Rui Carmo
May 21^st 2022, in the morning · 5 min read

Notes on Fedora 36

Sometime during the past two weeks I decided to install Fedora 36 on my Lenovo, and this is my usual roll-up of notes and sundry. Most of it was OK and unremarkable (which is good for technology these days), but (spoiler) there are always a few odds and ends that could be better.

There’s been a lot more going on, but that’s mostly on the hardware and 3D printing space, and deserves another post later on. Both things are connected, though, since I’ve set up this machine as a coding and 3D modeling/”creation” laptop without the myriad distractions of my main laptop.

First Impressions

Just as I expected, GNOME 42 broke most of my nice themeing. I think Adwaita looks like pants, so I hacked a few things to make it more welcoming:

I set GTK_THEME=WhiteSur-dark in /etc/environment to override Adwaita system-wide (yes, I know it might break some things, I don’t care).
Installed a baseline set of GNOME desktop extensions (BingWallpaper, user-theme, syncthing, Vitals, tiling-assistant, dash-to-dock and a couple of others).
Added my usual fonts (MS web fonts, Fira Code and Inter as a system/UI font).

This made it look and feel close enough to my previous installs to be usable. However, some gripes remained:

Desktop scaling is… still non-fractional, just like Fedora 35 (you get 100% or 200%, and that’s it).
100% text scaling reads like user acceptance testing was done by ants or something still in the insect phyllum. The display is 1080p, so it’s not that great, but it has a standard DPI, so this feels weird.
Using gnome-tweaks to set the text to 125% pops up an Accessibility icon in the top bar I cannot get rid of. I suppose that means I’m now officially old enought to rely on accessibility features?
Trackpad gesture support works, but is… still sub-par. It’s usable and supports (non-configurable) multi-finger gestures, but feels slightly off when compared to Windows 11 on the same hardware.
Full disk encryption works OK–I get a terse, but graphical password prompt upon boot, but it’s been years and it’s still not integrated with the OS to the point where I can avoid entering two passwords from a cold boot.

None of these are an inconvenience by themselves, but together they make for a good reminder of why I still use macOS as my primary platform.

Power Management

I had a weird situation where shutting the lid did not send the laptop to sleep, which is utterly unacceptable in 2022 and was apparently fixed by a kernel update the day after.

It’s a bit too early to say things are fine given the battery charging issues I had with Elementary, but so far nothing untoward has happened and fast charging seems to work fine.

But it’s already quite noticeable that battery life is much shorter than on Windows, even with “power saving” on.

I don’t expect this machine to come anywhere close to my MacBook Pro in that regard, but it is still disappointing to see Linux falling short of Windows in this kind of thing.

Applications

All my go-to CLI and GUI tooling (mostly dev and CAD tools these days) is a dnf away, and when it isn’t, I haven’t had any issues getting updated versions, even stuff like Blender and Cura. But it’s been rather nice to see that I have some very nice (i.e., simple and straightforward) desktop applications available.

Geary works better in this version, so much so that I might actually start reading my mail in Linux as well (I have long stuck to Mail.app as my only mail client for all my personal mail, so this is pretty high praise).
Apostrophe is a very, very nice and simple Markdown editor that I used to hold these notes together.
Secrets is a great native password manager, and having it readily available was very useful.
Steam and Proton worked fine, at least as far as Quake Champions was concerned.

However, finding applications being easier doesn’t mean things are perfect, especially regarding flatpak.

I get the advantages, but as a user, I just don’t think it is good enough. In fact, bits of the user experience are just atrocious–for instance, Alt-Tab will show a generic icon and internal IDs for flatpak applications instead of proper names, and I ended up installing KeePassXC to replace Secrets because flatpak applications still don’t follow GUI preferences.

So I’m still sticking to RPM whenever I can.

Music

Before the shift to Apple Silicon, I decided to try to use Linux as much as possible, and that includes my music hobby (for which I settled on Bitwig as my Linux DAW).

This poses a few challenges, but not insurmountable ones.

I installed Bitwig from flatpak (temporarily, as it turned out) for a quick test and then proceeded to get the Windows version of Arturia Software Center to run, which entailed installing playonlinux. This adds a few essentials to WINE that are not installed by dnf automatically, and was a great time-saver.

All my Arturia software installed successfully, but using Windows VSTs entailed reinstalling Bitwig using bitwig-fedora (again, flatpak isn’t that great a solution), apply yabridge to wrap the Windows VSTs into .so files and, finally, installing realtime-setup and adding my user to the realtime group.

