Elementary OS: Initial Impressions

Given that I've just recently install Elementary OS on my 2023 Macbook Pro (see previous post), it seems appropriate to make some initial observations about its functionality. The OS doesn't come with much software installed and my first order of business was to download the Chrome browser which is my browser of choice and upon which I am heavily reliant. That proved relatively painless thanks to Google's clear instructions. The OS has a so-called App Centre but Chrome was not listed there and so was of no help whatsoever.

The App Centre Software Categories

Next I installed my ExpressVPN and once again that was easy enough thanks to their very helpful website. No help of course from the App Centre but typing "torrents" into the search bar of the same brought up Gabut Download Manager that supposedly handles torrent files and I needed that. Happily, the app works fine when I downloaded a test ebook but that's when the awful realisation downed on me that I'd erased my Calibre library of ebooks. For some reason it didn't cross my mind and given that the laptop wouldn't reboot, the library was probably lost anyway. 

Opps! I forgot to keep my eLibrary backed up

I do have a backup of the library but my last back up was quite some time ago so many books have been lost. I got out of the habit of backing up regularly and have paid the price. The library is too large to back up online. Calibre is not listed at the App Centre but I happened to notice a small link that leads to Flathub and a message that apps can be side-loaded from that source. The download was successful. I also noticed that Chrome and a great many other apps are available on Flathub so that's probably the best place to retrieve apps from. 

The native video player opened an AVI file that I'd downloaded but played only audio with no video. However, VLC from Flathub came to the rescue and I had video as well as audio!

Laptop Connectivity Problems

A problem that I encounter almost daily on my 2013 MacBook Pro is a connectivity issue. Whether I'm connected wirelessly or wired via an Ethernet cable from a repeater, I lose the connection and am repeatedly prompted for the password to the WiFi network if I'm connected wirelessly. After a short while the problem goes away and all is well. The problem is annoying but doesn't seriously trouble me.

Nonetheless, I'd like to get to the bottom of it and there are plenty of requests on Internet forums from Linux Mint users for solutions to exactly this problem. The fact that it doesn't make any difference whether I'm connected via WiFi or cable rules out the WiFi hardware driver as the problem. Neither does it matter whether I'm connected to the WiFi repeater or the WiFi router.

The Internet router that I'm using is an ancient one and only operates on the 2.4 Ghz frequency with no support for 5 Ghz or any other frequencies! I don't use Bluetooth on this laptop so I've just now turned it off and I'll see if that makes any difference. It shouldn't but who knows. It's worth a try. Overall, I should be happy that things are working as well as they are given the antiquity of the technology that I'm using.

The operating system that I'm using is Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon with the Cinnamon version being 5.2.7. This means that the system is up-to-date. My WiFi adapter is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

I'd like to say that things worked flawlessly when I had Mac OS X installed on this laptop but that wasn't the case. Right from the beginning I had IP conflict alerts whenever connected to a repeater. I first encountered the issue when I stayed at a hotel in Singapore that was clearly using a repeater. In my own bedroom, where the WiFi signal was weak, I encountered the same problem when I installed a repeater. I solved the problem by connecting an Ethernet cable from the repeater to my laptop.

Charging Issues

It's been a while since my last post but I was out of town for quite some time and did not take my laptop with me. On return however, I noticed that charging cable for my beloved MacBook Pro 2013 was playing up again. After the original, I've replaced the 60W charger twice and the current one is proving troublesome with the little green light not always lighting up unless it's tweaked.

I've ordered and received a new one which I'll keep in reserve as the current one is not too annoying just yet. It will fail eventually of course. It's worth forking out for new chargers as my laptop with Mint LInux installed is running just fine and doing everything that I want it to do. Likewise my Raspberry Pi is fully operational. The advantages of USB C charging are obvious but of course my old laptop does not have such a port and so I'm stuck. The quality of the chargers I'm buying is clearly suspect but they're cheap and work for a while at least. 

Speaking of my Raspberry Pi, I've discovered that I can listen to music via headphone jack to a USB C and then to USB 3.1 as shown in Figure 1. It's a necessary workaround because I can't get Bluetooth to function and there is no headphone jack, for some mysterious reason. Previously I'd been using the headphone jack on a USB C hub but I've given that to my granddaughter so I had to come up with a workaround.

Figure 1

I still can't get WINE to run and that's something that I'll have to keep working on if I ever want to get my astrology program, Astrolog, to work again.

Raspberry Pi: Blogger and Netflix

There is definitely something weird about the Raspberry Pi and Blogger. Using Chromium, I tried to access my Pedagogical Posturing blog on Blogger but all attempts failed. I checked if Blogger was down and it wasn't. I checked on my Staying Healthy blog on Wordpress (that I haven't used since August 2020) and it opened instantly. So did the BBC website. I opened Firefox and things were exactly the same. 

It's not the browser then, it's to do with the interaction between the Raspberry Pi OS and Blogger. I recently created a post titled From Blogger to WordPress? in which I discussed the possibility of switching from the former to the latter. This current experience has only strengthened my resolve. I don't think Google is properly supporting its blogging platform and that may be the reason for my difficulties.

Figure 1

Anyway, I switched to my 2013 MacBook Pro running Linux Mint and tried to access my Pedagogical Posturing blog using Chrome. It opened instantly. This means that for the moment I'll be doing my blogging on the laptop and not the Raspberry Pi. To be honest, the monitor to which the Pi is attached is ready to be replaced. It's very hard on the eye and there are no speakers for the HDMI connection to take advantage of. There are some good monitors out there for about A$200 so that is a likely purchase in the not to distant future. Figure 1 shows a Raspberry Pi 400 running dual monitors.

As for getting Netflix to run on the Raspberry Pi, it's not easy. There's a lot of help out there but all of my efforts failed using the Chromium browser. I then switched to Firefox and encountered the same problems. In the end I gave up. I can run Netflix on my iPhone, my laptop and TV so it's not a big deal. However, it was frustrating to not be able to get it running. 

Ubuntu Upgrade

Maybe it was changing from the main server to an Indonesian server that finally enabled me to begin the upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 21.10. Figure 1 shows the early stages of the upgrade process. Let's hope that this upgrade will resolve some of my problems but knowing Ubuntu I'll probably a whole new set of problems. In terms of hardware, my only persistent issue is that the webcam on my 2013 MacBook Pro isn't functioning. Sporadically however, as I've mentioned in previous posts, the mouse, trackpad and keyboard all freeze. Software-wise, there are many issues: few installations proceed smoothly but I would have to single out WINE and Flatpak as being especially troublesome.

Figure 1

After a few hiccups, Ubuntu 21.10 has been installed and so far so good. Flatpak, Stacer, Calibre, Wine and Astrolog have all been successfully installed. I must say that Flatpak, once it's up and running, makes software installation very easy. You need to remember however, to log out and then log back in again in order to see the programs that you've installed. It took me a while to realise that.

I've also managed to install SageMath which I'm quite happy about. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of my first use of it. However, just as I was getting excited, the whole system froze again and I had to reboot. I suspect the problem may arise when I have too many tabs open. The poor old laptop's fan was working hard and I had many tabs open when disaster struck. I need to close down tabs and applications that I'm not using. The freeze may be the result of overheating but I need to investigate further.

Figure 2

I should keep a log of these freezes in an effort to discern any patterns.

USB Tethering: Mac and Android

I long ago discovered that my Macbook Pro doesn't play well with repeaters. It will connect without problem to the main router but, if it needs to connect via a repeater, then IP address conflicts arise and connectivity is lost. This was the problem in my bedroom but I overcame it by making use of the Ethernet port on my repeater. Once I connected the laptop to the repeater via an Ethernet cable, there was no problem. 

Recently however, my granddaughter was having buffering problems when watching Netflix over WiFi on her iPad Pro. I gave the repeater to her, connected her to an Ethernet cable via a hub and all was well. For her, that is, not for me. I was very quickly confronted with my old problem again. However, I had my Android phone and thought that the solution would be to tether the laptop to my phone via Bluetooth. The Macbook was having none of that. No problem I thought. I have a USB cable so I'll tether via that. No luck.

A little investigation led me to a site run by Joshua White and an app called HoRNDIS-9.2.pkg (46919 bytes) that I downloaded to my laptop and installed. I restarted my laptop and connected to my phone via USB and I'm typing happily away creating this post. 

No help of course from Apple popped up at the top of the search results but at least I'm connected now. I haven't tried watching Netflix or similar yet, in order to test the speed of the connection. I'll do that later and add to this post if there any problems. On his website, Joshua explains the technicalities of how the app works.

I still don't know why the bluetooth tethering didn't work. Perhaps there's a similar program that needs to be downloaded for that to work as well. For the moment, I'm just happy that I'm connected. Perhaps the motto of all this is indeed that CABLE IS STABLE.

WiFi Problems with MacBook Pro

My somewhat dated MacBook Pro is still serving me faithfully but I've had problems with getting it to connect with WiFi repeaters. 

I have a TP-LINK TL-WA855RE N300 Wi-Fi Wall Plug Range Extender/Repeater/Access Point and was having no end of trouble getting my MacBook Pro to maintain a WiFi connection to it. It would connect but soon an IP conflict message would appear and the connection would be broken. Having become so reliant on WiFi, I'd forgotten that this repeater has an Ethernet port. 

When I remembered, I then used a wired connection. My MacBook was assigned an IP address and that was the end of my problems. I need the repeater in my study, which is a little out of range of the TP-Link router, and so the lack of mobility is not a problem. I can simply turn the WiFi back on when I'm elsewhere in the house. 

The problem only occurred with the MacBook. My Samsung smartphone experienced no such problems. So the WiFi connectivity problem was never resolved but an alternative connectivity solution came to the rescue. Whether this same problem occurs with the latest MacBooks I don't know. 

Of course I don't have a dedicated Ethernet port on my MacBook Pro and so I needed to use a dongle, which fortunately I already had in my possession. With that and an Ethernet cable, I've had no further problems. It's just a reminder that, even in the world of technology, everything old can be new again. Once upon a time, there was no WiFi and Internet connectivity, when there was an Internet to connect to, was achieved via cables. Now, in my study, I'm living in the past.

Resolving WiFi Problems in MacOs

This is complete rewrite of an earlier post in which my purported solution to my Wi-Fi woes turned out to be ineffective. The specific problem concerned only certain networks, specifically the Wi-Fi in my Singapore hotel room and the Wi-Fi at Changi airport. The former required a password and my smartphone connected without a problem but my laptop seemingly connected without needing to supply a password. However, while connected to the Wi-Fi, my laptop would not connect to the Internet. At Changi, I likewise connected to the network but couldn't reach required site to insert my 5 digit password.

A suggestion provided on Tom's Hardware site at least solved the problem at Changi. Open System Preferences under the Apple logo and choose Network:

The suggestion was to click on minus sign in the diagram above while Wi-Fi is selected. Once the Wi-Fi option is deleted, restart the laptop and go back to above screen and click on the positive sign. Choose Wi-Fi from the drop-down menu and then try connecting again. It worked for me. This is something that I'd never tried before but I've now added it to my troubleshooting armoury.