/home/gmh

Debian GNU/Linux Testing (Forky) running on a 13" Intel MacBook Air 7,2 displaying fastfetch in a ptyxis terminal.

🐧

1 of the Mackleberry twins using Debian GNU/Linux to bypass the school firewall.

MX Linux 25.1 Xfce running on a piece of shit netbook.

MX Linux 25.1 upgraded using Debian Trixie backports.

Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie running the NsCDE desktop environment with a minimized terminal and xsnow in the top left corner. Can't do that on GNOME or KDE!

The OG animated desktop!

Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie running the NsCDE desktop environment. Sometimes you just have to forget about using GNOME or KDE. https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

It's a UNIX system! I know this.

Apple FaceTime HD camera enabled including GNOME panel notification.

Apple FaceTime HD camera disabled including GNOME panel notification.

Debian GNU/Linux Testing (forky) running on a 13" Intel Apple MacBook Air 7,2.

Enable and disable the FaceTime HD camera using the following software:

github.com/patjak/facet...
github.com/Chamal1120/f...

Debian GNU/Linux Testing (forky) running the GNOME desktop environment. 'Open Ptyxis Here' option fully integrated with the Nautilus file manager. using the nautilus-open-any-terminal plugin. https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal

Ptyxis fully integrated with GNOME / Nautilus on Debian GNU/Linux Testing.

Debian GNU/Linux Testing (forky) running the GNOME desktop environment.

Debian GNU/Linux 14 is going to be amazing!

680 out of 30

Debian GNU/Linux

... and with this my experiment with Mint is over.

Yeah, I know but if I'm going to use Debian I might as well use Debian it's been my primary Linux since the 90s.

I checked out Mint for the first time about 6 weeks ago, it seemed like a nice OS but they really need to get away from the Ubuntu base. Pushing broken kernel updates is inexcusable. 🐧

a man in a suit and tie with a mustache is standing in front of a map and says great success . ALT: a man in a suit and tie with a mustache is standing in front of a map and says great success .

The Ubuntu 6.17 kernel update is failing to install correctly, or causing kernel panic on reboots on multiple machines.

This also impacts Ubuntu based distributions such as Linux Mint.

Make a snapshot before you upgrade.

Ubuntu QA as shit as it ever was!

... and with that my journey to get Linux Mint running perfectly on the MacBook Air is complete.

mbpfan for proper fan control ✅
zram enabled ✅
all hardware including the webcam supported ✅

#!/bin/bash # add support for Apple PCI FaceTimeHD webcam # mpv av://v4l2:/dev/video0 --profile=low-latency --untimed sudo apt -y install checkinstall cpio curl git kmod libssl-dev linux-headers-generic make xz-utils cd /tmp git clone https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd-firmware.git cd facetimehd-firmware make sudo make install cd /tmp git clone https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie.git cd bcwc_pcie make sudo make install sudo depmod sudo modprobe facetimehd

Enable Apple's PCI based FaceTimeHD webcam. Verified as working on a 13" MacBook Air 7,2 running Linux Mint 22.3.

This should work without issue on other Debian/Ubuntu based distros.

If you end up giving this a go let me know how you went. I would be interested in seeing the output from

cat /sys/block/zram0/comp_algorithm

just to see what compression algorithm it uses by default.

Screenshot of a customised Cinnamon 6.6.4 running on Linux Mint 22.3. The hardware is a 13" Intel MacBook Air 7,2

A bit of customisation and I am happy with the look of Cinnamon 6.6.4.

I have taken a look at the zram-config on GitHub it just looks like a different way of doing the same thing, it still needs to be configured to get the best performance/settings as the defaults aren't optimised.

I'll just keep doing things my way because this is a tool on top of the zram-tools.

I hadn't heard of zram-config until you mentioned it. I just use the standard tools and configure them manually using the best practices as laid out by the Archi wiki/Pop_OS! and tweaked for the way Mint works, but if zram-config does what you want - excellent.

I should add this is for Mint (22.x), so you may need to edit if you are running a different OS.

two men on a boat with the words i 'm king of the world behind them ALT: two men on a boat with the words i 'm king of the world behind them

FML

sudo systemctl status zramswap.service and
cat /sys/block/zram0/comp_algorithm will provide you with more verification.

ON THE INTERNET - SO CHECK THE COMMANDS FOR YOURSELF.

Once you are happy reboot and you are up and running.

You can verify by running zramctl or swapon when you reboot.

Notes:

PERCENTAGE should be the percentage that equals 16GB of RAM if you have more than that.

vm.min_free_kbytes should be 1% of your RAM - echo $(awk '/MemTotal/ {printf "%.0f", $2 * 0.01}' /proc/meminfo)

THESE ARE THE SETTINGS I USE, AND ARE BASED ON WHAT POP!_OS DOES BUT I'M SOME RANDO

Install zram-tools.

Edit /etc/default/zramswap and uncomment:

ALGO=zstd
PERCENT=100
PRIORITY=100

Create a file /etc/sysctl.d/99-vm-zram-parameters.conf

vm.swappiness = 180
vm.watermark_boost_factor = 0
vm.watermark_scale_factor = 125
vm.min_free_kbytes = 80330
vm.page-cluster = 0

I'm running Mint on a 13" MacBook Air 7,2 and would add check out "mbpfan" for proper fan control, and enable zram support.

... that's a buy (if they ship to AU)

Oh, and enable zram. Since I did this my Air has been running great. Do yourself a favour, learn this for yourself nearly all of the guides online are outdated with what I'd consider to be bad defaults and little to no optimisation.

Linux Mint running GTKTerm connected to an Apple 1 (Briel Replica 1 Plus) clone. The clone is booted into Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC for Apple 1, and then reset back into the Wozmon monitor and the classic character set test program from the Apple 1 manual is run.

Modern Intel Linux say hello to the MOS 6502.

Linux Mint - zram configuration / vm.min_free_kbytes should be 1% of your available ram / echo $(awk '/MemTotal/ {printf "%.0f", $2 * 0.01}' /proc/meminfo)

Linux Mint - zram up and running

zram ✅