Using Fedora Linux

Awhile ago, I decided to try out Fedora. I really like GNOME's workflow and Fedora seemed like the best option because it is based around GNOME. 

Initial Installation

I installed it, which was pretty easy thanks to the Anaconda installer, and tried to get the proprietary NVIDIA drivers working, but my card, a NVIDIA GT 8800, is older so the drivers ended up making the experience not great. The background would be all corrupted after suspending. I tried my hardest to fix it using systemd and scripting, but I couldn't fix that issue. I ended up deleting the partition and switching back to Debian.

Second Try

Today, I decided to give Fedora another chance. I didn't use the NVIDIA proprietary drivers and instead opted for the open source drivers. So far, the experience is great. I got all my keybinds set up, and I customized it so it uses the Adwaita-Dark theme. It looks great and I love it. I had to initially upgrade from Fedora 32 to Fedora 33, but it wasn't hard. It just took a bit of time due to it having to upgrade all the packages. Installation of my programs wasn't hard either because I don't use heavy IDEs like Visual Studio Code, and I generally only need my web browser to function on my computer.

 The GNOME Experience

GNOME 3.38 is really great and fixed some of the annoyances I had with GNOME. It moved the buttons to power off, suspend, and restart all into one menu instead of a prompt that would take up the whole screen. So far, the experience has been speedy, and I really love the workflow. I like the overview menu, as it makes it easy to see all the applications I have open. I also love the dynamic workspaces of GNOME. So far, I have been using GNOME without any extensions, and it has been great.

Conclusion

So far, Fedora has been an excellent distro for GNOME 3. I like the workflow, and I like the dnf package manager. If you want a stock GNOME experience, Fedora is the distribution for you. It only comes with one plugin enabled out of the box, and it is super speedy. Programs are up to date, unlike Debian, and it is just so good. This has been my experience using Fedora so far. I might write a followup to this article after I use the distro more.

Using the Samsung Galaxy S5 in 2020

 I tend to switch phones somewhat often, just to rediscover what made these devices great. Today, I decided to switch to the Samsung Galaxy S5 for one day. The experience was pretty good, as I will write later in this post. I managed to get Android 10 to run on it using a custom ROM called Resurrection Remix. 

The Good

The phone experience was pretty good. It was even better than some low budget phones that I have tried in the past. Android 10's design really helped to modernize the device. I felt like it was a brand new phone, as it uses the stock android design. The phone itself has some pretty cool features such as a headphone jack (yes that's a feature nowadays), a IR Blaster, a removable battery, a fingerprint sensor (which isn't that great), a fast charging port, and Micro SD expansion. The phone also has IP67 water and dust resistance, so it can withstand a downpour, which is great where I live. Android also has some apps that iOS doesn't, such as an official Blogger app.

The Bad

The software was not very fast at all. Apps took a while to load and the animations are slow. There are also some software issues too. When I updated from Android 9 to Android 10, I had to reinstall the Google Apps using OpenGApps because it would keep on saying "Google Play Services keeps on crashing" or something along those lines. After that, the experience was alright. Bluetooth was not great, as it would crash sometimes. YouTube Vanced was a bit laggy on the device, and it is not very fast to reboot. I also had an issue where I would try to put in the Pattern, but it would be stuck on the pattern screen until the phone timed out. Also, the fingerprint sensor is not like a normal fingerprint sensor. Now I will cut it some slack, as it was the first attempt by Samsung at a fingerprint sensor. The sensor makes you swipe your finger down vertically instead of resting it on the sensor. While it sounds good in concept, it is not great in reality.

My Overall Thoughts

The phone is great in 2020, as long as you Custom ROM it. I never tried the original Android 6.0 ROM, but I would think that it was slow because TouchWiz is very bloated. App support is great, as most if not all apps will run on the device. I would even go as far as saying to pick up a Galaxy S5 and Custom ROM it as a budget device. It is a great flagship, even in 2020 with some features that modern phones simply don't have. I will not be staying on the device, but it was nice to revisit it in 2020 and see what features we miss out on by using modern smartphones. 

Running Debian on my Macbook

 Yes, I know that I have written quite a bit of OS reviews, but this one is really good. Two days ago, I decided it would be nice to give Debian a try on my 4,1, as it has an older kernel and the lid closing might work. At the time of this post, the latest Debian release is Debian 10 Buster.

Installing Debian

I downloaded the operating system on their website using the HTTP option (I found it to be the easiest). I used dd in order to flash it onto the USB flash drive I had on hand. I booted to it, and chose the Graphical Installer. When it booted into the installer, the trackpad did not work. I navigated all the way to selecting the Desktop Environment before I had to get a actual mouse. Luckily, there was one where I was staying (I was not at my house), and when I plugged it in, it worked and I selected Continue. 

After the install, I booted into XFCE, which is the Desktop Environment I chose. There were some pretty major issues straight off the bat. The trackpad had no way of right clicking,the panel was not great, the WiFi card did not work, and the fans weren't turning on when they should. I managed to fix them and I am going to list the steps below.

