /run tmpfs defaults,size=32M 0 0" to /etc/fstab, then "mount -o remount /run". You may do this even during setup, this will stop systemd from bitching and will hopefully not break anything else. * The Proper Debian Way solution: edit /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf, set RUNSIZE to something sane (15% or 32M are OK), then rebuild your initramfs and reboot. Of course you need to do this BEFORE updating, and I'm not even sure if this parameter is even available on Stretch! - Locales broke due to the before mentioned issue (so most of the upgrade ran in English with constant "Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory" errors), but self-healed near the end of the upgrade. Whew! - atyfb STILL refused to load at boot! Now THIS triggered me, so started checking. Yes, the module was getting into the initramfs. No, neither /etc/initramfs-tools/modules nor /etc/modules were having any effect. Yes, the module loads fine if manually modprobe'd! WTF. Long short story: "systemd-modules-load[173]: Module 'atyfb' is blacklisted" POETTERING!!! Turned out to be udev which now ships with a blacklist for vintage PCI video framebuffer drivers, and this one was on a rather unexpected place: /lib/modprobe.d/fbdev-blackist.conf. After stowing the freshly sharpened katana back, I removed atyfb from the blacklist and learned how to use dpkg-divert so the next udev update won't nuke my framebuffer again. OK, this one was painful, and yet it was matter of showing systemd who was the boss. None of my scripts and configs broke, and I still have RAM to spare, so BRING IT ON! ...but for now, I'm tired, so I'm saving the Final Boss for tomorrow: Buster->Bullseye. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-19, 03:08 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1188 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Final Boss conquered: Buster -> Bullseye Decided to engage into some optimizations prior to updating, to prevent a situation similar to Stretch->Buster: - Do the RUNSIZE mod to initramfs - ended going with 15% of physical RAM, which in my case means ~28MB. (This is also worth tuning on systems with loads of RAM - do you really want /run to grow up to 6GB on systems with 64GB?!) - Noticed the initramfs itself was getting bloaty, but that's because Debian puts every driver they believe it can be useful... including most Ethernet drivers and a bunch of other stuff that you may not end needing ever if your hardware setup remains static. On low RAM systems that can eventually lead to unbootable systems! (the Jessie one wouldn't boot on anything under 128MB RAM, and since this Compaq steals 4MB for its useless onboard video, well...), Again, on /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf, change MODULES from "most" to "dep", then rebuild your initramfs. Be aware that this now makes your boot highly hardware-specific and may not boot when moved to another, different setup! In my case, it was worth the tradeoff, since I managed to shrink down the initramfs considerably (~75%!) AND managed to shave a couple seconds down from boot time. Setup went pretty much without issue... until the initial reboot. Then my networking was broken. Desperately, I checked journalctl, pulled the cellphone and quickly found the why: the way network interfaces are named have been in constant state of change since forever, and systemd changed things yet again: in Ye Olde Times, Debian relied on autogenerated udev rules at /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. In Stretch, that was deemed "old because it's ooooold, ugly, beige, or whatever" but it will still honor your rules. Then Buster came and made no promises to respect your authoritah, but somehow my rules still got enforced. And of course, Bullseye finally made true to its promise to rain on my parade and completely ignored my udev rules because Poettering says it so, or whatever. Or something like that: my udev rules were being applied, but not how I wanted! LAN is supposed to be eth0, while WAN is supposed to be eth1, but udev inverted both because Lennart Poettering is actually the alterego of Seija Kijin. No, I'm not switching Ethernet wires or PCI slots on this thing! But if I zapped 70-persistent-net.rules, systemd would instead apply its silly persistent naming rules that I will never like (PCI bus/slot numbers, ewww!). So how in the hell am I supposed to apply sensible interface names in the Year of systemd/Linux? Well, your rules now live elsewhere, and have a new format, and the documentation fucking sucks like every modern piece of software these days (nowhere it says that if you have multiple interfaces, you need one rule file per interface!). Now I know how a Poetteringware hateboner feels... and damn, it's NOT a pleasant feeling! But to be fair, half of this shitfest was on me, by not bothering to check Debian release notes. But then, isn't that what apt-listchanges is for? I did read carefully the "important notices" presented on each apt-get dist-upgrade, but nowhere it said that I was supposed to migrate away from 70-persistent-net.rules (not for udev, or