About this blog

The name of this blog is small alley. As in an alley, I hope to post a variety of things that I find interesting and as you walk through the alley, you would find things that you like.

I have posted some songs that I wrote. I am not a great singer. I sing and play the guitar purely for fun and I hope people who thinks they can't sing can be inspired by me. No former singing lessons and no former guitar training. Just pure fun......

The recording is also done at home with a drum machine and one guitar through a small amp. The sound file has been touched up slightly by removing the noise. Otherwise the songs are as original as it gets.

I practise Taiji regularly. For me, it is a great exercise requiring control of mind and body to perform well and for it to be enjoyable. You can get more videos of Taiji from YouTube.

Other posts include places and events that I think are interesting and more important, which I have time to upload.

Enjoy your walk through this small alley.....

Thursday, September 17, 2020

MX Linux

 I had a Toshiba Satellite L500 laptop which I used for many years (cannot even remember how many) and it has Windows 7 installed when I bought it.  However I have installed Ubuntu as I am really a fan of Linux.

Recently the left Shift Key of the keyboard is not working and also the computer seems to be slowing down.  My initial idea was to use the computer as a print server for the home when my current print server (Aus Extenza) gives way (or give up) - recently the bios started emitting beeps indicating memory issues.

However I have decided to be more adventurous and added addition 4GB RAM (from 2 GB) to the Satellite.  I also got rid of the Windows installation (as I hardly use Windows nowadays) and installed MX Linux (64 bit) on the system.  I fell in love with the distro immediately.

It is very responsive and it feels more stable as it is based on the stable release of Debian.  I also like the Xfce desktop, synaptic installer and many more.  I very happy to be able to salvage the computer and can now use it to develop applications (more about this hobby in a later post).

Everything works out-of-the-box except for the Chinese input.  I installed ibus, libpinyin and other Chinese fonts (fonts-arphic-bkai00mp, fonts-arphic-gbsn00lp, fonts-arphic-gkai00mp, xfonts-intl-chinese, xfonts-intl-chinese-big) but still could not get to input Chinese characters.  

As this is Linux, I know the solution is somewhere "out there".  You see, Linux trains the users to be self-dependent and look for solutions themselves.  After some searching on the Internet, I finally installed ibus-gtk and ibus-gtk3 and presto, it works (see this post and this post ).  

As I am using Xfce, I do not have to make any entries in the .bashrc file.

The other thing that bugged me was that the number pad was not turn on (during log in or after).  Though I consider this a slight discomfort, I would prefer it to be turned on by default.  Well, I managed to turn it on by following this.  (Almost - I just did the Xfce part).

I do encourage you to give MX Linux a go (I think Ubuntu 20.04 is not stable).

Now I am waiting for the replacement keyboard to arrive and it is such a joy to be able to "give life" to my "aged" computer.



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