Fiddly, but doable if (like me) you’ve done something similar before and already know where to look. I suspect this would be nigh on impossible for most people stumbling into Linux, though.

But as a result I now have Arturia Pigments, V Collection 8 and FX Collection 2 working with a touch-enabled DAW, which is really nice (and one of the main reasons I reverted to Windows 11 in the first place).

Nothing like a little Jupiter 8 action — Pretty decent results so far

The only caveat is that Arturia VSTs don’t seem to support multi-touch input when run via WINE, but I don’t recall if that worked in Windows 11.

Conclusion

I’m pretty happy with this setup in general. It feels cohesive and productive in ways that only macOS did until now, and is a welcome respite from Windows (although I will be installing a local Windows VM for emergencies). I especially like that GNOME has developed some macOS-like behaviors I use all the time, like hitting the spacebar to get a quick view of a file, and that it generally gets out of my way.

It also takes me closer to actually going out on a limb and building myself a full blown desktop PC for coding and gaming in Linux.

Now that GPUs are coming down in price, I think the end result would be almost on par with a Mac Studio for around half the price (and triple the wattage, but that’s another story).

Rui Carmo
May 18^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Turing Pi 2 Kickstarter ※

I want to like this, seeing as it would make a lot of sense (such as things are) for me to get one, but with compute modules being sold out everywhere, ready access to vastly more powerful cloud (and local) resources and little time to tinker beyond a couple of hours a week, I just can’t justify it–especially since I gave away my Raspberry Pi 2 cluster last year, and just haven’t missed it.

But it would be really nice (budget permitting) to fill one with NVIDIA Jetsons since those would let me tinker with PyTorch in earnest (even if more slowly than a consumer-grade GPU).

Guess I need to become a YouTuber or something.

Rui Carmo
May 18^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive ※

The way Google handled this whole affair was bewildering, and bordering on the incompetent–and surely worth an award of some kind for worst product management strategy ever.

Like many others, I switched away (in my case, to a mix of consumer Outlook and iCloud, to diversify providers and lower risk) and all I needed was to keep personal mailboxes, but I could have spared myself all the hassle.

I don’t think Google, actually likes having customers, but as an engineering-driven organization, I suspect that is just a backlog item.

Rui Carmo
May 12^th 2022, at lunchtime · 1 min read

OP-1 Field ※

A massive improvement (the multiple tapes feature is something I’d love to have, and hope some of it might be back-ported to older hardware), at the usual Teenage Engineering price point (€1999 right now).

I still love my classic version, but this is going to cause a stir for sure.

Rui Carmo
May 11^th 2022, at dawn · 1 min read

Apple Discontinues the iPod Touch ※

Well, there goes the iPod, down into the dustbin of history. I have two iPod Touch devices (one original, and a second or third-gen one), and they both still work – in fact, the more modern one is in daily use as a backup alarm clock.

While it’s true that the iPad mini might “replace” it in some ways (it did for me, in the beginning), the iPod filled a niche for people who have to use non-Apple phones but want access to the ecosystem, so I’m a bit sad to see it go.

Rui Carmo
May 9^th 2022, in the morning

Midway

People leave these things in the most unsightly places — I went outside and managed to avoid crowds. It was nice.

Rui Carmo
May 7^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Patent For An iPad/Mac Hybrid ※

People read so much into Apple’s patent applications.

And yet, sometimes I think some are just filed to either prevent competitors from moving into specific directions or… just to troll people who still expect the iPad to become a general computing device.

Rui Carmo
May 6^th 2022, in the evening · 7 min read

Hardware is Harder

Following up on my Norns build, I’ve been working on a few more hardware projects for the past couple of months. It’s been (very) slow going, but I am currently going through a phase in the yearly cycle where there is a lot of procedural and management stuff to wade through, so doing something fun, physical and low-level was a great way to stay upbeat.

Rui Carmo
May 3^rd 2022, in the afternoon · 1 min read

Thoughts on Office-Bound Work ※

An open letter from Apple employees regarding returning to the office.

Two passages that immediately caught my eye, for distinct reasons:

This one is a very stark contrast to what I experience daily at Microsoft, where we dogfood Teams and Office collaboration on a daily basis:

We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely? How can we expect our customers to take that seriously? How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products, if we don’t live it?

…and this one is something I’ve had an interesting run-in with myself:

How can we expect to convince the best people to come work with us, if we reject anyone who needs the smallest bit of flexibility?

