muhyb

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/38558693

We have a Macbook Air mid 2013 and no matter what distro I tried, making wi-fi work was pain due to Broadcom drivers and not having ethernet port. Basically had to install the drivers via phone tethering.

However, probably because of the drivers, there are certain problems like disconnecting out of blue or really slow connection or cannot reconnect unless reboot the PC.

So I want to ask, if you have this Macbook and have Linux installed, which distro you're using it with? How is it?

Recently I installed Bazzite on a home computer and printers, Xbox controller, iPhone connection, everything the owners need worked out of the box. I'm wondering, would it also work fine with this Macbook too?

Edit: I added these to a blocklist, which I created here >> /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl.conf

This is for BCM4360 adapter.

blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist ssb

For now, it seems fine but need more time to see if the problems are actually gone. At least the reception issue is gone I guess.

Edit 2: Installed LMDE, which wi-fi was working even on live ISO. However, same problems also present here. It has dkms version of the driver but I don't sense any difference. Same connection drops, same random slowness.

Also found this thread. It describes my issues, but sadly no replies.

Edit 3: Currently experimenting with iwd since I found out this thread from Reddit, surprisingly not deleted, yet.

I installed iwd, disabled NetworkManager, enabled iwd.

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl start iwd
sudo systemctl enable iwd

Put these on /etc/iwd/main.conf.

[Scan]
DisablePeriodicScan=true
[DriverQuirks]
DefaultInterface=wl
[General]
EnableNetworkConfiguration=true
[Rank]
BandModifier5Ghz=9.0 

Though I didn't add BandModifier since we don't have 5Ghz anyway.

Then edited /etc/resolv.conf.

nameserver 192.168.1.3 #pi-hole IP

Also installed iwgtk to manage iwd with UI.

Seems fine so far, will edit again if it's good or not.

Edit 4: It's... better. Not the ultimate solution though. Slowings on network speed still happen. At least disabling/re-enabling wi-fi fixes the issue. With broadcom-wl driver, it needed Macbook to restart. That's an improvement I guess.

We have a Macbook Air mid 2013 and no matter what distro I tried, making wi-fi work was pain due to Broadcom drivers and not having ethernet port. Basically had to install the drivers via phone tethering.

However, probably because of the drivers, there are certain problems like disconnecting out of blue or really slow connection or cannot reconnect unless reboot the PC.

So I want to ask, if you have this Macbook and have Linux installed, which distro you're using it with? How is it?

Recently I installed Bazzite on a home computer and printers, Xbox controller, iPhone connection, everything the owners need worked out of the box. I'm wondering, would it also work fine with this Macbook too?

Edit: I added these to a blocklist, which I created here >> /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl.conf

This is for BCM4360 adapter.

blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist ssb

For now, it seems fine but need more time to see if the problems are actually gone. At least the reception issue is gone I guess.

Edit 2: Installed LMDE, which wi-fi was working even on live ISO. However, same problems also present here. It has dkms version of the driver but I don't sense any difference. Same connection drops, same random slowness.

Also found this thread. It describes my issues, but sadly no replies.

Edit 3: Currently experimenting with iwd since I found out this thread from Reddit, surprisingly not deleted, yet.

I installed iwd, disabled NetworkManager, enabled iwd.

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl start iwd
sudo systemctl enable iwd

Put these on /etc/iwd/main.conf.

[Scan]
DisablePeriodicScan=true
[DriverQuirks]
DefaultInterface=wl
[General]
EnableNetworkConfiguration=true
[Rank]
BandModifier5Ghz=9.0 

Though I didn't add BandModifier since we don't have 5Ghz anyway.

Then edited /etc/resolv.conf.

nameserver 192.168.1.3 #pi-hole IP

Also installed iwgtk to manage iwd with UI.

Seems fine so far, will edit again if it's good or not.

Edit 4: It's... better. Not the ultimate solution though. Slowings on network speed still happen. At least disabling/re-enabling wi-fi fixes the issue. With broadcom-wl driver, it needed Macbook to restart. That's an improvement I guess.

Apparently gnome-schedule is quite old and unmaintained. I want to help a friend with this and it shouldn't be a commandline option, has to be GUI. Something like kcron, task scheduler on KDE.

Hi there!

I have a situation about a game that has problems with running via Steam but the same binaries run fine via Lutris.

ProtonDB page of the said game: https://www.protondb.com/app/214590 (Fairy Bloom Freesia)

I tried it years ago, probably around Proton 4-2 times, and I was getting the very same error I get today if I run the game from Steam.

