Spotty Connection
Posted on Thu, Feb 18, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
I had a few days off work this week. It was very enjoyable to spend a bit more time with the family, doing some jobs around the house, going for walks, and generally nothing else, thanks to The Event.
However, in the quiet moments I still find myself browsing around, stumbling on new software I know will be enjoyed by my friends on Linux, and feel compelled to package it up, as a snap.
[Read More]Migrating Two Factor Auth
Posted on Wed, Feb 17, 2021
(Last modified on Thu, Feb 18, 2021)
| Alan Pope
I use a ton of services which either require or recommend 2fa as part of the authentication process. I used to use “Google Authenticator” then more recently “Authenticator Plus”. However Authenticator Plus seems to be no longer maintained. So while I have no problems with it, I think it is time to migrate to something else.
Step up, Aegis Authenticator, a free, open source authenticator app, available on the play store, and F-Droid.
[Read More]All Ahead Stop
Posted on Tue, Feb 16, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Well, things have escalated in Ubuntu-land since the posts I made on Monday and Tuesday! The Ubuntu archive for Hirsute (the in-development version which will become 21.04) has been temporarily frozen.
It seems there’s a rather knarly bug in the tools used to build packages, which is causing them to be “mis-built” - i.e. broken. I (and others) noticed this over the weekend, via a breakage in snapd - the daemon which mediates the installation and running of snaps.
[Read More]Going Backwards
Posted on Mon, Feb 15, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Yesterday I wrote about how I made a mistake by updating my primary Ubuntu computer to include the proposed pocket. I shouldn’t have done this. So today I quickly hacked together a script to take any packages which came from proposed and “downgrade” them back to the release pocket. It’s not pretty, but it worked, for me.
#!/bin/bash TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d) PACKAGES=$TMPDIR/packages DOWNGRADE=$TMPDIR/downgrade # Get list of all installed packages dpkg -l | grep ^ii | awk -F ' ' '{ print $2}' > $PACKAGES # Start the downgrade script echo "sudo apt install \\" > $DOWNGRADE # For each package in the list of installed packages while read p; do # Get the summary of where the package came from apt-cache policy $p > $TMPDIR/$p # Get the line after (grep -A 1 and tail -n 1) the highlighted one with 3 stars SOURCE=$(grep -A 1 "^\ *\*\*" $TMPDIR/$p | tail -n 1 | awk -F ' ' '{ print $3}' ) # If that line suggests we got the package from proposed, add it to the script if [[ "$SOURCE" == *"hirsute-proposed"* ]]; then echo "$p/hirsute \\" >> $DOWNGRADE fi done <$PACKAGES # Tell the user what to run to actually do the downgrade echo "Run sh $DOWNGRADE" Don’t use this.
[Read More]Don't Use Proposed
Posted on Sun, Feb 14, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
This is a short and sweet post to remind future me (and anyone else reading) not to use the “proposed” pocket of the Ubuntu Archive, if you want a bug-free and safe experience.
For those not “in the know”, each Ubuntu release has a bunch of pockets. If you’ve ever fiddled with your sources.list you may have seen the names updates, backports, security and proposed. These are usually prefixed with the codename of the release, such as hirsute-updates and hirsute-proposed for the current in-development version of Ubuntu, to become the interim release 21.
[Read More]Messaging Overload
Posted on Sat, Feb 13, 2021
(Last modified on Sun, Feb 14, 2021)
| Alan Pope
How many chat/messaging systems is too many?
Note the scrollbar. There’s more below the fold.
I still chat to some friends and open source contacts on IRC. I’m in a channel I’ve been in for nearly twenty years continuously with some long time friends I don’t really talk to elsewhere.
Internal company chat is Mattermost, and a couple of other projects use it. I have the Mattermost client open all day every work day, then close it outside those hours.
[Read More]Mastodon Instances, Everywhere
Posted on Thu, Feb 11, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Mastodon is interesting. It’s “free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services.”. To any normal personal that’s “Open Source Twitter”, largely.
Anyone can grab the code and spin up their own Mastodon instance. I put one up a year or so ago, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time or resources to maintain it, so I shut it down. Maybe it will return.
Currently I’m using the mastodon.social instance, so that makes me https://mastodon.
[Read More]Command-Line only Laptop
Posted on Tue, Feb 9, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Today, I’m following along from an earlier article “The Allure of The Terminal” where I talked about how I love the terminal aesthetic. How much, well, one of my computers is a command-line only install. I thought I’d talk a bit about that setup. Firstly, it’s not command-line only because it can’t run a graphical environment, although it isn’t a super modern system. It is certainly capable of running Ubuntu MATE, for example, I just choose not to.
[Read More]The Allure of The Terminal
Posted on Mon, Feb 8, 2021
| Alan Pope
Why is this interface so alluring?
Okay, so that blank window might not be, let’s fill it with something more interesting. How about top.
… or htop …
… or bpytop …
… or Dwarf Fortress?
Ignore for a moment it’s a GNOME Terminal window on Ubuntu with the Yaru theme, it’s the contents of the window that’s alluring to me. That and the IBM Plex font showing it off so well.
[Read More]Chromium on Linux
Posted on Sun, Feb 7, 2021
(Last modified on Mon, Feb 8, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Rumours are swirling in Linux circles that some prominent distributions are preparing to remove the Open Source Chromium web browser from their archives.
