- Playing a Ubuntu 19.10 Beta at home.
- Getting stats from my TSM server into Grafana at work.
- Cloud training…
16 Oct: Virtualbox 6.0.14 has been released today with support for Linux 5.3, so I updated my desktop OSes from 19.04 (Linux 5.0) to 19.10 (Linux 5.3).
- Ubuntu 19.10 with Virtualbox booting from ZFS (my 19.04 ZFS boot version).
- Ubuntu Mate 19.10 with QEMU/KVM booting from ZFS (my 19.04 ZFS boot version)
- Ubuntu 19.10 booting from ext4.
Radeontop a small program to get performance data from the Vega 8 APU, did hang the display of the desktop, so I uninstalled it.
I also updated the Vbox Guest Additions for my 12 Virtual Machines. Virtualbox had 3 problems in this update more than in any other update during the last 5 years;
- Ubuntu 16.04 VM had problems displaying the dock and top-bar.
- Ubuntu 19.10 VM had problems displaying the wallpaper,
Both problems can be circumvented by switching off 3D acceleration. - The first time I have to provide input to a VM, input is not accepted nor displayed and that happens in 50% of the VM start-ups. If you type something in any program in the host the problems disappears.
ZFS did not mount the datapools automatically, like it is supposed to do. By exporting and importing the pool the problem is bypassed. For the moment I wrote a small scripts that does it.
Next week I will look somewhat more in detail to these problems and try to solve them or write a bug-report.
Tomorrow we look at the laptop already running 19.10 for a week, upgrade Virtualbox, remove Linux 5.2 and try to solve the ZFS send/receive issue from Linux desktop to Linux laptop. It works from Linux desktop to FreeBSD backup server. In Linux there are some issues with non-root mounts by the receiver and I can’t login as root in SSH in that Linux receiver, like in BSD. Catch 22?
17 Oct: Upgraded Virtualbox on my laptop, I did not update the guest addition yet, but I see no problem there. I copied Ubuntu 19.10 VM from the desktop to laptop with the correct guest additions (6.0.14) and no problems with the display, it might be a Vega driver/Virtualbox compatibility issue.
I solved the issue with send/receive by allowing ssh to login through root in /etc/ssh/sshd.conf setting “PermitRootLogin yes”. Afterwards I copied the desktop public key to the laptop. Synchronizing desktop and laptop is considerably faster than with rsync.
The laptop is most of the time powered off and connected to a WiFI router that blocks all inbound traffic. I’m happy with my $12 1Gbps Switch as front end for my old router, I run DT/LT copy operations at 80 MB/s, that is faster than a local copy on the SSHD.
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I am excited about my extreme budget build for my server-desktop-workstation (maybe some gaming) rig. The parts are in, it is just a matter of time in getting it all together. VERY excited.
I’ve tended to be very cautious about Virtualbox updates as although backups are relatively easy to make a buggy release can be highly inconvenient for my workflow. Hope you manage to resolve everything and thanks for reporting back in ways that they can make potential fixes 
If I wasn’t having a mare of a week at the time this question was asked, I might have seen it and bemoaned the difficulties you can have upgrading an ELK stack, but luckily all that is sorted now 
I have been using Fedora 30 Gnome with 0 issues. I love whats going with the Red Hat side of Linux. Fedora Silverblue, Fedora 31, CentOS Stream.
I don’t know if I should try out CentOS Stream or upgrade to Fedora 31 when it comes out.
I came from Ubuntu on my desktop and Debian on my servers but I went distro hopping 8 months back and stopped on Fedora Gnome. Loved it ever since!
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Just upgraded to Plasma 5.17 on Ubuntu 19.10 yesterday, and I was troubleshooting what’s causing the Plasma shell crashing. Turns out it had something to do with the wallpaper slideshows, which they are fixing.
Since it came out I’ve been going through my selection of laptops upgrading the MX Linux installs to RC1 from the beta 2.1 and beta 3 versions.
I’ve also been going through the Arch based installs (Arco, Endeavour and Manjaro) and making sure they are all up to date, hoping they’ll do whatever needs doing to sort out any problems created by Archs recent announcement. I would imagine that may more changes than at first apparent if that also changes dependencies across repositories.
Other than that, I’ve been milking having “man flu”… pity there’s no one here to be impressed.
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I’ve been using Debian Stable for years and unlikely to change, but having run Fedora 30 in a VM for many weeks now, with multiple updates including kernel updates every few days, I have to say I’ve had a flawless out-of-the-box experience and flawless updates too! I’m not sure if this particular release is more stable than their usual offerings, but I am certainly impressed. I haven’t updated CentOS 7 to version 8 yet, which I also have been testing, though it does have a very different use-case and I am more excited to try CentOS Stream than CentOS 8; let’s see how things go in the coming few weeks!
