Attempts to install Linux in multi-boot on a 2004 12" Alubook

[Alubook133]

Wow ! That did the trick, wasn't expecting much TBH since I've always had this high CPU usage issue on this page also in Tiger or Sorbet, but it worked great right away - many thanxx !!

While I'm at talking browser (this is on Arctic Fox btw), I'm probably not properly setup because AF does not retain previous login nor font size (per web site/page) as modern browsers do... a bit annoying, not a show stopper but I'd like to know if there's a fix for this (cookies ? Prefs ?).

 

[wicknix]

Check in AF's preferences. If i remember right those older versions of AF launched with "incognito" mode enabled by default. If that fails, use InterWeb or SpiderWeb. Both of those are based on 52.9/60.9 vs 38.9 (AF) and should yield a little better web compatibility. They are slightly heavier though, so they might be a tad slower.

As for xrandr, as i mentioned ubuntu 12's repos are messed up. You could try this. It might get you "some" packages. You'll have to edit /etc/apt/sources.list by hand, then save, then run sudo apt-get update (do NOT do apt-get upgrade or it'll break your install do to the broken repository and missing packages). After that try your xrandr package again.

 

[Alubook133]

Once again you got me out of trouble, I found an AF pref in the Privacy tab to "Remember history", which not only retains forms contents (therefore logins as well), but to yet another surprise for me also retained the specific zoom used last time browsing to a web page, though no pref exists specifically for that functionality (like in Spiderweb or Interweb) - hence my (positive) surprise !

So I've decided to have AF as my preferred browser for now, so much so that the 2 other browsers refuse to show (get into an infinite loop) some JS loaded sites (at least a specific one I tried on the 3 browsers, a weather channel I regularly use). Plus in AF each tab has its own X to close it, very convenient and I'm way too much used (addicted) to it ^^.

A couple of remaining (small) issues for now :

- can't install a FR language pack in AF for spell checking, the "Add dictionaries" item opens a Mozilla addons page which requests a newer version of Firefox (v. 134.0.1), that I have downloaded for the heck of it, Intel code not PPC code I'm afraid.
- likewise, can't add google search engine to the list of search engines (Mozilla addons show 0 result)

These are AF-specific issues, maybe I should try to get answers in an AF thread - though it's also specific to Lubuntu 12.04.

 

[wicknix]

I can help with google search. Just go here: https://addons.palemoon.org/search-plugins/

 

[Alubook133]

Yeah, make sense since AF is based off of Pale Moon (which I'm using in Win11 due to plugins still active).
I then went to Pale Moon addons page (*), tried to install the FR language pack/dictionary but PM told me to gtfo cause AF 27.10.1 is too young for it. Oh well...

(*) Just found out I can't paste in here text from outside this text box, while inside copy-paste does work. That's a bummer, can't post a link without having to type it manually, no way I'll do this. This is not the case out of AF in Linux PPC (e.g. no problemo in Win11/Linux Mint VM).

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

@Certificate of Excellence, thanxx, sad to see that your attempt at this resulted in your machine dying... OTOH it hardly made any dent in your impressive collection of machines...

@wicknix, yeah I'll get to the audio issue soon enough and will try the alsa stuff. I'll have plenty of questions notably on networking and display resolution, as well as what you mentioned about not being able to get updates from the Lubuntu ppc repo which is now definitely down (found a solution for the 2nd monitor which involves installing a package but so far no luck with apt-get etc).

Not remixes fault at all. Just an tired, elderly Mac is all. That was a tough one to lose though. I liked that 12” pb a lot.

 

[Alubook133]

@Certificate of Excellence, yeah it's a great laptop and I love mine (the only one I got).

Just found out I can't paste in here text from outside this text box, while inside copy-paste does work.

unfortunately I have to confirm this problem with AF, though non-existent with other brwosers - so what I have to do is fire up e.g. Interweb whenever I want to paste a link or a chunk of text/code in a post here. :-/

As for xrandr, as i mentioned ubuntu 12's repos are messed up. You could try this. It might get you "some" packages. You'll have to edit /etc/apt/sources.list by hand, then save, then run sudo apt-get update (do NOT do apt-get upgrade or it'll break your install do to the broken repository and missing packages). After that try your xrandr package again.

thanxx so much again ! That worked great, I now have a full setup with dual monitors, fantastic !!



