C720 Linux Update

The three Acer C720 Chromebooks I wrote about in:

• 2014's A Note of Thanks,
• 2017's Travels with a Chromebook,
• and 2021's Chromebook Linux Update

are all still running Linux just fine despite the one I'm typing on being more than 8 years old. Below the fold I have some good news and some no-so-good news.

I was becoming a little concerned by the fact that the 5.0-series kernel I was stuck with was getting long in the tooth. So as an experiment I wiped C720 #3 and:

• Installed Mint 21.1 from scratch with LVM and full-disk encryption.
• Installed Mint 21.1 from scratch without full-disk encryption and with encrypted home directory, and updated to the current 5.15.0-67 kernel.

Below the fold, my notes on these experiments.

Blatant Self-Promotion

Liam Proven's NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems is a very interesting discussion of Linux distros and package management. He starts by discussing radical restructuring of Linux distros, focusing on NixOS and GoboLinux. Then he looks at less radical alternatives:

So, instead of re-architecting the way distros are built, vendors are reimplementing similar functionality using simpler tools inherited from the server world: containers, squashfs filesystems inside single files, and, for distros that have them, copy-on-write filesystems to provide rollback functionality.

The goal is to build operating systems as robust as mobile OSes: periodically, the vendor ships a thoroughly tested and integrated image which end users can't change and don't need to. In normal use, the root filesystem is mounted read-only, and there's no package manager.

Proven goes on to discuss efforts along these lines at Red Hat, openSUSE, Canonical and EndlessOS.

If you don't blow your own horn, who will do it for you? So it falls to me to point out that this is a great, but rather tricky, idea that I have implemented versions of not once, but twice. The first time more than 30 years ago for SunOS 4.1 in prototype form at Sun Microsystems, and the second time nearly twenty years ago for OpenBSD in production for the LOCKSS Program at Stanford.

Below the fold is more detailed self-promotion.

Chromebook Linux Update

My three Acer C720 Chromebooks running Linux are still giving yeoman service, although for obvious reasons I'm not travelling these days. But it is time for an update to 2017's Travels with a Chromebook. Below the fold, an account of some adventures in sysadmin.

Open Source Saturation

In Supporting Open Source Software I discussed the critical need for better support for contributors to open source projects. Now, Quo Vadis, Open Source? The Limits of Open Source Growth by Michael Dorner, Maximilian Capraro and Ann Barcomb presents statistical evidence suggesting that this problem is affecting the vitality of the open source environment. Follow me below the fold for the details.

Supporting Open Source Software

In the Summer 2020 issue of Usenix's ;login: Dan Geer and George P. Sieniawski have a column entitled Who Will Pay the Piper for Open Source Software Maintenance? (it will be freely available in a year). They make many good points, some of which are relevant to my critique in Informational Capitalism of Prof.  Kapczynski's comment that:

open-source software is fully integrated into Google’s Android phones. The volunteer labor of thousands thus helps power Google’s surveillance-capitalist machine.

Below the fold, I discuss "the volunteer labor of thousands".

Bufferbloat

This is just a brief note to point out that, after a long hiatus, my friend Jim Gettys has returned to blogging with Home products that fix/mitigate bufferbloat, an invaluable guide to products that incorporate some of the very impressive work undertaken by the bufferbloat project, CeroWrt, and the LEDE WiFi driver. The queuing problems underlying bufferbloat, the "lag" that gamers complain about and other performance issues at the edge of the Internet can make home Internet use really miserable. It has taken appallingly long for the home router industry to start shipping products with even the initial fixes released years ago. But a trickle of products is now available, and it is a great service for Jim to point at them.

Travels with a Chromebook

Two years ago I wrote A Note Of Thanks as I switched my disposable travel laptop from an Asus Seashell to an Acer C720 Chromebook running Linux. Two years later I'm still traveling with a C720. Below the fold, an update on my experiences.

Using the official Linux overlayfs

I realize that it may not be obvious exactly how to use the newly-official Linux overlayfs implementation. Below the fold, some example shell scripts that may help clarify things.

It takes longer than it takes

I hope it is permissible to blow my own horn on my own blog. Two concepts recently received official blessing after a good long while, for one of which I'm responsible, and for the other of which I'm partly responsible. The mysteries are revealed below the fold.