Upgrading to Windows11 on an old non supported computer

     I have some older pc's that were running windows10 and wanted to upgrade them to windows11.  Using the microsoft upgrade tool, it reported that my cpu and bios (tpm) would not support windows11.  Knowing Microsoft, most likely that is their way to push new hardware.  I did some research and found a way to upgrade both computers and they have been working without any issues.  I wrote up a small procedure to upgrade for future reference.  I accidently deleted the original file so this is a scanned in from a printed page. 

X11 window manager using the Penrose library written in Rust Language

      Since I began using Linux as my main OS sometime around 1998, I have always enjoyed trying out the many X11 window managers along with hacking on them or creating my own.

     Recently, I discovered on Github an X11 window manager library written in Rust language called Penrose.   Having played around with Rust a few times, I decided to see if using this library would make it easier to create a customized tiling window manager.   I found Penrose to be very well documented and in just a few hours I was able to put together a fully functional tiling window manager that is minimal and stable written in 100% Rust language.

     I named it MPWM for My Penrose Window Manager.  I like the Penrose idea about making a library in a solid system level language that allows others to customize rather than everyone trying to write their own window managers from scratch.  It gives the power of other programming language window managers such as Xmonad or Stumpwm but without having to load the full language into memory like with Haskell or Lisp.

    While MPWM is not perfect, there are still features or changes I may make, it's not about the end results for me as much as the journey.  I enjoy the challenge and making my computer work just the way I want.  The ability to change and modify everything in my OS is what keeps me using Linux to this day.

In search of a better Search Engine

     As google have grown they have increasingly turned to more censorship and advertising.  This limits the number of results from a search and also creates less privacy as they are tracking everything you type in for advertising results.

     Due to Googles lack of privacy protection, a couple of newer search engines have emerged.  Duckduckgo being the most popular alternative search engine that claims it is privacy focused.  However, there have been recent news about censorship on this search engine along with information about them using Bing as a backend, which leads to questions about whether they are much better than Google.

     Due to Duckduckgo's questionable privacy, a new search engine by the creators of the Brave browser has emerged.  Brave Search claims it is "the world’s most complete, independent, private search engine".   I have used it now for a few months and it seems to be fast and provides good results, however how much privacy it provides has yet to be determined.    The Brave browser is based on Chromium but offers settings to enhance privacy on the web, I have used it a number of times along with my favorite browser Ungoogled-Chromium which is just Chromium minus Googles extra spying stuff.  It's not as easy to install and upgrade as other Browsers but I think it worth it.

     So in short, I use Ungoogled-chromium browser with Brave Search as my default search engine which has to be manually set up in Settings but no-one said trying to maintain some privacy on the web was going to be easy.   Enjoy!

Slackware15? Whaaa?

 I just realized I didn't post anything in 2021. I guess it was a non-eventful year, lol.  

    I noticed that Slackware 15.0 was released recently after only 5.5 years since the last release /s. I did like that they released it on exactly 02-02-2022 at 22:22:22 that takes some planning. The beauty about slackware and also the web page www.slackware.com is that it is almost unchanged from its beginnings back in 1991.  Sure they have updated a ton of packages but the way you install and configure the OS and the package management is almost the same as its origins.  How many other OS's or web sites for that matter have the same look and feel 30 years after they were created. Sure, some may say its a lack of adapting to the new ways of doing things while others argue why change something for change sake.  For me, I love that nothing from a user perspective has changed, because why change perfection.  I love how installing and using Slackware is like putting on an old shoe even though that old shoe has been polished with the latest kernel and other software.  

    Therefore I had no choice but to download the lastest .iso burn it to a usb stick and install Slackware 15.0.  The install was flawless like all Slackware versions.  Everything worked perfectly and in a matter of about an hour I had everything I needed installed and configured.  I did need to download the source code for a few programs that Slackware doesn't include but they are mostly small and easy to compile programs.  I love that Slackware by default drops you to a command prompt rather than some Display Manager.  I prefer to use my own Window Manager that I add to the .xinitrc and run with startx.   I also love that after all this time I can install the latest Nvidia drivers by downloading the latest from their website and using their install script which works perfectly on Slackware. After two weeks of using this release it is still running flawlessly.  Slackware may be a bit more difficult to learn and install than say Ubuntu but once you are done with the initial install there is nothing to do.  The updates to the release are only security updates that may happen maybe once a week and can be easily updated with slackpkg update, slackpkg install-new, and slackpkg upgrade-all.  Other distributions are always changing and updating various programs that in many instances break something else.  

    In summary, Distrowatch https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20220214#slackware did a recent review of Slackware 15.0 where they mentioned that not many new users are flocking to it and most users are people that got started with it two decades ago or more.  I think that is true and I fall into that category, however I feel that although it takes some patience to learn and appreciate Slackware the reward is well worth it.  Thank you to Pat Volkerding, Alien Bob, Robby Workman, and the whole Slackware team for changing only what needs to be changed.   Hoping that slackbuilds.org is updated soon for the 15.0 release!  Congrats to Slackware for surviving 30 years!!!