elementary os 8 on the MacBook Pro

My personal laptop is a Chromebook. I've been using it for 5 years. I throw it in my backpack and rarely turn it off. It has terrific battery life and does most of what I need it to.

But it's begun to show its age. First the internal mic went out. OK, I could plug in my phone's headphones. Then the camera went out. OK, I could buy a camera--but this starts to look like a trend.

I realized I might need to have a backup computer, so dug up my 2011 MacBook Pro. It was running elementary OS 5.1, Hera, based on Ubuntu. (See my earlier post on this combo.) elementary is a good match for a Mac. Its use of the Pantheon desktop environment gives it a sleek, light, colorful look.

But Hera has been superseded, meaning it no longer has security updates. I didn't want to mess around on the internet with a vulnerable machine. And unlike some operating systems, upgrading meant more than issuing some commands. I would have to reinstall it.

So I downloaded the latest elementary--version 8.02--and ran through the installation process. It worked, but there were two problems: first, the Broadcomm internal wifi could only be configured if I had a working internet connection. Fortunately, I had an old wifi dongle that let me update the machine with the correct driver. Then I started installing some of the things I'd found useful before. The machine was painfully slow! First, I thought that the issue was that elementary uses a lot of Flatpak applications. The advantage: they're mostly self-contained, so if something breaks, it doesn't touch the rest of the system. But they were sure slow to launch. And they seemed to freeze up a lot. Frankly, it felt frustratingly unusable.

I also tried to install another Linux distribution--Lubuntu. I like it, too, although it has less of a Mac vibe. But it had the same wireless issue, and didn't seem like it detected some of the wonderful Mac hardware (illuminated keys, for instance). When I tried to reinstall elementary, the whole hard drive failed. I concluded that the hard drive was probably the issue all along.

So I went to the local computer repair shop (shout out to Micro Solutions) and they swapped out the hard drive for a SSD (steady state drive), 1 terabyte(!) for about $200.

Then, elementary installed like a dream. After a lot of apt updates and upgrades, followed by half a dozen restarts to wake everything up, this old Mac (8 gigs of RAM) feels very responsive and stable. Camera works, sound works, the keys light up, and it looks really good.

My final software suite mixes some native Pantheon apps (Outliner and Minder, a mind map program, and Pantheon Tweaks) with external apps: Google Chrome browser, emacs and pandoc (one of the most powerful writing platforms in the world), Upnote (my notes program that runs on every device I own) and that's about it.

Although I can do quite a lot with the command line, the built in configuration apps are quite good.

I spent a little while looking at themes, but getting them to apply to both Pantheon apps and Flatpaks (and Snaps) was hit or miss. So I mostly just adjusted everything to a "dark" theme. It feels pretty integrated.

I also fiddled with the window controls. elementary has a distinct aesthetic. Native apps have a close button on the top left menu, and a full screen toggle on the right. No "shrink to dock" command. I actually learned to work with that. Slide 3 fingers up the touchpad and all your programs display in a tiled grid--easy to switch. And command-H "hides" the program, just like the "shink to dock." So it's easy to stay focused. (I can also switch among multiple virtual desktops if I'm of a mind to group projects.) But non-native apps, like Chrome, still have the standard Windows controls. So I used Pantheon Tweaks to set that for all apps (the order and functions are there, but they look a little different as buttons).

Bottom line: with just a little bit of money and time, I now have a beautiful, quite capable computer. I enjoy using it. I rarely have to take my fingers from the keyboard. And the native apps have a wonderfully light feel to them.

elementary is secure, modern, and fast. Unlike Windows, Linux distibutions tend to be less intrusive. They're not always shoving ads and sudden forced upgrades at me.

At any rate, I marvel that once again, new Linux software has revived an aging computer. And the MacBook really is a pretty machine.

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians. Uncle Bobby's wedding June 27, 2008 Dear Ms. Patron: Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy. The intent of providing all tha...

Installing Linux on a 2011 Macbook Pro

I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac , which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five. The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try. Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to...

What Is Leadership?

My partner and I just finished co-teaching a leadership institute for librarians in the Western States. But I keep thinking about it. Some people, I know, think leadership is all about power. But I always wonder: power to do what? To make or to break? Over my 40-odd years of administrative experience — and some of them have been very odd indeed — I’ve boiled my idea of leadership down to three things. Know thyself . That is, have a relatively clear-eyed assessment of your strengths. Build on those strengths. But also learn how to recognize in other people the strengths that you do not have. Play well with others . Leadership begins with listening and paying attention. Then it moves into emotional intelligence — the ability to read and respond appropriately to human communication. The good news is that emotional intelligence is a skill set. It can be learned. The bad news is that a lot of people don’t bother. Make it better . There’s no point in leadership that makes things worse. Good ...

James LaRue - myliblog

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