Linux on Living Systems_

The chroot Technique - a Swiss army multitool for Linux systems

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:27:28 +0200

Ever ran into a Linux box that just won’t boot, even after making sure that BIOS settings are OK and that no major hardware errors are at hand?

Then you need to know about the chroot technique, which can be a real life saver.

For example, I managed to repair a Nanopore GridION device this way the other week, after the official method of re-installing it via an .iso file failed, which reminded me to make the effort of documenting these steps.

Random notes from installing Debian 11 with separate accounts for work and private

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:50:00 +0100

See especially the end for info about how to set up a nice integration between the work and private accounts, such that one can e.g. occasionally start the mail client or web browser from the private account from the work one etc.

Caveats when installing Debian 11

Make sure that an EFI partition is created (when I manually modified the partition table I accidentally deleted it, and had to reinstall to get it created properly again).
Had to turn off safe boot in BIOS
Had to set SATA settings to AHCI
Had to manually create a boot option with the path to
```
\EFI\debian\grubx64.efi
```
in BIOS settings

Instructions for configuring Debian to my liking

Add current user to sudo
- Switch user to root:
```
usermod -aG sudo <username>
```
- Log out and back the user
Uncomment CDROM remotes in /etc/apt/sources.list
Change default search engine in firefox to duckduckgo
Replace applications menu with whiskers menu

Install some packages:

sudo apt install vim git tig tmux curl tree rsync gparted
    ecryptfs-utils redshift bash-completion bluez blueman

Clone rc folder:

git clone https://github.com/samuell/rc.git

Link rc files:
```
ln -s rc/.{b,v,t}* .
```
Create empty .bash_aliases_local:
```
touch ~/.bash_aliases_local
```

Activate in bashrc:

cat 'if [ -f ~/.bashrc_mods ]; then . ~/.bashrc_mods; fi' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Install vim-plug:

curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

Run :PlugInstall in vim:
```
vim -c ":PlugInstall" -c "qa!"
```

In “Keyboard settings > Application shortcuts” add two shortcuts:

xfce4-popup-whiskermenu    # Ctrl+Esc
xfce4-terminal --drop-down # Super+Space

Open the terminal with Win+Space, and configure:
- Set width to 100%
- Uncheck always show tabs
- Uncheck show menubar in new windows
- Configure color to more pastel like colors according to my new method
In Appearance…
- Set style to “Adwaita-dark”
- Set fonts to “Adwaita”
- Set main font to “Sans Regular 8”
- Let main monospace font be “Monospace Regular 10”
In terminal preferences, set font to “Monospace Regular 10”
In Window manager, set shortcuts:
- Tile window up/down/left/right: Super up/down/left/right
- Move window Ctrl+Alt+F
- Resize window Ctrl+Alt+R
Install and configure Brave browser
Encrypt home folder

Set up separate work and private accounts

Create the separate accounts
Encrypt folder of both

In order to run private commands from the work account and vice versa:

Installing Qubes OS

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 06:59:00 +0100

I just switched to Qubes OS as operating system on my main work laptop (a Dell Latitude). Or in fact, one of the reasons was to be able to combine work and private hobby coding projects, that’s increasinbly been happening on the same machine. Anyways, these are my experiences and notes, as a way to document caveats and quirks in case I need to do this again, while possibly also being of use for others.

Terminator as a middle-way between floating and tiling window managers

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 19:22:00 +0200

I have tried hard to improve my linux desktop productivity by learning to do as much as possible using keyboard shortcuts, aliases for terminal commands etc etc (I even produced an online course on linux commandline productivity ).

In this spirit, I naturally tried out a so called tiling window manager (aka tiling wm). In short, a tiling wm organizes all open windows on the screen (or on the current desktop) into a “tiled” grid of frames. You can then control how these frames are created, resized, as well as switch focus between the frames, all using keyboard shortcuts. This allows you to avoid leaving the keyboard for moving windows around or resizing them, before starting your work in a new program.