Retired Techie

Getting Older, not Necessarily Wiser

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Virtual Box Vs Vert Manager and the Talking Heads

Introduction

Greetings one and all. Today I want to discuss Oracles Virtual Box vs the other guy, specifically Vert-Manager. If one listens to the many talking heads out there, myself included, Virtual Box tends to get slammed quite a bit in comparison to vert-manager. And this generally concerns one parameter, speed

When it comes down to load times, I am not saying that the criticism is undeserved. What I am saying is that it is only one aspect of a hypervisor, the one that is easiest to understand, quantify, and everyone likes to looks at. However, speed is not the sole criteria one should be judging their hypervisor by, as I recently found out while working on another video. This may be a niche issue.
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Retired Techie

September 7, 2025
Debian 13 Trixie with BTRFS

Introduction

I am installing Debian 13 Trixie (recently released as Debian Stable) on a Virtual machine (VM) using the B-TRee File System (BTRFS). The Debian installer supports installing a BTRFS volume to a partition, and creating a single sub volume within. With the terminal I will be modifying a BTRFS volume that spans multiple drives, and contains multiple sub volumes.

A portion of this work will need to be done outside the Debian installer. The most common methods involve either mid install break out or post install. I have not found any information on pre install procedures for this. Looking at the way the Debian installer works this may not be possible.

In this article I will be doing a post install file system modification. To me this seems the most straight forward and easy to understand method.
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Retired Techie

August 27, 2025
Managing Graphics Cards in Linux, My Way

Introduction

Are you having frame rate issues in video games? Battery life tanking fast? These could be caused by having multiple graphics cards, and using the wrong one.

Today many laptops and desktops have two graphics cards. An integrated one for normal light usage, and a discrete one for more robust power usage, like gaming.

Selecting the right graphics card for each situation will improve both frame rate and battery life..

Today I am going to identify and control multiple graphics cards with Linux, as simply as possible. A valuable skill for your Linux tool box

I would be remiss if I did not point out that this process can be dependent to some extent on Linux Distribution, desktop environment, and hardware

In this video I am using a MSI laptop running Fedora Linux with a KDE Plasma desktop. Your millage with this process might vary if your setup is significantly different from mine.
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Retired Techie

July 22, 2025
An Ollama AI Model

Introduction

I want to take a look at a very basic Ollama Artificial Intelligence (AI) model and track the information flow from query to results. For those who are new to AI, Ollama is a Application Program Interface (API) for Large Language modes (LLM). The combination of API and LLM make up a basic AI. And I want to examine how data flows in this process.

The basic components of the model include the User, some type of interface between the User and the Ollama, The Ollama API itself, and a LLM. It should be noted that there are many different LLM models. As this model does not call out a specific LLM, the limiting factor will be if the LLM will run on the hardware being used. The larger the LLM model, the more precise the response, however more resources, in the form of processor cores and RAM, will be required to run it.

Ollama AI Model
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Retired Techie

July 12, 2025
Direct Attached Storage

Introduction

Greetings. I want to discuss Direct Attached Storage (DAS). What it is and why you might need it.

In my current situation I am living off a laptop, with a couple of DAS devices. Both devices cost about the same. However one is solid state and much faster. The other is mechanical and much larger.

Probably, the vast majority of people using computers may only need DAS, and not any sort of network solution.

Flash Drives have gotten very large lately. They sort of took over DAS from cdrom/dvrom once they hit 8 GB and bigger. And I know people who use flash drives, and SD cards, as many laptops have a SD slot built in.

There are external hard drives. TB of inexpensive storage. One just needs to chose between mechanical and solid state. Solid state is faster, but mechanical is still cheaper per GB.

Then there are a wide variety of options for using internal drives externally. USB to SATA, and multi bay drives, some even supporting hardware RAID. Though these options loose something in the form of portability.
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Retired Techie

June 18, 2025