Update Friday 9 August: I got my reference to WSL wrong. I corrected it below and credited the person who pointed out my error.
Update Monday 12 August: Added a clarification about my getting Pop!_OS on my Darter Pro. The screenshot of my desktop was also updated after tweaking my desktop a little.
I’ve had Darlene II, my new System76 Darter Pro laptop, for about a week and I finally have things tweaked to my liking. I may still install AV Linux MX Edition (AVL) on it. I’m trying to decide between a full install or setting up a dual boot between Pop!_OS 22.04 and AVL. But I thought I’d take a little time to share some thoughts on my new laptop.
Initial Software Installations
There are several programs that I insist on having on my computers. The first is 1Password, an amazing password manager, and it has both a desktop version and browser extensions. I moved to 1Password after my old password manager, LastPass, got hacked in 2022. LastPass users’ login information was obtained by the hackers, despite LastPass’ insistence that our private info wasn’t even available on their servers. 1Password isn’t free, but the prices are quite low and you can use it on all your devices. It’s just $2.99 a month for an individual and $4.99 a month for families.
We’re going to need a new web browser
Pop!_OS comes with Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, but I prefer Google Chrome as my default browser. I installed Chrome for my web browser, as well as Google Earth. I recently decided that I want to give less of my info to Google, so I’ve switched over to using the Brave browser. Brave is based on Chromium, the open-source basis for Chrome, and is designed with privacy in mind. Brave is based on Chromium, so I can even import my profile from Chrome. That includes my settings, bookmarks, and installed extensions into Brave. I can cut Google off from my browsing data once the data is imported into Brave.
Houston we have a problem.
But there was a problem. When I installed the browsers from Pop!_OS’ Pop!_Shop software store I installed the flatpak versions of the browsers. It turns out the 1Password extension for Chrome doesn’t play well with the flatpak versions of the browsers. I discovered that when I found myself having to unlock 1Password more often than I should. After working with 1Password’s tech support, I discovered my error. I uninstalled the flatpak versions (via flatpak uninstall [packagename]) and installed the programs with the Synaptic Package Manager. I had also installed Thunderbird and VLC with a flatpak, so they got the uninstall-reinstall shuffle as well.
Pop!_OS: Ugh
As I said in my initial article about the new laptop, System76 installs their Pop!_OS on all the computers they build. My laptop has Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS, based on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). I used Ubuntu Linux as my second Linux distro in 2007 when I decided it was time to leave Windows. I quickly realized that I wanted more customization out of my operating system/desktop environment than Ubuntu can give me.
A quick clarification: System76 gives you the option of getting Pop!_OS or Ubuntu on the computers they build. Having already discovered that Ubuntu isn’t for me, I went straight to Pop!_OS. As the old saying goes, your mileage may vary. Thanks to NoNamesLeft600 on r/System76 for pointing out that the clarification was needed.
Darlene II came with the Cinnamon desktop environment (DE), and I hated how little you could customize it. I’ve been a KDE user for over a decade, partly because I can customize pretty much everything about how it looks and works. This tutorial showed me how to install KDE, but there were some issues.
WSL? Why?
For some reason, Pop!_OS (and Ubuntu) use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which forces some of the Windows environment on Linux users. The problem is that many Linux users stopped using Windows for very specific reasons.
Correction: I referred to the wrong WSL. What I deleted was the Wsman Shell Command Line “whistle.” Somebody seriously needs to rename their tool because two programs called WSL is confusing. Thanks to ahoneybun on r/System76 for pointing out my error. Anyhow…
I discovered that WSL broke my ability to use a local version of my personal start page for my web browsers. WSL also broke my ability to put launchers on the bottom panel and open various programs, including my file manager. It turns out the solution is to uninstall WSL and all of its associated programs with Synaptic Package Manager. I also removed any configuration information for WSL and now all my panel launchers work properly.
You’ve gotta have widgets
I’m enough of a computer geek that I have a collection of widgets I insist on having on my desktop. The Cinnamon DE won’t let you have many of the widgets I use, but KDE loves letting its users use widgets. (You can see the screenshot to the right in almost full size by clicking/tapping it. It’s also available at the bottom of the article.)
The first widget I always add is an analog clock with a second hand. Yes, I’m old(-ish) and prefer using old-school clock faces like I grew up using. My insistance on having a second hand goes back to my days when I worked in radio. I then added the Simple System Monitor (in the upper left corner), something I’ve used to keep an eye on my system since I first discovered it over a decade ago.
The widget won’t show my computer’s uptime (the time since I last rebooted), my network traffic, or the temperature of my CPU since Plasma 5 was released. I added two other widgets to the lower right corner of my screen to make up for it. I now have a network speed monitor and a system monitor to track the load on my CPU and how much memory I’m using.
The bottom panel
I also put a collection of launchers on the panel, a color picker, the Places widget so I can quickly access frequently used folders, and a Folder View widget to replace the old drawer widget that I used with Plasma 4. It lets you show the Desktop folder or any other folder you specify. I created a folder with things I use often and want to get my moue on quickly. It contains a folder for files for my home recording studio. There are also links to the livestreams for WWOZ and WTIX in New Orleans.
