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:

Medium, PS4 Linux and future projects

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Another year, new hope! This is going to be a short update.

piocmetal.jpg

I’ve recently revived my medium account. Say hello to the THICC Pi 4 above!

I’ve recently been working on some things, such as getting PC games running on the Pi 4, which I posted about here, and that Linux-on-PS4 project I blogged about prior. Looking to begin crossing off projects from my tracker this year!

Also recently, I’ve been real excited for the GPD Win 3 release and some upcoming handhelds from Experimental Pi that were leaked.

Maybe I’ll do more writing as well…

Until next time!

Short Update: M1 Linux excitement, PS4 Future Project

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Hello there again!

I’m waiting on some parts to come in for my Linux Gaming project on the PS4. Thankfully, many out there have already made some videos on how to run tethered exploits for the PS4, so it looks like getting Gentoo or Arch running won’t be that difficult. Looking forward to having a spare “gaming pc” sitting around for when people can visit again.

In other exciting news, Marcan, known for his Playstation reverse-engineering in the past, is going to wholly devote himself to working on getting Linux distros running on the new M1 Macs. The target of his project is initially the M1 Mac Mini, and then to support further laptops etc from there. From his Community Stream, he mentioned he intends on having this be a full-time effort he can devote himself to. My knowledge barely scratches the surface of the reverse-engineering and exploits he’s worked on in the past, but it appears the M1 Macs can run alternate kernels other than macOS, so it’ll be interesting to see what work he does there.

I’ve been working on some Raspberry Pi-powered retro consoles and little mini Nextcloud servers for friends, amongst fun handheld terminals, for xmas. We’ll see how everyone likes their little custom projects as presents. I love building little things :)

I’ll update this blog more, and likely have a timestamped dedicated project page, when I have more to report regarding a PS4 running Steam in Linux and am excited for what the future holds! I may be going more mobile in the future, with all the layoffs and economic disasters that have been happening in my country this year, so we’ll have to see.

Have a happy 2021!