Mikey Boldt – Page 3 – What am I doing?

Solved the “abfh” Problem

November 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

One Linux server at work has always messed up my keyboard mapping when connecting to it via VNC. Previously, I had worked around this issue by changing the window manager from gnome to evilwm in my ~/.vnc/xstartup file. This got me by for a while, but I had trouble with the mask keys when I switched from Mac OSX Lion to Linux, so I came back to solving the problem. In my googling, I found this often-encountered situation referred to as the “abfh” problem¹.

This post, and in particular, this comment provided the best solution I found for the “abfh” problem:

dcatdemon said...
Perhaps you can try this:

1. edit your $HOME/.vnc/xstartup
2. put the line "export XKL_XMODMAP_DISABLE=1" before your gnome-session.
3. restart vncserver.

and lo, it works :).
credit must go to this link.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190865#c7

There are many other possible solutions, but this seemed cleanest and simplest–and you gotta love a 1-liner.

Footnotes:

¹ “abfh” refers to the output of pressing the standard key-mashing sequence “asdf”.

Why I left Mac OSX for Linux

November 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

Background

In my days, I’ve explored many different operating systems. My first computer exposure was playing games like Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Odell Lake on an Apple II in the classroom (ah, the classics). The first computer in my home, an Intel 386, ran DOS, eventually with Windows 3.1 on top of it. Through high school and college, I ran many flavors of Linux and BSD. When I started collecting a paycheck, I got a Mac, which provided the best of both worlds—a full Unix environment with hardware that just works. I don’t have as much time as I used to for tinkering with device drivers, X configuration, and window managers, though I still spend a lot of time on the command line, so Mac was a good fit.

Lion

First, I admit I hastily upgraded to Lion. I hadn’t had trouble with any previous OSX upgrades. A coworker had good things to say. I was sold. And the upgrade went fine (and even if it hadn’t, I still had my Time Machine backup). But when I saw the new features, I started getting uncomfortable.

My Computer is not an iPad

In my new Lion environment, the new launcher and full-screen apps make my computer look and feel like an iPad. I don’t want my computer to be an iPad. If I wanted an iPad, I would get an iPad. I understand there is nothing forcing me to use these features, but this direction and philosophy worry me. If this is where the train is going, I want off.

The Final Straw

Being a bit of an experimenter, I decided to try to embrace some of the new features. I added a second desktop in Mission Control and started using some full-screen apps. That’s when my machine started acting up. Every so often, apps would become unresponsive. I could switch between apps, but they wouldn’t respond to input. This, for me, was the final straw.

Horror Stories

Beyond my own concerns and issues, I’d heard several people have bad experiences with Lion. My wife’s network card got flaky after her upgrade. I know folks needed to spend time getting MacPorts back together. One coworker’s machine had severe performance issues after his upgrade, and Apple support walked him through their equivalent of fsck. The filesystem “repair” left his machine unbootable, requiring him to start over at Snow Leopard, upgrade again, and recover from his Time Machine. Then there was Tim O’Reilly’s tweet about Lion. These horror stories were reputable enough for me to seriously question Lion’s quality, and not write off my own experience as a fluke.

Linux

So, I installed Ubuntu Linux, as it has the reputation of “just working.” And, that was exactly my experience. Everything down to e.g. the screen brightness buttons on my MacBook Pro keyboard worked out of the box. I’d heard some murmuring about problems with Skype on Linux, but even that worked fine for me. Now instead of my browser taking up a full 1920×1200 screen, I’m running xmonad in Gnome to maximize my screen real estate. Desktop Linux has come a long way since I first used it in the 90’s.

Conclusion

In brief, I do not like the direction Mac OSX seems to be taking. My computer is not an iPad, and I don’t want it to act like one. I’ve heard about and experienced Lion’s bugginess. Over the years I’ve been using Mac, Linux—specifically Ubuntu Linux—has caught up to the point where it works out of the box, while providing the ability to tweak it to my tastes. Linux is the friend I haven’t seen for years, but after reconnecting we have more in common than ever. It’s good to be back.

Hello, World

November 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I’m going to start writing a blog.

Why?

A couple reasons for starting this:

Contribution: I’ve certainly siphoned lots of information from others’ blogs. I will add back to the pool of knowledge.
Reflection: Track and follow-up on my decisions, plans, and ideas.

What?

I envision the posts falling into a few categories:

Experiments: I like trying different ways of doing things, and will share my experiments here.
Projects: I will share projects I’m working on and what I’m doing for them.
Opinions: I’m a laid-back guy, but when I have an opinion it’s generally strong and worth sharing.

How?

To start, I’m using emacs org-mode with org2blog to write my posts. I’m doing this because I spend a lot of my time in emacs, and I think the convenience will make me write more.