Yet another note to underline that WordPress on www.malak.ca has been updated, this time to version 6.9.4. And, when I was checking, I deleted 3,344 pending comments — I have long since stopped inspecting them 100 at a time for the possibility of a legitimate post; though I did notice that this time around, about 1,400 (presumably) spammy comments were lined up for my post on making Sour Cream Muffins! 🙂
New recipes:
Savoury Pork Custard: A recipe developed with — actually initially proposed by — ChatGPT to create a pork based dish that is very soft.
A Tiramisu-inspired Layer Cake: A recipe based off a “quick tiramisu” seen on a “30 minute meals” show, and reworked again with the help of ChatGPT. Tasty! (Optionally) Uses the loaf cake version of my Plain Cake. At this moment, the recipe is still an early draught along the lines of a “Release early, release often” model (here’s my archive).
Pulled Beef: Basically, beef cooked in the kitchen braising or stewed beef method. The first time I made it, it was a spot on recreation of what one would expect! (Adapted from my pulled pork recipe for beef, with … the help of ChatGPT.)
Updated recipes:
Pulled Pork: A recent addition, but listed as “updated” because I had already transferred this recipe to malak.ca/food several weeks ago. Pulled pork cooked in the kitchen braising method. This has become a recent favourite! The second time I brought it to a church dinner, it was sufficiently popular for it to be characterized as “Don’s Famous Pulled Pork” — much to my amusement, given that in those circles it is more my vegetable soup that would be characterized as “famous” when associated with me, while another parishioner’s pulled pork would best characterized as the “famous pulled pork” in those circles. 🙂
Vegetable Soup: Updated a couple of months ago; I don’t recall the latest updates.
goat cheese omelettes, which is effectively an evolution of the ham and cheese omelettes I used to make for Mom; I started making goat cheese omelettes after Mom preferred a goat cheese omelette my brother bought for her at a high-end pastry shop and bakery;
goat cheese muffins, an addition (developed at my mom’s behest, after having one of my goat cheese omelettes) to my growing collection of muffin recipes that I serve to my mom, to cater to her evolving tastes;
chocolate buttercrunch (“English Toffee”); along with among other things generally updating the recipe text, a section was added stressing the importance of and outlining the mise-en-place(here’s my archive) that I find to be crucial to this recipe (as in, “of course mise-en-place is always a good practice and a good idea and really helpful when cooking, however in the case of this recipe, mise-en-place is essential to the success of, and simply, the execution of this recipe“);
plain cake, mostly adding for the addition of the optional use of fruit and stewed fruit, the use of either a loaf pan or a square cake pan, and allowing for the distinction between the use of either the “old fashioned” greasing and flouring of the pan method and the parchment paper method;
chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake squares, mostly for minor turns of phrase, as well as any updates I may or may not have done (oops bad memory, it’s been a while!) since the previous version;
shortbread cookies, again mostly for minor turns of phrase, as well as dividing some “multi-step” instructions, and fleshing out a number of implied steps (call my recipe style ridiculously verbose and overly detailed … in order to … live up to a lessonlearned at a computer conference I attended in 2011. 🙂 )
20260105 updated: The recipe for roast potatoes was updated yesterday.
Happy cooking!
PS: as a personal reference, I have made seven batches of chocolate buttercrunch — representing 3-1/2 pounds of butter, over 4-1/2 pounds of chocolate, over 3-3/4 pounds of sugar, and over 200mL of maple syrup — over the past roughly two weeks, to plan for Christmas giveaways. That’s about 90 to 91 bags of 60g of crunch each!
Using your computer of course requires some software beyond the base operating system; fortunately, most desktop linux distributions not only have repositories of freely installable software, often more common software as decided by the distro’s maintainers are pre-installed on the system at the same time as system installation.
This post is concentrating on the popular office suite LibreOffice which includes a drawing program, a word processor, a spreadsheet application, and a database application. While this post will show a few functions of each part, it is in no way intended to be a tutorial, but rather a cursory demonstration of each, leaving the exploration of each to you, the reader.
In this post I occasionally refer to operating systems beyond Linux. Also, contrary to my usual habit of not editorializing in this series, I offer the following: Many Linux software suites are largely, although importantly, not completely compatible with other known equivalents on other systems. They will often be able to open and edit files created by them; however, the compatibility and drop-in replacement value of each piece of software for the other (regardless of in which order) is often variable, sometimes quite substantially.
Note that occasionally, some screenshots were taken at different times for the sake of completeness, but presented in the order seen here, for the sake of the narrative.
Pinning Apps to the Dock:
Start from the Activities (hot corner in the upper left hand corner (the horizontal bar; either just quickly move the mouse there, or if necessary, click on the the horizontal bar):
Activites screen
I searched for “Lib” which brought up three of LibreOffice’s apps: Writer, Calc, and Impress, and I right clicked each one …
Searching for installed LibreOffice components
… each of which I pinned to the dock at the bottom, one at a time:
Pinning icons to the dock
Templates:
Note: In this post, the use of existing document templates found on the internet will be generously relied upon in order to demonstrate in a cursory fashion some of the resources available to desktop users — both of free software packages and other systems as well — as well as to simplify the mounting and development of the narrative using said existing documents. The site www.freedesktop.org, by happenstance, is frequently used, as is the templates section of www.libreoffice.org. Of note, especially on the former site, there are a number of templates which are in languages other than English, and some which have been on the site for several years, using older formats. Hopefully, the language barriers as the cases may be will not be too difficult to surmount given online translation services, while the older file formats are normally seamlessly supported by current software suites, with the ability to save in modern formats.
Users are of course free to create documents from scratch as they would on any system.
Going back to the activities screen, choose the Firefox icon (orange and blue, on the left at the bottom):
Firefox launched
In the address bar, enter the address of a search engine, such as www.duckduckgo.com:
Navigating to a search engine
Search for templates. In this case, I specifically asked for templates appropriate for LibreOffice, which brought me to www.opendesktop.org:
Navigating to opendesktop.com
In the search bar, I searched for LibreOffice, which gave me the following options:
Searching for LibreOffice templates
… and chose for ODF Text Templates (for word processessing):
Sorting for odf files
Sorting for odf files
Browsing through the templates, I chose a CV template, for “Tux the Penguin — Brand Ambassador and Mascot”:
CV template chosen
… which I downloaded:
Downloading the CV template
On the activities screen, I opened up the Files application:
Files program launched
Drawing:
… and this is where I learned that the downloaded CV template was not what it seemed. 🙂
Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured drawing software. One such piece is LibreOffice Draw, which functions similarly to Microsoft Visio, allowing for some basic-to-not-so basic graphical manipulations, editing, basic draughting, and inserting texts.
