Linux on my Thinkpad

I am pleased with the transition I made from Windows to MX Linux on my Lenovo Thinkpad T470p. It’s a beautiful machine, but much better now that I no longer have to use Windows 10 in it. I am back in the operating environment that I know and love and don’t need to make any compromises. I have used MX Linux previously, on lower-powered and older machines, but although I know that I could easily run a fancier distro under my 32 GB RAM, I wanted something that I already knew would be stable and that I would probably stay with. Initially I tried installing MX with the Gnome 3 and KDE Plasma desktops, then reinstalled and tried Budgie. I liked Budgie best, but it’s a bit buggy, so I’ve gone back to XFCE. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with any of the others, but XFCE is the desktop that MX Linux comes with, and MX seems to play best with it.

Regarding software, as usual, I have added the tools that I use: Cherrytree Notes, Bluefish, Filezilla, KeepassXC, Osmo, Scribus, Calibre, for now. All of these are multi-platform and available also for Windows, so even for the few months I was working under Windows, I was able to use almost exclusively free open source software.

I installed XnView as a photo manager, but then I had a pleasant surprise when I found that GThumb has grown into a program that can handle most of my everyday needs, such as cropping, resizing, color correcting. Last time I checked, this was not so, and I’ve reluctantly used XnView for years since. Though it is free, and very nice, it is still proprietary software. On Windows there is FastStone, which is under a GPL3 license.

For my cloud needs, I have NextCloud for personal files. This works fine (though it doesn’t start up automatically, for some reason). For the office, I unfortunately have to use Google Drive. Here there is a problem, because Google provide no native system for synchronization on Linux. (They initially promised, and people have been screaming at them for years in the Google forums, but it hasn’t helped – it just ain’t gonna happen.) I tried to use the Gnome 3 and KDE Google Drive solutions (which was the reason for my mentioned experimentation with these desktop environments). The verdict: Gnome’s Online Accounts is still too slow to be of much use. KDE’s Google Drive synchronization is currently disallowed from authenticating by Google. I tried next to use a proprietary solution, Expandrive, because it is supposed to work like Google Drive File Stream. But, for Linux at least, this is completely Beta software (and expensive). I had an email from the developer, but he didn’t reply to my feedback. So I’m using InSync, but just for a single folder where I keep some active files. My hard drive is not large enough to contain all of the files we have on our Google Drive, and previously Insync somehow made a horrible mess, mixing some of our personal home documents in public folders – it took hours and hours to correct the mess and I don’t want to go there again.

Regarding support under Linux for the Thinkpad T470p, as far as I can see, everything is supported, almost out of the box. For battery management, there is a specific external module for the TPL battery management system that I needed to add (acpi-call-dkms). This keeps the battery charged up to a certain threshold in order to help preserve the life of the battery. The machine still seems to drain the battery more quickly than under Windows, however.
The only thing that I have not yet installed is the drivers for the finger print reader.

The trackpoint

I once before owned a very cheap Thinkpad, on which I also replaced the Windows system with Linux, but I never really got the hang of using the trackpoint. Now I’ve decided to try to get used to it. I have always hated touchpads, and usually the first thing I do is disable them and use an external trackball (which I much prefer to mice). I suspect that I’m less dexterous than most people and always look with admiration when I see people effortlessly using their touchpads. It could be age, but I remember how even in primary school the teachers would tell me I was holding the pencil too heavily.

But the trackpoint is something special. There’s no way to accidentally create havoc with it, as I always do with with touchpads. Still, getting accustomed to the trackpoint is no easy task, though I do recognize the advantages. The experience reminds me of when I first began using a mouse, after working for years with WordPerfect under DOS. It felt really strange. But there’s something about the trackpoint that brings me closer to the machine, and encourages me to use keyboard functions more. For example, in LibreOffice, to select a large block of text that spans more than a page, I would normally use the mouse (or trackball), but trying to accomplish that with the trackpoint is simply horrible. So I looked up how to do use the keyboard instead and gasped how easy it is (you simply hold down the shift key while moving the arrow buttons – doh – I bet everyone else already knew that). Giving up external pointing devices is quite liberating. No doubt those who work completely in Vim or Emacs, and don’t need to use any pointing device whatsoever, feel this even more strongly. Having used a pointing device consistently for about 25 years, I’ve simply forgotten how it felt beforehand.