Now as you can see I'm offered to upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS, I guess triggered by the apt-get update with your sources.list, right ? And I suppose I should stick to 12.04, so I'll disable any update with the Software Sources window, am I right ?

Anyway - this is starting to be real interesting - and FUN !

 

[wicknix]

Correct. Don’t upgrade to 14.04. I would disable all automatic updates. I customized 12 remix with a slew of newer packages than what 12 and 14 offer in their repos, and it will most likely downgrade those packages and quite possibly break the install. You can install extra software you find in the repos like you did xrandr, and you may get lucky if the package isn’t actually missing, but i wouldn’t recommend going overboard on that.

Cheers

 

[Alubook133]

Cool stuff, so in reality this "12.04 remix" is a mixture of 12.04 (the majority I suppose), 14.04 and even 16.04... very nice !

I've tried the Hibernate item in the logout menu, however all I got is both screens turn black, a mildly spinning fan (as if the CPU was continuously doing some work), and nothing else, I couldn't wake the laptop up no matter what I tried... so I had to brute force shutdown (which I hate to do, never too sure how the machine will appreciate it, the good thing at least is there's no spinning disk inside anymore).

Is there any hope Hibernate might work (would be great for reasons I've already explained) ? Or at least, Sleep (which is not listed in the Logout menu btw) ?

 

[wicknix]

Hibernate was always hit or miss on PPC Linux. I know if you install this kernel it enables cpu throttling. It might fix hibernate also. Worth a shot i guess. Just uncompress the kernel archive. I believe i added a readme file in the archive to explain how to install it.

Cheers

 

[Alubook133]

Greetings !

Err... well, changing the kernel sounds a little spooky to me... feel like everything could go kaboom if I ever make a mistake or something (though the procedure itself is simple, and yes you have included a README file in the tarfile, thanxx).
So I dunno, I'll probably want to postpone this until I feel confident enough (or I can't stand anymore not being able to sleep/hibernate the laptop, whichever comes first ^^).

Just found out my dual monitor setup via Arandr did not survive a reboot, nor did the panel settings (location in the 2nd monitor bottom, centered, height, etc...) so I need to find a way to have all of this set itself automatically at reboot.

 

[Alubook133]

A brief update to share a tidbit I just found (and I'll continue to share anything I think might be of interest to someone here) that automatically sets a 2nd monitor to a proper resolution at reboot (for details or other similar operations, read here).

The way I did it (there are other ways) was to create a file called .xprofile in my home dir, and write this line in it :

xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1680x1050

to make sure my external monitor would be set to 1680x1050 after each reboot (with the main laptop monitor set to its defaults resolution of 1024x768).

Prior to this I checked with xrandr (no option) which resolutions and refresh rate were available for that monitor, as well as the name given to it (here "DVI-I-1", it's the DVI-I output connected to a VGA input of that monitor, the DVI input is already used by the Win11 PC).

Side note : there's a graphical tool called arandr with which you can play with displays resolutions, position, etc... in fact it's a GUI for xrandr. However it doesn't offer to save your settings, hence the above manip'.

Next tasks :
- automatically get rid of that pesky "desktop 2" (or disable auto switching between desktops by mouse scrolling)
- find how to reboot to either Lubuntu-remix or OS X directly from current login, i.e. without having to go thru the boot picker (hopefully can script this, must be possible to modifiy the boot-device via script or s'thing)
- fix an issue with AF, which fails to reload all tabs (however offers a "Restore tabs" button, so no biggie)

 

[Alubook133]

Getting a tad frustrated here...

The status bar refuses to show up in Arctic Fox, I've tried to change Preferences and stuff but no luck.