From the Files program just opened, I navigated to the Downloads directory, where the CV was located after downloading, and despite having believed that the CV I had downloaded was a text document, the file format in fact proved to be a drawing format:
Downloads directory inspected
I double-clicked on the CV file, which, since LibreOffice Draw isn’t always a part of a Fedora base installation, launched the software store, and having found LibreOffice Draw in the Fedora repositories, offered to install it, which I accepted:
CV file double-clicked, launching the software store in order to install required software
Once LibreOffice Draw had been installed, I asked that it be launched:
LibreOffice Draw installed
After closing the offer to see the “What’s New” notes, I went to the File dropdown menu to open the file:
Opening the CV template
… and navigated over to the Downloads directory, where the CV was located.
Navigating to the downloads directory
I clicked on the CV file to open it:
CV file opened
In Draw — depending on the nature of the input file — various existing texts can be modified, as well as many basic-to-not-so-basic graphical manipulations. In the case of this file, the file was designed such that the text could be modified:
Editing the text of the CV
To manipulate images, the picture of Tux (the penguin) was double-clicked to select it, the right mouse button was clicked, and the “Rotate or Flip” option was selected:
Manipulating the penguin image
… and I chose to flip the picture of Tux upside-down:
Penguin image flipped upside down
Some modestly — or more complex — drawings, including multimedia documents such as the CV shown above, can be created and / or modified, which I leave to the reader to explore.
Word Processor:
Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured word processing software suites. One of the more popular such pieces is LibreOffice Writer.
I returned to the opendesktop.org website, and chose a business card template to open in a word processor — LibreOffice Writer.
I navigated to find a business card template:
opendesktop.org template for business cards
… and downloaded the file:
Business card template downloaded
Similar to how the CV above was opened, the business card template was opened, without having to go through the installation of LibreOffice Writer:
Business card template opened in LibreOffice Writer
The text of the first card was changed to a “Desktop Linux: Revealed” theme:
Name and contact details on first card changed
The modifications were also saved:
Saving modified business card file
Saving modified business card file
Returning to the opendesktop.org templates, I chose the “Organica Business Forms” to download:
More Writer templates viewed
The page for the Organica Business Forms was opened:
Business Forms template page
… and the file downloaded:
Downloading template
Template downloaded and directory opened
The business forms were compressed in the .tar format, analogous to .zip files:
Directory with downloaded file, which was double clicked
The archive was double-clicked, revealing a directory contained within:
.tar file double clicked, opening up the archive
The directory was double-clicked, revealing several templates: Business cards (different from above), a fax cover sheet, four different kinds and sizes of labels, an invoice, and a letter:
Various files in archive revealed
Going back to Writer, the letter file was double-clicked, which again opened the file in LibreOffice Writer:
Letter file opened
A space was added between two paragraphs:
Spaced added between paragraphs
The “Table” drop down menu was opened:
Table drop-down menu opened
… and the “Insert Table” option was chosen:
Insert Table option chosen
… which opened up a window to determine some settings for the table to be inserted:
Window opened to set table characteristics
A table with five columns and five rows was selected:
Table settings changed
The table was selected, and the right mouse button was clicked, revealing a contextual menu:
Contextual menu opened
The option “Table Properties” was selected, bringing up a window:
Table properties window opened
The button for all lines under “Line Arrangement” was chosen in the Borders tab, in order to insert borders around all the cells of the table:
Table borders changed
The “Ok” button was pressed, returning me to the document, showing now all the cells of the table with borders:
Table added to letter
Text was added to a cell in the upper left hand corner (“Linux Desktop”):
Text added to table cells
A number of other cells were filled in:
Text added to table cells
The “File” drop down menu was opened:
File menu opened
… and the file was saved:
File saved
As with the previous section, I leave it to the reader to further explore LibreOffice Writer to see the various options in the various menus, and the various kinds of text documents that can be created.
Spreadsheets:
Much like other popular desktops, Fedora Linux has several fully functional and fully featured spreadsheet software. One of the most popular such pieces is LibreOffice Calc.
After saving the business cards, I returned to the freedesktop.org website, browsing the spreadsheet templates:
opendesktop.org page sorting for spreadsheets
opendesktop.org page sorting for spreadsheets
opendesktop.org page sorting for spreadsheets
opendesktop.org page sorting for spreadsheets
I chose the Amortization Schedule:
opendesktop.org page with amortization schedule
The amortization Schedule was downloaded:
Amortization schedule downloaded
Amortization schedule downloaded
Similarly to previous files, the Amortization Schedule was opened (file double clicked in the file download directory).
Amortization schedule opened in LibreOffice Calc
Several of the balance figures was selected, revealing how the value us calculated in the formula bar:
Amortization schedule, cell calculation revealed
Amortization schedule, cell calculation revealed
Amortization schedule, cell calculation revealed
I chose to modify the table, by adding a value of 1000 in the “Extra Principle Payment”, to change the values of “New Balance” …
Value changed to 1000
… and then I changed the value to 500 to see how it affected the values of “New Balance”.
Again I leave it to the reader to further explore mounting spreadsheets of their own using their own data.
Slide Shows / Presentations
At the opendesktop.org collection of templates, I chose a slide show template to download:
opendesktop.org page sorting for a presentation template
I chose a template to download …
Presentation template downloaded
… and downloaded it:
Presentation template downloaded
Presentation template downloaded
Again through the files directory, I double-clicked on the downloaded file:
File in download directory double clicked
… which opened up the file in LibreOffice Impress:
Presentation opened in LibreOffice Impress
I began editing the title line — in the process, using the wrong branding for this series!
Text modified
The text colour, white, didn’t have enough contrast for my taste, so I selected the text …
Text colour modified
… and went into the options area on the right to by clicking on the letter “A” with a red underline, to change the font colour:
Text colour changed through menu icons on the right
The font colour was changed to a greenish-blue colour:
Text colour changed to a greenish-blue
Text colour changed to a greenish-blue
Other text was changed and added:
Text added below title
I changed to the second page, and similarly started to change the text:
Navigating to second page
Text can be changed as per your needs, as well as pages added through copy / paste or other wizards available.
The drop-down file menu was chosen, so that I could save the file:
File drop down menu to save the file
File saved
Once the file was saved, I opened up the drop-down file menu again, and chose “Export As” so that I could export the file as a PDF. (Editorial note: As mentioned earlier, while there is a good amount of compatibility between LibreOffice and other office suites, it can be disappointingly incomplete, which I have particularly seen and experienced with — but not only — slide shows. For more of a discussion of such from the perspective of the usefulness of PDFs, please see my post on the subject.)
