I don’t see why not. The example config file has a whole bunch of complex commands, far more than just the java --jar you need to run a Java application.
Very cool writeup! I also love the rollercoaster that is your blog categories. We’ve got everything from free software, gun violence, deadbeat dads, and … spaghetti.
For real though, great stuff! I’m always happy to come across legit oldschool-style blogs without a commercial agenda.
So I could recommend a distro, as you asked (which would be Ubuntu) but instead I believe what’s better is making the switch… small!
In practice that means safety net and familiarity all around :
backup your data
backup your data… and not, that’s not a mistake, truly do it, now. Before you try something new, and scary. In fact… don’t touch your computer, get another one, a cheap one like a RPi4 or a relatively old laptop that a colleague hasn’t used for years.
copy, don’t move, your data to whatever distribution you picked
ideally have a dedicated hard drive in there for JUST the data, NOT the OS
play… have fun, truly. Try to use YOUR data, I mean the copy you have now that you don’t even care if you lose, and try to use them with the stock software that comes with your distribution, e.g OpenOffice or Blender or Kdenlive, or whatever you are into
delete it all! Don’t be afraid, you can do it, you have copies anyway
do it, again, again, keep a logbook or wiki or .doc file where you write down what you learn
rinse and repeat
this way you should find YOUR distribution in no time and you won’t be afraid of messing up!
Honestly it’s a fun adventure. I’ve been learning Linux and CLI tools decades ago and I’m still learning to this day so do not assume there is one solution you can find today and move, it’s a process, a long one, but a really empowering one IMHO.
That’s really what I’m doing on my debian server where I host my docker containers.
I don’t care if I brick my system while playing arround because every day at 00:00 a crontab job dumps all my database and saves all my docker volumes and docker-compose to an external HD and saves most important dotfiles and wireguard configuration.
Back Up and running in 30 min !
2 years in, still going strong and learning everyday something new, keeping everything I learn in a markdown file.
Personal CA with self-signed certificate by an intermediate CA chain
Wireguard tunnel routing all my devices traffic to protonVPN
Alot of docker stuff
Alot of networking stuff (DNS, cryptography…)
LVM, bash…
…
Wild ride, sometimes alot of frustration, but what an empowering experience !
I have an OG Surface Pro. The first one. It’s running Windows 10 at the moment and it’s doing fine except for the occasional wifi/Bluetooth bugs. I’m using it exclusively in tablet mode with the pen. No keyboard.
When Windows 10 is going to reach its end of life, I’d like to install Linux on it. But I need it to have a tablet style interface with gestures if possible.
Do I need any special distro or drivers on that hardware? And what would you recommend as the desktop environment?
I had one of those too! Sturdy little guy, reminds me a bit of the first eeepc 701 :-) But I was worried about the replacement of the charger once it would die. Besides, I have had a bad experience of Surface-line longevity, they always seem to die suddenly after a while, so I sold it.
That is so awesome. Do you still have one lying around? Those things have an awesome form factor, but the I/O ports are a little bit dated by todays standard 😅
Nah. The hardware wasn’t very good and it was very slow. I had a 7" and a 9" one. I replaced them with the surface pro.
The company was going to make custom Linux based OSes for other smart devices like TVs and monitors but Android came out and was backed by Google, so of course it became wildly popular. Our company went bankrupt pretty quickly after that because it had no the contracts coming in. Asus was the only client keeping them afloat and the contract was ending.
To add another comment to your reply, have you tried it personally?
I’d like to back up my system before doing the switch. What do you recommend I use? Clonezilla with an external USB drive all plugged in using a USB hub?
I haven’t tried the Surface images due to not having one, but I am using their Silverblue images to make the whole NVIDIA drivers thing a bit easier on my system.
Also I haven’t needed to backup my system in over a year now (I stopped hopping with Silverblue) so I don’t remember the solution I used, but this seems good.
This is a big issue with Snap. It may be like Flatpak, allowing devs to set their own dependencies for ALL distros, but its poor uptake outside of Ubuntu’s ecosystem means that it’s no different to yet another distro repackaging system.
Flatpak, or even Nixpkgs, are the future because they allow devs to have control over the distribution of their software. Snap being such a closed ecosystem in comparison only means it will replicate many of the problems we’ve found with traditional (re)packaging systems.
I can’t speak for Flatpak as I haven’t tried it but nixpkgs are beautiful to work with and configuration of my system has become completely reproducible in a clean format.
