PSA : Linux support for Kaby Lake laptops - JANUARY 2017

This isn't as much a post, as it is an update on the state of Kernel and Distro support for Kaby Lake laptops, as of early January 2017.

Trivia:
Kaby Lake support was introduced in Linux 4.5, and only came of age closer to 4.8, although not with its fair share of quirks. GPU support for corresponding Intel integrated graphics is very much a work in progress, but as of 4.9 seems to be in usable condition.

Test Environment:
CPU : Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz
GPU : Intel Integrated Graphics 620
RAM : 8GB DDR4 2400MHz
HDD : Sandisk Ultra II 480GB SATA3 SSD

All installs, unless otherwise specified, used an encrypted LVM disk with default setup.

Summary
Good : openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora 25
OK : Ubuntu 16.10
Bad : openSUSE Leap 42.2, *buntu 16.04 LTS
Unknown : antergos, Linux Mint 18.1

In some greater detail...
openSUSE Leap 42.2 is on Kernel 4.4, as is Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS and its myriad derivates(tested on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu.).

Fedora Workstation 25 comes with an outdated kernel, but a dnf update on a fresh install takes the kernel to 4.8. It had no visible issues, except this was the only distro where sound did not work out of the box. Running  service alsa force-restart as root solved the problem however. 

openSUSE Leap 42.2 consequently has some bug which results in "X Window System" having CPU utilisation skyrocket to the point of unusability. A purely CLI session which startx disabled seemed to work fine for the limited time I tested it.

*buntu 16.04, on the other hand, seems to start up fine, but freezes at random intervals, usually triggered by browser start-up. The only way to restore control is a force reboot, as keyboard shortcuts, force logouts and switching off X, all seem to have no effect whatsoever.

Ubuntu 16.10 (also tested on Kubuntu) comes with Linux 4.8, which thankfully has much better support.However, hardware acceleration seems iffy, and running a 4K video on vlc, or YouTube has framerate issues that weren't present in Fedora's similar kernel.

openSUSE Tumbleweed (release 20170104), openSUSE's rolling release runs on a 4.9 kernel, and has stellar support on KDE, but tracker takes up way too much RAM on GNOME. Not sure if it is a GNOME issue or Kaby Lake issue, though.

For antergos, the ISO Refresh 2016.11.20 failed to boot up from an USB key. There is now a new ISO download available (as of Jan 6, 2017) which I have not tested.

Linux Mint 18.1 MATE seemed to have it's mirrors down last I checked. I will try to update it's testing once I have a chance to give it a spin.

Analytics - Phase 4

It's that time of the year again. 

Just kidding. If there is one thing about this blog's schedule that is consistent, that is its inconsistency of schedule.

There has been this irregular tradition of looking at what kind of people (read "computers") chance upon my little corner.

In its latest iteration, we see a surprise surge in visits from the Cult of Mac! Also, Chrome has finally dethroned Firefox at the browser helm, over two years after it did so in the world's wider web.

Well, how have the interwebz shifted over the years then. We see quite a few interesting trends as time passed by. This is the 4th such post, so let's see how the balance has shifted over the years.

Since its early days, Chrome users had held their own in terms of traffic. In the last couple of years, however, it has grown from lingering in Firefox's shadow to claim its place under the sun, while IE, almost always on the verge of a comeback, will likely never quite catch on in these parts.

Also of note is the "other" section, fuelled almost entirely by esoteric KHTML and Dilo-like renderers in the early days, but replaced by more simplistic, yet consistently growing mobile-based alternatives.

Speaking of mobile alternatives, the practical absence of mobile visits can be better visualised by the OS share variance with time, with "other" accounting for a humongous 0 percentage points during the earlier years, while growing to a healthy 10% in recent times. 

Given it's FOSSy leanings, Linux-based user-strings have always been over-represented for this blog that for the web-at-large, but the sudden spurt in Mac visits is an unexplained surprise, which may or may not be explicable by the proliferation of "cheaper" Macs like the Air, the Mini and the Pro non-retina.

Note 1: All of these number are cumulative(since early 2009), so the trends would be more pronounced if we take each period in isolation. A year by year comparison might be in order, especially if compared to overall trends in market 

Note 2: Previous iterations lie here: Part 3 2 1

Automatic headphone detection in Alienware M17xR4 for openSUSE Leap 42.1

All to often, people dismiss Linux if something tiny doesn't work out of the box. They claim that one does not face such problems in Windows, forgetting the extensive jumping through hoops known as installing a bunch of drivers that negates the whole "out of the box" premise.