The file drop-down menu was clicked again, and the option “Export As” was clicked:
File menu opened to export the file as a PDF
Exporting to PDFs can be rather easy and direct, or, as I am going to show a little bit here, allows for a large amount of choices …
Options window for PDF options
… including protecting PDFs with passwords for opening:
Tab with options for password setting for opening PDFs
Setting passwords for PDFs
Passwords were set for both opening as well as for “permission” which means to allow editing of the PDF (see my post on the subject), and the slide show was exported as a PDF:
Setting passwords for PDFs
… and the OK button was clicked:
Presentation exported to PDF
As usual, I leave to the reader to explore further. Also, within LibreOffice itself it has a wizard to help the user create a number of presentations with various backgrounds and layouts.
Database:
LibreOffice also includes a database module, called “Base”, which is similar to Microsoft Access; it is essentially a front end manager — a gui interface — for the actual database software behind it that it leverages.
Before I show a properly mounted database, I will show some screenshots about how to start.
Starting from the home screen, the activities corner (hot corner) in the upper left was clicked:
Desktop screen
On the Activies screen, “libreoffice base” was typed into the search bar, and the option to install LibreOffice Base, which is not always installed in a base install, was offered:
Activities screen accessed, and “libreoffice base” searched for; the option to install Base was offered
The option was double-clicked, which brought up the “software store” with the choice of LibreOffice Base …
Software store opened to allow for installation of Base
I double-clicked on the option, bringing up the information page on the package and the offer to install it:
Description page for Base
I clicked the “Install” button:
Base installing
Once LibreOffice Base was installed, an “Open” button presented itself:
Base opened
The “Open” button was clicked, lauching LibreOffice:
Base opened
A wizard came up to select a database:
Wizard opened to allow choice to launch Base
The presented option was accepted, and the “Next>” button was clicked, bringing up a “Save and proceed” window:
Save and proceed window
The “Finish” button was clicked, opening a Save window:
Finish button clicked, allowing for the creation of a database
Once that was done, the following screen came up, in order to start creating a database:
Initial screen for creating a database
Note that from this point on, I am showing some very basic things, and I will soon recommend a tutorial, which will better show how to use the software than I could ever present.
I clicked on the “Table” icon, which brought up a Table Wizard:
Table Wizard launched
I chose the “Personal” category, on the premise — in the context of this post, anyway which presumes that many readers may be seeking to use linux at home and not just at the office, and that a database might not as easily appear to be a personal piece of software.
Personal category chosen
I pulled down the suggested list of topics:
Suggested list of topics
… and chose “Recipes” for what I presume are obvious reasons — we all eat, and presumably many people have a personal collection of varying sizes (here’s my collection of recipes, incidentally NOT in a database format, at https://www.malak.ca/food).
Recipe option chosen
Some field names were suggested:
Field names suggested
I clicked on “Name”:
Name selected
… which moved it over to the column on the right:
Name field moved to right window
I also chose other sample tables:
Ingredients field chosen
Utensils field chosen
Instructions field chosen
Description field chosen
… at which point, I clicked on the “Finish” button, leading to the following screen:
Finish button clicked, leading to a data entry page
I started entering data:
Data entered
I chose to save my changes:
Database saved
At this point, I am going to direct you to a far better tutorial than I could ever present, even in the most cursory of fashions:
As of the writing of this post, a rather complete tutorial on using Base can be found at thefrugalcomputerguy.com/seriespg.php?ser=15/ (no doubt amongst countless other similarly excellent resources):
TheFrugalComputerGuy.com LibreOffice Base tutorial page
TheFrugalComputerGuy.com LibreOffice Base tutorial page
Although I think it best to leave the tutorial to TheFrugalComputerGuy, I will show a small database in action:
Starting again at the desktop screen:
Desktop
The activities screen was accessed through the upper left hand hot corner with the mouse:
Activities screen with the dock
The Firefox icon (orange, on the left on the dock at the bottom) was clicked:
Firefox web browser launched
I went to my favourite search engine, duckduckgo.com:
Search engine opened (in this case www.duckduckgo.com)
… and I searched for “libreoffice base templates”:
Searching for Base templates
Searching for Base templates
I chose the “Templates & Extensions” link, the second link above, at the LibreOffice.org site itself:
Templates at libreoffice.org
I clicked on the green “plus” sign to the right of “Boost your creativity with templates”:
Template link clicked
… which led to the following page:
Templates page
On the left, there are a number of filters under “Add tag filters:”, and clicked on “Base”, bringing up the following page:
Page with templates for Base
I chose the “MyRecipes” template for LibreOffice Base:
Page for a recipes database
I scrolled down to quickly assess the files, finding them eminently interesting for the task at hand:
Template description
The download button was clicked, and the file downloaded:
Template downloaded
The files program was opened, and the newly downloaded file was highlighted:
Downloads directory opened
The .zip file was double-clicked, creating a directory of the files (ok I accidentally created the directory three times!)
.zip archive opened
One of the directories was double-clicked and opened:
Archive consulted
The “ReadMe.txt” file was double-clicked and opened:
readme file consulted
The .odt file was opened as well:
Instructions and general description file checked
The “MyRecipes1.jpg” file was double-clicked, opening a screenshot:
Screenshot of database operating consulted
The FoodPix directory was opened, showing pictures of the recipes in the database:
Pictures included in the archive viewed
From the database’s main directory, the database was opened:
Database opened
After looking about, the “UpdateRecipes” option was selected:
One of the options selected
Which opened up one of the recipes:
One of the recipes in the database
The database author chose to have an active Pantry list with checkable items, no doubt based at least partly on their recipes; by having it dynamic, when asked to create purchasing lists, the database can exclude pantry items already on hand:
Pantry list
Said shopping lists can be generated from the “1MainMenuSwitchboard” option:
Main menu switchboard created by the author to navigate through their recipes and other functions they programmed
Given that the “switchboard” is based on macros, the Tools pull down menu was opened::
Tools menu opened
… and the “Options” option was clicked:
“Options” option clicked, opening an options window
The Security option was chosen:
Security option chosen
… and the “Macro Security” button was clicked. The security level was set to low, as per the author’s suggestion:
Macro security options changed
Back to the Switchboard:
Database main menu opened
The “Mark Recipe List” button was clicked, and I decided to mark three of the recipes:
Recipes chosen
In trying to close the window, a window asked if I wanted to save my changes, to which I clicked “yes”.
Window closed and changes saved
The “Grocery List for Marked Recipes” button was clicked:
Grocery list option chosen from main menu
… producing a grocery list based on the recipes, which was automatically opened in LibreOffice Writer:
Note: Although it has been a while between posts and I had planned on another subject for what would have been this post, given the time lapse I decided to take advantage of a new version of Fedora that had been released to show how to easily upgrade the OS version, in this case, from version 39 to version 40. Note that many different versions of linux (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc.) have similar functions and upgrade paths; since I began using the automatic upgrade tool in Fedora in about 2018, I have had good experiences.