Cross-platform foss apps (again)

Now I’m on MS Windows (see earlier post), because that’s what I acquired with the Thinkpad given or loaned to me by my son. But we seem to be reaching a stage where the actual operating system is not of prime importance.* I mean I had to fiddle quite a bit in order to set up the machine as I wanted it, minimizing the connections with Microsoft and setting up the same software I always use on Linux. I’m beginning to think it’s a useful constraint to go for software that’s available everywhere, on all Linux desktops as well as MS Windows and Mac. Not everything works as well as the non-FOSS options. For example, Foxit Reader (which isn’t FOSS) is much more feature-rich than Evince, which I also have set up. But for everyday tasks, Evince is enough.

For those willing to work with the terminal, the limitations become much more insignificant, but it’s a struggle to identify the right scripts. For example today I was looking at Imagemagick, and I didn’t find yet an easy explanation of how to do stuff. There’s a routine operation I always do when importing photos from my phone or elsewhere, in order that I can put them online. This involves reducing the size of the photos according to their longest side (but only those that actually need to be shrunk), and then saving them with a new name. This is very easy in Xnview (which isn’t FOSS), but it seems like a struggle to obtain through Imagemagick.

I’m still trying to obtain a FOSS alternative to XNView, and yesterday looked at Digikam. Naturally it can do a lot more for digital assets management than XNView, however its batch routine is still primitive compared with the latter. There are no options for shrinking only large photos (rather than blowing up the smaller ones), and no option for shrinking them by their longest side (in order that it will work the same for portrait and landscape shapes). That’s when I started to look at Imagemagick, because why be upset with GUI options, when in the CLI you can do everything, right? But it isn’t quite so simple in the case of Imagemagick. And I know myself. Things that take a long time to learn are just as easily forgotten – especially the ones that I don’t need to do several times a day, so that they become a routine.

For text editing, I’ve finally ended up with Bluefish. It can do everything I need, and it was possible to simplify the interface how I liked it, and use tabs. One need that many people don’t have is simple and painless LTR / RTL shifting, as soon as one changes the input language. Bluefish handles this painlessly – when I shift to Hebrew or Arabic, it begins the line from the opposite side. Some programs, for example Geanie, can’t handle RTL languages at all, and others don’t do it very well.

I would like to get into the habit of using a single editor (Bluefish) wherever I need an editor. For example this WordPress post, and maybe also for writing emails. Using a single editor means that everything is taken care of in one familiar interface, and there are no surprises like losing all of my work if the computer suddenly turns off. Bluefish saves every minute by default.

* The upcoming versions the Windows Linux Subsystem offer an even more real Linux experience than what currently exists, and it has better interaction with filing systems.

Journal – mainly about photo handling under Linux

I was somehow sick yesterday – woke up feeling very low energy. In mid-morning I had loose bowel movements, throughout the day felt zift. And it was also quite a busy day, with the annual test for the car, a visit from the guy that replaces our water filter, two trips to Modiin to take Yotam to work and back. Then in the afternoon we bought him a new computer monitor.

Most of last weekend was spent moving files around and doing backups, in order to free a disk up for our new Nmix multimedia player. Then setting up the player itself. I will talk about that some other time. But the awkward thing is that somewhere during that process my laptop Windows partition, and even the HP restore partition got affected, such that I can’t use Windows, and have to use Ubuntu. Previously I was flipping back between these every few weeks; probably eventually spending more time with Windows.

The data on the partition all seems to be there, and I was able to access and transfer it using Yotam’s Ultimate Boot Disk. Just won’t let Windows start.

So I’m stuck with Ubuntu, unless I get it fixed. Truth is, I’m a bit worn out by the problems of both operating systems, and have found myself lusting for a Mac. But, as my son Yonatan says, if I had a Mac I would probably find things to complain about that too.

Since I’m a bit of a fatalist, I took up using only Ubuntu as a challenge. The most difficult thing for me under Linux is finding a way of working with photos. Although photography is by no means the larger part of what I do, it is an area that has to be in order. And the big obstacle to overcome is finding a Linuxcentric photo organizer and workflow.

I have done a major revisit to this subject in the last few days, trying the most commonly known applications and some less known options: Picasa, Digikam, Gwenview, G-thumb, F-spot, Lightzone, Bibble Pro, as well as reading up on Geeqi and a couple of others.

What I need really, is actually what Picasa does rather well, except that Picasa under Linux chokes on my photo collection (it’s about 35,000 photos so far). I need something that imports photos from a camera, lets me organize them and handles light editing – preferably non-destructive. I have a folder-based system, but also use tags (keywords). I want to use both, and to be able to search for photos using both. I also want to have a quick way of uploading the photos to the web (I have been using Picasaweb.

