Tag: Linux

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OSNews reports that Dillo has released a new version for the first time in almost a decade!

Now there’s a blast from the past!

Dillo (as in armadillo) is a super-minimalist web browser for Linux and related systems that’s especially useful on low-end hardware. I used it for a while back in the early 2000s, though not as my primary browser. It was great for reading documentation, though, because it was so fast (and docs usually don’t need JavaScript (and if they do, they shouldn’t)).

I haven’t really kept up with it since 2009 or so, not long after the the major 2.0 release, but I built its RPMs for a while. First on my desktop for RHL/Fedora, then on multi-boot partitions to build for older versions and other distributions like SuSe and Mandriva, then using User-Mode Linux (an older virtualization system). I later moved the build system to an expendable frankenputer after an OS installer trashed my partition table. The last set of RPMs I built were for Fedora and RHEL back in 2009. (These days, with containers and modern virtualization, it would be *so* much easier and safer to do all on one box!)

Apparently the project stalled in 2016 after one of the main developers, Sebastian Geerken died. A few years later, lead developer Jorge Arellano Cid just stopped posting online. A couple of years after that, the domain name expired and was picked up by a spammer. (I should see if I still have any links to the old site on here and update them.)

It’s sad to hear that Sebastian passed away.

I hope Jorge is okay and just off-grid somewhere.

This year’s new project has brought it up to date with modern SSL/TLS capabilities, which is a much bigger deal now than it seemed to be in the early 2000s, as well as improved CSS support and other improvements. I’ll have to try out how well it handles today’s (static) web. I bet it’ll run great on the PineTab2!

Updates: Not surprisingly, Dillo handles Snac pretty well. It’s able to view public Snac posts/timelines and log in to my account here. But posting isn’t working.

Not so much Pixelfed or Mastodon, both of which are JS;DR. GoToSocial static pages are readable, but it’s not using any of the styles.

The new project offers plugins for Gemini, Gopher, man pages and IPFS, as well as something called Spartan that appears to be another minimalist protocol like Gemini.

And it does indeed run quite fast on the Pinetab!

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Always nice to be greeted by this unlock screen:

Login screen with blurred background and boxes of static that are the right size for a large digital clock and a login message.

Ever since upgrading to the latest NVIDIA driver, my Linux system has had a weird quirk with resuming from suspend/hibernate. All the applications and services that were running pick up right where I left them, but anything drawn by Gnome shell — including the unlock screen, the top bar and the dock — has corrupted text and icons. Sometimes it’ll be missing every few letters (Firefox is often captioned “ire ox”). And sometimes all the letters and icons will just show static.

It clears up if I log out and back in, or reset the display with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. And I recently learned about another useful shortcut for Gnome: Typing “r” in the Alt-F2 “Run Command” box (whether I can read it or not!) will reset Gnome Shell without closing the session, so I can keep all the applications running and actually use suspend for what it’s meant to do — though with an extra step.

Update July 10: The latest driver (515.57) appears to fix it!

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After a brief stint at distributed computing early in the pandemic, I came back first to Folding@Home, then BOINC, with the following goals:

  • Use some spare computing power to help with worthwhile research.
  • Not drastically increase my power usage.
  • Mainly run projects when my computer would be on anyway, not start running a full desktop power supply full blast 24/7.
  • Avoid damaging my primary system, and especially not have to replace a fried CPU or GPU in a hurry during the ongoing chip shortage! (I’ve had heating problems with graphics-intensive games on this box.)

Folding@Home only seemed worth doing with the GPU, and the tasks took long enough that it only seemed worth doing if I was going to keep the computer on, which tripped up on my targets for power usage, uptime, and overheating risk. And their ARM version had dropped 64-bit support, so I couldn’t put it on the Raspberry Pi either. Well, not without installing a new OS and setting everything up again.

I tossed BOINC on an old Android phone (via F-Droid) to start with, using Science United as a manager to automatically choose projects based on areas of research instead of having to dig into each project one at a time. After a week or so, that seemed to be working out pretty well, so I looked into expanding.

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  1. Put Folding@Home on my desktop.
  2. It’s using too much power.
  3. Can I put it on my Raspberry Pi 3B?
  4. The software is 64-bit. The OS on there right now is 32-bit.
  5. Specs show the 3B has a 64-bit processor.
  6. /proc/cpuinfo shows it has a 32-bit processor.
  7. Specs show it should have BCM2837
  8. /proc/cpuinfo shows it has BCM2835
  9. Magnifying glass shows BCM2837 stamped on the chip.

A close-up view of a circuit board with Raspberry Pi 3 written on it and a Broadcom chip partially hidden by plastic spacers.

WTF?

It turns out all Raspberry Pi CPUs appear as 2835 in the kernel?!?!?

I decided to put BOINC on an old phone instead. I don’t feel like installing a new OS on the Pi. *sigh*