Hope you get well soon and your Arch-based systems stay afloat. The only one I ever tried was Manjaro; didn’t work really, so removed it after a few days. Next time I’ll go for Arch “the Arch” way, which as they said on DL is now even harder, but I’ll have built Linux from Scratch by that stage, so I don’t mind that too much
I recently bought a couple of 120Gb SSDs to test different distros on bare metal without touching my main Manjaro/Arch drive. Luckily I can swap drives in a bay at the top of my PC, so it makes it very easy to switch drives and run tests 
I’d installed Manjaro Gnome last night, and will be testing it more over the weekend, and I’ll also be testing Salient OS and Endeavour OS over the weekend too
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Funny, Manjaro has worked really well on my hardware, but we all know that hardware matters and sometimes things need a little bit of tweaking.
My experience with EndeavourOS has been really good, I think it’s a little closer to the base Arch than either Manjaro or Arco (if I had to choose an Arch based distro I still think it would be Arco, but it’s a close thing).
I’m glad I’ve tried these Arch based distros, I still prefer the .deb packaged distros because I’ve used them longer and I think that way, but it feels good to know how to an alternative. I’m afraid I still have lasting memories of “RPM hell” from my earliest Linux days and that may be why I have an (unreasonable?) bias against those distros. Maybe for 2020 I should work on that and try and live with an RPM based distro for a bit.
They are however all Linux at their core.
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In the very early days of Red Hat, before yum probably, I experienced RPM dependency hell first hand and it made me give up on Linux for a good long while. I have to say, Fedora 30’s probably worth a try, I am shocked at how stable it’s been despite multiple kernel updates within just a few weeks!
How is Fedora at upgrading from 30 to 31? What is the support period for a Fedora release? I don’t want to have to be re-installing every 6 months
I did try Open SUSE last year, the thing with that RPM based distro is YAST drives me batty. The theory of everything being in 1 place is nice, in practice I find it overdone.
In my early Linux days I had a brief period with Mandrake so perhaps I should look at a descendant, Mageia perhaps.
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Before I do the Fedora 30 to 31 update, I’m definitely making a backup. No idea how successful this will be. I’ve only been experimenting with Fedora for about a month or so, but it’s still very rapid in its updates. I think it does update major version every six months. I’ve never used yast. I’m happy with one super-stable system (Debian) and one experimental. Not currently curious enough to try anything else, though after LFS it’ll be Arch I’m thinking.
Fedora nowadays works great but you have to know that they release every 6 to 8 months and the support for one release is not that long. Though they improved release upgrades immensely. But the support is too short if you do not want the hassle of upgrading and doing big backups twice a year.
I know what you mean about Yast, I have a similar feeling even though Suse people love Yast.
I use Mageia and yes, the Mageia Control Center is similar but not as extensive in the options as in Suse. But honestly I almost never use it and in fact do not need a control center. I prefer the CLI or the options offered by the desktop environment. I originally come from Debian and the reason Debian does not offer something like Yast is that the project prefers the DEs to integrate those options, like the Xfce settings/Mate settings/Gnome Control Center or Plasma etc. I find that enough and a lot of the advanced control panels offered by some distros redundant. But that is just me. I learned Debian by installing anything myself from a netinstall.
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If you don’t want to update every 6 months and want to try out a RPM distro, I recommend giving CentOS Stream or Fedora Silverblue a try.
I think you will find Fedora 30 will be supported for 30 days after Fedora 32 is released so each release is supported for 13 months minimum.
Ideally, what I’d want to try is a common or garden, bog standard, workstation (i.e. desktop) Linux that is stable’ish (I like Debian Bullseye/Testing) and has about 12 months between the needs to upgrade (it’s nice if it has that built in). I’m not that bothered by the latest and greatest features and experiments, if they work out they’ll trickle down to us mere mortals, I have no great wish to be lab guineapig.
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My Linux week was quite quiet until Friday when I went to OggCamp in Manchester UK for the Friday Pre meet up and all of the Saturday as one of the crew. Got to meet our friend and Host of DL @zebedee.boss and had a great chat with him on Saturday morning for a few minutes and for 2 hours Saturday evening. We both agree it’s MATE as in Friend and Double click so hit it off right away 
I got to talk with loads of old and new friends in the community some of whom I knew their voice but had not met before. Unfortunately I had to leave early as had to travel to Glasgow this afternoon for a family funeral, but being part of this community which now stretches all over the world just makes my Linux life so much richer. I thank you all for being part of my Linux Journey.
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