DirectX error: StrecthRect is invalid call

I don't know what Steam does differently but in the meantime it causes this error. Probably it's game's own problem at some circumstances (regarding it's a custom Japanese engine) and what Steam does triggers this error. I'm using Glorious Eggroll's Proton 10-15 on both Steam and Lutris, that's why I think it's related to Steam client itself.

Also tried WINE and if I run the game with regular WINE from my system, the performance would be really poor, but at least it runs.

So, I'm trying to understand what would be the difference. Do we know what might Steam client does behind the doors? According to the latest reviews on ProtonDB, the game should run fine. That's why I wanted to try it again after so many years.

I tried every Proton version and I get the same error almost on every version. For some, it crashes right away. Launch options such as PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 do not help either.

Any ideas what should I check or try?

I'm on EndeavourOS, my Steam is a native package.

Or should I go 11 > 12 > 13?

Edit: Thanks for all the replies. I asked this out of laziness and apparently trying this is not a lazy thing to do. I'm not Bilbo Baggins seeking an adventure. Will go with 11 > 12 > 13 way, though might stay at 12 for a while at this point. You know, lazy. :)

Edit 2: Updated to 12. Haven't checked all the configs yet but so far so good, at least every function I expect works. If I finish this checking sequence, I might go for 13 soon too.

Edit 3: Updated to 13 as well. It actually took shorter than updating from 11 to 12. Though for some reason Jellyfin is marked as obsolete, however it works and I couldn't care less. My things are working and hopefully I won't see problems. If I do, I'll check them one by one at this point since it's a small home server.

Gotta add this: I had 325 packages on Debian 11, and now I have 450 packages on Debian 13. Some of them are marked as obsolete but must review them one by one. I feel like this upgrade process brake my minimalism and introduced some bloat but gotta care about that later.

I know, I'm doing this again but it's just hilarious at this point.

Hi,

I'm searching for a window decoration theme that only has a frame, no buttons or anything more. Something like what Bismuth had. The one I pulled from AUR works on my Arch system (even though it's not supported for Plasma 6) but I want to install this on my Thinkpad that has Aurora Linux. But since I only want the window decoration part, any theme like this would work for me.

Edit: Thanks to Remus86, I was able to install Bismuth.

Though, because of the nature of immutable, it was tough. I had to use rpm-ostree a lot, which Aurora devs don't recommend to use. I had to install

sudo rpm-ostree install cmake gcc-c++ extra-cmake-modules qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtquickcontrols2-devel qt6-qtdeclarative-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel qt6-qtwayland-devel kf6-kconfig-devel kf6-kcoreaddons-devel kf6-ki18n-devel kf6-kxmlgui-devel kf6-kdeclarative-devel kf6-kcmutils-devel kf6-kglobalaccel-devel kdecoration-devel

just to be able to compile Bismuth.

Later, since cmake couldn't write on a read-only system, I had to modify the location to my home directory.

cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local

I added this installed location as QT_PLUGIN_PATH, just for KDE settings to see it as a theme.

export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib64/plugins:$QT_PLUGIN_PATH

But it was not persistant between logins so I also wrote it to bashrc:

echo 'export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib64/plugins:$QT_PLUGIN_PATH' >> ~/.bashrc

Also created a bismuth_kdecoration.desktop file for it, under ~/.local/lib64/plugins/org.kde.kdecoration3:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KDecoration
X-KDE-Library=bismuth_kdecoration
Name=Bismuth
Comment=Bismuth

Then I set the permissions: chmod -R 755 ~/.local/lib64/plugins/org.kdecoration3/

When I restart, I was able to use Bismuth.

I'm sure some of you already using it like this but if not, this could be useful for you.

It creates a directory with the channel's name, create sub-directories with the playlist name, it gives them a number and put them in an order, it can continue to download if you have to cancel it midway.

You can modify it to your needs.

Add this to your ~/.bashrc or your favourite shell config.

alias yt='yt-dlp --yes-playlist --no-overwrites --download-archive ~/Downloads/yt-dlp/archive.txt -f "bestvideo[height<=1080]+bestaudio/best[height<=1080]" -o "~/Downloads/yt-dlp/%(uploader)s/%(playlist_title,single_playlist)s/%(playlist_index,00)s - %(title)s - [%(id)s].%(ext)s"'

You can even limit the download speed by adding this parameter: --limit-rate 640K This example is for 5 Mb/s.

Summer^pixiv^ by gomzi