Fedora Silverblue: the packages I layer

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Layering packages in Fedora Silverblue is not strictly forbidden, but it should be considered the last resort. For example, I prefer to layer the ZSH shell:

Note that you must reboot when you layer packages. Quoting from the documentation: Using package layering creates a new deployment, or bootable filesystem root. It does not affect […]

A first look at Garuda Linux “Temeraire” (260819) (Mokka edition)

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I’m reporting on my first experiments with Garuda Linux (Arch-based), the latest release, “Temeraire” (260819), in the Mokka edition. I’m testing that in a virtual machine. I can anticipate that I love the aesthetic of this distro, especially in this Mokka edition, which is more sober than the “dragonized” version. The installation The installation is […]

Installing CachyOS Linux on a Geekom IT13 Mini PC

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In this post, I show how I installed CachyOS Linux (Arch-based) on a Geekcom IT13 Mini PC. These are the main specs of the Mini PC: Processors: 16 × 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-13620H Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.1 GiB usable) Graphics Processor: Intel® Graphics I’m installing CachyOS “cachyos-desktop-linux-260628.iso”; I downloaded the ISO and […]

Getting Started with LM Studio in Linux

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I report my first experiences with LM Studio in (Arch) Linux. LM Studio is a desktop application that allows you to discover, download, and run Large Language Models (LLMs) entirely on your own computers, offline. This is the hardware and system I’m testing it (you see, no GPU with VRAM):

First, download the AppImage […]

Archinstall: dual boot with another Linux installation

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In the past, I had several problems using archinstall for installing Arch Linux in a dual boot with another existing Linux installation. In fact, I gave up using archinstall and created my own script for installing Arch. In particular, I experienced these two problems: Archinstall failed installing Arch if the disk already contained a BTRFS […]

Fixing LibreOffice Flatpak Opening Files from GNOME Dash

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I use Fedora Silverblue with GNOME, and I have LibreOffice installed as a Flatpak. Recently, I hit a strange problem: when searching for an office document from the GNOME Dash — for example, an .odt or .ods file in my Dropbox folder — and selecting it, LibreOffice appeared to start, but then failed with an […]

Bootstrapping chezmoi_modify_manager before chezmoi apply

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If you use chezmoi_modify_manager together with chezmoi, there is one annoying bootstrap problem: chezmoi_modify_manager is needed while chezmoi apply computes file contents but the usual .chezmoiscripts/run_before_* hooks run too late to install it for the first apply I wanted a solution that was: automatic shell-based version-pinned rerun only when the installer script changes This post […]

SWTBot Tests Failing on GitHub Actions macOS Because of “Welcome to Mac” (Setup Assistant Analytics)

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My SWTBot UI tests recently started failing on GitHub Actions macOS runners. The application under test is an Eclipse-based application, so at first I expected the failure to be caused by some SWTBot timing issue, focus issue, or maybe a regression in my own code. However, the screenshot captured by the failed test showed something […]

Running Homebrew Commands with sudo on Linux and macOS

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Sometimes a command installed with Homebrew needs to be executed as root. A good example is nethogs, which needs elevated privileges to inspect network traffic. The problem is that this often fails:

even though this works:

The reason is that sudo usually runs with a different, restricted PATH. Your normal shell can find […]

Bootstrapping chezmoi from HTTPS to SSH After First Apply

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When I bootstrap a new machine with chezmoi, I usually start by cloning my dotfiles repo from GitHub over HTTPS:

That works well for the very first setup, because my SSH keys are not installed yet. After the first chezmoi apply, though, my SSH keys are finally in place, and I want the dotfiles […]

Fedora Silverblue: upgrading

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I’m continuing my evaluation of the Fedora Silverblue Linux distribution, which I started some time ago. Let’s upgrade the system! As mentioned in the official documentation: On Atomic Desktops, you can keep using your computer while applying OS updates as they are downloaded and installed in the background. Once an update has been installed, you […]

Running Waybar with a Custom Configuration Directory in Sway

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When setting up Sway as your Wayland compositor, you might want to organize your Waybar configuration in a non-standard location — for example, keeping a dedicated ~/.config/waybar/sway/ directory to separate your Sway-specific bar configuration from others. This seemingly simple task comes with a couple of subtle pitfalls worth knowing about. The ~ Expansion Problem The […]

A first look at Fedora Silverblue 43

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I’m going to test the Fedora 43 Linux distribution in its “immutable” “atomic” shape, Silverblue. Fedora Silverblue is Fedora’s atomic, GNOME-based desktop built around an image-based, mostly read-only system rather than a traditional mutable Linux install. As an atomic desktop: the base OS is image-based, updates are applied as a new deployment, and you switch […]

Neovim and LaTeX with LazyVim, part 3: custom commands

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This is a follow-up to the first post on Neovim and LaTeX and the second one. If you write LaTeX in Neovim using the LazyVim distribution, you already get a fantastic editing experience thanks to VimTeX and texlab. But there’s one thing that often trips people up: how do you quickly wrap selected text in \emph{…}, […]

Run mako in Sway/Hyprland, but not in KDE (Wayland)

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If you use a Wayland compositor like Sway or Hyprland, mako is a great lightweight notification daemon. Many distros make it “start automatically” via a systemd user service, so you don’t need to add exec mako to your compositor config. I’m experimenting with a setup with KDE, Sway, and Hyprland installed on the same machine […]

Installing Linux on a Dell Pro Max Tower T2

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I’ll show how I installed Linux (EndeavourOS, i.e., Arch) on a Dell Pro Max Tower T2. This is quite a powerful computer! Here are a few screenshots taken from Windows 11: Before installing Linux on this computer, I had to change the SSD SATA mode from RAID to AHCI, as documented in a previous blog […]

Install Endeavouros with Disk Encryption

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A small blog post on how to install EndeavourOS with LUKS disk encryption. The installation starts and proceeds as usual (see, e.g., my older post). I’m using KDE for this installation. When you get to disk partitioning, choose manual: If you start from a fresh disk, create a new partition table and choose GPT: If […]