systemd, or anything!) So yeah, dear Debian package maintainers, you SUCK too! ... Anyway, live and learn. My netcards have sensible names again (this time "lan0" and "wan0", respectively for LAN and WAN), and after fixing the relevant places at /etc, my networking was restored and this house haz the Internetz again. Other stuff to watch out: - Avahi sneaked in. I guess it's handy for some network printers and Apple toys, but since I have none of those, purged it goes! - AppArmor is now enabled by default starting with Buster. Don't be tempted to disable it, otherwise systemd will get real angry and you'll end with an endless rebooting machine! If you do not want to use its services, too bad - it's for your safety, citizen. Userspace tools are safe to remove/purge. - This Compaq has useless onboard audio, but it's one of the rare soundchips to require firmware (ESS Maestro). Debian used to include it... until the DFSG Nedflanderists purged the impurity away in 2008, sending its unfortunate users back to 1995. Even with a non-free repo, the ESS Maestro firmware never came back to any Debian package, so you need to install it manually - download these two files and place them under /lib/firmware/ess. Why do I feel like channeling my inner JWZ!? So, that makes a grand total of 4 out of 4 major updates done. Despite the systemd-induced pains and this mania of devs hating to document their shit in human language, I'm still happy with Debian letting me using modern software on my computers until they rot, unlike Windows, Android or Fedora. For now, I'm not touching Saki Mark II until Bullseye leaves LTS, which won't happen until 2024 at the earliest :) (please Debian, let 32-bit live a bit longer at least in the CLI arena!) And for the next idiot that wants me to toss this machine in the trashcan (because "unfixable hardware vulnerabilities" and "beige is ugly") and instead have me buy an ARM toy board unobtanium in my country and whose only expansion ports are all USB through a hub, piss the fuck off! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-19, 18:07 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1189 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Leaving aside Poetteringware shenanigans, me not reading the docs, and the docs sucking donkeys' ass, the whole ordeal was... not THAT traumatic after all. My scripts and config files remain pretty much unchanged from the last major reconfiguration circa But now, since I'm a masochist there is something I need to address: since I turned BIND into my adblocking solution of choice, its resource usage has shot straight to the moon. Right now, the largest RAM/disk hog is BIND: my 8MB adblock blacklist zone takes nearly 1 minute to load (with intense disk grinding), uses over half of physical RAM (and sometimes gets heavily pushed back to swap), and introduces annnoying ~1 minute delays on shutdown (again, with intense disk grinding) which is something I absolutely do not want, especially when I'm on a hurry powering down things during a blackout before the UPS battery runs out of juice! Also, configuring BIND is anything but pleasant, and I suspect there is room for improvements. The Internets suggest me to migrate to alternative DNS software like PowerDNS or NSD. Apparently both are performance-oriented, with lower RAM footprint, and in the case of PowerDNS it can even use Real Databases™, which is something I could get into (it can even import your BIND zones via SQL, or use them as-is via a BIND backend). Here is what I'm currently using BIND for: 1) Vanity domain names for my LAN hosts (this was its original purpose back in my years at the dorms as a bored college student). 2) Caching DNS server for my LAN, using third-party public DNS services as forwarders (Google, Clownflare, IBM, and as a last resort, the highly censored DNS from CANTV) 3) Adblocking, using blocklists compiled by this. 4) Extra blocking measures for unwanted parasites like Facebook or D'OH! Another favorite for 2), 3), and up to some extent 4) is PiHole, but it doesn't seem it can tackle 1), so I would prefer a real (but lightweight) DNS solution that I can configure myself and then forget it (plus PiHole is a self-contained solution that brings a lot of extra baggage I do not need). HALP! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-26, 22:43 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Dinosaur
Post: #1190 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Oh boy, Clownflare now wants to become a telco! Zero Trust SIM Leaving aside the eSIM-vs-physical-SIM nerdrage (spoilers: eSIM == CDMA/TDMA/AMPS == you don't want that shit), the LAST thing in this world is Clownflare, the biggest MITM of the Internet, becoming a MITM in my cellphone too! "Zero Trust", yeah. ZERO TRUST on you idiots, Clownflare. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-09-30, 02:56 in Upcoming game announcements/news
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Dinosaur