This appears to have come about because of a change being made by Google, which reduces functionality in third party chromium-based browsers. Chromium (perhaps unsurprisingly) falls into this category. While the proprietary Google Chrome is built on the same technology as the open source Chromium browser, they’re not the same.
[Read More]Pitchforks set to Stun
Posted on Fri, Feb 5, 2021
(Last modified on Sat, Feb 6, 2021)
| Alan Pope
It’s just a month into the new year and we have our first controversy in the Linux community for 2021. In a recent update to Raspberry Pi OS, the official operating system for the diminuative computers, a new repository was added to the default install. This change means new and existing Raspberry Pi devices, running the officially maintained and blessed Operating System will check in with an additional software repository when updated, which will offer more software to the consumer.
[Read More]Reboot Aversion
Posted on Thu, Feb 4, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
I am not a fan of rebooting my computers. As you can see:
alan@robot:~$ for host in $(cat computers.txt); do ssh "$host" "uptime"; done 20:24:53 up 117 days, 5:06, 10 users, load average: 5.85, 6.07, 5.48 20:24:55 up 113 days, 4:56, 7 users, load average: 0.95, 0.68, 0.72 20:24:56 up 66 days, 9:05, 5 users, load average: 1.06, 0.58, 0.51 20:24:57 up 2 min, 1 user, load average: 0.60, 1.09, 0.
[Read More]Let's Go Snapping
Posted on Wed, Feb 3, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Last year ( 😄 ) I wrote an article called Snap Along With Me in which I detailed how I approached snapping a rust application called t-rec. Well, I’m back with another “Snap Along”, this time we’re snapping an application written in Golang.
During a meeting to on-board a new member of the team at work today, I went through a similar process as my last blog post. This time I chose a different application, so I thought I’d write it up here.
[Read More]The Black Oblong of Monospace Mystery
Posted on Sun, Jan 24, 2021
| Alan Pope
I originally titled this post “Don’t be afraid of the command line”, but decided “Black Oblong of Monospace Mystery” was more fun. Is the command line really scary? It doesn’t feel like that to me, but I grew up with an interface which looks like this on first boot.
Not exactly friendly, but I was 9 at the time, and this was normal. Typing things using the keyboard was pretty much a daily activity.
[Read More]Hush Keyboards with Hushboard
Posted on Thu, Jan 7, 2021
(Last modified on Mon, Jan 11, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Yesterday while surfing the ASCII highways of IRC (yes, IRC) a URL linking to a MacOS application scrolled by my screen. Unclack is a small MacOS utility which silences the microphone of the user when they’re typing. The purpose is to prevent the noise of typing being passed through to other participants when on a Zoom / Skype / Jitsi call. Neat.
They don’t make a Linux version, and I couldn’t see anything similar, so I did what I usually do in this instance, throw the idea towards my friendly local coder, Stuart Langridge.
[Read More]My GNOME Tweaks
Posted on Wed, Jan 6, 2021
| Alan Pope
One of the neat things about GNOME Shell is that it’s pretty tweakable - to some degree - to customise it to a user’s preferences. I know some people use GNOME Shell stock experience. I don’t. I have previously written about some of my must-have extensions and add-ons. This supplements that with what I do to further tweak my (currently) Ubuntu 20.10 system to my liking.
Note: These are the settings I configure on my computer that I use all day every day.
[Read More]Downloading Twitter Data or Not
Posted on Mon, Jan 4, 2021
| Alan Pope
Bit of a rant, sorry. I’m trying to download my data from Twitter. I login via the web page, find the place to do this, note its says I’ll get an “archive of your data we think is most important to you”. Uh-huh, you think. Then click the button.
It takes a day to build that archive, and you’re not allowed to ask for it again for 30 days. Next day I get a notification so I can download it.
[Read More]Check for Outdated Snaps
Posted on Sun, Jan 3, 2021
| Alan Pope
I don’t consider myself a ‘Developer’ but I maintain a bunch of snaps in the Snap Store, and threw together a shell script which I’m sharing here in case it’s useful to other publishers. The goal of the script is to go through each snap and check to see if there’s a newer version of it upstream than currently published in the store. As such it’s not meant for end-users, but for people like me who publish multiple snaps from different places, and want to keep on top of them.
[Read More]Great Timing
Posted on Fri, Jan 1, 2021
| Alan Pope
With a keen interest in all things “retro”, I’ve previously bought copies of Fusion Magazine, which I’ve enjoyed. Shortly after I blogged yesterday about The Best Portable Spectrum, I received a marketing email from Fusion Retro Books. With impeccable timing, they’re promoting a new Spectrum game, called Neadeital by Matt Birch.
They had me at the screenshot. I was a big fan of Tir Na Nog, Dun Durach (and Heavy on the Magick) as a kid.
[Read More]Snap Along With Me
Posted on Wed, Dec 30, 2020
| Alan Pope
Every so often I find myself with an idle hour and decide to use that time to package some new software for Linux. A common activity among nerds, I’m sure ;). This blog post is a write up of what I did, and why, which may be useful to others with time on their hands.
I keep meaning to live stream when I do, but on this occasion I had a bad hair day was also listening to and engaging with a podcast, so it wasn’t practical.
[Read More]