Firstly, the “Activities” screen happened to open when I logged into the system, and I chose the software icon in the dock on the bottom (the white “shopping bag” with the red, black, and blue symbols):
Activities screen with dock on bottom
Which brought up the following screen, telling me that there were general updates, and that a new version of Fedora was available:
Software icon chosen
The system updates were first chosen and downloaded:
Updates downloaded
Once the updates were downloaded, the system was ready to be rebooted for installation:
Updates ready to be installed
The “Restart & Install” button was chosen to confirm the reboot:
Restart and install updates dialog box opened
The system rebooted:
System rebooted
… and updates were installed:
Upddates installing
Once the updates were installed, the system rebooted:
System rebooted after installation of updates
… leading to the login screen:
System login screen
… where I entered my password:
Password challenge
Once logged in, I clicked on the software icon again in the dock, and chose to download the upgrades for Fedora 40:
Software store opened again, and upgrade packages downloaded (2%)
Upgrade packages downloading (19%)
Upgrade packages downloading (32%)
Upgrade packages downloading (56%)
Once the upgrade packages were downloaded, the “Restart & Upgrade” button was pressed:
All packages downloaded, and Restart and Upgrade button pressed
… which required authentication, so my password was entered:
Authentication required for the major changes
Password entered
The system asked again if I wanted to restart and Install the upgrade:
Confirmation requested to restart and upgrade the system
The “Restart & Install Upgrade” button was pressed:
System rebooted
System rebooted
Updates installing (3%)
Updates installing (14%)
Updates installing (39%)
Updates installing (52%)
Updates installing (59%)
Updates installing (77%)
Updates installing (93%)
Updates installing (97%)
Once the upgrade was complete, the computer rebooted:
System rebooted after upgrades applied
The login screen came up again:
Login screen
And again I provided my password:
Password challenge
Password entered
Once logged in, new artwork for the new version came up, as well as a notification that the system had been upgraded to the new version (in this case, Fedora v.40):
New artwork for Fedora 40
Just to finish off some checks, the menu at the power button was opened, in order to open the settings screen, accessible from the little gear second from the left on top:
Menu for settings opened
The settings were opened:
Settings opened
I noticed that the name of my computer was curiously changed back to “Fedora” in the upgrade:
System renamed after curious change by upgrade
Then I chose the “System Details”, showing that the system had indeed been updated to version 40:
Confirmation that the system had been upgraded to Fedora 40
Next chapter: Using common pieces of desktop software
In this chapter, Gnome Extensions will be briefly discussed, and basic file transfers and manipulation will be highlighted.
Gnome Extensions
Gnome was designed to be extensible, or have its behaviour be changed with extensions. There are hundreds of extensions, most produced by volunteer programmers.
Launch Firefox from the dock at the bottom of the screen (the icon at the left). Firefox will launch, leading to the Fedora Project main page (a setting you may wish to keep, or change at a later time.)
In the navigation bar, enter the site https://extensions.gnome.org. (Some distributions may manage extensions locally; Fedora has opted to only do so partially.)
Click on the link “Click here to install browser extensions”, which will eventually allow for the installation of the Gnome Shell integration tool.
Click on “Add”:
I recommend that you click on “Allow this extension to run in Private Windows” and press “okay”.
As of when the following screenshot was taken, here is page one of the available extensions, along with a brief description:
To install an extension that interests you, click on the black switch that will be set to “Off”.
Click on “Install”:
Sometimes, an extension will be incompatible with the current version of Gnome, and the page will say as much:
When you have selected all the extensions which interest you, close Firefox:
Basic file manipulation:
Starting from the main screen, click on the activities bar in the upper left hand corner:
… leading to the activities screen, with the dock:
Click on the blue rectangle meant to resemble a filing cabinet, in the centre.
For convenience, I moved the window to the left, and it “snapped” to take up half the screen:
The activities screen was accessed again, to access the dock, and right-clicking on the file manager icon:
Choose “New Window”, in order to launch a second file manager window:
The size and location of the second window were adjusted in order to have a second window on the right:
Before moving on, I am going to point out that I personally like file listings with full information; however, files can be displayed with previews (the following shots were taken after the following operations were completed):
By hovering the pointer over a button with four blocks in it, you can toggle between lists and icons:
Clicking on the icon will change the filenames to icon size:
Hovering over the same square icon can revert to a list view.
At this point, you can insert a USB key with some files or a backup, or a CD/DVD drive, or a portable USB hard drive.
In this case, I decided to copy some files from the computer hosting my website, and some file backups. Clicking on “+ Other Locations” reveals, as per the window on the right, access to other computers accessible to your computer:
I entered into the address bar at the bottom of the window the address of my website, and telling the file manager to use the ssh protocol to securely access the location:
As part of the initial connection, my computer asked me to confirm if I wanted the connection, since it was the first time this instance was connecting to my website. Should you get such a challenge, click on “Log In Anyway”:
My website server presented an authentication challenge:
I entered my username and password, chose “Remember password until you logout”, and clicked on “Connect” (you may choose either of the two other options, at your discretion):
Once there, I navigated to a directory with some photos from a past birthday celebration for my grandmother:
Wishing to copy all the files on my server (on the right) over to the computer (on the left), the first file was selected by clicking on it …
… and then scrolling down to the bottom of the file list, and while pressing on the CTRL key, clicking on the last:
Instead of drag and drop, I right clicked my mouse over the right …
… which opened a contextual menu, in which I chose to create a folder, leading to the opening of a dialog:
A name for a new directory, in this case reflecting that it was from my grandmother’s birthday one year, was entered into the dialogue, and the directory was created:
The previously selected files on my server were transferred via “drag and drop” to the newly created directory:
A photo was selected, and a right click opened a contextual menu, offering a number of options. The first, “Open With Image Viewer”, was selected …
… opening the selected photo.
On the local machine, I clicked on “Home” …
… then on “Documents”, while on my server, I navigated to another directory where I chose a PDF document:
This time, I used a right-clicked contextual menu on my server side to chose “Copy To” to copy the document over to my local machine.
The file was then selected, and a contextual menu (right click) was opened, which offered “Open with Document Viewer”:
… opening up the document, in this case about how to make a backwoods washing machine:
Again on my server, I navigated to another directory, this time in my backups:
… and selected another file to transfer, in this case, a spreadsheet:
The spreadsheet was dragged and dropped onto the local machine:
Recognizing the file extension as that of an OpenDocument spreadsheet file, LibreOffice was launched:
… and the file was opened, in this case, for a table of prices for a number of items I sell at a flea market near my cottage:
Back to the file transfers, a video file in a directory with pictures and videos of my cat was selected …
… and dragged and dropped over to the local machine, and the file selected and right clicked, revealing a contextual menu, allowing for the opening of the video file:
The Gnome Videos player was opened; since the relevant codec had not been installed in the base install, Videos asked if it should attempt to install the codec, which it proposed might be available in the software repositories:
The “Find in Software” button was clicked, leading to the following window:
The required codec (“GStreamer Multimedia Codecs – H.264”) was chosen for installation; once installed, a video of my cat, playing with a feather toy, was shown:
Another file, another spreadsheet, was selected on my server …
… and dragged over to the new setup:
Using a right click contextual menu, the new selected file was opened:
… revealing my shopping plans for a large amount of soup I was going to cook for a community meal:
Another file, a text file, was selected on my server …
… and dragged over to the new setup:
Using a right click contextual menu, the new selected file was opened:
… and a text editor window opened up with the text file:
Many other things can be done with the file manager, including launching template documents in a click if templates have been placed in a templates directory.