The pager widget lets me quickly switch between desktops, and the key status widget shows if the caps and numbers locks are on. Most of the icons in my system tray widget are hidden so they don’t take up space unless they’re needed. My digital clock in the panel uses 24-hour time (like the rest of the world) and a European-style date.
Some of those icons look different
I’m using the Breeze icons for Cinnamon. It’s a discontinued icon set, but it lets me get the icon look I like. The regular Breeze icons have some icons (like Thunderbird’s icon) that have extra bits that I don’t like. Some of the included icons don’t have looks I prefer. I’m not a fan of the default icon for the Calbre ebook reader, so I grabbed the official icon and replaced it on the application launcher itself.
The plain KDE application launcher menu icon looks pretty boring, so I found a colorful version in the KDE press kit and replaced the icon in the launcher itself. The Simple System Monitor widget doesn’t have a KDE icon, but it turns out that you can replace any of the distro icons that come with the widget. I found an SVG version of the Pop!_OS icon and used it to replace the Ubuntu icon in the widget.
Second Life looks much better now
My old computer barely met the requirements to run Second Life. That meant that my graphics were pretty plain. I even had one person ask me why my avatar looks like it was from many years back. My old laptop simply didn’t have a graphics system that could show how pretty Second Life could look.
I also had to make sure I didn’t try to do much at once because I ran out of memory pretty quickly. Running Thunderbird and Second Life at the same time? Two memory hogs running at once dragged everything to a crawl. Being in Second Life while I had MLB Gameday open for a Dodgers game? Also a bad idea. But now I can have email and Second Life (actually the Firestorm viewer since there’s no official Second Life viewer for Linux) open at the same time. I can even play music or even stream a radio station at the same time without slowing my system to a crawl.
Second Life on both computers
The best part is that I can see much more of Second Life at once. This is how my bedroom looked on my old laptop. (I don’t have full-size images for the screenshots below to reduce the load time of this page.)
And now? I can even turn on PBR mirrors without having to turn off other things.
Now I need to upgrade the look of my avatar. The Pride Lanes Bowling Center looks great on Darlene II.
I need to get one of my avatars bowling on my old laptop so I can get another avatar on my new laptop and get some video of them bowling. I especially need video of my avatar bowling with my custom bowling ball. It’s a throwback to a house ball from the 70s, basic black with the suits from a deck of cards spread across the ball. I wish I could find a picture of the old ball to help me position the suits, but I can’t find a picture of the old relic.
What about AV Linux MX Edition?
I couldn’t boot my new laptop from my flash drive with AV Linux MX Edition. It was as if the BIOS couldn’t even see the drive, although once I was logged in I could access it easily. The problem lies with coreboot, the BIOS software that System76 uses. There’s a known issue with coreboot and USB 2.0 devices. Once I got a USB 3.0 drive I had no problem booting into AVL, but as I said above, I need to decide if I want to dual-boot for both Pop!_OS and AVL first.
I’ll also have to do a backup to save my data so I can put it on its own partition. System76 does a basic install where your /home folder is on the same hard drive partition as the operating system. It’s not necessarily a bad idea, but I’ve long preferred having my /home folder on its own partition so if I have to do a reinstall I don’t have to worry about losing any work.
I may add the recording software I want to the existing install, but AVL has everything I need and it’s ready to be used right out of the box.
There’s one big problem
There is one big problem with the new laptop, and it’s literally about size. My old laptop’s screen ran at 1366×768, and Darlene II’s screen resolution is a whopping 1920×1200 (16:10). While it lets me see a lot more at once, it also means the font can be pretty small. I’ve boosted the display settings a bit, but I end up having to zoom into most websites so I can read them without having to get too close to the screen. Of course, having an age north of 60 doesn’t help either.
One more thing
All of my digital devices are adorned with stickers, and I knew Darlene II would be no different. While the Transbian Studio sticker isn’t available to teh general public, every other sticker is. The stickers across the top and in the lower right are now available in the brand new My Two Lives shop on Spreadshirt. You can buy the designs on stickers, t-shirts, and much more. From the upper left corner are BLM Palestinian Lives Matter, Legislate, and Life’s a Bitch. My store just launched today, and for the next 14 days, you can get 25% off everything. Just click the link at the top of the store.
The other stickers are from my favorite New Orleans store, Dirty Coast. From the center just below the System76 logo are River. Lake. Uptown. Downtown. Sticker.; Be A New Orleanian (currently unavailable); The Booker Sticker, celebrating New Orleans musician James Booker (also unavailable, but it’s available on a t-shirt or patch); and the Breakfast Sticker, which features a cup of cafe au lait and a plate of Beignets.
The verdict is…
I love my Darter Pro. Except for the recording software, I have things set up how I like. Once again, I need to give a huge thank you to the friend who paid for my new laptop. There’s no way I could have afforded a laptop that can run digital audio workstation (DAW) software with my own money. Now I need to set up my DAW and start getting tracks laid down some tracks for Somewhere Someone Cares, a blues rock number I first came up with a riff for in 1996.
What about the kittens?
I have most of an article about the kittens’ third week of life written, but as I was finishing up this article I realized I had never imported it into WordPress to get finished and published. I’ll try to get it posted this weekend. Please forgive the delay. Sometimes life happens, and getting Darlene II up and running had to get priority. My bad.