Side Projects and Small Updates

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Running stress tests on the x250 before repasting

Hello there again! Just thought I’d give a nearly-mid-month update on things.

While repairing the Thinkpad X250 I’ve been working on recently, I found that two separate replacement keyboards did not have ribbon cables long enough to fully plug in to the connector on the motherboard- this seems to mess with trackpoint functionality. Guess I’ll wait on testing other cable and board replacements on that before coming to a conclusion. Looks like the thermal paste on that core i5 4th gen may also need to be replaced, as it seems the processor hits a solid 99c after only a few seconds of being stress tested, whoa. I intend on giving this to a friend once fully repaired.

I also have a System76 Gazelle model gazp9 that I’m working on getting the body plastics and screen repaired for. Looks like the previous owner I received this from had a habit of punching their screen, so might need an entire display assembly to fix that. This’ll be the extra computer I keep in case a family member ever needs a computer, and are open to trying out Pop!OS. Once I get that guy into functioning order again, I’ll definitely see if I can get an Arch Linux rice as well as a Pop!_OS screenshot from it with inxi and neofetch information.

Looking forward to using my Framework Laptop and a future System76 mobile workstation as my daily drivers in the future. More cores on one machine means I can use one for Virtualization and application compiling for work, with the other being the modular thin and light for everything else. Here’s hoping the JingPad’s software matures as well, as that would be the perfect companion tablet that ran an Ubuntu-based distro. Keep an eye on those project and hardware tracker spreadsheets for when I update em- looking forward to testing some fun hardware soon, as well as next year.

That’s it for this week! I’ll throw some fun things I’ve been reading or watching below recently:

  • Foxes Afloat is a fun youtube channel with a couple who have lived on narrowboats in the UK Canals for a while. I especially like them because I can relate to Colin who is also on the Asperger’s Syndrome train

  • My coworker Nathan Dyer wrote a great blog post about his life hacks for better wrist support, and another one previously about how he’s improved his Bluetooth experience on Linux

  • Watched a fun video on why Tesla made their DOJO computer from a Tesla fan channel

  • Nick from The Linux Experiment channel gave an update on how his JingPad is performing, with updated software.

  • I have a PineTime and PinePower Desktop unit arriving from the fun folks at Pine64 soon, looking forward to seeing how the PineTime can replace my Pebble Time Round. Here’s their october update

  • Jeff Geerling recently reviewed a pre-production board of the Cutie Pi tablet. After running through my emails on my no-longer-used email account I used to have as a main account, it looks like I might be receiving one of those in upcoming months too!

Framework Laptop + eGPU on Fedora Linux

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Hi there! I’ve recently taken to moving to a more portable setup, which should allow me to travel more while getting more done.

Still working on finding a decent portable monitor setup that allows the Pangolin pang10 (HDMI-out only) and my Framework Laptop (USB-C out, plus various port expansions) to have a secondary display while traveling. I’ve also been gaming on an eGPU-based setup for the past month and some change with the Framework Laptop.

The External GPU enclosure I’m utilizing is the awesome CoolerMaster EG200 eGPU. This thing includes a 2.5” drive bay on the front, a separate-from-thunderbolt USB hub on the back, and a clean setup for the GPU. Wires are pre-ran from the built-in standard desktop power supply and all the parts are clealy marked, should you need replacements.

The Framework Laptop is still running Fedora Linux. I might try Arch or openSUSE around the beginning of 2022, but we’ll see. I decided to go with an AMD GPU this time around, as I’ve mostly used Intel and NVIDIA products most of my life. Starting with an older RX590 I found on eBay, I tested the GPU for 2-3 weeks and it was running most of my games fine, held back only by the performance of that older card.

Then, all of a sudden, I sprung upon a combo deal on Newegg. Get an AM4 motherboard at MSRP and get an RX6600XT at MSRP as well, as part of the bundle deal! I could likely use that motherboard in a small server build in the future, so I’m keeping that in storage for now, as I use the RX6600XT in the eGPU. Games are running great on the external monitor! While Risk of Rain 2 destroys framerates like it always does, games like Factorio, No Man’s Sky, Audiosurf 2 and Last Epoch are running perfectly fine from 50-140fps!

