I used macs exclusively from around 2007 to now. Before, I had a decade of Linux on my desktop. In all that time, I continued to use Linux, just not as UI machine. I tried Linux a few times in there. But now I could not stand the idea to buy a new Mac. Because of that, I bought a #beelink SER9 that I am now trying as a daily after work driver. Gnome has gone a long way. It's really nice. And they fixed the font rendering.
This will hopefully be a thread of all things I discover along the way.
#keyd (https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd) was basically one of the biggest missing pieces for me last time I tried Linux. With it, I can map all my keys and replace application shortcuts with better defaults. Like this:
[google-chrome]
meta.[ = C-S-tab
meta.] = macro(C-tab)
[firefox-esr]
meta.] = macro(C-tab)
meta.[ = C-S-tab
That shortcut is way nicer for my hands, and I unified it everywhere. Luckily, #Ghostty has a config for this.
Sadly, somehow Debian has problems with the Wifi-Module on the #beelink. On the Pre-Installed Windows 11 it was able to get the maximum Wi-Fi speed that my router allows. With Debian I had to disable Bluetooth to get it faster than 0,5mb/s and even then it maxed at 20 mb/s.
Not sure what is going on there, but I now ordered a "known good" Wi-Fi stick. Don't want to go further into this mess than needed...it's still Linux. BUT the printer and scanner just worked đ .
On Mac OS, I had a link to a script on the desktop. Every time I got an invoice email, I grabbed the PDF and dropped it onto the link. Then the script would get the pdf path as a parameter and did some housekeeping with it. Basically some light cleanup of the filename and moving it into the correct folder so that another script could send the stuff to my tax person once every month.
How can I get a drop target visible on my Gnome Desktop somewhere on the screen that does this?
Over a week on #Gnome and #Debian now. And I must say that I love it. Never thought that I would say this. Has it still its quirks? Yes. But way less than I thought. And Gnome + their UI framework makes the apps look so georgous now. Really impressed by the quality of all those apps. OpenSource does not need to look ugly. Seems like #libadwaita makes it really straightforward to build beautiful apps.
A big thank you to all amazing open-source contributors to that ecosystem.
You do it at a lower level than GNOME.
Relevant utlities:
xev reports X events, which include pointer motions and button presses and releases.
xinput is the program to list and set input device properties. For example, if you wanted to set a scroll lock button (not the same as scroll lock on your keyboard -- this lets you hold down a button and drag the pointer and turn it into a scrolling motion), xinput is the tool.
xbindkeys associates key or mouse buttons with other actions.
And xvkbd is the X virtual keyboard; on first glance it seems odd to be using that, since it can pop up a graphical keyboard for use on tablet-style devices... but it also synthesizes X events on demand.
For example, my .xkeybindsrc file contains:
"xvkbd -text "[XF86Copy]""
m:0x0 + b:8
"xvkbd -text "[XF86Paste]""
m:0x0 + b:9
which assigns the Copy and Paste keys to my mouse buttons 8 and 9. Turns out I do it so often than having them on my mouse is a useful thing.
All of these programs start with X because they are, or were, X11 specific.
I understand Wayland also uses xinput, but if you are using that, you should expect not to have anything work and be surprisedly delighted when it does.
@bitboxer I think the guy above overcomplicated things a little bit...
What mouse is that? If it's semi-popular, like logi G305 or Razer Viper, there's a pretty solid chance it's included in libratbag:
https://github.com/libratbag
So just install libratbag + piper, and you have a nice GUI for configuration.
@bitboxer I used Piper to configure my Logitech mouse buttons.
https://github.com/libratbag/piper
This is the list of supported mice (libratbag is the library used by piper):
https://github.com/libratbag/libratbag/tree/master/data/devices
(Iâm no longer using it as at some point the default configuration matched exactly what I wanted)
@bitboxer it's been AWHILE since I've dealt with it so I can't find the issue on git but it's a known issue: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=300822
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2082761#p2082761
@bitboxer well like I said it's been a known issue for a long time now and it still isn't fixed. It's been brought up to the devs several times already and they're reluctant to fix anything that isn't within their GNOME ecosystem. The cursor will work just fine within a GNOME DE with GNOME apps, etc but outside of either of those things? good luck.
the problem is it's a default mouse cursor for many distros and DE's so it's good advice that if you're using a DE OTHER than GNOME to disable the Adwaita cursors to save yourself a headache.
But if you're in GNOME then it's a non issue for you.
@bitboxer I am happy for you that it works for you. I overconfigured my setup a few decades back and now have a hard time adjusting to a different setup (I sometimes try, but that's a clear "me-problem"). Default GNOME is still preferrable to many other options out there.
I found it interesting what parts of your workflow you wanted to keep and that at least some (most?) things are possible.
@fnordfish i tried it on mac for a while, but I hate it.
Ideally it would have a nice Gnome UI to see all shortcuts, integrates in Gnome Search and has a keyboard shortcut that opens said ui to quickly filter/select a snippet.
@bitboxer Does a .desktop file in your ~/Desktop folder suffice?
In the `Exec` key of that entry you can give it a `%u` or similar for url, with which the entry was "opened"
(see https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/1.1/ )
You can take inspiration from other .desktop files in your system.
1 Introduction # Both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments have adopted a similar format for desktop entries , or configuration files describing how a particular program is to be launched, how it appears in menus, etc. It is to the larger community's benefit that a unified standard be agreed upon âŠ
@bitboxer Oh wow, Intelâs wifi chips usually have excellent support with Linux, maybe the kernel youâre running is a tad behind (on Debian this wouldnât surprise me). Intel also ships separate driver packages from their website, if you want to indulge those, it might fix your issues
Which version of Debian is that? Could also be that itâs simply in the wrong repository (eg nonfree) and therefore not available by default
@moritz yeah, that surprised me, too. It's Debian testing. And I tried all things listed here:
https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi
That's the reason I disabled the Bluetooth to check if this changes things. It's a beelink mini pc thing...no idea what they did to the chip when cramming it into this small form factor đ .
But no worries, an external USB Wi-Fi Dongle will not hurt and is super cheap. I actually expected worse hardware support đđ„ł.
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