Also I'd like to make sure a couple of apps get launched at login, I found this ;

Ubuntu 12.04 has an application to configure startup programs and it's called, totally unexpected - "Startup Applications" (or gnome-session-properties)
You can start it in two ways, either running the following command in the terminal:
gnome-session-properties
or selecting "Startup Applications..." menu item in the system menu

however can't find this "Startup Applications" menu anywhere, then gnome-session-properties results in a "command not found", I tried to apt install it but went to 0% and stopped there.

Any idea how to fix both issues ?

OTOH I've found how to disable the 2nd desktop (to be confirmed at next reboot) by going to :
Preferences -> Openbox Configuration Manager -> Desktops
and decreasing the "Number of desktops" item to 1.

Also, no idea why but suddenly I'm now able to paste text into a post here (was not working until now), that's good !

 

[wicknix]

There was an issue with the status bar in older AF versions. One work-a-round was to enable it as a pop-up, so when you hovered links it would show.

As for your autostart issues, look here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LXDE#Autostart

Cheers

 

[Alubook133]

Once again (and again), that did the trick, wouldn't have thought about trying this, I need to try harder I guess, oh boy do I feel helpless... :/
Btw I love AF in terms of user interface, functionalities, it's really complete and easy to get used to (eg tabs placement via menu). And I just appreciated the fact that after a process kill (a tab went crazy trying to access reverso.net, so had to kill AF) and restart, the piece of text I had written here prior to crash reappeared as if nothing had happened (just like it does in modern FF).

As for the autostart thing, I had read about creating a .desktop file but was looking for something lighter, so I'll look into the LXsession thing :

Applications can be automatically started in a couple of ways:

• With .desktop files
• Via LXsession

Beside, I hadn't noticed before but the dual monitor setup acts strangely, in that the main monitor (1024x768) still mirrors what happens on the 2nd monitor (1680x1050), obviously showing only part of it (the top left 1024x768 part of it), while I thought they were independent (as they are in OS X). Not a problem at all, just would prefer a different behaviour.

 

[wicknix]

Btw I love AF in terms of user interface, functionalities

Well... you might like this then. A few years back i rebranded Pale Moon 28 as "Faded Orb". It obviously has the same UI, but this version would be much newer than AF that's bundled with 12 remix. There's a few other goodies also (like SeaMonkey). All are .deb files and will install and create desktop entries like any other Ubuntu app.

Download

Web Browser for PowerPC Linux and Mac OS X 10.6 and above - wicknix/SpiderWeb

github.com

I've also attached my patched version of Snes9X for 12 remix below if you're interested.

 

[Alubook133]

Interesting, there's already a spiderweb browser app in the 12-remix :

ah shoot, again impossible to paste text in here with AF... gotta switch to Interweb, worked yesterday so I thought that it had fixed itself but no.

Back in Interweb now, so this is what I wanted to post regarding Spiderweb in 12-remix :

Version: 2.1.0 (32-bit)
Build identifier: 20200225
User-agent: SpiderWeb/2.2.1 (X11; Linux ppc; Mobile)

so the one you linked is more recent than this one ? Anyway I'll download it and see how it looks like.

Had no idea what Snes9X is so just checked it, I'm not a gamer but these oldies might be fun (reminds me of crazy "Tetris parties" in the office lol, yeah I'm that old ^^).

 

[wicknix]

Yeah the browsers on that page are updated versions of what i baked in to 12 remix.

Snes9X is a super nintendo emulator. Just download some ROM's and enjoy.

 

[Alubook133]

I most probably will.

Ok so I just installed the newer Spiderweb, looks nice, can paste text here (first thing I tried ^^) so that's nice (and normal, dunno why AF has an issue with this), too bad it doesn't have the X on each tab to close it I'm so used to, and can't install extensions apparently but maybe I need to search for Pale Moon extensions instead of doing a search from the Add-ons manager in spiderweb. Also, glad to see it is equally able to display this web page (TV progs) as nicely as AF is capable of (while many other browsers can't do the job).
Edit : actually spiderweb is the only browser able to also show mouse over text (summary) in that page, be it in OS X or Linux, and trust me I've tried many browsers ! Clearly more web page/JS script execution capabilities built in spiderweb.