In this post, acquiring a computer on which to install Linux, as well as downloading and writing a Linux distribution on a USB stick, will be shown. Fedora Desktop Edition will be used as an example, although at this point, setting up the installation USB stick can be done with any other distribution — which is most of the common ones — that allows for such an installation.
(Note for future reference, graphical installation with other distributions will be similar, but each may have some nuances and differences between them.)
Hardware — the computer on which Linux is to be installed
First, I recommend that as a newcomer, whichever linux you decide to install, that you decide to do the installation on a separate computer, such as an old computer, on its own. By doing this, you will not reduce space on the hard drive / SSD on which your current OS is installed, especially in taking account the space for data you may to transfer over to the Linux system, nor will you have to deal with the intricacies and occasional perils of dual booting or data loss on your current computer setup, nor will you have deal with the myriad and occasionally confusing issues that may surround virtualisation. Finally, by having a separate computer to “play” with, you will be able to start over again in the event that something goes wrong, or if you decide that you’d like to try a different Linux distribution.
The current (2024) webserver for www.malak.ca
The above photo is taken from a page from a recent (February 2024) presentation the author made about their web server, which hosts https://www.malak.ca (the website hosting this blog), using an old computer with a BIOS creation date of 2008.
Acquiring a computer:
“Old” computers are not unusually difficult to acquire; you may already possess one in storage.
Use an old computer you may be wishing to replace, or already be in the process of replacing, or even a several years-disused computer of which you may not yet have disposed;
Buy, or barter for, a used computer from family or friends;
Buy a used computer from a local computer repair person, who may have a storefront and may sell refurbished computers;
Speak with your employer; depending on their policies, they may be willing to sell you older equipment of which they would like to divest themself(ves);
Check reputable online markets;
Buy a new dedicated computer (only recommended once you become convinced of the cost/benefit regime).
Check the “minimum requirements” page of the distribution you choose; my current bare minimum specs are a Core 2 Duo 64bit processor, 4GB memory, 40GB hard drive (the current, as of late 2023, Fedora Workstation recommendation), and a spare USB 2.0 port (such as after other common USB peripherals you may be using, like a mouse and keyboard), in order to use the installation USB stick (which will be shown lower down in this post). (As desired or required, don’t forget to get a used screen.)
For the purposes of introduction to, and the exploration of, Linux, the old mechanical hard drive with such an old computer is likely adequate; however, SSD cards and extra memory will dramatically increase performance of older equipment. Further, as of posting, SSD cards in the 250GB range are typically very affordable to either add on later, or purchase for immediate use including installation of the system, while memory cards appropriate to the motherboard are usually readily available and inexpensively as per the above list regarding sourcing an old computer.
Downloading and creating a USB installation stick:
A USB stick is required for this step; Fedora’s installation image as of version 39 in late 2023 is approximately 2GB; hence a 4GB USB stick would be recommended going forward.
I am recommending the use of Fedora Media Writer to create the installation media, which can be run on Windows or Mac (as well as Linux, of course!) Should you choose another distribution, you can use a downloaded image from another distribution’s download page (see Desktop Linux: Unveiled Chapter 2: Common Linux Distributions for a few suggestions of other distributions; see below regarding choosing other Fedora desktops, or creating installation media of another distribution).
(Note that the following screenshots may have been created out of order, however are presented in the order required for the narrative.)
To get the Fedora Media Writer, visit https://getfedora.org (I start off using screenshots from Windows):
Click on the circle indicating the latest release (in the shot above, 39), which will bring you to the following screen.
On this screen, click on “Download Now”; don’t worry, you aren’t committing yet.
On the following page, click on the green download button for Fedora Media Writer, either for Windows or for Mac:
A licence agreement window will pop up. This is for the Gnu Public Licence version 2, the licence under which the Fedora Media Writer is licensed. Click on “I agree”.
The next screen will ask where to install Fedora Media Writer on your computer, and it will suggest a location to install it on your hard drive. Click “Install”:
Once Fedora Media Writer is installed, click on “Next”:
… and click on “Finish”:
Launch Fedora Media Writer:
You may be asked to allow the app to make changes to your device. Click “Yes”.
At this point, you can either choose to have the Fedora Media Writer download Fedora automatically, or, you can download a distribution of your choice, and ask Fedora Media Writer to use that distribution instead (the “Select .iso file” option):
Going with the “Download automatically” option above, which by default chooses a Fedora distribution, on the next page (below), choose “Official Editions”:
Should you wish to try another desktop instead of the standard Gnome Desktop in Fedora Workstation Edition, you can choose the “Spins” option above, which will list the following drop-down menu:
Under the choice taken, the next screen is the “Write Options” for the USB stick, which at this point should be inserted in a USB port. Choose the latest version of Fedora (in this case, 39), the hardware architecture, and the USB stick to which you wish to write the installation media:
Click “Write” in the above screen, and Fedora Media Writer will begin writing to the USB stick:
The screen will automatically change to indicate that the written data is being checked:
Once finished, you can click on “Finish”.
Should you wish to try out Fedora without installing it on your computer first, you can follow the instructions on the screen to restart the computer and try a live, temporary version of Fedora. This will not affect your hard drive in the least, unless you choose to install … which I am not recommending, since I am recommending that you install on a completely separate computer (see beginning section).
Next Chapter
Chapter 4 will show the installation of Fedora Workstation.
Desktop Linux: Unveiled is a series of posts that show how to start using Linux.
In this post, Linux will be briefly explained and briefly compared to other common desktop computer operating systems.
First, what is an operating system?
An operating system (OS) is the software that makes a computer run, like Microsoft Windows, or MacOS. It is typically able to provide a way for users to operate the computer, and translate the instructions so the computer can run them. It also coordinates all the computer’s resources such as its CPU (central processing unit), memory, hard drive, and other components of the computer, as well as coordinate the user’s programs and data.
What is Linux?
Most people understand “Linux” to be a complete operating system like Windows or MacOS. However, strictly speaking, “Linux” is in fact just a part of the operating system, the central part called the kernel. Common usage has had “Linux” to informally refer to the whole operating system.