I had just gotten a fresh install of openSUSE Edu Li-f-e, based on Leap 42.1, running on the behemoth that is Alienware M17xR4. All seemed fine until I realised that plugging a headphone into the relevant jack does not reroute the sound output through the headphones, while the speakers keep blasting away.

Pulseaudio, or rather pavucontrol, was helpful enough to switch between line-out and headphones on cue within the GUI, albeit with little effect, as the sound output remained unaffected.

The situation wasn't too different with the KDE's "Audio Volume" module, which largely seems to be a front end to pulseaudio.

As I was bungling through the settings, I realised that the issue wasn't detection of headphones, as it was the switching audio output from the speakers to  the headphone.

Enter, alsa!

alsamixer has a particularly unhelpful welcome display, which has no bearing on the level of customisability it offers.

AlsaMixer intro screen

We can, however, get much better controls, once we manually select the sound card (Press F6).

Note: If you fail to find the option for the given sound card, See Note 1 at the bottom of the post.

AlsaMixer - select sound card

We then navigate to the  HP/Speaker Auto Detect (in red in the image below) and toggle to ON (by pressing M).

AlsaMixer - change HP/Speaker Auto Detect

If you get stuck along the way,  help is just an F1 away.

Help menu for AlsaMixer

Note 1:

If you fail to find the option for the given sound card, add the line 

options snd-hda-intel model=alienware at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa.conf .
If the file does not exist, look through the folder /etc/modprobe.d/ to check if any similar file exists with a different number preceding it, and edit the same.

Note 2:

Packages used:
alsa-1.0.29-10.1.x86_64
pulseaudio-7.0-3.1.x86_64
pavucontrol-3.0-5.3.x86_64

Note 3:

There are multiple audio jacks in the M17xR4, so for the above process to work the headphone/ext. speaker needs to be plugged into the jack shown below

Audio jack in Alienware M17xR4 for auto headphone detection

Analytics - Phase 3

Resurrection!

It seems Linux on the desktop is coming of ages. Or is it another meaningless attempt at quantifying user base?

For the first time in this series, the windows stronghold seems to be loosening, but there is atleast one surprising new entrant on this list, Opera Mini. I would have loved to see the count spread by platform, but Opera Mini's structure almost explicitly makes that a foolish dream.

Part 1

Part 2

Also, FWIW, I've moved!

Super

I have been advised in good authority, that a Dutch tourist is more likely to to be heard saying "Super" than any of their other European brethren. I have insufficient empirical evidence either for or against the statement,

I have also been advised, again by people who know better, never to use

sudo ...

where

su -c ...

can be used instead. This "super" advice, after having been burnt several times over in the past few days, I now hold as undeniable truth.

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born
the super user (mis)privilege
haunted me till the morn!

A thousand words...

If "a picture is worth a thousand words", we can actually determine it's resolution.

We know the average length of an English word lies in the vicinity of 5.1 letters.
Assuming 8-bit ASCII uncompressed text, and using RGB bitmap with 24bit colour for the image,

1000 words ~ 5100 letters + 999 spaces + n punctuation marks.

Average length of an English sentence approaches 14.3 words. Each sentence needs a concluding punctuation in form of a period. Non-concluding punctuation is observed slightly more regularly than in every other sentence. For the sake of simplicity, let's consider it converges at 1.6 punctuation marks per sentence.

So, number of sentences =  1000 / 14.3  =  69.93  ~  70
Therefore,  n  ~  70  *  1.6  =  112

So, 1000 words ~ (5100 + 999 + 112) = 6211 characters = 49688 bits.

Getting to the image side of affairs,

Each pixel in a RGB bitmap with 24-bit colour (I really hope you don't need more than 16 million colours for that picture we are talking about) is naturally of 24 bits.

So we can fit in a mere 49688/24 = 2070 pixels into such an image. That would be smaller than even an iPhone icon, which requires 3249 of those dots (Android icon sizes vary).

