!Permacomputing: Manjaro/i3 on an Asus Vivobook 2020
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rawtext.club:70/~xiu
2023-01-15
Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia
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My second intentional permacomputing[1] project and first
proper Linux learning project[2] is getting Arch Linux on
a refurbished Asus Vivobook 2020.

This project has been a weird ride with lots of
metaphorical running into walls, but I don't hate it and
every tiny bit of progress has felt very rewarding.

Pain points were (*still are):

 * Figuring out if Arch was the right choice
 * Getting my head around window manager vs desktop env
 * Removing default apps, installing my own
 * Figuring out how to copy files from my main machine
 * Configuring my environment
 * Making programs open without locking up my terminal window
 * Connect to Rawtext.club

Here's how it went:

1. Arch turned out not to be the right choice. I found
   out what "rolling release" actually means, and realised
   I'm just not technical enough to deal with untested
   updates. Manjaro popped up as the tested-updates version
   of Arch, and it comes with a community-built package with
   the i3 window manager[3] instead of a full DE.

   To be honest, I still don't understand the difference. i3
   has a bottom bar with the time, date and other info like
   the OSX status bar. There was a wallpaper background that
   loaded by default. And when I type mod+d, it opens
   something called a dmenu (?) where I can search for apps
   the way OSX's mod+space let me do. So it's still
   spiritually the same thing, kinda. Am I a heathen for
   saying this, or is it actually good news from an end user
   perspective because switching would be less of a leap?

   Note: I wanted something Arch-based because I really like
   their wiki. Yeah, that's probably silly, but it's really
   nice having good documentation while trying to learn.
   There aren't a lot of people I can ask for help with this
   stuff, so accessible self-study materials is important to
   me.

2. Manjaro/i3 comes with the Pale Moon browser and
   configs for other browsers that aren't installed. It took
   me awhile to figure out how to use the AUR (Arch User
   Repository)[4], how to avoid haivng to use the AUR
   directly by installing a helper called Yay[5], then
   getting my head around the difference between building a
   package and installing a binary. That's ten minutes of my
   life I'm never getting back, but now LibreWolf is
   running just fine instead of Pale Moon.

3. Copying from OSX to Manjaro is a poo. My short-term
   solution was to reformat a thumbdrive to FAT32. My
   long-term solution has been to sign up for a pCloud
   account and use their folder sync feature.

4. Configuring my environment and making programs run the
   way I want them to is a work in progress. So far, I've
   managed to:

   * Change my terminal style by editing ~/.Xresources
   * Remove the default wallpaper (but forgotten how)
   * Make pCloud open on startup using an `exec` call in
     ~/.ie/config with --no-startup-id (no need to open
     terminal)
   * Manually run a program from terminal, but have it
     open in the background so I can keep using that
     terminal window: `<app_path> > /dev/null 2>&1 &`

5. The experience of trying to connect to Rawtext.club
   was painful. For starters, I couldn't just ssh-add my key
   like on OSX, I have to `eval "$(ssh-agent)"` first for
   reasons I still don't get. Only then can I ssh-add.

   Then after connecting, I couldn't run certain functions
   because RTC couldn't recognise my terminal. Turns out
   when you SSH to a server, the server uses info about your
   terminal to figure out how to render stuff (or something
   like that), and Manjaro/i3's default URxvt wasn't being
   picked up. Eventually after a lot of confused
   best-guessing of search keywords, I landed on adding
   `export TERM='xterm-256color` to my profile dotfile on
   the remote server. RTC worked a treat after that.

So, why a second laptop, you ask? My partner has taken
over the Bodhi machine with plans to learn Linux too.
They are otherwise very embedded in a BigTech ecosystem,
so this feels like a win for broadening horizons.

I'm very happy with an 11" machine. At just under 1kg,
it's comfortable to carry around and fits nicely on my
lap. Manjaro runs very snappy, although to be fair when I
first booted up this machine, Windows 10 ran pretty
snappy too. We'll see what happens as it ages and
accumulates more cruft.

[1] gopher://rawtext.club:70/0/~xiu/phlog/2022-09-23-permacomputing-early-thoughts.txt
[2] gopher://rawtext.club:70/0/~xiu/phlog/2022-11-19-new-machine-thoughts.txt
[3] https://i3wm.org
[4] https://aur.archlinux.org
[5] https://github.com/Jguer/yay