7 ms·

A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3 years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby programming while visiting parents.

by iamevn 5y ago

A couple months ago I pulled my x220 that I hadn't used in 3 years out of the closet and got it all updated to do some hobby programming while visiting parents. My only other laptops were a work machine (X1 Carbon, I want to say from 2019) that I didn't want to travel with and a Surface Go that I didn't want to wrangle into having a decent dev environment. When I booted it up, I checked the most recent entry in pacman's logs: $ tail /var/log/pacman.log -n1 [2018-08-24 12:40] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -R aur/ino' Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a completely updated and working Arch setup. Using it was surprisingly pleasant, I think the most painful thing was initial builds for some large Haskell projects were slow but subsequent builds were tolerable. Also the original screen, while nicely visible with the matte surface, has a painfully low resolution of 1366x768 and so few websites are happy with half of that width now that everything has huge margins. Probably the most important thing was that it was mine (even though I haven't done the sorts of mods in TFA) in a way that my work laptop and the windows machines I'd been using outside of work could never be. (I do love how sturdy it is. Especially with the slice battery that almost doubles the thickness and gives it enough juice for hours)

unixhero 5y ago
Well of course you fixed your arch install in a matter of an hour, you're a Haskell developer.
- laumars 5y ago
  I’m not a Haskell developer and Arch is my goto Linux precisely because it’s on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong. YMMV but the snide remark is definitely unjustified.
  - idealmedtech 5y ago
    That's been my experience with Arch as well. I've only seen a handful of actual breakages in my time (using consistently since 2016), and there's _always_ a good discussion with a manual fix available within a few hours, or a few days if you want to stick to official update channels. Plus KDE Plasma has become such a joy to use! I repurposed my T530 as a media center with a wireless keyboard and it's been a fantastic experience
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      Out of curiosity, what's your media center setup?
      - idealmedtech 5y ago
        The physical setup is very simple: just the laptop wired through miniDP to the TV, laptop sits behind the TV on a little wardrobe and has its screen turned off. I have various handbraked movies (not for distribution, only my personal usage) and shows that I view in VLC, plus a gigabit Ethernet connection that is more than enough for HD streaming. I keep it simple, just have a standard desktop install of Arch with Plasma. Lets me also do work on the machine, writing code here and there, checking emails etc. The living room setup is much easier on my back for extended work sessions as compared to my office chair.
        pdimitar 5y ago
        Same reasoning here, my back is not well and even though I am starting physiotherapy in a few days, I am looking for a setup I can actively practice from a couch-like position. Even bought a very nice and sturdy (and comfy) folding bed. And will soon order a lap desk. Makes me a bit salty because the Steelcase Gesture is an absolutely EXCELLENT chair and I paid a lot for it but... health is more important. Hopefully I will be using it more in the future if my physiotherapy progresses well. Thank you for the anecdote. I am pondering Manjaro with XFCE but might look at KDE Plasma as well; a lot of people praise it.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  Anecdote: I use Manjaro on my home server and on a laptop and it's rock-solid. Not sure why people look down on Arch, I only had good experiences and I'm very far from a seasoned sysadmin.
  - unixhero 5y ago
    I don't look down on Arch at all. I came from the yesteryears of using Slackware Linux. It was a lot of work. I learnt a lot of course. But I won't do that again. Arch is much much more modern and elegant, but still requires some handholding. The Arch Wiki is a pearl. I tried Manjaro and was mightily impressed, it was a breeze. I might go back to that on a multi boot machine. Cheers.
  - dTal 5y ago
    People look down on Arch because the stability story is catastrophic, and Arch users deny that because they have low standards: Parent was surprised that "Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything" after only 2 years of no updates. It "just" took them "an hour of babysitting it" through cyclic dependency headaches. Child comments proudly proclaim "only seen a handful of actual breakages" (since 2016) and "on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong". Compare to my dad's laptop, which has been running Debian for about a decade and often goes multi-year stretches without updates, and has never broken. Not once. That's the kind of performance I expect from an OS.
    - iamevn 5y ago
      fwiw I've gotten a debian install to the point where I'd rather wipe and reinstall than fix thanks to a combination of pinning, bad pip hygeine (why oh why is global install default), and not being sure where to go to learn how to untangle the mess I'd created. Sure I was a lot less experienced but there's something to be said for arch giving me enough tools and information that I actually feel like I can fix whatever comes up.
0x38B 5y ago
I have a Surface Go 2 running Arch. Great for dev work, aside from the low amount of storage (128 GB). Its portability is hard to beat for trips; Patagonia’s lovely Atom 8L sling bag is big enough for the tablet with some room left over.
- peterfield 5y ago
  Love my X220, although it has been really struggling lately. Chromium, Opera, Brave or Firefox all cause my CPU/fan to crank up as soon as I have a couple of tabs open :(
mgdv 5y ago
I love my X220. Also running arch with dwm. Initially, it was more for tinkering and just to play with but it's getting more day to day use. The keyboard is great and I'm not as worried if it drops or the kids get their hands on it. I also love the light placement rather than the keyboard being back-lit Been pushing it to do Java development and, while a little slow, it's holding up fine
zbrozek 5y ago
I used an x220 as my primary machine for a long time. The low resolution screen and the unusually crappy touchpad are what got me to upgrade. The touchpad in particular was horrible because it had different resolutions in X and Y. In one of those (I don't remember which) it was lower than the screen. So I found myself frequently unable to get to the 1 pixel wide handles to resize windows without the wigglestick.
- jkepler 5y ago
  I turned the touchpad off on my x220 and simply used the track point.
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    I've always enjoyed being multimodal. There were workarounds but I didn't like not having access to a useful touchpad. It seemed like a clear hardware problem because I had the same problem in Windows as in all desktop environments in Linux.
- idealmedtech 5y ago
  I'm not sure which DE you're using, but many have a simple shortcut (in XFCE it's something like Alt+click) to resize windows with the keyboard. Becomes very natural to use and much less fiddly than the touchpad alone.