Given that text is usually in Unicode these days (UTF-32 needs 4B per character), and jpeg/tiff/png, etc compresses images in a major manner(15:1 compression is passe), more pixels could be fitted into the 1000 words in question. About 3-5 times the pixels, to be precise. Text compression using Huffman encoding (~2.9:1 for a 27 letter alphabet), quite commonplace, however results in even fewer pixels.

All these and other intricate considerations may possibly average each other out in the greater scheme of things.

This, however, does not change the fundamental truth that if your average photo is worth a thousand average words, you need a new photo.

Or to paraphrase what I read somewhere on twitter, A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes up ten thousand times the space.

Anybody interested in helping me write an app/program that calculates how many words your picture is worth? Mail me.

P.S. I have corroborated the word statistics from several sources, but had no way of testing their authenticity/data. So I'm not linking to any of them.

openSUSE 11.4 - A new life

As many of you know, and the rest, well they'll know by the end of this sentence, openSUSE 11.4 released yesterday, the 10th of March, 2011. It'll be the seventh straight release I use, and the 4th release since I became associated with the Project.

To download visit : http://software.opensuse.org/

Unfortunately, my old machine is still running on 11.3, and the all new Vostro I got today has, wait for it, Windows Vista, both of which I plan to amend tomorrow. Sadly, that was not possible today because seeding the ISO was, I felt, more important than selfishly enjoying Geeko glory. So, no donut, oh sorry, screenshot for you.

The journey to openSUSE 11.4 has been anything but smooth. [1] says well why.
But I'd like to add to that.

The initial rumours about Novell, openSUSE's primary being up for sale did not go down well with the community, as we have seen the last major sale of a Free Software leaning company, Stanford University Networks, as very unfavourable to the FOSS community, with important jobs axed, opensolaris dead, and Openoffice.org left to potentially rot, with Libreoffice being a bold step by the people who care, to infuse life into the best office suite in the world.

The sale to Attachmate that eventually followed, did not help cool matters, due to the following,
1. No one had ever heard of it.
2. The sale of those patents to a shady conglomerate!

However, Attachmate seems to be serious enough about the feasibility of SUSE to run it as a separate division. And THIS is what they have to say about openSUSE. May be lip service, or may not be.

Now to the many firsts. openSUSE 11.4 is the first major distribution release to have stable LibreOffice, has Firefox 4, GNOME 3 preview(optional), KDE 4.6 and loads of other new stuff like Scribus 1.4, KOffice 2.3.1, etc. Also new is the support for Tumbleweed, a rolling release.
A more detailed Product Highlights is available.

But these are not the only important changes. Many new faces in every team, marketing collaboration days, a great openSUSE Conference, attempts at clearly defined strategies and trademark guidelines, all this has worked to largely improve the cohesive co-operation that is the openSUSE project.

We have had our share of growing pains, with membership issues and policy being cause for heated debate. Stability has always been the strength of the openSUSE distribution. The openSUSE community has done well to learn that it has to show the same stability in every step, not just in the lines of code. We have come out of it, not just better, but cleverer. We are a community that has a worldwide spread, contributors and users alike. In our do-o-cracy, we are not judged by our race, sex, or politics, but by our actions. A great example would be our team of 125 Ambassadors, who come from a whooping 47 countries. Another new initiative to overcome the gender divide otherwise stark in FOSS is the Women of openSUSE Project.

We have been lucky to have partners like OMG!SUSE! at our side.

With a clearer sense of identity and purpose, we hope to march from strength to strength, so that we can continue to bring to you, openSUSE, all of it!
(Now, now I can't promise what the next release number will be, so hang on for the ride!)

Join us in making the world Greener (most puns intended)! http://www.opensuse.org

As we heard in Batman Begins, "It's not who you are underneath - it's what you do that defines you."

My views on openSUSE LTS

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the viability of a Long Term Support release for openSUSE. Some have proposed a separate LTS version, some a rolling release called Tumbleweed. Some have shown support for both, suggesting they coexist as separate sub-projects. Yet others have suggested we create an openSLES, a "free as in free beer"(to think that this phrase even exists) version for SUSE Enterprise, much like what the CentOS people do with RedHat Enterprise Linux.

This discussion has spiralled into multiple threads on the opensuse-project list. The threads have been linked to at the end of this post.

My reply in regards to the discussion is summed up below:-

1. I have a feeling the two being analogised to CentOS is a bit unfair. openSUSE's relation with SLE has always been more the Fedora to RHEL kind. We, as a project, form a base, not a copy of SUSE's enterprise offerings, if typically more conservatively than competition.

