Root ZFS Soon, but now we know how soon (sort of)…

The following is a link to the current project in GitHub. This will give us what is hopefully an accurate picture of the timeline.

https://github.com/orgs/ubuntu/projects/1

Given the hopeful nature of devs and people like me, this will keep us in check for a realistic timeline. Wish I could help guys, but kernel programming is not in my wheel house (yet).

Root ZFS for Ubuntu… soon..

Dev at Ubuntu Dimitri John Ledkov who has previously been involved in this effort commented on the Ubuntu mailing list with this update: 

Zstd patches have not made it into the upstream kernel yet. 

As used by mkinitramfs: 
– lz4 is faster to compress than gzip 
– lz4 is blazingly fast to decompress 
– lzma is dog slow to compress and decompress, but is tiny 
– lz4 size weight over gzip is marginal (14%) but imho worth the improved boot time & initrd creation time 
– xz is potentially even slower and even smaller than lzma 

In places where size is an absolute premium (tiny embedded iot devices) and performance is irrelevant, xz or lzma should be used. 

In all other places, our performance profile is in favor of lz4. 

Imho that includes the kernel image itself, thus we should consider switching: 
– initramfs tools to default to lz4 
– livecd-rootfs to default to lz4 
– kernels to compress kernel image with lz4 
– grub to include lz4 support 

I shall proceed with changing the defaults on the above to improve our responsiveness experience on installer, cloud, core and classic devices. If our firstboot & subsequent boot speed degrades or disk space becomes a concern, we can look into tweaking these changes further.

So, we can hope for this in Ubuntu 19.10 for testing/updates before (hopefully) being released in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Linux Gaming just got way better!

Since the release of ProtonDB, there have been over 2500 games added to Linux!

What is Proton?

Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam. Underneath the hood, Proton comprises other popular tools like Wine and DXVK among others that a gamer would otherwise have to install and maintain themselves. This greatly eases the burden for users to switch to Linux without having to learn the underlying systems or losing access to a large part of their library of games. Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving.

ProtonDB is used to collaborate on performance on different hardware/software configurations. Allowing the community to work together to get the games working.

Setting Up Proton in STEAM – Tested Ubuntu 18.10

Links on Site

Due to the purchase of Github from Microsoft, I have removed my account and all repositories.  This will also affect a few posts I have made here.  The links used to embed some small snippets (aka GISTs) of code will no longer work.  As time is available I will start fixing them manually.  Until then I thank you for your patience.

 

Thanks,
Matthew Curry

How to use a PS1 in Linux/MAC

Here are the PS1‘s I use for my daily driver.  Feel free to take them and change them up.

I use different colors, so one doesn’t accidentally login or run something as root (which is in red, users are yellow).

To use these, simply copy and paste them into either the root user; or regular user’s .bashrc.

Alternatively you can add them to /etc/profile to make them enforced system wide. 

For MAC, it is the same; however the PS1 is a little different. See below.

 

Root

 

User

Site Updates

Just a heads up to all out there that care.

MattCurry.Com was down for a bit, while I installed the SSL Certificate, and updated my site.

Again, thank you to all the regular users.  Please don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS for updates.

Sincerely,
Matthew Curry

 

Using Nano with Markdown in Linux

Fan of nano?  Like having pretty colors to see where you messed up? Of course we do!  Much like many of us, I use nano.  Its quick, easy, and readily available.  However, I like to see the highlighting of my language.  As many of you know, there are “nanorc” files, that will tell nano how to handle language highlight.

They are usually located in  /usr/share/nano/ (at least in ubuntu); and you can make your own under your home directory with a .nanorc file.  I can post about that later…

For now let get markdown working in nano!

You will need to create a file called markdown.nanorc by doing the following:

 sudo touch /usr/share/nano/markdown.nanorc

Now that the file is created, we just need to populate it with the following below text, in a pastebin for your convenience.  Just copy that text, and paste it into the aformentioned file. Once a new session is started, you will be able to start using markdown.

https://pastebin.com/raw/tHkBqdef

Just a little note as well; if you have a need for another language, you can follow the same instructions with their pre-reated files.  Take a look here, to see other nanorc files.  Also, nano has just been updated after a very long while, please take a look at the new support when you can.

 

 

 

Finally a good note app for devs

Open Source Note Taking

This app is nice as it can be local, one time synced, or just offline notes if you are in a secure area (what started my search).  I am on a network where I can’t get to any cloud services at all, especially ones where you can give out data.  I am however able to go out and do research.  Leaving me with a tone of notes, and nothing to store them in with any sort of sense.

Also, I have a lot of markdown, and code snippets, and that sort of thing.  So, like most I started keeping plain text files.  This was not cutting it though; as many of you know.  II would on occasion have a mixture of code types in the same note.  This seems to handle those for the most part.  Although it is similar to Atom, which is my favorite IDE/text editor in a GUI; it is much lighter and doesn’t always try to correct me into some language.

At the end of the day, its just a great note app; and the files underneath are up to you to encrypt/sync/etc.  The editor I am referring to is Boostnote.  I will give a link to GitHub, and link to their sites download page.  Please try it out and enjoy! I hope this helps out a nerd out there somewhere.

 

Thanks,
Matthew Curry

MattCurry.com

Best Editor / IDE?

I have tried many editors in Linux, Mac, and even Winblows.  However, none of them like this…  Please take a look at this video and you will be surprised at the customization that is possible with this editor.  No matter your language, theme, or plugin preferences.  It also has its own package manger to mange all the awesomeness so you dont get corn-fused…