Dusty's Diverse Domain

I recently ordered a new batch of Arch Linux laptop stickers. However, because they have been selling so well, I ordered three times the number that I usually stock! I was able to get a much better price by ordering a larger bulk quantity and I’m excited to pass the savings onto all the loyal Arch Linux users out there.

The price for a single Arch Linux Sticker has dropped from $1.90 to $1.35. The savings are even greater if you purchase in bulk; you can now order 20 stickers for 80 cents a piece!

Head over to schwag.archlinux.ca to order your stickers and other Arch Linux goodies. If you’re interested in more generic Arch Linux branded items, check out our Zazzle shop.

I’ve tweaked the design on the incredibly popular Arch Linux Laptop Stickers available through the Arch Linux Schwag store. I’ve taken the black outline of the sticker for both a more modern look and to alleviate problems when the decal cutters don’t quite line up with the border. I hope you like the effect!

My camera isn’t top of the line, so if someone would supply me some quality photos of these new stickers in action, I’d be happy to include them on the Arch Schwag website.

Thank you for supporting Arch Linux.I am always eager for new ideas to put in the Arch Schwag store. I’

After some unexpected delays, I am proud to present the latest version of the Arch Linux Handbook: https://www.createspace.com/3904652. This Handbook is based off the Arch Linux Beginners’ Guide as it was on June 10, 2012. Due to complaints with previous editions, I put extra effort into the interior of this version, removing the styling on things that look like links to other wiki pages, and ensuring that such links at least give a hint as to what you should search for on the Arch Wiki for further information.

Even so, the handbook is little more than a printout of the Beginners’ Guide. It does not contain any new information aside from a short forward I authored. However, if you are looking for a paper copy of the Beginners’ Guide in a convenient handbook size, this book is exactly what you are looking for.

As with version 2.0 of the handbook, the cover design for version 3.0 was done by Branko Vukelic, a gifted artist, designer, and web developer.

In 2010, I helped organize the first ArchCon, held in Toronto. We had a blast, and I considered it a success. Unfortunately life overtook me and I did not have time to organize a second one in 2011. I heard that there was a Polish language conference that used the ArchCon name that year, but didn’t know about it until it was over.

This year, the Polish group is going all out with the first truly international ArchCon. You can view their site in English at http://2012.archcon.pl/en/ (other languages also available). They’re expecting up to 250 people and are planning a terrific after party and workshops. The conference will be held in Warsaw on July 28 and 29.

Sadly, I won’t be able to make it, but I am very excited that the community has grown enough to create this international event. If you’re going to be near Poland at that time, I encourage you to register. ArchCon 2010 was a small event, but it was a lot of fun and to the best of my knowledge, everyone was glad they attended. There’s something special about being surrounded by Archers.

Demand for Arch Linux lanyards has been growing steadily. I had intended to have a new order by new years, but I ended up dealing with a different company, and decided to do a completely new design inspired by the updated Arch Linux website. There is a subtle gradient from dark grey to black in the background that looks very dynamic, and the logo itself is crisp and clear. Each lanyard is thin and very light to wear.

The lanyards are $6 for singles, and can be purchased from The Arch Schwag Store.

It’s pretty rare for me to link to other people’s articles in this blog. I don’t believe in regurgitating information. However, this link is not regurgitated, it’s an interview I gave to http://mylinuxrig.com/ so it’s my own words:

http://www.mylinuxrig.com/post/9557009605/the-linux-setup-dusty-phillips-developer

When I first started using Linux over a decade ago, dual screen was a pain to set up. When I got my first laptop four years ago, setting up an external monitor was also painful. Then came xrandr and life was good. Now there are nifty little monitor switching GTK apps that allow you to drag screens around just like in Windows or MacOS.

But that’s a lot of fiddling around. For the longest time, my use case has always been either:
a) I am using only my laptop
b) I am using my laptop with my 1920×1080 external monitor connected via VGA (It’s an old laptop)

To accommodate these two use cases, I had connected my “Switch Display” (fn+F7 on my thinkpad) key to the following simple script:

  #!/bin/bash
  if ! xrandr | grep VGA1 | grep disconnected  >/dev/null ; then
      xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x768 --output VGA1 --mode 1920x1080 --above LVDS1
  else
      xrandr --auto
  fi

Succinctly, if the external monitor is connected, enable it as “above” my laptop, otherwise, just enable the laptop monitor. All I have to do is plug in or unplug my monitor, hit Fn+F7, and my display would automatically adjust itself.