“Distributions”, (usually) complete and integrated collections of software built around the Linux kernel, can be legally built and distributed by anyone with the abilities and inclination because of the way the Linux kernel and the other software usually used with it are licensed, although most people choose to use an established distribution.
Distributions vs. Operating Systems
Linux distributions usually contain full linux-based operating systems, as well as extra software often not traditionally included in operating systems, such as office suites, media players, graphic design software, educational software, games, various apps, as well as other software such as server software. Although not all of the software is installed at the same time, they are typically all easily available in central locations called “repositories”, similar to app stores on MacOS and Windows; much is available free of charge, too!
Free Software vs. Proprietary Software
A lot of software available under Linux — and a growing amount under Windows and MacOS as well — is called Free Software, or sometimes Open Source Software. As a contrast, a substantial amount of Windows and MacOS software is called Proprietary Software.
Many people hear the expression “Free Software” and assume that it means that it is free of monetary charge. Some may even question its quality on the basis of such a lack of price.
Although free software is often (though not always) given away free of charge, and most common free software is of very high quality, the expression “Free Software” in fact refers to “freedom”, specifically various freedoms granted to the users of the software. These freedoms include the freedom to run the software for whatever purpose you wish, the freedom to study how the program works as well as make any changes that you wish, the freedom to share the software with others, and the freedom to share software you’ve modified with others.
Some of these freedoms require that the source code, or “recipes” that people can read and understand, be available to anyone and everyone.
The various licences used to allow this often tend to foster cooperation between various parties, often allowing groups who might sometimes be competitors to also cooperate with each other, creating common software that each group can then package together to present according to their own vision. Within this cooperation, software sometimes is developed quickly, and often many programming bugs are found and corrected quickly.
Some common free software licences are the GPL and the LGPL, which specifically give the recipient of the software the above freedoms, and require the sharing of the source code to the software, and any changes you may have made to it, when distributing the software. Other common free software licences are the BSD licence, the MIT licence, and the Apache licence, which have very few requirements but which permit users to use, modify, and distribute the software, while retaining copyright and some disclaimers notices.
In contrast, proprietary software is usually controlled by very restrictive licenses that keep the source code hidden, doesn’t allow users to distribute the software to whomever they please, doesn’t allow users to modify it or fix bugs even if they are able to were they to have access to the source code, and may even dictate how the software may or may not be used.
Next Chapter
Chapter 2 will list some popular Linux distributions that people use on their computers.
It is titled “Deux frères, deux serveurs” (yes, it’s in French, and means “Two Brothers, Two Servers”), and the presentation represents my part of a double presentation with my brother.
I have five active computers, all which were ready to update to Fedora 39 in November, 2023: Three were running on Fedora 37, and two were running Fedora 38. Normally, I try to keep to the same version of Fedora on my fleet of computers — although I will format with the current version of Fedora mid-stream when I format a new or a new to me computer, or a new hard drive or ssd, and try to use a version (that of the majority of computers) until end-of-life, usually roughly 12 to 13 months. I settled on odd numbered versions several years ago, on Fedora 15, by happenstance, and a desire not to be reformatting different computers every six months depending on when their end of life fell.
As such, I proceeded to upgrade my computers.
Since the recommended method of update for Fedora is by the command line DNF upgrade command (here’s my archive), or to use the graphical method in the “Software” “App Store”, I proceeded to upgrade my machines on the command line.
(Note: Some of the screenshots and photos used in this post were created during the various upgrades, while some were re-created ex post facto for the sake of mounting this narrative.)
Note that the upgrade plugin was already present on the server, hence my having omitted the step of installing the plugin. Important note, minor in my head although critical to my experience, is that my webserver uses the Workstation Edition, not the Server edition.
All went smoothly, with one small quirk: After the upgrade and later that evening while at a restaurant, I wanted to check my website for something, and it was down. I thought little of it beyond the frustration in the moment. When I got home, I let my brother know in the hopes he might help … but in the process, I saw that the machine’s light in the power button was amber, and I had an idea that there was a software power management issue. I pressed the button, and the machine popped to life; I then went into the power management part of the settings in the gnome settings, and found the “automatic suspend” setting had been turned on to “when idle”.
VPN Server: Fedora 38, Server Edition, Legacy BIOS (HP Compaq dc7700 Small Form Factor)
My next upgrade was also fairly simple and straightforward. It was on a machine I found in a building slated for demolition in about 2016, and is a P4-3.4GHz single core machine, which I had been using as a world community grid node for years, but which had been inactive for months, after there having been little work for it for months when WCG moved from IBM to the University of Toronto. (I also suspect that the UofT may have decided to shift most of its tasks to GPUs, which I don’t think the machine possesses, and in any case I did not properly research let alone confirm this, beyond the apparent lack of work units being sent to it.)
A problem I’d been having for years with this machine was that it would not reboot without manual intervention, apparently due to a time error; this suggested a dead bios battery. I tolerated this for years, but this summer I finally installed a new battery in the machine, resolving the issue.
I reformatted the machine with Fedora 38 Server Edition given its age and lack of memory, and I renamed the machine, having some misgivings about its former name. I offered its use to my brother, who uses it as a VPN server for the household here, particularly to simplify assisting our mother in her computer use. I generally leave the machine alone: VPNs are a nebulous thing I don’t understand very much at all; I understand SSH filesystem tunnelling, and the parts between that and VPNs are too nebulous for me to understand.
But to wit: Up to this point I was neglecting the machine, letting my brother deal with it, but as a result the machine would often go unupdated for weeks at a time. In mentioning that I’d embarked upon the process of upgrading my computers all to Fedora 39, I mentioned that I liked to keep my fleet of computers all aligned on the same version of Fedora; I mentioned that at that time, due to new installs, I had two out of five computers on Fedora 38, while the rest were still on Fedora 37. With the comment that I wanted to keep my fleet on the same version, my brother encouraged me to maintain responsibilities for updates and yes indeed to upgrade this machine in particular, to keep it in line with the rest of my computers.
Which, of course, I did. (There were indeed some firmware updates to be installed.)
Here’s what the process looks like on my XPS13 (Screenshots and photos taken after the fact, on a subsequent series of firmware updates):
Firmware updates a few weeks after upgradeFirmware updates a few weeks after upgradeFirmware updates a few weeks after upgrade
At this point, I was invigorated by being able to perform firmware updates on my XPS 13 laptop (which admittedly had not been the first time I had done so under linux, but no matter.)
However, a couple of weeks later, I noticed that an extension wasn’t working: My XP13 has a touchscreen display, and Gnome has an onscreen keyboard that pops up contextually when text is to be entered, occupying a major amount of screen space; I had been using the “disable-touch-osk” extension by sulincix, which stopped working with the upgrade to Fedora 39.
