Another Arch Linux disaster
After a kernel panic with Arch Linux after a package upgrade (and many other issues), I will switch my main machine back to Debian Linux.
I did have a small issue starting Regolith on Debian after an update, but there was a fix already defined that was quick to apply successfully.
I can still choose to use Wayland compositor with the Sway tiling window manager, the Wayland equivalent of i3 for Xorg.
Terminal User Interface tools are on the rise, so I have started evaluating them to see which ones I want to adopt.
Arch Linuxλ︎
After an update of Arch Linux today I was greeted with the Linux blue screen of death (something I have never seen before on any Linux system - but plenty of times on Windows).
I have experienced more failures after updating in the last 6 months with Arch Linux, than I experienced with Debian Linux in the last two decades.
Using Garuda Linux Hyprland I was able to use Btrfs and snappy-tools to roll-back updates, but when I had to roll-back most of the software updates it was creating a significant overhead.
This time the Btrfs roll-backs seemed to fail, because there was less than 10Gb of file storage space left. I was surprised that so much space is required for a system update and Btrfs snapshots.
Luckily I had my older computer on which I created a Debian Live USB disk, so I could boot the failing Arch Linux machine and backup the files over the network. I used Caligula TUI app to create the USB boot disk from the Debian Live image.
With Debian Live running I could access the Arch Linux file space using the Nautilus file browser. I used the Network section to mount the older laptop file system, so I could copy and move files.
Although Arch Linux is interesting and Hyprland is nice to use, this combination seems far too unreliable to be my day to day operating system. Btrfs is an interesting approach to manage change, but it seems quite inefficient if it requires so much file space for snapshots.
I plan to install Debian Linux on the main computer. Once I have that set up, I can experiment with Wayland and Sway (or other alternatives to Hyprland that are more mature and have more flexible tiling options).
TUIλ︎
Tools such as LazyGit and Bottom (BTM) have paved the way for more Terminal-based User Interface (TUI) tools.
I'm evaluating a range of TUI tools to understand which would be useful to add to the Practicalli toolbox. Tools I enjoy and value are being added to the TUI section of Practicalli Engineering Playbook
nnnλ︎
Free, fast, friendly file manager.
nnn is a fork of noice, a blazing-fast lightweight terminal file manager with easy keyboard shortcuts for navigation, opening files and running tasks.
- Show details of the currently selected file (stat, file)
- Disk usage analyzer mode (within the same fs, doesn't follow symlinks)
- Directories first (even with sorting)
- Sort numeric names in numeric order
- Case-insensitive alphabetic content listing instead of upper case first
- Key - to jump to last visited directory
- Roll over at the first and last entries of a directory
- Removed navigation restriction with relative paths
- Sort entries by file size (largest to smallest)
- Shortcut to invoke file name copier
Apt install nnn package
❯ sudo apt install nnn
[sudo] password for practicalli:
Installing:
nnn
Suggested packages:
mediainfo | exiftool atool | patool vlock lftp sshfs
Summary:
Upgrading: 0, Installing: 1, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 1
Download size: 87.3 kB
Space needed: 175 kB / 21.3 GB available
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 nnn amd64 5.0-1 [87.3 kB]
Fetched 87.3 kB in 0s (783 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package nnn.
(Reading database ... 369863 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../archives/nnn_5.0-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking nnn (5.0-1) ...
Setting up nnn (5.0-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1) ...
❯ sudo apt install nnn mediainfo exiftool atool patool vlock lftp sshfs
Note, selecting 'libimage-exiftool-perl' instead of 'exiftool'
nnn is already the newest version (5.0-1).
Installing:
atool lftp libimage-exiftool-perl mediainfo patool sshfs vlock
Installing dependencies:
lbzip2 libcompress-raw-lzma-perl libmime-charset-perl libsombok3 libunicode-linebreak-perl
libarchive-zip-perl libmediainfo0v5 libmms0 libtinyxml2-11 libzen0t64
Suggested packages:
arc lzop rpm libposix-strptime-perl libpod2-base-perl | lcab unace lrzip lzip | pdlzip libarchive-tools python3-argcomplete
arj nomarch unace libencode-eucjpascii-perl mediainfo-gui ncompress | unace-nonfree lhasa | plzip sharutils archmage
lzip rar unalz libencode-hanextra-perl cabextract rpm2cpio | nomarch xdms | clzip flac genisoimage
Summary:
Upgrading: 0, Installing: 17, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 1
Download size: 10.4 MB
Space needed: 43.6 MB / 21.3 GB available
Continue? [Y/n]
Thank you.
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