For the record, I used xbindkeys to connect the button to the script with the following .xbindkeysrc:

 .xbindkeysrc                                                                                                                
  "/home/dusty/bin/check_external"
      XF86Display

This served me well until I bought myself a new television that only operates at 1360×768 on the VGA port. Further, when I’m connecting my laptop to the tv, the television is usually below the laptop monitor rather than above, as my monitor is.

So now, my check_external script looks thusly:

  #!/usr/bin/python
  import subprocess
 
  positions = {
      "1920x1080": "--above", # Monitor
      "1360x768": "--below" # TV
  }
 
  output = subprocess.check_output("xrandr", shell=True).decode("utf-8")
 
  external_connected=resolution=False
  for line in output.split("\n"):
      if external_connected:
          if "+" in line: # + represents the default resolution for that monitor
              resolution = line.split()[0] # + the resolution is in the first column
              break
      if "VGA1 connected" in line:
          external_connected=True
 
  if external_connected:
      subprocess.call(
              "xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x768 --output VGA1 --mode {resolution} {position} LVDS1".format(
                  resolution=resolution, position=positions.get(resolution, "--above")), shell=True)
  else:
      subprocess.call("xrandr --auto", shell=True)

This is Python 3 code, and works delightfully on my Arch Linux running awesome setup. I still have to do custom xrandr commands if I ever connect to someone else’s projector or monitor (this happens so rarely that I don’t think I’ve done it since Archcon last year), but normally I can get away with a quick “xrandr –auto” in those cases, which usually just clones the display. There are dozens of ways to set up monitors, but this works great for me, and I can normally have my display up and running the way I want it with a couple keystrokes.

My supplier for the Arch Linux Laptop Bags product line has updated her offerings. We have four new laptop bags available, and some of the older models have been dropped or reduced in price. Check out Arch Linux Schwag to review the offerings.

In addition, I’ve reduced the price on Arch Linux pens to below cost, in an effort to liquidate some stagnant inventory.

As always, thanks for supporting Arch Linux!

Over a year ago, I released the Arch Linux Handbook, a print copy of the Arch Linux Beginners’ Guide. It proved to be far more popular than I expected, with nearly 400 copies in print.

Of course, the Beginner’s guide is a community edited document for a rolling release Linux distribution, and after a year, the Arch Linux Handbook became somewhat dated. So I’ve created a second edition. It is currently available directly from the eStore and will be available on Amazon within a couple weeks. The International Amazon sites, other booksellers, and brick and mortar stores should have the book available for order after about six weeks.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to both Jules Pitsker and Branko Vukelic. Jules is the motivating force and primary maintainer behind the online Beginners’ Guide. His tireless and thankless contributions have turned it into the exceptionally well-written and comprehensive document that it is. Branko is the best designer I know, both for print and web based materials. He did a terrific job on this handbook cover.

I don’t normally write public journal-like entries, but I’d like to describe my experience at ArchCon as an advertisement to attract more attendees next year!

As co-organizer of the conference, I felt a lot of pressure for it to go well. People had paid registration fees to attend, as well as their travel arrangements and accommodation costs. I wanted it to be worth the time, effort, and money they spent to attend.

I think it was. I feel quite confident that no-one was disappointed.

My trip started a week before the conference. Dieter came over from Belgium around the same time as me. We did some touring around Toronto and down to Niagara Falls, and I had the dubious pleasure of introducing him to Canada’s own special recipe: poutine.

On Wednesday, the day before the conference, my best friend, fellow arch user, and ex-developer, Jason Chu flew in from Victoria, BC. I navigated my way to Humber College, where the conference was hosted and where we were rooming together on campus. Our room very closely resembled a prison cell with cement walls, floors and ceilings. We each got a private bedroom; mine was especially private (and prison-like) as my magnetic key card tended to need frequent resetting.

We met up with Ricardo Alvez who gave us a tour of the college and classrooms and then drove us to a nearby Mr. Greek for supper. We were all thoroughly entertained and swapped a variety of stories, information, and ideas.

Ricardo dropped us off at our dorm where we impatiently waited for our third roommate, Dan McGee (veteran pacman hacker, patch rejector, and expert freelancer). Jason and Dan had never met before, but they quickly became old friends and we spent the weekend insulting each other just like old friends who have far too much respect for each other always do.