On screen keyboard disabling extension not working
This leads to a gripe I have for the Gnome developers: Stop breaking extensions with each new version of Gnome, or provide *some* kind of stable API or environment or whatever is needed so that the extension developers don’t decide to abandon their extensions because Gnome keeps on shifting so much that they have to work excessively hard every six months just to maintain their extension.
This led to the next two computers I have, which are a 2015 Acer laptop, and a 2014 Dell Inspiron desktop.
Acer Laptop: Fedora 37, Workstation Edition, UEFI — but using Legacy BIOS
I have been having problems using UEFI in my Acer laptop since I received it new in 2015; the Fedora live media would boot up, and I could install Fedora under UEFI; however, it would never boot up afterwards. My only solution seemed to be to use legacy bios. Nonetheless, hope springs eternal, this was the time to try again to install under UEFI.
I should note at this point, as mentioned above, that my home server (2008) and my VPN server (2007) are both rather old computers and pre-date UEFI and use legacy BIOS, while my XPS 13, Acer laptop, and Dell Inspiron desktop, are all UEFI machines. I make these distinctions because of conversations I had in which on the one hand, it was suggested that I perform a baremetal reformat of the Acer laptop in order to sidestep a problem I had been experiencing when I’d allowed the battery to drain completely, forcing a reset to defaults in the BIOS and hence to UEFI boot, making my setup with legacy-BIOS unbootable; on the other hand, I concluded “It’s 2023; it’s absurd not to be using UEFI on UEFI machines.” (Of course, the use of older, legacy machines predating UEFI are a different issue altogether, and for them, said point is moot.)
In addition to this comment about using UEFI, and the potential to have any UEFI firmware upgrades as discussed above, I decided that my Acer laptop needed to receive a baremetal format, given the accumulation of a lot of software on the system that I didn’t use (many though hardly all installed because of a presentation I gave in 2021); I decided that instead of package hunting and manually uninstalling them all — including dependencies that decide not to uninstall — it seemed more efficient and effective to do a clean install.
Fast forward to this round of upgrades, I upgraded the installation using a downloaded Fedora 39 image, and I went through various upgrades and setups, such as Gnome extensions, and some software installations. Suddenly I remembered that I had not changed the boot sequence from legacy bios to UEFI, so … I started over.
Several installation attempts later, including trying Fedora 36 (with an intention of upgrading through to version 39) based on some advice playing around with the various BIOS settings trying to get just “the right” settings, none worked, and I finally resigned to reinstalling yet again under, and continuing to use, legacy BIOS. Sigh.
Setting the Boot sequence to Legacy BIOS
Before setting up in legacy mode, I had a flash of inspiration: Since I was nonetheless able to boot the live media under UEFI (which I knew wouldn’t otherwise be used afterwards), I attempted a firmware update as per the above. To my mild disappointment, there weren’t any firmware updates for my Acer Laptop:
I continued with the installation under Legacy BIOS mode, and set up the desktop with the various Gnome Extensions, installing software not in the base installation, and customizing settings and the like.
I once again faced a few pet peeves I have about how Fedora is set up (incidentally through Anaconda, but by itself not Anaconda issues, best I can tell):
Fedora uses sudo by default, which I don’t like: I go by the notion of “Don’t be afraid of root; respect it, but don’t be afraid of it” — when you have to do root-y stuff, log into root, do what you have to do as root, and then sign out of root. (Yes, I am aware of the advantages of sudo, even beyond its convenience and short term elevations of privileges, such as logging of *who* elevated their privileges to do *what*; I just wasn’t taught that way, and on a single user system, I don’t see much value to it; hey maybe that’s just me.) As such, with each new install I perform, I have to, ironically using sudo under my default user account, assign a password to the root account, and then, remove my default account from the wheel group.
Fortunately, this is easily set in the Settings / About menu, *if* you don’t remove your default user from the wheel group, or at least haven’t yet, and therefore still have sudo privileges:
Note that in the above screenshot, the option appears shaded out because since I had already removed the primary user from the wheel group, effectively disabling sudo, my (default user) account did not possess the requisite permissions to edit the hostname.
Changing the hostname on the command line is also not particularly difficult, using the command “hostnamectl set-hostname new-name”
… or, editing the /etc/hostname file, by entering the command “nano /etc/hostname” as the at the command line and as the root user:
Then, once in the /etc/hostname file, enter the host name you want (in the case of my Acer laptop, “reliant”, as in the USS Reliant from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan movie.)
And on this install, I noticed that the extension Vertical Overview by Ralthuis, which among other things, allowed for the dock on the Activities page to remain vertical and on the left edge of the screen, instead of on the bottom of the screen, was broken, something I hadn’t noticed when upgrading my XPS13. Note: Check lower down in the section for my desktop.
Dock moved to the bottom of the activities screen due to a broken extension (note screenshot recreated after the fact)
On this point, I installed a number of Gnome extensions that I like, unfortunately not the one mentioned above, as well as adding apps to the dock, and other optimizations I commonly perform.
Finally, I had to activate the flathub repository (here’s my archive) in order to be able to install software that I use that is distributed as flatpaks, such as Signal (a secure texting app):
… and then Signal was installed from the Software App:
Minor note: I don’t recall having to enable the flatpak.org repositories before, although I may be wrong.
This leads to my final computer to upgrade, my desktop:
In the summer of 2023, I upgraded the mechanical drive to an SSD, and I had installed Fedora 38 the SSD; the Dell Inspiron had difficulty recognizing Fedora 38 media, so I took an old pre-UEFI computer, inserted the SSD, and installed Fedora on the SSD. I don’t recall if I knew to change to legacy BIOS once I transferred the SSD to the Dell, or after an error or two, I realized the error, and made the change in the setup. The installation worked, although I was slightly irked.
Come time to upgrade to Fedora 39, I performed the command line DNF upgrade covered earlier, dealing with some of the consequences like the power management and idling issue above. Additionnaly, I noticed something else that irked me regarding the power button (changing it from “Suspend” to “Power Off”:
“Power Button Behavior” setting changed from “Suspend” to “Power Off”. Call me old school …
However, in the intervening time I had experienced the UEFI crisis above, so I first performed a backup of my data to my backup folders on my web server, mildly surprised by how much I was behind in my manual backups.
Unfortunately from this point on, my desktop proved to be the most challenging to upgrade properly.
Having downloaded a copy of the install media for Fedora 39 and burned it onto a usb stick, as well as still having the Fedora 38 Server Edition DVD (which I had forgotten was the F38 Server Edition, instead erroneously assuming that I had gone to the trouble of burning the F39 Workstation Edition onto the DVD), and I tried to install Fedora 39 from both media. I tried several settings in the setup menu, to no avail: The motherboard categorically refused to recognize either, simply displaying an error message vaguely communicating a sense that it didn’t like the media. In looking through the internet for pages on the subject, including the Dell website, I was mildly piqued that solutions commonly referenced burning the usb stick using particular software under Windows (to which strictly speaking I have access, but not on the computer in question), and often just assuming that there would be a Windows partition on the computer. Putting aside knee-jerk reactions, I assumed that this would not address the issue since the solutions appeared to assume a conflict with Windows which could not exist on my machine, or that the Fedora media-writing tools were inherently unable to operate correctly.
