Linux on the Desktop, n-th try
I love Linux. I’ve been using it at home since 1996 (togeter with macs). How far we’ve come in 20+ years.
Desktop environment
I used to be against desktop environments, which I saw as bloated, but since getting a HiDPI laptop in 2015, I have changed my mind. Having services and DPI settings taken care of in one place is too nice to pass up.
As of mid-August, I have settled on KDE Plasma. I’m running Debian 10 Buster at home
and at work.
I find KDE very polished, and in some ways I like the UX better than mac or windows. The
font smoothing and rendering is great.
In others areas it needs work, and in particlular, it lacks a per-monitor DPI/scale setting.
Firmware upgrades
As I was having some issues with my home laptop, I looked at its firmware/BIOS, and noticed the firmware was out of date.
I was about to follow instructions on installation, and I saw references to
Linux Vendor Firmware Service, and how it automates
upgrades via the
fwupd daemon.
My computer was supported by this magic.
All I had to do was install fwupd, get a listing of devices (fwupdmgr get-devices),
which listed my BIOS, and unlock it (fwupdmgr unlock <device-id>),
then do fwupdmgr update.
This is an enormous improvement over messing with FAT32-formatted USB thumb-drives.
Current issues with wifi
At the moment, my personal laptop, a Dell XPS 13 9350, is having problems with the wifi card driver. After some time, becomes unresponsive.
When that happens, this has been happening on systemd:
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_get_pktid: Invalid packet id 588 (not in use)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_get_pktid: Invalid packet id 294 (not in use)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_get_pktid: Invalid packet id 579 (not in use)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_get_pktid: Invalid packet id 337 (not in use)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_query_dcmd: Timeout on response for query command
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_get_station: GET STA INFO failed, -5
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_query_dcmd: Timeout on response for query command
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_query_dcmd: Timeout on response for query command
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_get_station: GET STA INFO failed, -5
...
...
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_tx_ioctl: Failed to reserve space in commonring
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_run_escan: error (-12)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_scan: scan error (-12)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_tx_ioctl: Failed to reserve space in commonring
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_run_escan: error (-12)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_scan: scan error (-12)
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_msgbuf_tx_ioctl: Failed to reserve space in commonring
[...] kernel: brcmfmac: brcmf_run_escan: error (-12)
(get the above from sudo journalctl -k -f | grep -i brcmfmac)
The issue has been reported already.