Post: #1191 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Killed by Google: Stadia "The future of gaming", they said. "Streaming is the way it's meant to be played", they assured. "NEGATIVE LATENCY", they affirmed. ...and now, it's dead. No, it's worse: it has been DOA, but it took Google 3 years and a few billion dollars to face reality: gamers DO NOT WANT streaming-only "consoles"! At least Google will be fully refunding the few people dumb enough to fell into this scam, if only to keep the regulators away. But make no mistake: the only content you should be streaming are bad videos, not interactive content! Just buy a console, people! (Or save your money or rob a bank for a gaming PC, if you really still care about modern AAA games). Paying for software you don't "own" is a thing. But paying for the equivalent of a thin client for videogames must be one of the most stupid ideas EVER from the entire tech industry! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-01, 02:07 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Dinosaur
Post: #1192 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
https://nitter.it/markrussinovich/status/1571995117233504257 Mark Russinovich (the guy that wrote your favorite Sysinternals tools including the former best task manager for Windows) either has lost its mind, smoke something real good, or just wants to see the Twatterverse burn. I guess he finally got bored of being a Microsoft... A kernel dev guy advocating for the death of C and the rise of Rust!? As much as I dislike C and friends, all I can say is: WTF dude!? Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-02, 14:00 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1193 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
It has been decided: Debian will include non-free firmware on the official install media! https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2022/10/msg00000.html https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Non-Free-Firmware-Result https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33055100 About bloody time, people! So many new computers are unusable (some are literally unbootable) if your device drivers do not supply the required firmware blobs for the hardware! Ever tried to do a Linux setup over WiFi (remember: RJ-45 is dead on laptops because APPLE SAID SO), just to have your installer end abruptly there because it could not list any network? The Big Three PC GPU brands have required blobs for years for tasks other than textmode and unaccelerated desktops. Many audio, network, and even input devices DO require blobs to justify their existences! So yeah, Common Sense™ has finally prevailed (sorry Sanae but my laptop is not Gensokyo), and Debian will let you have a fully working desktop out of the box on the default installer. That's GOOD for the Linux ecosystem overall, even if Debian comes very late to the party... and will save me some time in the future by not having to dig into Debian's website for those hidden unofficial firmware images. You'll still have the option to disable that on the installer via some boot-time flag or something, should you not want a working PC, but of course the Nedflanderists, Stallmanites and other FOSS purists will go ballistic over this decision, and I can already envision the protests, Twatter/Matrix mobs, and possible Debian forks ("Purebian"?) stripping any kind of non-free impurities so these religious fanatic dudes can stick to doing nothing useful on their old Thinkpads, I guess? No, FSF/RMS, no OEM will ever go back to the era of soldering $1 flash ICs with old broken firmware and the risk of bricking it during updates! Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-06, 02:58 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1194 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Just like MATE preserves the look, feel and sanity of GNOME 2, there is the little known fork of KDE 3.5 (Peak KDE IMO), Trinity Desktop, or TDE. It's not new, but it finally seems to have mostly sane repositories for many distros, including Debian-based ones: https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Debian_Trinity_Repository_Installation_Instructions Since KDE 3.5 is now considered vintage, I chose my just-refurbished ThinkPad T40 for testdriving it, and here are my impressions: - Hello, good old friend~! I missed you! - Do not use the tde-desktop metapackage to install: for whatever reason it will try to replace desktop-base (a core Debian branding package) with its own. Instead review the dependencies of said metapackage and install only the parts you need (I skipped tde-accessibility, for example), plus some suggested packages (--no-install-recommends is your best companion here, or I would have ended installing of all things, XScreensaver. OH HELL NO!) - I know those old Dothans are not speedsters by any means, but man, TDE feels sloooooooooow. It isn't RAM - htop gladly reminds me that most of the 2GB RAM of my T40 are largely unused. Can't be HDD either - that ol' 80GB Sammy sits idle for most of the time. KDE 3 was powerful but not exactly lightweight, but it certainly felt zippier on lesser hardware back then, so I don't know where is the source of bloat here. Applications start slowly, even non-native