I gave up for the moment, changed the boot settings back to Legacy BIOS, and used the untouched Legacy BIOS install for roughly a week while dealing with other upgrades and life in general.
After roughly up to a week, I remembered something I’d read a week or two earlier that said that the UEFI shim for Fedora versions 37 and 38 (and I presume, given my experience, Fedora 39 as well), was not working for some motherboards “due to a difficult certification process for this component“, (here’s my archive) and that a workaround was to install Fedora 36, whose shim was known to work, then proceed through the command line upgrades to Fedora 39.
Fedora 36 was downloaded and burned on a usb stick, and the settings in the boot menu were changed back to UEFI. Fedora 36 was installed — successfully! …
… and the updates were performed, after which the command for the version upgrade was performed, to bring it to Fedora 38. However, the system would not reboot on its own; a quick fsck command corrected some “dirty code”, which it corrected, and I changed some boot settings about booting and automatic on at certain dates. Once this was done, the upgrade to Fedora 38 continued:
DNF upgrade command working; yes, my screen is dusty!
I again performed a dnf upgrade to Fedora 39, and had to repeat the fsck command in order for the system to properly reboot.
To correct this rebooting issue, an empty file named “fsck” was created in my home directory.
Backups were restored, and work similar to what I’d performed on my Acer laptop were performed regarding sudo, root, renaming of the box, evolution, extensions, pinning apps to the dock, and the like were performed.
After yet another week or so, I noticed that my backups had not fully been transferred, and began transferring the balance. In the process, my computer indicated that it did not have enough space on the hard drive; I suspected that during the previous install that I had not correctly removed the previous install, so I reformatted yet again.
So I repeated the installation and upgrade process, this time ensuring that all space on the drive was reclaimed, and repeated the above processes, both specific to the computer as well as other things generally required as part of the upgrade.
During the initial setup, I discovered an extension that brings back the vertical view: V-Shell (vertical workspaces) by GdH, and it seems to do what I want, although on the desktop there is a setting that brings up the (vertical) dock, workspaces, and app search space over the workspace; comparison with another setup allowed me to find the setting I wanted.
And, to repeat myself: Gnome, do you hear me? Stop breaking extensions!
Now — so far — the computer seems to be working, but as this whole process over a month has shown, I should give it at least a week to find out if there are any other issues.
Final Thoughts
I don’t read the upcoming changes for new versions, nor do I research in advance problems that people have been having. I discover the problems, changes, and challenges along the way, and as such for me Fedora reveals itself as per my usage and discoveries — no doubt leaving a lot hidden to me — not only over its roughly 13 month lifespan, but also over the first few weeks of using it, and, interestingly, over the installation process itself, especially when it’s over several machines of different eras and manufacturers and technologies.
As this round of upgrades in particular has shown, as well as years of using Fedora Linux, using Fedora Linux is an exercise in bleeding edge.
Now, barring unforeseen changes, additions, and the like, I’m looking forward to roughly a year of Fedora 39 goodness!
www.malak.ca is hosted by myself on an old desktop computer in my bedroom, using my home internet connection. The general specs are:
Dell Vostro 420 Series (64bits) — BIOS date of October 24, 2008
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad CPU @ 2.66GHz (with hyperthreading), with a clock speed of 333MHz; L1d cache 128KiB (4 instances); L1i cache 128KiB (4 instances); L2 cache 6MiB
8GB (4 x 2GB) memory, clock speed 800MHz
HD: 240GB SSD (OS and blog)
External USB hard drive: 1TB (static website data and other stuff)
Currently, it is running Fedora Linux version 37 Workstation Edition. Using the Server Edition for such a small, home-grown vanity project seemed unnecessary given a comfort level with the Workstation Edition and, since at its core, the two editions are subsets of the same OS. Ultimately, missing packages from one edition compared to the other are a “dnf install” command away. (As for a longer-term distro, I have always been a Red Hat user, so Debian or an Ubuntu LTS release aren’t interesting to me, while the new community respins of RHEL have neither captured my imagination, nor do they hold sufficient appeal anymore on a technical level.) Hence, I started from the Edition with which I and my brother (the technical heavy-lifter) are familiar, which allows for the (admittedly rare) use of a GUI as needed.
The filesystems are with ext4 on the boot partition of the SSD, as well as on the external USB hard drive; I use ext4 because I’m used to it, but can’t truly say I know, or can recommend, one filesystem from or over the next. UPDATE: I checked the filesystems and … the boot partition is ext4, and the SSD’s data portion seems to have defaulted to BTRFS; there you go, proof I don’t know much about the differences between various filesystems and their comparative advantages and disadvantages. 🙂
December 2017: IBM ThinkCentre, circa 2003 era and running CentOS 7.X (retired due to a suspected thermal event)
Sometime after 2017 and until April 2020: A Core 2-duo circa possibly 2010 era, running various current Fedora versions up to version 31 (repurposed due to power issues)
April 2020: IBM ThinkCentre, circa possibly 2006 or 2007 era, running Fedora 31 to Fedora 37 (retired due to unknown problems causing constant reboot cycles, which were not fully investigated)
But to wit, since hosting www.malak.ca myself, it has always been on my home internet service, a DSL line with a (now-)paltry 6.05MBit-ish down and, what, 0.67MBit-ish up capacity, which for reasons beyond the scope of this post had not been upgraded for (best I can remember) over 20 years.
Time marching on and the increase of devices in the household meant that while still minimally usable and just functional, the internet connection regularly became inadequate for daily use, and barely usable for things like weekly simultaneous videoconferences (and with slightly-more-than-tacit rules of “no other internet usage during said weekly dual videoconferences” and the like.) The slow internet access, especially the slow uplink, affected a blogging project started in late 2020 showing pictures of the preparation of my recipes from my collection by limiting photo sizes not only as a good idea for reasons of netiquette, page layout and formatting, but as an outright necessity given the limited upload capacity (thank you WordPress for lazy-loading!)
Well, last week we finally upgraded the internet package to cable with 120MBit down and 20MBit up. Interestingly, we had had a cable modem for a few years in the late 1990’s until it became quite unusable and made a switch to DSL; as a side note, a box, some equipment inside it, and some cable wiring from that period were still attached to the outside of the house, not having been removed at the time, and were still compatible and usable when we got the install last week.
As such, www.malak.ca now has decent upload speeds!