A nice convenient feature in AF is the pull-down menu located on the left of the tab bar that gives access to the full browser menu (while it's hidden to save vertical footprint), not present in spiderweb.

Anyway I'll continue to evaluate this version of spiderweb, in particular in comparison with Arctic Fox. Right now having once again the CPU-goes-wild problem on this MR page, seemed to be fixed with the certificates file you provided me but here it goes again, constant 100% CPU usage for minutes on... :-/

 

[wicknix]

too bad it doesn't have the X on each tab to close it I'm so used to, and can't install extensions

I have a fix for that also. Lol.

spiderweb-addons.zip

drive.google.com

Inside is an extension called SeaTab. Install that to get close buttons on each tab. Just drag and drop the .xpi file to an empty SpiderWeb tab to install.

 

[wicknix]

A nice convenient feature in AF is the pull-down menu located on the left of the tab bar that gives access to the full browser menu (while it's hidden to save vertical footprint)

To the far left of each tool bar are little arrow buttons . Click those to hide/unhide menus/controls.

As for 100% cpu on this forum, turn off the Rich Text editor - you can disable it in your MR profile preferences.

 

[Alubook133]

I have a fix for that also. Lol.

haha, at this point just send me the bill and I'll see what I can do. 😂

To the far left of each tool bar are little arrow buttons . Click those to hide/unhide menus/controls.

yeah I've seen these, but none of them offers the full browser menu, they're more dedicated menus - but I'll check again, I've probably missed something here.
EDIT : I indeed missed s'thing, I had to first unhide the menu bar and then hide it with the arrow type button - duh !

As for 100% cpu on this forum, turn off the Rich Text editor - you can disable it in your MR profile preferences.

I'll try this, a bit perplexed though since this trick was not needed until yesterday, the certificates file really made a huge difference initially... oh well, anyway we shall see.
EDIT : no "Rich Text editor" setting in the MR Preferences, there's font size, language and stuff, but nothing else related to editing.

 

[Alubook133]

Inside is an extension called SeaTab. Install that to get close buttons on each tab. Just drag and drop the .xpi file to an empty SpiderWeb tab to install.

works great, thanxx ! Now getting closer to what I'm looking for...

Btw there seem to be a bunch of interesting add-ons in the tarfile, I was looking into having Ublock Origin added to the browser and I see an extension named uBlock0-libre@raymondhill.net, tempted to give it a shot...

 

[Alubook133]

... which I did, and was worth it, installed flawlessly and have started to do its ads blocking bizness.

I've also tried a few themes included in that tarfile, and stopped at the "classic Firefox for Seamonkey" look.

Unfortunately things have become unbearable on the 'book while browsing in this forum, so much so that I'm typing this from my PC, had to have pity on my CPU and furiously spinning fans...

As I mentioned above, didn't find a "Rich Text editor" setting in the MR Preferences that could explain the CPU at 100% problem, or rather could help minimize it. Btw I noticed that when that happens it's very often the Xorg process that goes wild, and by "wild" I mean 98% CPU, not so much spiderweb itself.

I've tried to set spiderweb priority to -10 in the System manager app to at least be able to continue work while things go bad, but that didn't change anything (make sense if Xorg is the "preferred culprit" here, and anyway the Prio number was unaffected ).

 

[Alubook133]

Autostart of applications at login done, just had to create a file "autostart" under ~/.config/lxsession/Lubuntu and list in it the apps I wanted to automatically launch at DE startup (task manager, lxterm and spiderweb for now, will grow later, reminds me that I'm still to find a nice analog clock desktop widget, miss this a lot).

Since the shutdown only takes a few seconds, and ditto for getting the Lubuntu desktop to show up (now with some applications auto launching), maybe I can avoid the need for an "hibernation" functionality if I can somehow force the laptop to reboot to Lubuntu OS directly, i.e. without the hassle and waste of time to have to go thru the boot picker first.

I suppose it's a matter of setting the OF boot-dev parameter to the right "device" (volume/partition and boot loader), but not 100% sure, and maybe there are other ways...