All that turns out to be a tall order. Picasaweb has the most elegant user interface I have seen for handling photos. In a single screen, without any customization, it does everything I need to do. It is super-fast, for browsing, searching, editing and sharing, and permits a brilliant workflow. I think it’s a work of genius. There are still a couple of things I don’t like about it, but all in all I’m happy. But, as mentioned, the Linux version (which is based on the Windows emulator Wine) is less robust.

Under Linux, the best equivalent seems to be Digikam. It has keywords, uses folders, can handle editing (not non-destructive as in Picasa), but, for some reason, on my machine it is almost unusable. Slow and prone to freezing. Again, the problem may be the large photo collection.

G-thumb does a reasonable job. It’s fast and easy to use. It uses a folder-based system. It allows simple (not non-destructive) editing. Instead of keywords, it relies on searchable comments. Trouble is, the comments are recognized only in G-thumb, and it does not recognize IPTC keywords at all. That means that any time spent in tagging (which is an exhaustive process) would be good only for G-thumb, or perhaps Gnome’s file manager.

F-spot is just the opposite. It relies only on tags, and does not allow a folder view. It does tagging very well, and these are searchable. The tags are generic IPTC standard, and are recognized outside of F-spot. The problem is, that after you have invested so much time organizing a photo collection in folders, it just isn’t possible to go back and start tagging every single photo.

F-spot seems to be closest to I-photo under Mac. I checked out I-photo in a display model in Office Depot today. I don’t think that would work for me either.

Lightzone and Bibble are two non-free photo managers and editors that work under Linux. At up to $200 they are expensive. But I would consider them if they did everything I want. Lightzone does editing very well, and is supposed to handle Raw photos (which I don’t use). Bibble seems to handle the photo-organization quite well and also allows editing. Both programs are aware of and can handle tagging. Both do non-destructive editing, though they handle it in different ways. Unfortunately neither have a search engine. Lightzone has some problems navigating to my external hard drive. Bibble has an interface based on dockable windows, which seems a bit messy to me. A new version of Bibble has been promised for a long time. I will wait and see what that offers.

Gwenview is nice mainly for viewing photos and is a bit limited. Geeqi, based on an old “competitor” to GThumb, is in a very alpha-stage and is mentioned as being unstable and not recommended for serious use. There are systems that use PHP and Appache, but these don’t seem a good option for work on a desktop computer.

So there I am – nothing really does everything that I need to do. I will probably adopt a workflow that involves Picasa, GThumb and F-Spot. Perhaps I will import photos in Picasa, use Picasa as an intermediate station, since it works quite well with a smaller number of photos. In Picasa I can tag them, then archive them for later viewing in GThumb and F-Spot. Sometimes, in order to work with photos in the archive, I can do the opposite – moving them to a folder that is watched by Picasa, doing quick editing, then sharing them from there by email or web. There are a couple of things I’m still not sure about in this process, such as Picasa’s handling of keywords, and how best to use Picasa as a way-station.

Perhaps, in a few months time, some of my difficulties will be solved by updates to some of the programs I have mentioned.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Writing, and Writers’ programs on Linux

Daughter Ella left for Barcelona this afternoon, to meet up with the Rainbow gathering, currently near the town of Leon. Doesn’t seem like long since she came home from India. Europe will be different for her. During her year in Sicily, she didn’t travel very much – now it’s another phase in her life.

One of her deliberations was whether to take a camera. Eventually she decided on her old Rebel – a film camera. When I first traveled to India, I didn’t take a camera. I wasn’t sure about preserving memories, or maybe it was about preserving them by mechanical means – hard to remember one’s ideologies of thirty years ago.

Lately I’ve been thinking that not taking travel pictures might encourage me to do more writing. I found a couple of writing programs that work under Linux. There’s yWriter 4, by Spacejock. That’s a free program that runs under Wine / Crossover (Windows emulators for Linux). At least it’s supposed to run. I didn’t managed to get it to work properly. You type and nothing appears on the page. Like a mechanically induced writers’ block, or the machine version of those nightmares where you scream but are unable to produce sound. Perhaps now, after reinstalling under Crossover 8 / Wine 1.0 it will work better.

However, the other program I discovered looks good too. This is a multi-platform suite called Writers’ Cafe. It isn’t, unfortunately, a free open source program (though the Mac version is free).

The most convenient computer for writing, of course, is my ageless Psion. Its AA batteries last a month and the thing clips neatly onto my belt. Not so inspiring to type on the small keyboard and grey screen but when the spirit moves me these details are forgotten. Perhaps now, with the emergence of a line of computers like the Ee PC, we are moving back again towards convenient handhelds.