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June virtual meeting!
by Tim Keller June 9, 2020

June 9, 2020

Hey Gang! Well, we're still not quite out of it, so this month's meeting is going to be virtual again. I've been watching Technopia's website and they're now open to members only. I think when it's open to the general public, we'll follow the CDC guidelines, see what Technopia wants to do and have a real in person meeting. I hope everybody has kept sane, okay less crazy, during the quarantine. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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X1 Carbon Gen8 review
by joshua.gage.stone＠gmail.com June 7, 2020

June 7, 2020

Hey all, Since Lenovo has been making announcements about shipping Linux on their machines [1] and expanding on their certifications [2], I decided to purchase an X1 Carbon Gen8 [3] as my newest daily driver. I thought I'd share some thoughts after installing Fedora 32 on it. Chassis: The X1 Carbon has excellent build quality. Despite being an ultrathin laptop, it feels quite solid in my hands and is well-balanced when grasping with one hand. Weighing in at 2.38 lbs, it's much lighter and smaller than my T480 (4.03 lbs) which makes it more ideal for traveling. The laptop doesn't flex or wobble when typing either. Ports: The number of ports is quite good compared to other ultrathin laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and Macbook. Two USB-C ports are available which are its main method of charging (very useful for sharing cables too). There are two also standard USB-A ports, as well as an HDMI port and headphone jack. There isn't native ethernet which is a bit of a disappointment, but fortunately this is mitigated with a dongle that comes with the laptop. There isn't an SD card slot or even a microSD slot either, but the SD card reader dongle I already use with my desktop can be used instead. Monitor: The FHD 400 nit screen is very good. Costa Rica 4K [4] -- which is typically used as a benchmark for demonstrating display quality -- looks quite nice on it. I don't have a colorimeter [5] on hand for measuring the full capabilities of the screen in a more empirical fashion, but it should be capable of showing the full sRGB range as well as covering most of Adobe RGB. The 4K HDR 500 nit configuration should be more ideal if color reproduction and HDR are of utmost importance. Keyboard: Thinkpads are well renowned for their keyboards, and the keyboard on the Carbon is no exception. The keys feel just right to me when typing, not being too mushy or too clicky. They also don't give off much noise, which is very much appreciated when working in a quiet room. Speakers: I'm quite happy with the quality of the Dolby Atmos speakers. Usually laptop speakers are a disappointment to me, but the speakers on the Carbon are more than capable of handling different genres of music. The speaker alignment being upward-facing instead of side-facing as seen in other thinkpads also makes it better for watching videos and listening to music with other people. It does seem a bit lacking in bass-heavy music [6], but the built-in DAC is more than capable of driving a pair of good-quality headphones [7]. I might have to make an update on this later because Dolby Atmos support on Linux appears to be a work in progress and may need a preset to have it more closely match the speaker output on Windows [8] in the meantime. Battery: I can get a decent amount of battery life from the 51Wh battery, usually about 14 hours with light usage and medium screen brightness on stock Fedora. I think I could easily squeeze more battery life out of it if I installed Powertop or TLP, but hopefully battery optimizations land in upstream so no extra work needs to be done by the time Fedora 33 comes out. Noise & thermals: This laptop is quiet! Even when playing 1080p@60fps video in a quiet room, the fan don't make any audible noise. Multi-core workloads like code compiling also don't seem to be an issue on this laptop. Sensors report roughly 70C during such workloads, and the fan gives off a low amount of noise that's well within acceptable range. Performance & Stability: The i7-10510U performs quite well. It appears to be about as fast as the R5 2600X in my desktop at compile tasks, which is especially impressive considering this is in an ultrathin laptop! It also remains responsive for multitasking while compiling, still being able to play fullscreen video in Firefox while dropping a few frames when attempting to switch tabs (considering it's able to sustain full 60fps playback otherwise while most cores are saturated, this is still acceptable). Suspend support on the Carbon is rock solid too. I've repeatedly closed the lid and opened it back up to have it immediately wake up from suspend, making it ideal for keeping around on standby for when I want to look something up. Vendor Support: Almost everything about this laptop works out of the box on Fedora, with one exception being that firmware for the fingerprint sensor is currently still in testing and needs to be explicitly enabled [9] if you want to enable fingerprint login & authentication from Gnome Settings Since I bought the Carbon before Lenovo started offering a configuration with Linux preinstalled, I ended up paying for a Windows license. Lenovo support however was quite understanding of my situation in having no desire to run Windows on it, and provided a refund for the license. I think this is noteworthy since they previously didn't offer a refund when I previously bought my T480 a few years ago. Enabling hardware decoding support for improving CPU usage and battery life [10] is also trivial. Firefox appears to consume 15%-25% CPU during fullscreen 1080p@60fps video playback, and VLC is usually using 8%-15% for the same video. It's worth noting that Firefox's accelerated decoding support is still bleeding-edge and probably has room for optimizations, and I'd imagine VLC could be even more efficient once it has native Wayland support. Conclusion: Overall, I'm very happy with this laptop, both on the software and hardware side. Despite being brand new, the out-of-the-box Linux support has been some of the best I've seen in a long time and the tweaks I've had to do for it were quite minimal. I think once Lenovo sorts out their official Linux support (I still don't see it offered as an OS option in the customization page), they'll have a truly stellar product that they can market to Linux users as a daily driver. Sources: 1. https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-laptops/ 2. https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-brings-linux-certif… 3. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p… 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXb3EKWsInQ 5. https://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-Color-Munki-Smile-ColorMunki/dp/B009APMNB0/ 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgRr0CLFhaw 7. https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-M50xBT-Wireless-Bluetooth-Headpho… 8. https://github.com/JackHack96/PulseEffects-Presets/tree/master/irs 9. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_7)#Fing… 10. https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-…