There is a lot more to unpack in the open letter (including procedural and work-life balance aspects that feel foreign to me these days), but in an age when even very conservative, non-technical companies are allowing full remote or flexible hybrid work, the scenario it portrays is… out of touch, at the very least.

Rui Carmo
April 30^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

GeForce Now adds Apple Silicon support ※

I definitely need to try this over the weekend.

I’ve spent a fair bit more time thinking about getting into gaming (escapism, I guess) and maybe even game development as a hobby, but this is also a good reminder I would love to see an xCloud equivalent of this instead of the janky browser UX.

Rui Carmo
April 29^th 2022, in the evening · 3 min read

The Xiaomi Mi Stick 4K

I recently bought a Xiaomi Mi Stick 4K to bring along on vacation and as a secondary Android TV device, and this is a short review of how it fared so far.

Rui Carmo
April 26^th 2022, at dawn · 1 min read

Elon Musk to Acquire Twitter ※

Clearly, some folk have too much money on hand.

I’m more curious as to what this will mean for alternatives like Mastodon (I’ve got an account there but hardly ever used it) than whether we’ll finally get editable tweets, but don’t really think there will be much of an improvement either way.

Rui Carmo
April 23^rd 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum ※

Boy, this takes me back.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years already. My first computer was a ZX81, but the Spectrum was what I used most during my teens in a couple of form factors.

Also relevant, and slightly insane: DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum. Yes, someone crafted a modern build chain to develop Spectrum software, Docker and all…

Rui Carmo
April 21^st 2022, at dinnertime · 1 min read

teenage engineering TX-6 ※

Pretty wild, and definitely not cheap for a portable mixer even if it does have a built-in synth and sequencer.

Rui Carmo
April 21^st 2022, at late afternoon

Fan Support

Fanning out — One of my AirPort Extremes died, but fortunately I keep spares and was able to swap out the fan.
I'm *really* sad Apple doesn't make these anymore, since they're still the best (and most trustworthy) home router I ever tested.

Rui Carmo
April 19^th 2022, in the evening · 1 min read

HOT DOG Linux ※

Following up on my theming shenanigans, this Slackware-based Linux distribution has a bunch of retro-looking graphical themes that are certain to deliver a warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia (or shock, depending on how many of the original systems you used).

Rui Carmo
April 18^th 2022, in the morning · 1 min read

Apple Hardware Test Download Helper ※

A way to download and run the Apple Hardware Test on older Macs, which may come in very handy indeed if you need to diagnose something.

Let’s hope they keep older files around for a few years still…

Rui Carmo
April 16^th 2022, in the evening

Froggy Night

Glistening — We spent Easter break in the countryside. The night life was amazing, I couldn't sleep properly all week.

Rui Carmo
April 14^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Inside the Atlassian Outage ※

This makes for fascinating reading, especially the implications regarding their design for multi-tenancy. Not the kind of problem I’d wish on anyone, but the way it was handled throughout is… weird.

Rui Carmo
April 12^th 2022, late night · 3 min read

Going Platinum

I’ve been blissfully (nearly) offline for a few days, and it’s been great to actually not use computers except those inextricably attached to TVs.

Rui Carmo
April 10^th 2022, at lunchtime · 8 min read

Notes on Long-Form Notes

Like many people, I find the subject of note-taking to be a little more than a curiosity given I rely on it extensively on a daily basis. I stop short of making it an obsession, but I rely on notes to keep myself organized at work, to keep track of things I’d like to learn/experiment/create and, of course, to write.

Rui Carmo
April 9^th 2022, in the afternoon · 3 min read

Severed

If you haven’t seen Severance yet (the TV series, not the movie), you just have to, especially if (like me) you’re perennially struggling with work-life balance.

Rui Carmo
April 7^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

PICO-8 Education Edition ※

This is pretty awesome. We’ve been playing around with PICO-8 on various devices for the sheer fun of it, and it is great to see a completely free online edition aimed at education.

Here’s the blog post with more info.

Rui Carmo
April 5^th 2022, at breakfast · 1 min read

Azure ARM Virtual Machines Preview ※

This has been a long time coming, and it is also nice to see Ampere has found a ready outlet for their server designs.

Hyperscaler-wise, this compares well with AWS’ Graviton and Oracle’s own Ampere machines, and I expect different SKUs in the relatively near future (although I’m definitely not in the loop).

Rui Carmo
April 2^nd 2022, at dinnertime · 9 min read

You Can Leave Your Hat On

A little while ago I wrote about my homelab, and one of the things I mentioned in passing was that I run a Linux desktop container there as a remote development environment.