tl;dr - edit the file ~/.bash.rc add the line export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 then reboot. Once done, type into the Firefox address bar about:support and check that "Window Protocol" is set to "wayland". You can configure how swipes work by visiting about:config and filtering for "swipe": I'll say this for Linux - why have two different ways to accomplish something when you can have twenty? It…
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I've been looking for this rare beast for ages - a hub which has multiple USB-C outputs! You see it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that computers don't have enough ports on them. And laptops? Pah! A couple of USB-C if you're lucky, and one of them has to be used for power. What a world! This is the MOKiN USB-C Triple-Display Docking Station - MODK1402. It's a bit over £100 depending on …
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I'm sure I remembered there once being a clock app for Linux which was deliberately vague. It would declare the time as "Nearly tea-time" or "A little after elevenses" or "Quite late" or "Gosh, that's early". But I can find no evidence that it ever existed and am beginning to wonder if I dreamt it. So I built it. First thing's first - there are a lot of existing fuzzy clocks. But they mostly…
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After three years of constant abuse, my once pristine laptop keyboard now looks like this: My options were: Ignore it. Scrape off all the paint and replace with translucent stickers. Buy a new keyboard. Even if I were happy with the aesthetic of a hard-worn keyboard (I wasn't) the flaking paint just didn't feel nice under my fingers. I also figured that scraping the paint further risked…
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A few years ago, I wrote about my perfect ls command. I always want to see the most recent file at the bottom of the screen, with a human readable filesize, and nothing else. I've started using the exa tool to make that happen. Sadly, there's no configuration file to change its default behaviour. So, I add this to my ~/.profile file: # Better LS with exa alias lh='exa -l -s modified…
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I needed to copy 3TB of data from my old homeserver to my new one. I decided to spend as much time "sharpening my axe" as possible. I spent ages dicking around with ZFS configs, tweaking BIOS settings, flashing firmware, and all the other yak-shaving necessary for convincing yourself you're doing useful work. Then I started testing large file transfers. Both scp and rsync started well -…
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ZFS sometimes benefits from having a logging drive. Usually, you need to assign a whole device or partition to it. Unfortunately, I had already partitioned my SSD and didn't feel like repartitioning it. So, here's how to create a file, mount it as a loopback, and then assign it to your ZFS pool as a logging drive. Create a 1GB file somewhere on your SSD: fallocate -l 1G zil.img Mount the…
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I have a headless server - one without a GUI - which I use as a NextCloud client. My laptop, phone, tablet, and server all sync with a cloud-based NextCloud instance. But, sadly, NextCloud don't offer a way for servers to speak to servers. If you try to run apt install nextcloud it will try to install 300MB of GUI dependencies which you just can't use. Luckily, there's a way around all that!…
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Back in 2011, I bought an HP Proliant Microserver G6 for £250. Last week I upgraded to... A Proliant G8 for £270. Nice! Hurrah for Moore's Law! Of course, setting it up is a bit of a mare. So here's a tangled mess of notes to hopefully remind me what to do... Firmware Download the latest gen8 firmware / BIOS / iLO. Find a site offering demo licence keys for iLO 4. Boot Order I stuck in an S…
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The Mozilla VPN service is great, but it doesn't work using the CLI if you have a "headless" server. After a bit of faffing about, I got it working. I suffered so you don't have to. Get an account Sign up and use code MOZILLA20 for a cheeky 20% discount! Get a token in the browser To start with, you'll need to get an authentication token. This requires you to be on a machine which can run a …
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I always find it depressing when I reach the limits of my abilities. I have a new Thermal Imaging camera. It automatically saves photos in two formats. The first is a standard JPEG with false colours and metadata superimposed. The second is a .irg file which can only be opened by the Windows-only software which comes with the camera. Judging from what that software shows, the .irg contains a …
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If you have a large collection of eBooks, you probably use Calibre - it's simply the best bit of cross-platform software for managing your library. It runs rock-solid on Linux. But a recent upgrade gave me a problem. I started the app and the windows were missing their borders and my mouse cursor was too small. Not show-stopping problems, but mildly annoying. After a bit of faffing around,…
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