Over the past few weeks, several of you have asked me to take a look at the Lunduke Computer Operating System, or LCOS for short. I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard of it before your requests, so today I want to take a look at what it is, how it works, and what its use case is.
I had to do a little research before sitting down with LCOS. I’ve seen Bryan Lunduke’s name on social media, specifically a few X posts, and a few YouTube Videos. I didn’t realize he’d started his own Linux distribution. Apparently, I haven’t been paying close enough attention.
While I don’t follow Lunduke, doing a little research indicated that he has disagreements with large parts of the open-source community. But that’s not what I what I want to look at here. I’m going to focus specifically on the requests I received, and examine LCOS itself and share my thoughts on it from an end user perspective. If you’re looking for political drama, you won’t find it here.
Greetings, everyone! My goal for this article was to set up a Wayland-based graphical environment on a minimal Arch Linux installation using Labwc.
Achieving this goal without Xwayland has proven basically impossible. A large number of Linux application’s are still based on X11, which prevents a pure Wayland installation. While not the focus here it does make me wonder why are mainstream distributions and desktop environments are so bent on leaving X11 behind?
But I need to get off the soap box and proceed with creating a mostly Wayland based light Graphical User environment.
Yes, Wayland is the future! So I need to learn something about it. However, X11 can do things that Wayland compositors may never support, just as Wayland can do things X11 will never be capable of. Which is why it is impossible to have a pure Wayland experience.
For this project, I’ve chosen Labwc, mainly because I’m not a fan of tiling window managers. I’ve tried them under X11, but I’m too old and set in my ways to change my workflow. Labwc follows in the tradition of Openbox, a classic X11 window manager.
While I wanted a native to Wayland setup, the lack of a good selection of Wayland based applications doesn’t make that practical.
When building out the graphical user environment, there are plenty of Wayland tools for taskbar, wallpaper, login, etc. The problem shows up with productivity applications; many haven’t been converted to run under Wayland, and some may never be.
Since my goal is a usable Graphical User Environment (GUI), and Labwc is a basic light weight stacking Window manager Compositor, I will need to add additional functionality with some third party programs.
Also I am aiming for working, and not overly worried about look and feel at this point. In depth configuration is a subject for an entire article unto itself.
So, as a mater of length, I will be skipping over a lot of the look and feel configuration, and focusing on the functionality stuff.
Installing Arch Linux with Btrfs differs from an ext4 installation when preparing the disk. In this article I’ll create a Btrfs filesystem and its subvolumes, mount them, and install Arch step by step from the command line—without using Archinstall.
I’ve covered Arch installations before. My last walkthrough used ext4, and it was more than a year ago. Since the Arch installation guide changes over time, it’s worth revisiting, and one should always verify against the guide whenever following any installation tutorial.
This time, I’ll use Btrfs, or the B-tree file system, instead of ext4. I’ve had extensive experience with Btrfs over the past year and decided to try it on Arch.
This article also lays the groundwork for a future article: a pure Wayland installation using labwc. Labwc is a window-stacking compositor for Wayland, inspired by the classic X11 window manager, Openbox.
I’ll be installing Arch in a virtual machine, so a few details differ from a bare-metal installation. For example, I won’t install processor microcode in the guest. On a physical system, you’d generally install the package appropriate for your CPU vendor.
The walkthrough is divided into sections; timestamps are in the description:
[…] you’re interested but haven’t read the previous article, you can find it here. It explains how I installed Arch with Btrfs, and the VM I’m using now is the result of that […]
Browsing Linux distributions (or distros) before deciding what you actually need can quickly become overwhelming. There are many options, and some distribution lists include operating systems that aren’t based on Linux at all. For most people, the challenge isn’t finding Linux distro, They find to many. It’s finding and choosing one that actually fits.
The better approach is to start with your own needs. It takes a little time and planning, but it is a much better way than jumping on line and asking “Which Distro?” Analyze your self, your needs, and your usage habits, then select a distro with confidence.
Linux isn’t Windows or macOS, and it won’t behave exactly like either one. Whatever your experience with those systems, expect there to be differences. If you’re open to learning a different way of doing things, Linux may be a good fit. If not, it is probably better to stay where you are at.
Over the next few months, I will be exploring computer cryptography: certificates, chains of trust, certificate authorities, encryption, digital signatures, and the like.
These subjects can seem intimidating, but they are part of the technology we rely on every day. In this article, I want to focus on the basics of public-key cryptography, specifically how key pairs can be used with email. In a future articles, I’ll look at other applications, including HTTPS in your web browser.
Public-key cryptography forms the basis of any number of security systems people encounter every day, making it a useful place to begin. The subject is often presented using dense terminology, jargon, and complicated mathematics. My goal is to keep these things short, clear, and approachable, while adding detail where it matters.
This series will focus on the practical use of public-key cryptography in networking, beginning with the role of PGP or OpenPGP key pairs in email.
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