Fixing Networking

The most important thing I needed to get working was networking. Luckily, it was pretty easy. I had the Broadcom BCM4321. You might have a different card, so be sure to check the instructions on the Debian wiki page for your card. You need to have a Ethernet connection, so be sure to connect to the internet, otherwise you won't be able to install the necessary firmware. I installed the firmware-b43-installer package from the Debian repositories. Since I installed from a USB, the repositories were screwed up. In order to fix this, I nanoed into the /etc/apt/sources.list file and changed my repositories to match the Debian Wiki's sources.list example file. This fixed the repositories after I updated it using apt update. Once I installed the firmware package, it seemed to go alright from there.

• Debian Wiki: bcm43xx
  
• Debian Wiki: SourcesList
  

Fixing the Trackpad

In order to fix the trackpad, I needed to add a configuration file and install a package. I used the instructions from a blog called the Rambling Moose, where they explained how to fix the issue. I installed the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package after updating my xorg config files. After a reboot, it seemed to work just fine.

• Rambling Moose: How to get Tap To Click back on your Debian 9 XFCE Linux install
  

Fixing the Panel

After I did that, I wanted to get the panel out of the way. I originally tried adding it to the autostart, but that ended up doing nothing. I finally figured out what the issue was. Make sure that when you log out, the checkbox saying "Save Session after Logout" or something similar is not checked. After doing this, the panel seemed to autostart just fine.

Fixing the Fans

Originally I tried a utility made by datcuandrei called MacLinuxUtils. It is a nice Java program that I would highly recommend. I had a small issue initially with the program, as the xfce-terminal would kill the Java process after exiting, but the author fixed the issue and updated the release. In the end, I decided not to use the program for the time being. The author of the program told me that they would be adding features such as a system tray icon and a more customizable manual mode for the fans. Once these features are added, I will gladly switch to the application again. In the meantime, I decided to try macfanctld. The program runs as a systemd daemon and has a config file located in /etc. It made the laptop much cooler and is my second recommendation if you don't want to use MacLinuxUtils. 

• MacLinuxUtils 
  
• Ubuntu Manpage: macfanctld
  

Overall Thoughts

Debian 10 has been great. I have been able to use suspend like normal, and I have been able to use my favorite web browser Brave with it. It feels more up to date than my old OS X Mountain Lion install. I am dualbooting both however, so if I need OS X I have it available. After fixing all of the issues mentioned above, it runs great. It even runs quite a bit cooler than OS X. It stays around 90-130°F. The RAM usage is also much better. It idles around 300-500MB. Debian 10 is a great option for those who have old macs and don't want to use an OS like Chrome OS on it. It is much better than Ubuntu in my opinion, which has its fair share of issues on this old machine. If you need a user friendly installer, I would recommend checking out the Debian Live ISOs, as it uses the Calemares installer. 

Debian 10 running on my Macbook 4,1

Trying CloudReady on my Macbook

 Today, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit CloudReady on my Macbook 4,1. I created the USB using a tool in Linux called dd. It took some time, but it worked. I took out an old hard drive, that I originally got from the Macbook itself, and put it in the computer. CloudReady discontinued dual booting in 2018, so I couldn't dual boot it with OS X Mountain Lion. 

I booted into the hard drive, so I could see what was on it before I wiped it. It turns out that there was macOS Catalina 10.15.3 on there. I checked out what was on there, and it was just a bunch of hackintosh kexts and such, some dmgs of programs I installed, and some of my music library. I figured that the Catalina partition wasn't very important, so I decided to go through with my install of CloudReady.

I booted into the USB, which took a while, but I wasn't there to see how long it took as I had other matters to attend to. It booted fine and I connected to my WiFi before installing. I installed the OS, which took a bit of time, and booted into the hard drive. It first showed a flashing folder with a question mark in the middle, but it went to the CloudReady logo a bit after that. 

It booted into the setup screen, and I set up my Google account and connected to WiFi. One of the things I noticed in the setup was that the touchpad sensitivity was very high. When I finished the setup, I went into the settings and changed it to the slowest option so it was actually usable. After that, I went into the Chrome browser and accepted some permissions for extensions, since I use Brave and not Chrome anymore, I had to accept them.

The next problem I noticed was that the WiFi kept going out after ten or so minutes of use. I knew about the problem because I used Linux on the machine before (maybe another post soon about that experience) but I couldn't do anything about it since CloudReady did not have an option to switch to a proprietary driver.

The final straw and what drove me to put my Mountain Lion hard drive back into the laptop was the Macbook kept on getting super hot. CloudReady would not ramp up the fans like it should, so it kept on getting extremely hot. I didn't like this, as when I am in a classroom, I don't want my fans spinning up super loudly because the OS can't handle cooling very well.

Although I had a fairly negative experience, I noticed some of the stuff was fixed that was an issue in a Previous release of CloudReady. The headphone jack no longer lit up red, which was really good because I don't want a distracting red light in my headphone jack when I take the Macbook places. Suspend was working properly, which is good. I figured out that you can use a PIN in Chrome OS, which is super convenient because I have a long password. 