by iamevn 5y ago

unixhero 5y ago

Well of course you fixed your arch install in a matter of an hour, you're a Haskell developer.

laumars 5y ago
I’m not a Haskell developer and Arch is my goto Linux precisely because it’s on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong. YMMV but the snide remark is definitely unjustified.
- idealmedtech 5y ago
  That's been my experience with Arch as well. I've only seen a handful of actual breakages in my time (using consistently since 2016), and there's _always_ a good discussion with a manual fix available within a few hours, or a few days if you want to stick to official update channels. Plus KDE Plasma has become such a joy to use! I repurposed my T530 as a media center with a wireless keyboard and it's been a fantastic experience
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what's your media center setup?
    - idealmedtech 5y ago
      The physical setup is very simple: just the laptop wired through miniDP to the TV, laptop sits behind the TV on a little wardrobe and has its screen turned off. I have various handbraked movies (not for distribution, only my personal usage) and shows that I view in VLC, plus a gigabit Ethernet connection that is more than enough for HD streaming. I keep it simple, just have a standard desktop install of Arch with Plasma. Lets me also do work on the machine, writing code here and there, checking emails etc. The living room setup is much easier on my back for extended work sessions as compared to my office chair.
      - pdimitar 5y ago
        Same reasoning here, my back is not well and even though I am starting physiotherapy in a few days, I am looking for a setup I can actively practice from a couch-like position. Even bought a very nice and sturdy (and comfy) folding bed. And will soon order a lap desk. Makes me a bit salty because the Steelcase Gesture is an absolutely EXCELLENT chair and I paid a lot for it but... health is more important. Hopefully I will be using it more in the future if my physiotherapy progresses well. Thank you for the anecdote. I am pondering Manjaro with XFCE but might look at KDE Plasma as well; a lot of people praise it.
pdimitar 5y ago
Anecdote: I use Manjaro on my home server and on a laptop and it's rock-solid. Not sure why people look down on Arch, I only had good experiences and I'm very far from a seasoned sysadmin.
- unixhero 5y ago
  I don't look down on Arch at all. I came from the yesteryears of using Slackware Linux. It was a lot of work. I learnt a lot of course. But I won't do that again. Arch is much much more modern and elegant, but still requires some handholding. The Arch Wiki is a pearl. I tried Manjaro and was mightily impressed, it was a breeze. I might go back to that on a multi boot machine. Cheers.
- dTal 5y ago
  People look down on Arch because the stability story is catastrophic, and Arch users deny that because they have low standards: Parent was surprised that "Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything" after only 2 years of no updates. It "just" took them "an hour of babysitting it" through cyclic dependency headaches. Child comments proudly proclaim "only seen a handful of actual breakages" (since 2016) and "on the of easiest distros to fix when things go wrong". Compare to my dad's laptop, which has been running Debian for about a decade and often goes multi-year stretches without updates, and has never broken. Not once. That's the kind of performance I expect from an OS.
  - iamevn 5y ago
    fwiw I've gotten a debian install to the point where I'd rather wipe and reinstall than fix thanks to a combination of pinning, bad pip hygeine (why oh why is global install default), and not being sure where to go to learn how to untangle the mess I'd created. Sure I was a lot less experienced but there's something to be said for arch giving me enough tools and information that I actually feel like I can fix whatever comes up.

0x38B 5y ago

I have a Surface Go 2 running Arch. Great for dev work, aside from the low amount of storage (128 GB). Its portability is hard to beat for trips; Patagonia’s lovely Atom 8L sling bag is big enough for the tablet with some room left over.

peterfield 5y ago
Love my X220, although it has been really struggling lately. Chromium, Opera, Brave or Firefox all cause my CPU/fan to crank up as soon as I have a couple of tabs open :(

mgdv 5y ago

I love my X220. Also running arch with dwm. Initially, it was more for tinkering and just to play with but it's getting more day to day use. The keyboard is great and I'm not as worried if it drops or the kids get their hands on it. I also love the light placement rather than the keyboard being back-lit Been pushing it to do Java development and, while a little slow, it's holding up fine

zbrozek 5y ago

I used an x220 as my primary machine for a long time. The low resolution screen and the unusually crappy touchpad are what got me to upgrade. The touchpad in particular was horrible because it had different resolutions in X and Y. In one of those (I don't remember which) it was lower than the screen. So I found myself frequently unable to get to the 1 pixel wide handles to resize windows without the wigglestick.

jkepler 5y ago
I turned the touchpad off on my x220 and simply used the track point.
- zbrozek 5y ago
  I've always enjoyed being multimodal. There were workarounds but I didn't like not having access to a useful touchpad. It seemed like a clear hardware problem because I had the same problem in Windows as in all desktop environments in Linux.
idealmedtech 5y ago
I'm not sure which DE you're using, but many have a simple shortcut (in XFCE it's something like Alt+click) to resize windows with the keyboard. Becomes very natural to use and much less fiddly than the touchpad alone.