After receiving the RX6600XT, I used the egpu-switcher app from github to make sure the proper symlinks were setup to offload graphics to that, and grabbed newer mesa drivers via GloriousEggroll’s mesa-aco COPR, and I was good to go! I’ve heard mentions that kernel 5.14.x will allow AMD hotplug support, but it seems that isn’t ready yet, from my testing. Framework has promised a firmware update to their Framework Laptop soon too, that will fix the power delivery anomaly I was seeing. I’d need the eGPU hooked up along with a secondary power supply if I wanted to game for longer than four hours at a time. Once that update comes in, I’ll be able to take that port I’m sacrificing to a power adapter and switch out Expansion Cards to put an Ethernet port in and enjoy faster networking.

For the heck of it, I’ll include recent inxi/neofetch outputs from my docked Framework laptop and Pangolin pang10 laptop below.

## This info was taken from the inxi and neofetch programs on Oct 3 2021 from my Framework.

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Graphics: Device-1: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Navi 23 [Radeon RX 6600/6600 XT/6600M] driver: amdgpu v: kernel
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: amdgpu,modesetting resolution: 2560x1440
OpenGL: renderer: AMD DIMGREY_CAVEFISH (DRM 3.42.0 5.14.9-200.fc34.x86_64 LLVM 12.0.1) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.3.0-devel

/:-------------:\
:-------------------:: ---------------
:-----------/shhOHbmp---:\ OS: Fedora 34 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
/-----------omMMMNNNMMD ---: Host: Laptop A8
:-----------sMMMMNMNMP. ---: Kernel: 5.14.9-200.fc34.x86_64
:-----------:MMMdP------- ---\ Uptime: 4 mins
,------------:MMMd-------- ---: Packages: 2334 (rpm), 17 (flatpak)
:------------:MMMd------- .---: Shell: zsh 5.8
:---- oNMMMMMMMMMNho .----: Resolution: 2560x1440
:-- .+shhhMMMmhhy++ .------/ DE: GNOME 40.4
:- -------:MMMd--------------: WM: Mutter
:- --------/MMMd-------------; WM Theme: Sweet-Dark
:- ------/hMMMy------------: Theme: Sweet-Dark [GTK2/3]
:-- :dMNdhhdNMMNo------------; Icons: Nebula [GTK2/3]
:---:sdNMMMMNds:------------: Terminal: gnome-terminal
:------:://:-------------:: CPU: 11th Gen Intel i7-1185G7 (8) @ 4.800GHz
:---------------------:// GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 6600/6600 XT/6600M
GPU: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
Memory: 3188MiB / 31880MiB

Outside of working on getting that eGPU setup running fine with the Framework, I’ve also been dabbling in Arch ARM recently and might try installing Parabola, Arch ARM and Ubuntu 21.04 on my Pi 400 recently. We’re also testing out how to “popify” the Ubuntu experience on a Pi 4/400 recently, so stay tuned for that!

Garuda, Mocaccino and some Archcraftian love.

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Hi there! Back in action over here in my corner of the world.

I’ve recently been looking into trying a different distro on the GPD Win Max as well as some on my System76 Pangolin. However, I have also recently come across a Pi 400, so I might try turning that into its own little sort of a portable laptop as well. More on that in future blog posts.

With a coworker who enjoys that Arch lifestyle, I decided to try it out as well. However, I’m lazy. Install from scratch? Never for this lazy boyo! I saw a video recently on Archcraft so I’ve been testing it out for a few days on my Pangolin (model pang10)

A screenshot from the tester drive

Above, you’ll see that I’ve been testing Archcraft a tad for work and play. Bpytop is on the right screen (internal display) for monitoring the Pangolin’s temps.

While I’m enjoying using this for work, I’m also testing out our new support topic on our System76 Support page for installing our drivers and some light gaming.

Next, we test Garuda on the GPD Win Max! A few coworkers have been using this distro happily for gaming recently, so I thought I would give it a look.

Garuda on the gpd win max

Here we see Garuda Linux running fine on the GPD Win Max, as it outputs to a 1440p 165hz external monitor…

Veloren on gpd win max

Above we have a screenshot of Veloren, a fantastic FOSS MMORPG game, running at a respectable 36fps on the GPD Win Max. Now, obviously we would see higher framerates if I was playing this on the internal 1280x800 60hz display, but I wanted to see what that 10th gen iGPU was capable of!

In the future, I will have a Framework Laptop, so I’m wondering how well this game will play on Intel’s Xe graphics in the 1185g7 processor I’ll be getting with that.