Overall, I would not recommend CloudReady for anyone using a Macbook 4,1 or older in 2020. The experience is not very good, and CloudReady's certification for the machine ended a couple of months ago. If you want a more modern operating system, I would recommend Mountain Lion, as that is what runs best on these old machines. You can use Firefox Legacy and some other software, which I discuss in my other article about Mountain Lion in 2020. That is all for now, thank you for reading.

Running Mountain Lion in 2020

 This is a review on the state of OS X Mountain Lion in 2020 from my personal experience. 

OS X Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012. The OS received security updates until 2015. Most app developers decided to leave the platform. The major blow to older OS's was Google unsupporting Chrome and not updating it anymore for OS X 10.9 and older. However, there are alternatives to Google Chrome, which I will discuss later.

I run Mountain Lion on a Macbook 4,1. The Macbook 4,1, (also known as the Macbook Early 2008), does not officially support Mountain Lion. Apple supported the device up until 10.7 Lion. I managed to get Mountain Lion running using a patcher tool called NexPostFacto. The patcher was developed by a person named parrotgeek1. You can visit his website here. 

Mountain Lion, by itself, is not a great operating system to be running in 2020. Safari is outdated and does not work with the majority of websites. The mail application is not really great in my opinion, although I am a avid Thunderbird user. Although, there are ways you can run a modern web browser on Mountain Lion. Parrotgeek1 has also developed a browser called Firefox Legacy. This takes a more up to date version of Mozilla Firefox and ports it over to older operating systems like 10.7 and 10.8. You can even run a bit of an older version of Firefox on Snow Leopard! You can also find this web browser on his website, which I have linked above. 

Firefox Legacy makes Mountain Lion more usable in 2020. Websites actually are decent on the machine, and you can get more modern extensions such as Multi Account Container, which I use for school, LastPass, and more. I was even able to get Google Meet to run! 

Older applications tend to run pretty well. I was able to get a more modern version of git using MacPorts. I also used a code editor called TextMate to help fix small issues with my discord bot. Although, I really don't need it because I have vim. I also got an older version of iTerm to run on it and replaced the bash shell with a zsh one. GIMP 2.8 also works pretty well on the device, although you do not want to be editing 4K images on it. Thunderbird also runs pretty well, but you need an older version. Specifically, you need version 45 of Thunderbird, which is outdated and doesn't run the more modern Thunderbird extensions.

Overall, my experience with Mountain Lion has been positive. Sure, I could run Linux on my Macbook 4,1, and I have before. The only problem I have with Linux is that the kernel stops detecting the lid close after a while of use. Mountain Lion did not have the same issue. I also did not want to run Windows 7 or 10 on the devices, since both are not great for a Core 2 Duo machine and the drivers aren't great either. I like Mountain Lion because you can still get by using it in 2020, even though some applications might not run or might be outdated. Most apps I actually use are web based, so I don't even need to download anything. That has been my personal experience with OS X Mountain Lion on my Macbook 4,1. 

 Mountain Lion running on my Macbook 4,1.

Using the HTC First in 2020

Last night, I decided to try out the HTC First, (also known as the Facebook phone), in 2020. It runs Android 4.1.2. I got the idea from watching a Luke Smith video about how he did not use a phone at all apart from when he goes out to shoot in the forest. 

I installed some apps on there, such as TickTick, a Flashlight app (Android didn't have a flashlight toggle yet!), and AccuWeather (since MyRadar was not compatible). I already had a few apps on the device from playing around with it a year or two ago, such as Twilight (a blue light filter), Nova Launcher, and a few others. I decided to remove Nova Launcher, as I wanted the stock android experience. Also, I had turned off the Facebook Launcher a year or two ago because it was broken. 

To my surprise, it was basically stock android apart from the Facebook logo when you start up the device. There were a few bloat apps, but I disabled those when playing around with it that one time. Other than that, it barely had any apps that I would consider bloat. I also updated it the night before using it, so it ran the latest Google apps and the latest Messenger app.

Sadly, most apps were not compatible, but that isn't surprising when you are trying to run a OS made in 2012 in the year 2020. Although, for basic tasks such as texting, calling, viewing the calendar, light web browsing, and using TickTick, it was fine. 

The device doesn't have what I would call flagship specs, which is probably one of the reasons why the HTC First flopped in the market. It comes with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage with no microSD expansion, a 5MP camera and a 1.6MP selfie camera. It also came in a variety of colors. Mine is the red color, but it has a stain from a monster sticker that had been on the phone for too long.

Overall, this phone was pretty nice to use in 2020. It was nice to see what I had missed out on in 2012 with stock android. I am definitely going to switch back to my iPhone 7, but this phone helped me realize what I really needed from a smartphone. Sure, I like listening to music with my earbuds, using discord on the go without a laptop, watching YouTube at lunch, texting friends with iMessage, but it isn't necessary on a smartphone. This phone helped me learn a valuable life lesson, and that is to appreciate what you have, as others may not be so lucky.

My HTC First's Homescreen

Welcome to my Blog!

 Welcome!

This is a place where I will post my tech endeavors, experiments, and explorations. You can contact me here, or on other platforms. My website is wolfie.glitch.me.