Category: Computers

I’m starting to get good at this. Fired up an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS VPS and moved everything. More details (maybe?) to follow.

So, it’s been a long time without any news – time for an update.  A new job, and all kinds of other things have gotten in the way.  I’ve made some changes to try to be as open source, Linux, and privacy-minded as I can.

Post-Install Guides

Continue reading Hiatus – Again, It’s Been A Long Time

Due to a whole range of problems and issues surrounding updating from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS, I’m in the process of migrating to a new Linode that I’ve set up.  This site will be going up and down over the next few hours, and will also probably be throwing out some SSL certificate errors as I get everything moved over and troubleshoot.

I know I’ve been laid up for a little while, and I know that Fedora 25 has been out for a few weeks, but here’s my updated guide for installing and configuring Fedora 25 on the Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015).  Not much has changed, in fact it becomes a little easier every release…more and more of the hardware is supported by the kernel by default, and Gnome is getting better with every release at dealing with HIDPI displays.  (Of course, you can ignore the HIDPI stuff if you got the model with the 1080p display.)  I still have the same issue with the fingerprint sensor – but it’s a minor issue.  It lights up any time the computer asks for a password (including in the terminal) and doesn’t turn off – even after you type in your password – until you run your finger across it.  Again, minor issue.

Not much has changed since I wrote the last one, so a lot of this is largely copied and pasted from my last guide. Continue reading Fedora 25 Post-Install Guide: Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015)

I’ve been searching for a while for a good docking solution for my X1 Carbon…and I’ve settled on Lenovo’s Thinkpad OneLink Pro dock.  I did a lot of searching since I run and wanted it to work with Linux, and I found some outdated and/or inaccurate data from over the past several years.  I wanted to add a new data point, and hopefully it will help someone else in a similar situation.

Here’s the dock:

Continue reading Thinkpad OneLink Pro Dock and Linux

As promised, here is my post-install list for the Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015 model, 3rd gen).  I spent most of yesterday evening and this afternoon getting things set the way I want, and I love it so far.  I have one nagging issue – the fingerprint sensor – but everything else is working well.  I’ll address my issue at the bottom.

A few things have changed since I wrote the last one, so I’m going to basically start from scratch. Continue reading Fedora 24 Post-Install Guide: Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015)

Fedora 24 is finally officially released.  I’ll outline a little about how to upgrade, but I won’t be able to upgrade my own machines until I get home from work.

Stupid work, getting in the way of my Linux upgrades.

Anywho, let’s take a look at the upgrade process to get from 23 to 24 – I’ll just add this for informational purpose, as I’m a stickler for clean installs.  Plus, my 23 installs are fairly recent, so I won’t be losing a ton of stuff there…so I don’t have much of a reason to not to a fresh install.

Continue reading Fedora 24 Is Out!

I ran into a little bit of an issue over the past several days…my battery life was horrendous.  Or at least it seemed that way compared to what it was under Windows.  Linus is notorious for having worse battery life (one of the few downsides to running it) on laptops, and the best explanation that I’ve been able to find is that the kernel is made to support such a wide variety of hardware, that it may be supporting things that you don’t need.

I remembered vaguely doing something about this during my last install, but it had been a while, so I had to research again to figure out what to do.  There’s a really simple tip that will help greatly – my battery life (as measured in Gnome) went from a little under 3 hours to almost 7.  Not quite the 9 hours I had under Windows, but a huge improvement nonetheless.

Here’s what I did:

Continue reading Extending Battery Life In Fedora 23

There really isn’t much to write about this one – it’s just a post-install guide.  This laptop has been out for over a year now, and the newer kernels support pretty much everything.  Going back to my previous post about Fedora on this machine, there isn’t nearly as much to fix. I know this is a little late…especially with Fedora 24 coming out in a little over a week, but nonetheless here it is.

In my previous post I outlined my reliance on Windows lately, and it really got me to thinking, so I decided to switch my laptop back to Fedora.  My original reasoning was to use Windows on the laptop to have access to Lightroom for my (very amateur) photography needs, but I realized over the past year I rarely edited photos on it, as I prefer the large screen on my main machine.

Before my list of tasks, I’ll go through some of the changes.  After that, a good deal of this will be pasted verbatim from my post from last year, maybe with a few notes added.

Continue reading Fedora 23 Post-Install Guide for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (3rd Generation)