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Signing a driver for UEFI in Debian
by Richard Klein June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

I'm trying to build Droidcam. Part of the install process wants to sign a driver: "Secure Boot is enabled, attempting to sign the driver please specify signing key location (or leave empty to sign manually later) You can Google 'secure boot' for your distro Enter the path of the public key:" Googling didn't show me a clear answer. Does anyone know what path it's looking for? -- Rich

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8GB Pi4 announced!!!
by Tim Keller May 29, 2020

May 29, 2020

The Pi4 people announced an 8GB version for $75! That's enough ram you could run a chrome tab or two! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Creating Hotspot and Fedora 32
by Dennis Payne May 19, 2020

May 19, 2020

I upgraded to Fedora 32 last night. I can create a hotspot like I did with Fedora 31 but connecting to it fails. I use: nmcli dev wifi hotspot ifname wlp3s0 ssid <name> password <password> Is there something else I need to do with Fedora 32? -- Dennis Payne dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi

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Reminder: Meeting tomorrow! Your/My/Everybody's house! 7PM! via Jitsi!
by Tim Keller May 13, 2020

May 13, 2020

Hey Everybody, Yup, we're all trapped at home like crazed rats in a maze, but that can't stop us from having a WLUG meeting! Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Time: 7pm - Whenever we want to stop! Topic: Lots of stuff I'm sure! Snacks and refreshments sadly won't be provided, though expect a fair amount of eating and drinking on camera! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Manjaro - Caffeine Question
by hammerron May 10, 2020

May 10, 2020

I'm looking a bit at Manjaro 20.0, with Gnome, and when I first ran, saw in the top right (system tray?) a coffee cup symbol. I believe that this means that the Caffeine-ng program might have been running. I have not seen the coffee cup symbol since. I tried to click on the Caffeine icon, and also the Caffeine Preferences icon, but seems like nothing happened. I tried searching the Manjaro forums and have not found a solution. Any thoughts? (Sent it to the WLUG, maybe Forrest or another Manjaro user will see it ) Ron

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RDP into Win10 with Remmina
by Richard Klein April 29, 2020

April 29, 2020

I'm getting tired of booting into Windows for work. I figured out how to connect to the VPN from Debian, but it would be very helpful to RDP into the workstation in my office. I know the URL for my workstation, the domain, the username, and the password, but I'm failing to get it to work. What should I try? Remmina says "Connecting to <server>..." for a minute, then fails with "Connection to RDP server <server> failed." -- Rich

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Fedora 32 release
by Joshua Stone April 28, 2020

April 28, 2020

Hey everyone, Fedora 32 came out today and it looks very solid! Here's a post detailing many of the core improvements: https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-32/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/28/fedora-workstation-swamp-draining… I'm quite happy to see so much work going into components that I use every day, including Gnome Shell, Toolbox, Wayland, and Pipewire. The Firefox improvements should be especially helpful for when we do our next Jitsi Meet call. -Josh

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Does LINUX still exist?
by Ken Jones April 24, 2020

April 24, 2020

I am trying for figure out what, if anything, of FEDORA RED HAT LINUX is still available. I have downloaded a DVD that I plan to install on my DELL XPS desktop PC running WINDOWS 10. Will it find for me my old LINUX atmosphere? Ken Jones

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