As a dev, you can just distribute a nixpkg with whatever build tool inside. That beats the current system of “native” packages where your software is repacked and then maintained by half a dozen teams for different distros that use different dependencies and update cadences.
Bottles has gone as far as to demand its fedora package be removed and now shows a warning if you’re not using the flatpak version because repackers just don’t properly test all their software (how can they? there are thousands of apps in these repos!)
nix is a “native” packaging format. Apps are compiled for your host OS and run in that environment with no restrictions, for better or worse.
Flatpaks are containers. They provide a virtual OS to the application such as the file system, and accessing host OS features is done through “portals” which just means you can give/revoke the ability of the app to access your host OS resources such as networking, file access etc.
Flatpaks are therefore much safer in theory. But Nix packages are lower overhead, and can interact like any built-in software binary that you’d have when you spin up a fresh install of, say, debian.
Nix packages are harder to use IMO thanks to their poor documentation and lack of GUI package manager support (not that it’s impossible, just that it’s been a niche system for most of its life) and since most people are accustomed to flatpaks and their permissions system (and the fact it comes preinstalled on most distros) so flatpak is still pretty ubiquitous, even for NIxOS users
the Chrultrabook project is what youll wanna look into, but basically yes. You can reliably get new-ish hardware very cheaply and flash FOSS stuff like Coreboot onto it.
No idea why tbh. The equivalent laptops outside of ChromeOS’ ecosystem are usually much more locked down, to the point where the most powerful systems you’ll find being able to run Coreboot are decades-old thinkpads on 3rd gen mobile i5 and Kepler mGPUs.
I gave one step more to achieve the holy sanctity of FOSS hardware I bought a Thinkpad and flashed Libreboot in it. Waiting for the bless of Saint iGNUcius
Except for using the pen, IR-cameras, booting from USB…
Reminds me of android ROMs about a decade ago.
“My new L33tM@st3r ROM has just been released! Now with kernel tweaks for buttery-smooth performance and major improvement to stock battery life! Comes with it’s own tuning app so you can adjust it the way YOU want!
(Not presently working: bluetooth/wifi/camera/NFC/dialler/headphones but everything else is awesome!!)”
Yes and no. Back then, you got the ROMs from a group / individual / forum and it wasn’t very much vetted like a distro coming directly from the linux community / canonical / etc.
Also, I can live without using surface pen (-: If you compare to Asahi and its maturity (a lot running, but not sound yet), LinuxSurface kernel have made a LOT of progress in making these devices even more usable compared to they handle Win11.
Sway is probably meh because it’s a manual tiler. I use sway-autotiling in laptop mode and don’t bother with switching the layout in tablet mode.
But generally the question should be “How does a stacking window manager even work with touch?” The answer is “like shit”. Instead of having your windows automatically placed on the screen, you have to drag them around with your stylus.
I used to use KDE Bismuth (tiler for Plasma) and it was the best experience on a touchscreen I could imagine. I mainly used 2 tiling layouts. The usual Master+Stack for regular use and when watching lectures I used a layout which is almost stacking but makes the windows slightly smaller than full screen, so you can grab the window on the bottom easily. I had a keybind which reduced the opacity of a window making it see-through. That way I could have my lecture over almost the full screen while still being able to write over almost the entire screen.
Plasma also has the option to do something when you drag from a specific screen edge. I used that to launch the app launcher, to select workspaces and lock the screen.
I guess it’s worth confirming if it’s been a logout or a reboot as well. If you open a terminal and type “uptime” does the time match when you booted up or after you left it alone for a while?
Check the output of: dmesg -Tand have a look through: /var/log/messages
I would be focussing on errors, warnings and/or terms like “reboot, shutdown, logout, timeout, idle, etc.” to try to narrow it down what is happening and when.
I’ve got a Surface Pro 5 with the dogshit m3 processor and 4GB of Ram, anyone have any concept of how it’d run under linux? It basically folds at any real task in Windows
“KDE is heavy” is so 2000s. It’s been quite a while since KDE is very tight on resources usage. Unless you’re running a raspberry or similar, there’s no point on constraining yourself with one of those desktops for an everyday use device.
Getting a surface pro 8 soon, looking forward to getting Linux on it!
Edit: installed Pop OS on my SP8, had to switch to Wayland and also needed to do some tweaks to get the keyboard to work to decrypt but it’s running well so far. I believe you can get the camera working with the proprietary camera stack but it’s not a priority for me right now
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