Month: January 2024

Since my last post I’ve had to load Linux Mint on my MacPro 5,1 at work – a MacOS “security update” a couple of weeks ago did in the OCLP instance I had set up to run Monterey, so I muttered a quiet “fuck it” and loaded Linux on it.

Initially I was going to load POP!_OS on it like I have on my PC at home, but Pop didn’t like some antique bit of hardware in the MacPro. Mint on the other hand installed just fine and after some under-the-hood wrenching I got all of the fiddly hardware bits working.

Then over the last weekend the SSD in my super cheap refurbished 2013 MacBook Air called it quits, so I replaced it – and that’s where things went pear-shaped…

The 2013 MacBook Air still has a user-serviceable SSD in it, but it also has the “T2” security chip in it, and I was unable to get MacOS to install on the new SSD for ‘security reasons’ – probably because I didn’t install a $500 Apple-blessed M.2 in it.

Fine…

So I spent yesterday getting Ubuntu 23.10 running on the Air, which was kinda complicated because of that thrice-damned T2 that both controls everything and is ridiculously proprietary. The system will run bog-standard Linux just fine, but the keyboard, backlight, trackpad, webcam, sound, wifi, thunderbolt, etc, etc wont work because the T2 controls them and Apple isn’t talking when it comes to reverse engineering the thing to make drivers for anything not-MacOS.

Luckily people aren’t easily dissuaded from doing whatever they want with the stuff they buy, and there are some complicated solutions for the T2 available… All you need to do is recompile the kernel.

Long story short, after about five hours I had “Mantic Minotaur” running on the MacBook Air – along with all of the peripherals. Interestingly, the Air runs better (and cooler) with Linux than with MacOS, probably because Apple doesn’t want people using circa 2013 1Ghz dual-core i3 systems – even if they are obligated to support them for another year or so.

And that’s about it for this update. I’m coming up on my 55th birthday in about two weeks, I passed 20 years in Secondlife last month, and I hit 20 years where I work this year. Some stability I guess. 🙂

Listening to "Subdivisions" by Rush

Well, I gave up on Windows 11 after an entirely too long 90 days…

I installed it as my home desktop OS on October 6th, fought with it on and off over the holidays, and finally dumped it this afternoon in favor of Linux.

What really sealed the deal was the news that came out this morning about the next major update for Microsoft’s OS, which was pretty much nothing but what services and applications Microsoft has managed to shoehorn their pet AI “Copilot” into.

Microsoft is all-in on their AI… I mean, Microsoft is making all of the OEMs replace a key on the keyboard with a new one just for Copilot:

Meanwhile I’m just not interested in offering up more of my personal data to the Machine God. And given that MacOS is now nothing but a glorified iPhone interface the only option left was FOSS.

Not that this is a ‘bad thing’ really. I’ve used POSIX compliant operating systems pretty much since POSIX was a thing – which was 1988 if you’re curious… The difference is I’ve not really used a desktop version of UNIX/Linux since the late 90’s, preferring my command-line operating systems to remain command-line.

So, it’s been a pleasant surprise to see just how far the Linux desktop has come in the last 30 years. For example, I plugged in my backup data drive and dropped to the terminal to mount it – only to discover that it was already there – and the distro I’m using understood all of my bleeding edge hardware without me having to compile anything…

Now, Linux still has some issues that prevent it from being the every-man’s OS – namely that there are still 1×10^32 ways to install a piece of software – and all of them more or less expect you to figure it out. And while there are very few applications that you can just double-click and make go, it’s better than it used to be! (see the above comment about not needing to compile anything)

Overall it took about five hours to get Pop!_OS (a distro from System_76 – a local Linux hardware manufacturer) installed and configured with all of the stuff I need / want. This included Photoshop CS6 – which I’ve been trying to get installed somewhere all year to get off the Adobe SaaS model, Second Life, World of Warcraft, my various office apps, work apps, development tools, music stuff, and other compu-cruft. And three items on that list are Windows apps running in WINE, which required some fairly advanced fiddling to make them work.

All in all the new OS is pretty nice and I’m enjoying the figure-it-out-ness of it… Keeps my think-meat limber.

Listening to "Saved By Zero" by The Fixx

Lines join in faint discord
and the stormwatch brews
a concert of kings
as the white sea snaps
at the heels of a soft prayer
whispered.

Listening to "Dun Ringill" by Jethro Tull

One more trip around the local star complete – on to the next.

Listening to "Wheel in the Sky" by Journey