ones! - Sound is a problem - it seems Pulseaudio gets upset by aRTs or something else (my initial session refused to fully logoff until I killed a 100% CPU-pegged Pulseaudio process at logout), and after the next logon, KNotify was complaining that it died when it tried to notify... itself? Sounds like I've got a conflict somewhere. Ugh. - I need to be root to change the display resolution? Except that nope, if you use the handy tray applet. WTF. - GTK3 apps stick like a sore thumb, due to theme mismatches. Fun. On the very same hardware, MATE performs MUCH better, but then MATE still receives love, unlike TDE. Veredict: TDE lets you live back the nostalgia of non-braindamaged power user desktops, but the internals have fallen prey to good ol' software bloat for unknown reasons. Oh, a little more manpower wouldn't hurt... Quote of the day: <frg_Away> tomman tde desktop is the SeaMonkey of desktops. Not enough devs and few people rooting for it. Even the latest kde release is funky. Wish too 3.5 would be back. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-08, 02:37 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1195 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
OK, so it's not software bloat that it's murdering performance here, it's good ol' aRts playing not nice with good ol' Pulseaudio. As soon as aRts daemon spawns, both it and Pulseaudio daemons go 100% CPU, and system performance goes to hell, things run toasty, etc. If I disable aRts and use non-TDE apps, those have perfectly working sound through Pulseaudio, so that rules out possible driver issues. Supposedly recent TDE versions should work better with Pulse, but not only there is no option to pick it on audio settings (only ALSA and OSS), it does some sicknastyness that makes Pulse go real mad. Welcome back to 2006! This is NOT the part of the Vintage Linux Experience™ I wanted to revive, folks... If I can't fix it on my T40, no way in hell I'm deploying TDE to my daily drivers. And of course, uninstalling Pulseaudio is NOT an option I'm willing to consider on any of my laptops, thanks. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-09, 23:12 in Internet numbers bragging thread
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Dinosaur
Post: #1196 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Half of my sector got their CANTV service zapped again during one of our many, MANY blackouts - apparently a "birdstrike" brought down a high voltage line which fried one of our phone trunk cables. AGAIN. And of course that means a wait time of Math.rand() years. Fortunately I didn't won the "fucked by CANTV" lotto AGAIN, but a neighbor of mine quickly went looking around for a switch. We now have the following options in this zone for wired Internet: - Craptacular CANTV DSL. - Some startup fiber ISP (with the ill-thought name of "ADSL SYSTEM" - guys, fiber is NOT DSL!) with barely any online presence outside Instagranola. 10/10 for $35/M + $120 setup. Support is iffy. - One of the regional cablecos (Planet Cable) launched their FTTH service (+Planet), $36/mo + $120 setup buys you 10/10M PLUS 80 channels of useless analog cable. Sadly you can't opt out TV ("it comes for free", said one of their techies while laying fiber lines on my street). Hope their fiber crews give better service than their CATV folks, as Planet also has many, MANY complaints of poor service here. - Good ol' deepfryer Inter, with its ever-confusing marketing. They claim "FIBER!!!!", but actually they have not laid fiber in this city AT ALL. Instead, it's good ol' sucktastic DOCSIS. $10/mo + $40 setup (includes a RENTAL cablemodem!) buys you "10M" (no word on upload speeds), with plans up to "250M". Oh, did I mention that it's METERED? Yeah, in 2022 Inter will sell you a 10M plan with 500MB/mo (nope, there is no typo - it's half a metric gigabyte on the base plan), and each additional GB goes for ~8 'murican cents. If you reach ~105GB, your plan becomes unlimited 'till the next month, so the actual real price ends being ~$20/mo. Since this neighbor hadn't ditched Inter yet for TV, her natural option was DOCSIS. After a delay of 2 days and 2 faulty Arris cablemodems later, she finally was online. I went for a testdrive, and...  WTF, she supposedly hired the 10M plan?! Maybe Inter's Speedtest server is cheating, so let's try going outside:   ...OK, something odd is happening. Either Inter is giving some sort of "welcome bonus", or some slimy cable reseller gladly signed up our lady for the 50M plan (worth $30/mo!). Oh boy, next month's invoice will be a fun one... Oh, as you can see, the actual upload speed is close to one measly megabit, so 10/1... or 50/1? Wow, didn't knew DOCSIS sucked as bad as ADSL for upstream... For comparison, my small ePeen:  Oh, and CANTV now offers DSL up to 22/2M, still craptacular but much cheaper than the competition by virtue of being state owned. So what are my chances for a plan upgrade? Let's consult my modem:  ...ugh, G.dmt!? That means my DSLAM has never been updated past ADSL1 (and most likely will never be until it dies or a falling airplane nukes the phone central), so I'm limited to 8/1. Oh wait, look at that attenuation! Online calculators say my DSLAM is over 2km away (which after checking with OpenStreetMap, it's true!), so I'm further limited to 6M on a sunny day. "Fucked" isn't enough to describe my situation... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-10, 01:14 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1197 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