2. openSUSE has the direct primary sponsorship of Novell. CentOS has no official affiliation with RH. An openSLES may antagonise Novell/SUSE/Attachmate's friendly approach.

3. Offering of an LTS version alternately with a couple of normal versions has not been discussed. I wonder why. Ubuntu does that quite appreciably, (though I have never personally encountered an Ubuntu-powered server).
From Wikipedia, "To date every fourth release, in the second quarter of even-numbered years, has been designated as a Long Term Support (LTS) release, indicating that it has updates for three years for desktop use and five years for server"

To say what that means, let's say we have 12.0 as LTS(5 release cycle support), then 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 with normal 2.2 cycle support. Then again 13.0 as LTS, and so on. This will cause an LTS version to be perennially active, while having a "cutting edge" version for systems here stability is not primary.
This would help a only one extra already present older version needs to be maintained, reducing stress on the developers.

4. The point mooted in (3) can also help on standardising a versioning scheme, the need for which was discussed but never finalised some time earlier, probably on the marketing and project lists.

5. Nelson Marques has a point. Too many offerings would cause confusion. Normal openSUSE vs openSUSE LTS vs openSUSE Tumbleweed vs openSLES has already confused me to an extent.

6. Someone suggested binary compatibility with SLES would make people recommend SLES for paid-for-support Linux. While I appreciate Novell's roles in what openSUSE is today, I personally feel SLES sales figures are not supposed to be the concern of the openSUSE project.
Furthermore, even openSUSE can be paid-for-support Linux, considering people pay for 90 day support or something like that when they buy the box.




Threads
[1] Announcing openSUSE Tumbleweed project Nov '10 Dec'10
[2] openSUSE LTS Nov '10 Dec'10
[3] Packman for Tumbleweed

GNUSIM unscrewed...

Last Saturday, I was in an intensely FOSSible mood. I had just gotten rid of the Control systems paper and was struggling to get back control of my life, fighting for my MUKTI as one might very well say. Well, suddenly I realised how much I had lost touch with my once fabled programming skills, how even the best(albeit, only among schoolmates) can rust out in this blisteringly moving world and be swept away into oblivion. So, indulging in glorious self-pity, even more so when I discussed my dying C skills with Debayan <here>, I decided to move to the other end of the Free Software world, that of the user. So, I set off to find the most practical softwares an Electronics Engineer could possibly need, and start using them. Even then, I was under Debayan's tutelage, who introduced me to uclinux, which I didn't really get very enthusiastic about. So he recommended GNUSIM8085, an 8085 microprocessor simulator, which was of more immediate use to me. In these days of one click installs, no-one even miles close to me in LAZINESS likes to compile from source. In fact, when I was more into coding, many of my programs used to lie around uselessly for the simple reason that I was too lazy to debug them. People used to even say my coding was sub-par, with my football sized ego(back then) coming to my rescue, making me challenge them to stupid stuff like algo design. But although my ego has long left my side, unfortunately, or maybe not so unfortunately, my laziness hasn't. Still in the lack of other options I decided to do something I typically do once in like a quarter. So I set about the job. But it was not meant to be as easy a road as it could have been. First this dependency missing then another. Then somehow I managed to load a package already around because I wasn't paying attention. After all this when the magic word "done" appeared on my screen I wanted to jump up in ecstacy. Settling down, I rushed to /usr/bin to try it out. Then, I realised, that I had never even done make install. Routing myself back to the installation folder, I carried out my duties. Then, finally heaving a sigh of relief, I went back to the binaries when I was greeted by the best message of all : Display cannot be opened. :-( I seriously considered applying for euthanasia, but as it was already 5:15 am by then, and I had an exam the following Monday, the plans were overwhelmed by melatonin(for the uninitiated, it is our biological clock hormone!) and I dozed off. The next morning, or rather afternoon(my morning), I had a brainstorm of sorts and without rhyme or reason, delved back into the installation folder. There I noticed a copy of the binary resting in peace. For the lack of better things to do, I clicked it, and bingo! Here finally, was the first Free tronicate software, up and running in my teenie weenie little netbook. My entire effort was logged by the inimitable myself using CTRL+C CTRL+V, the greatest computer shortcut ever envisaged. It is as follows:

kkn@linux-vnz8:~/Desktop/gnusim8085-1.3.5> ./configure
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
...
....
......
(gnusim8085:8374): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0
linux-vnz8:/usr/bin #

Here's a shot of when I started:


And here is the working version:

GLUG, NIT Durgapur Annual General Meeting.

