Linux

So then, hang about. ThinkPad Retro is now a thing. Will I be upgrading? Unless I sell the X250 & pay the difference or I am bequeathed a hefty sum, not likely. 

Made the migration to switch off trackpad & toward the sole use of the TrackPoint, personal preference but muscle memory still needs retraining. 
Also set battery thresholds to 80% via tlp, shoulda done this from new but meana eek out 100% extra life span. The tlp fullcharge can boost capacity when needed but I work mainly of AC. 

Set up Samba config, all GUI under Mint, but needs manual editing under openSUSE. Friendly help under both communities Solus can connect to both but cannot be seen on network. I may have to fiddle some more. However Solus has saved my bacon three times thus far, so still in it’s infancy. 

Migrating Linux OS from 256GB to 512GB SSD

Thought I’d document how to migrate a Linux OS to a larger disk using 100% FOSS tools. 256GB is a bit pokey these days especially when dual booting, virtual or otherwise. Let’s get to it:

The first step is optional & can be disregarded if you are familiar with partitioning but is handy if your a newb like me. In this example we will clone sda to sdb, both disks can be identified by there volumes.

1. We will start Clonezilla in disk to disk mode & proceed to clone the smaller volume to the larger. The advantage of this is an exact copy of your smaller disk will be created to use as a template.
2. Using GParted, whilst keeping boot & swap untouched, we will delete the home partition. Now grow the root partition, for arguments sake, to double the size. Apply, You may see an error state if root partition is BTRFS, this can be safely ignored. Recreate home partition with remaining space. Apply & execute all changes.
3. Now we will reboot into Clonzilla, this time being careful to start in partition to partition mode. Now we will need to select our root source partition (smaller volume) and our root target partition (larger disk.) Clone being sure to recreate the partition table proportionately. We will want to repeat this for our home partition.
4. Now to increase the size of your VM;

cd /var/lib/libvirt/images

sudo qemu-img resize generic.qcow2 +20G

This worked perfectly with BTRFS / & XFS /home, any less exotic file systems should be a sinch. Happy computing!

Choices/Either Or

AMD or Intel?

iOS or Android?

Windows or Linux?

Integrated vs discreet?

ARM or X86?

ThinkPad or MBP?

Firefox or Chrome?

Deb or RPM?

Rolling or LTS?

Lossy or lossless?

Nintendo or SEGA?

Proprietary or open sourced?

Cupertino or Redmond?

Nvidia or ATI?

Zen or KVM?

Minty

So, the Mint devs have nailed the suspend issue introduced in 18.1! Good job as accidentally deleted my Clonzilla image back up of Mint 18.0. Doh! 

M.2

So which is redundant & surplus? Which is of greater value? Dual SSDs or mobile broadband? 

A singular Windows 10 instance is handy for troubleshooting a thorny PC problem now & then, & in matters of disk cloning & bootable USB creation… With the whole weight of x86 thrown behind legacy Windows, then arguably it is a necessary evil. In terms of resources, it is just plain greedy & inefficient. Ever updated Windows? It’ll struggle to apply a singular patch, whereas Linux excells even if every package needs recompiling. Windows automatically applies BIOS & firmware updates but the same can be attained through running the executable from a FreeDOS USB. Windows ramps the CPU fan compared to silent (open) SUSE. 

With all the above I’m seriously thinking of ditching Redmond’s finest & then using a giffgaff data only SIM paired with a £50 4G card. 

Massive Attack

Everything running like a Swiss watch after latest nuke & pave. Most likely attack vector? A dodgy repo! Never add & trust random strangers security key! Home repos are excluded by default, which I will definitely steer clear as once the key is trusted is there really anyway to verify what is installed? 

On a side note the X250 was the last X Series ThinkPad with old style logo (BBC anyone?) which I hugely prefer, also the fingerprint works reliably under openSUSE. Not like the X260’s encrypted effort.

 

Craptacular

Dear Apple

You sold me a 16GB iPad. Such miniscule storage is not fit for purpose. Please die!

Yours enraged
fleamour