EXTRA STAGE BOSS: moving the nx9010 to Modern Debian. I had neglected my ol' HP Compaq nx9010 since I rarely use it's Debian setup these days (it's also my rare mainly-Windows box here) because due to typical software bloat and the natural progress of tech, it's not a great Linux runner anymore. Leaving aside modern DEs wanting machines released since the last Apple hardware launch, and even sane DEs (like MATE) not being that lightweight anymore (hello GTK3!), I just left it there, rotting away. Oh, it also fails to properly work with any kernel past 3.16 because ACPI support on this thing breaks spectacularly on 4.x kernels and later (this is why most live distros won't even boot properly on it). Anyway, let's update it just for the sake of consistency, and because I'm masochist. So far I've done the Jessie->Stretch step, mainly for performing kernel testing: - Kernel 3.16 (Jessie's default): everything works more or less OK! - Kernel 4.9 (Stretch's default): ACPI causes weird hangs, but only sometimes. - Kernel 4.19 (stretch-backports, Buster's default): ACPI causes weird hangs ALWAYS. Kernel logs register errors like this: ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed \_SB.PCI0.SOME.PATH, AE_AML_LOOP_TIMEOUT (some ACPI version string) or processes being hung then kernel complaining about 120 second timeouts with large stacktraces involving ACPI drivers, and the usual consequence being reboots become impossible (except sometimes via Magic SysRq key), being unable to monitor battery status, or CPU temperature. After doing more testing, the things more likely to cause the ACPI hangs are: - Trying to monitor battery status, if battery is installed (amazingly mine STILL holds some charge, despite being 18 years old!). Removing battery also removes this source of hangs. - Trying to monitor CPU temperature (which on those machines is done via ACPI thermal zone sensors) Messing with acpi_osi identifiers do not change anything, so it isn't just matter of laptop getting angry because it expects Windows. Everything works fine with kernel 3.16 or older, and of course WinXP works fine too, as expected. There are some very ugly regressions on the ACPI subsystem on the Linux kernel that impact this specific laptop very badly, but it's extremely unlikely any kernel dev will care because why would anyone want to run modern Linux on a 20 year old laptop? So much for "Linux brings back old hardware back to life"... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-15, 15:59 in Games You Played Today REVENGEANCE
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Dinosaur
Post: #1198 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
It's that time of the year again where I actually seek to play videogames: the Sonic Hacking Contest 2022 ends today! Since I only care about Retro entries, these are the ones I'm quickly reviewing now: * SHC2022 Sonic.EXE mega drive: Based on some ancient memehack. Gore stuff. NEXT! Silver Sonic: Rise of the Death Egg: Oh, a SMS hack! Level layouts do not benefit from iffy Sonic SMS engine physics, so it's easy to fall into bottomless pits. Still, 8-bit games rarely receive love so I'll take it! Sonic & Johnny: ORIGINAL CHARACTER PLEASE DO NOT STEAL™. This one offers a new character that it's literally a rocket, and speed-oriented level layouts. You have rather strict time limits for most acts, so... ugh (there is a cheatcode for disabling those). The music is not bad, but better get your platforming serious or you won't get past the very first act! Sonic 1 - Score Rush: Good ol' Sonic 1 where you don't try to beat the clock, but the score is running against you! Rack points and don't get hurt! And to sweeten the deal, you get those cool new moves from later Sonic games to increase your wrecking power and boost your score. You can also replay single acts over and over and over as the game has leaderboards too. Variable difficulties turn your vanilla Sonic into a whole new game. SONIC DELTA 40Mb (Sonic Delta Next): THIS is what Sonic Origins should have been! But nope, Sega lost its cool ages ago. Neto has been improving and refining his "all Genesis 2D Sonics in one" megahack (complete with Sega-spec bankswitching!) for years, and it clearly shines at being the ultimate vanilla Sonic experience. 40 megabits well spent. Sonic Skychaser: Mini-boss rush hack. Thanks for reminding me how much I HATE Sky Chase, guys. NEXT! Sonic Sunventure: Reasonable level layouts (except for that remodeled Marble Zone with borrowed Scrap Brain hardware, ewww!!!), no special moves (at this stage basic Spindash is the least you would expect for a Sonic hack!), and 3 stages that show the potential that Sunventure may bring for future releases. I would keep an eye on this one for future contests. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Anniversary Edition - Pink Update: Minor tweaks to Sonic 2 here and there. Does what it says on the tin. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Plus: Minor tweaks and fixes to Sonic 3 Complete. Does what it says on the tin. Sonic the Hedgehog Megadriven (SHC DEMO): Short but fun. Got stuck at the first act of Lost Ruins like a certain ice fairy, until I learned that double-tapping A makes Sonic jump on air. D'OH! Once again, the potential for future improvements is there, so hope it comes back with a vengeance next year! Sonic the Hedgehog: Isle of Magnetic Artifacts: THIS. FUCKING THIS! If you gotta absolutely play a hack this year, LET DO THIS ONE! The whole Japanese-style aesthetic leads to a rather impressive gameplay experience, very chilling but without losing Sonic's cool. The references to Ristar are a nice touch. Soundtrack picks are simply perfect. And you have plenty of stage area to explore with each of the 3 lead characters. If this were a bento box, I would eat it without regrets. Hack of the year, this one. Hope it evolves into a full blown game at the level of, say, Sonic Megamix. Oh, and don't miss the sound test! (Why noone has made a Touhou-themed Sonic hack!?!?!?) Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-16, 16:39 in (Mis)adventures on Debian ((old)stable|testing|aghmyballs)
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Dinosaur
Post: #1199 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
Just moved my firewall/router rules from old and crusty iptables to the new hotness, nftables. After some useful advice from the lurkers at #netfilter, and some Stack Overflow posts, the migration turned out to be painless and simple: - There are tools (included upstream) that will translate your rules. While you can one rule at a time, bear in mind that nftables do NOT create the default filter chains you would expect (INPUT, OUTPUT, PRE/POSTROUTING, etc) - you have to start from a completely blank "anything goes in" state! Instead, dump your iptables ruleset with iptables-save, then translate it with iptables-nft-restore which will take care of creating the required chains. - There is some minimal scripting support, including being able to define constants. But you can't pass constant values over commandline until nftables 1.0... which will ship with the next Debian stable (Bookworm) - Bullseye currently uses 0.9.8 which doesn't support the -D parameter. This became a showstopper for me because on my current iptables ruleset I expected to pass the currently active network interface name to the script! - However, forget about hacks, temporary files, and defining interface names on the fly. Just hardcode everything! For that we have one of the most wonderful additions to the syntax in nftables: SETS! Oh man, sets are THAT great: save lines of nearly duplicate rules by using sets of everything: IP addresses, subnets, port ranges, and even interface names. Since in my case I already know which names are going to have my interfaces ("wan0" being the NIC where my DSL modem lives, "usb0" being always my cellphone when tethering, and "ppp0" for the rare times I need to use my ol' 3G data stick), I just hardcoded those on a set. Turns out you don't need nftables which one to use - the kernel will just pick the one that is set as the default route at any moment, which works fine for me as I don't expect here to have more than one WAN device active at the same time. - I ended moving all of my rules to a external .nft (what an unfortunate name given the current affairs on the net) ruleset file, instead of having everything as commandlines in a Bash script. This keeps things tidy, separate, and easier to manage should I need to add a port forwarding rule for any of my laptops, or to move the SSH port again in the future. - Documentation is... not great, as you would expect from modern software projects. The nftables wiki is known for having syntax errors and deprecated samples! Apparently you're supposed to become a graybeard sysadmin just to define your own firewall rules on Linux, or buy a $35 unflashable TP-Link router these days :/ But hey, now my firewall rules are future-proof... for now. The final pending task for me is to switch DNS from BIND to something else, as I can't stand those ~2 minute delays on shutdown because BIND is trashing my HDD hard, and 128MB SDRAM sticks are not exactly easy to find here... Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
| tomman |
Posted on 22-10-21, 22:44 in I have yet to have never seen it all.
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Dinosaur
Post: #1200 of 1318 Since: 10-30-18 Last post: 9 days Last view: 2 hours |
And this is why no amount of money in this world will make me do any kind of Javascript development, EVER: https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/5038 The whole JS ecosystem is built over a burning house of wet cards. Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™ |
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