This write up took a long time coming. My apologies to all concerned. Nevertheless, this AGM took a long time coming too. When it did come though, it had little if any scope for complaint. The Annual General Meeting, 2008-09 of GNU/Linux User's Group, NIT Durgapur took place on Wednesday, the 8^th of April, 2009 at the conference hall of the D.M.Sen Memorial building. It was finely attended, and the faculty was represented at the meeting by our very own S.Chowdhury sir, Sajal sir & S.Das sir, all from the I.T. Department. The meeting, scheduled for 6p.m. started in time. We were addressed by our teachers who shared a few kind words with us and assured us that their blessings and advise would always be with us. S.C. Sir told us that we should keep setting higher goals for ourselves, and be ready to overcome newer frontiers. He gave us examples of various people who had done pathbreaking work despite roadblocks and lack of support, including the illustrious work of S.Das sir. He also spoke of how our GLUG had, despite opposition from various quarters and a non-supportive administration, risen from a low to become a respected FOSS awareness hub, reaching new heights that had never been contemplated earlier, to become one of the best known GLUGs in the country. He praised the vision and tenacity of both the student members and the faculty advisors which had made this possible, specifically mentioning Debayan and Mayank among students. Sajal Sir encouraged us to turn our GLUG into an even larger entity, which would change the face of computer usage and the image of GNU/Linux as a geeky OS, at the least in our state, at the most...well, you know. He spoke of 4 things that had changed the recent world, namely Google, Wikipedia, MIT OpenCourseWare and Youtube! videos, and how we could very well be the fifth. He was followed by S.Das sir who spoke of the various opportunities we have and get and how we should go out and use them to our benefit.

This was followed by a presentation by Debayan, the outgoing head of our Software Development Unit. He spoke of the various shortcomings of GLUG in it's earlier avatar, which had caused it to partially collapse and how it had risen from that low, thanks to the undying enthusiasm and support of the concerned teachers and students. He spoke of the plethora of work done by GLUG, NITD in the past two years and of how this work can be carried on by it in the coming years. He spoke of the grand success of Mukti '09 in achieving it's primary goal, not that of pulling in huge crowds but of reaching out to the right places where spreading FOSS awareness mattered. Thanks to Mukti '09, new GLUGs have come up at several places like NIT Agartala, NIT Jamshedpur and KGEC, Kalyani. The working of GLUG, NITD has matured over its 5 year life, and it has grown to become a resource hub of sorts for the entire region, with other close-by GLUGs calling in for technical and logistic support. He spoke of the extremely helpful role of IOTA, Govt. Of West Bengal, in providing us with psychological and financial support when we were facing difficult times, and in its usefulness to the future plans and functioning of GLUG. He also gave us an idea and useful advice on the future tasks and responsibilities of GLUG, with plans like the FOSS helpline and Freedom toaster. We realised how much we had done recently and how much more needed to be done yet if what we did was really to bring about the change we wanted. Thanks to Varsha's efforts and survey, now 75 of 228 girls in our college used one distro or another of GNU/Linux, a positive tendency, to say the least, at the grassroots level. It was clear from his words that to make Free Software a true success, the basics were where we needed to go back to. The 3 mailing lists(well practically two,)received the much deserved attention in their role in popularising GNU/Linux, both in and outside the campus. The list of common interest would be groups.google.com/group/nitdgplug .

Shreyank, or Shrink as he likes to be called, spoke of his 4yr tryst with GLUG, from its early days to its current state. Entwined though his words were in his characteristic PJs, his dedication and love for GNU/Linux and Free Software was hard to miss. It's people like him, with their delicate balance of sanity and dedication, that our GLUG would miss the most.

The Director shared a few kind words with us, about our future course of action and priorities.

Following this, the new GLUG committee was announced and the outgoing committee was issued certificates of appreciation.

The committees are as follows :

NEW: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgt7ftmz_32w522kgh&invite=692183710

OLD: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfxc9dkf_14dpv742zt&invite=293702772

The meeting was then concluded at around 8.