We failed in our first mission of Archcon: Find a pub near campus. Dan and Jason were less than impress when we settled for Tim Horton’s (A Canadian coffee/donut chain) instead. Conference consensus is that, wherever Archcon 2011 is held, it must be in proximity to multiple pubs. No beer that night, but it wasn’t for lack of trying!

We went to bed slightly too late, but got up in time. I had meant to be at the conference early and get set up before anyone arrived, but there were already several attendees in the room when I walked in. People seemed a bit nervous and reluctant to allow me to draw them into conversation, but this didn’t last. People became very animated and everyone had something to contribute.

I haven’t presented anything since I was in school, and I have always been an awful presenter with massive public speaking anxiety. So I was surprised, as I set up my introductory speech, to find I felt relaxed and comfortable and was looking forward to the talk. I don’t think the talk was terribly well done, but I was happy with it, and most importantly, enjoyed it. The best part was, having my talk over first, I was able to enjoy the rest of the conference completely anxiety free!

We all experienced a fair amount of anxiety to begin with, though, as wireless was not immediately available. We had an ethernet port in the room, but no wireless routers. This was eventually resolved when Jason set his laptop up as an access point.

We had arranged scheduled talks in one room with various versions of free form discussion in a second room. With the small number of attendees, the second room didn’t get much use on day one, although a small collection of us got together for an informal bug squashing. I had intended to run this in parallel with an online bug squashing in IRC, but I had trouble getting into IRC and had previously thoroughly forgotten to advertise the session! I wrote a patch for an archweb bug, but I’m sure Dan will be rejecting it.

The conference was catered with pastries and drinks at breaks, and burgers, hotdogs, and way too much salad at lunch.

I am writing this as I upload and encode videos, so I won’t describe individual talks. The presenters were all game and presented well. The talks really made the conference, and I think a lot of enthusiasm for Arch development was generated among the participants, even (or especially) those of us who have basically left the community.

Day one ended with a trip downtown to find food and, more importantly, beer. I’d say about half the attendees went out, and I’m pretty confident fun was had by all. If laughter is the best medicine, we should all be very healthy for some time to come. Matt and Jason’s argument about…. well, I’m not sure what they were arguing about, but it was entertaining to watch them argue.

Day two started about 15 minutes late. Most people showed up surprisingly close to on time in spite of the late night. Coffee was consumed. After the scheduled talks wrapped up, several attendees presented “lightning talks” (5-8 minutes on whatever topic makes you happy). These forced a lot of variety into a short amount of time and were quite entertaining.

I was sad that we missed out on the development sprints. These were scheduled to occur in parallel with the last talk, but I think we were all a bit too tired and decided to watch the talk instead. I had in my mind we’d have time to do development after the lightning talks, but instead we ended the conference early. Some people left, having to catch planes, buses, or other commitments, but a large group of us stuck together. Dan and Jason coerced Kevin into chauffeuring them through a beer run while the rest of us borrowed Dan’s disc to play a game of three on three ultimate. Given Toronto’s humidity, we were soaked with sweat in short order. I still managed to cause grievous injury to my right thumb, though. It’s still hard to type and even harder to text as I write this.

Once Dan, Jason, and Kevin returned, and Jason had fixed a problem with his company’s web servers, we headed over to a Chinese buffet for dinner. The group kept shrinking as people left.

Next, the beer was consumed in our prison-like dorm. The number of beer-consumers was disproportionate to the amount of available beer, and we ran out quickly. Alex and Eric showed up shortly after all beer cans were empty. We had to switch to alternate forms of entertainment, and rotated between exchanging friendly insults and compliments, modifying and discussing playlists, discussing the history and future of Arch Linux, and planning ArchCon2011. Jason was repeatedly asked why he wasn’t carrying his Nexus one. Apparently this question annoys him.

That was the official end of ArchCon, but not for me. Jason, Dan and I spent Saturday touring Toronto in the rain. I didn’t go up the CN tower, but they had a wireless lounge that allowed me to write a python script to create the archcon image thumbnails page you’ve seen. I wrote it on my android cell phone over SSH with my injured thumb.

Dieter and a local friend of his met us at the bottom of the CN tower and we made our way to the Cloak and Dagger for more beers. We were all hungry, but didn’t realize that their kitchen was closed on Saturday. Jason and I grabbed a pair of pizzas which disappeared to quickly. So Dieter and I picked up a couple more. Loui showed up and further Arch discussion ensued with, of course, an adequate consumption of beer. I’m told it was one of the best place to get beer in the city.

I wouldn’t know. I don’t drink.