For now, I’ve settled with Fedora 34 (gnome) on my secondary drive for the Pangolin pang10 laptop, and Garuda Linux on the GPD Win Max as well as the gaming Aero15Xv8 I have. MocaccinoOS is something I’ll possibly delve into next weekend or following ones. For now, Garuda has the best FPS output for that Intel iGPU on the GPD Win Max, and Fedora is the most stable secondary distro for my Pangolin.

Giving ChromeOS an Honest Try

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Hello there again! Long time no see!

Recently, I’ve been getting to using ChromeOS a bit more, with the Thinkpad C13 Yoga that was on sale recently in the USA.

My little ChromeOS desktop

My little ChromeOS desktop

So far, I’ve used this for a few use cases:

  • Blogging, as you see here

  • My job, customer support- mainly firefox and chrome with some VSCode in between

  • GeForce Now gaming

  • Casting videos to our various “smart” sticks in my family’s TVs

Some of the “workspace” functionality I usually see in my various Linux flavors is even here too! Well, I guess that should make sense, considering ChromeOS is technically based on Gentoo with some Google flair and design language thrown in.

The Linux container experience with Debian is definitely adequate for most developers’ needs it appears. A friend of mine who worked at Google for a short stint once mentioned “A Chromebook should be as simple as possible, while having the tools a web developer may need” and I can definitely see that here. Tons of partitions for updating on reboot, kind of like the frzr idea, and keeping the Debian instance in its own container…while also allowing you to see your Linux apps as icons in the launcher alongside everything else.

Now, onto the use cases in more depth!

Having edited this blog post, turned Medium article, on the Chromebook, everything is smooth as butter. When I receive a new machine, or have a machine that I’ve refurbished, I usually end up going through the quick process that is installing Fedora or Pop!_OS on it. However, running my bash script to set things up the way I like usually takes a while afterwards.

Not the case on ChromeOS. You sign in to your separate work and personal emails, and just get stuff done. Here I show myself doing some web browsing, editing this blog post and checking out the new Framework laptop, with fully modular components. This Thinkpad C13 Yoga breezes past it all.

For my work, now at System76, I’m mainly on my work-provided Gazelle getting things done. I would say I probably use this Chromebook two days a week for work, due to various time-sensitive things needing a full Linux experience. When I am on the Chromebook though, I’m answering calls through our dedicated call app, typing up notes in VSCodium and testing various packages in the Debian VM.

Outside of having a few web browser tabs open, a terminal and a text editor, I don’t need much else for my job. Having access to the Android app for our calling system is nice, for sure. That way I can have a dedicated device for it. I need the computing power to compile Linux kernels from time to time, but other than that I mostly live in the browser. Need I mention the keyboard? I’ve been spoiled by Thinkpads for most of my young adult, and now maturing adult life. I can type up to 100wpm on this bad boy.

Consuming media. We all do it, on various devices we own. I like that this is a 2-in-1 style laptop, so I can just fold it when I want to use it as a “director” of sorts for Youtube video playlists on the TV in our living room.
Want to have a music session? Easily cast various Soundcloud songs/Youtube videos to the television and sound system my family owns.

Not much more to say here, everything just works!

Something else I’ve been using this Chromebook for, is for testing various cloud gaming and streaming services.

I own a lot of games on Steam, but mainly play games on Linux- more info about that in a prior post. I’ve been testing GeForce Now game streaming for a month or two. When all I have is this Chromebook, I just plug my wired Xbox 360 controller into it, and jump into a Rocket League or No Man’s Sky session.

Games such as Destiny 2 or others that have had issues running on Linux either due to developers who do not support Linux or some sort of anti-cheat software incompatibility, I’ll play via this method…and in my testing, they run fine! Our home internet is fairly quick at around 100mb/s down and 40mb/up, and my work-from-home friends that I visit occasionally also have fairly quick internet, so game streaming wasn’t an issue there either. One thing to be careful with is if you’re streaming something like Rocket League from your phone, though, as that latency could potentially result in a lost match.

I have tried a Bluetooth 8bitdo Pro controller, but had issues using it with Moonlight or GeForce Now on my C13 Yoga. It appears that GeForce Now is very picky about what bluetooth controllers they’ll accept, so I mainly have been sticking to my USB Xbox 360 controller.

Those are my short thoughts on the use cases I’ve been testing out ChromeOS for recently, feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Hello System76!

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Quick update.

I now work at System76 on the Happiness team.
Going to build some machines and sell them as a side project for a short while, and downsize everything I own that doesn’t play well with Linux so I can have a streamlined setup in the future.

Also I’m super psyched for our upcoming open keyboard launch.

Some cool things I’ve found recently: