Hyperbola part 3 - taking this bad boy to overdrive - upgrading to the 0.4 beta

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andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

In part 2, I showed how to do a basic, minimal install of Hyperbola, how to get networking and graphics working, and how to install the DWM window manager and some programs: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/hyperbola-part-2-beginners-guide-installation-w-dwm-window-manager

Here, we are going to jump ahead and power up from Hyperbola 0.3 to the beta of the next version, Hyperbola 0.4. In so doing, we will be able to get the latest version of the iceweasel-uxp browser and we will get basic sound working!!! Follow along.

1. First, change the repos to disable all the Hyperbola "stable" repos, and only enable the Hyperbola "development and debugging" repo. Do this by opening the 'mirrorlist' file in our text editor, nano:
sudo nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Edit all the lines that say they are a "stable" repo by starting the line with a '#' symbol, in order to disable them. Edit the very last entry in the mirrorlist, which says:
"Note: Only for development and debugging
# Server = https://repo.hyperbola.info:50011/gnu-plus-linux-libre/testing/$repo/os/$arch"

Delete the "# " symbol and blank space at the beginning of the line, in order to enable this repo:
"Server = https://repo.hyperbola.info:50011/gnu-plus-linux-libre/testing/$repo/os/$arch"

Hit the Ctrl-o key combination and press Enter to save the file, and Ctrl-x to exit nano.

2. Remember, we have to re-start our internet each time, so if your network isn't running yet then run the earlier commands for starting the internet. Your ethernet device name will probably not be 'enp0s2' like mine - remember you have to use the 'ip link' command to determine the name of your ethernet device.
sudo ip link set enp0s2 up
sudo dhcpcd

3. Update and upgrade all the packages on your system
sudo pacman -Syyu

At this point I got asked some questions, to which I had to answer "y" for 'yes' to each one. Watch out, "y" is not always the default!

I also ran into some errors, which said that various "pinentry" files on the system were somehow causing problems while I was trying to update and upgrade. I resolved these errors by removing the offending files, per a solution I found in the Arch forums:
sudo rm /usr/share/info/pinentry.info.gz
sudo rm /usr/bin/pinentry-curses
sudo rm /usr/bin/pinentry-tty

Watch your error messages closely and see if you get the same errors, or something different, or none at all. I post these here only because they were the errors I ran into, not necessarily that everyone will always run into them.

Now I was able to update and upgrade the packages successfully:
sudo pacman -Syyu

4. This upgraded almost 300 different packages to newer versions. At the end of the process I rebooted. The new 0.4 beta version of Hyperbola deleted the 'sudo' package, so I could not use the command 'sudo reboot' to reboot the machine. I had to log in as root and reboot:
su
reboot

5. The 'sudo' package was removed, but it was replaced by a more secure and more minimalist alternative, the 'doas' command from the openBSD system. A lot of security experts are now recommending that we move most of our desktop GNU/Linux systems to 'doas' instead of sudo, so this is a great chance to try it out. 'doas' is already set up on the system for you, and should work right away. Try to update the package repository again:
doas pacman -Syyu

6. You should be asked for your password, however at this point I got another error saying that pacman would not run because I was missing the packages 'libssl.so.46' and 'libcrypto.so.44'. There appears to be some kind of small bug here, because I already have the later versions of both files on my system. The solution, if you run into this error, is to link the system to both of the newer versions of the packages, and tell the system that they fulfill the need for the older versions. We'll do that using our new friend, 'doas':
doas ln -sf /usr/lib/libssl.so.48 /usr/lib/libssl.so.46
doas ln -sf /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.46 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.44

7. Now I was able to update the package repository with pacman, and pacman told me there were no additional package updates to install. If there are some, then go ahead and install them.
doas pacman -Syyu

8. You'll notice that every time you use the 'doas' command, you have to enter your password, and that there is no tab-completion of commands. This is not the ideal way to use it, not like with the 'sudo' command where it seems to remember your password for a few minutes after entering it, and where your terminal can complete commands by pressing the Tab key. In order to get the password "persistence" like with 'sudo', we can edit the 'doas' conf file like so by opening it in the nano text editor:
doas nano /etc/doas.conf

Here, you'll see that the following line has been un-commented (i.e., there is no "#" symbol at the start of the line):
"permit :wheel"

This is the line that allows us to act as the administrator with our regular user account by entering our regular password, because our user account is part of the "wheel" group. To make the password more "persistent", we change that line as follows:
"permit persist :wheel"

Save the changes by hitting the Ctrl-o key combination and the Enter key, and exit the nano text editor by hitting the Ctrl-x key combination.

In order to get the tab-completion of commands for doas, edit the .bashrc file in your home directory with nano:
nano ~/.bashrc

Add a line at the bottom of the file:
complete -cf doas

Again, save the changes by hitting the Ctrl-o key combination and the Enter key, and exit the nano text editor by hitting the Ctrl-x key combination.

That's it. Now if you use the 'doas' command where you would have used 'sudo' in the past, 'doas' will retain your password for a few minutes like it used to do with 'sudo', and once you are using it in a terminal it will tab-complete your commands.

9. Once in DWM, I noticed that the nice terminal emulator I had installed in the Hyperbola 0.3 version was no longer available, 'lxterminal'. And 'xterm' was uninstalled during the update process for some reason. So I needed to install both xterm and a decent terminal emulator (I do NOT consider xterm to be decent, despite what some may argue). I found one in the Hyperbola 0.4 repository that I like a lot - 'sakura'. I think you'll like it too. It's light, fast, has no added dependencies, and has nice options and defaults. I recommend installing them both before starting DWM:
doas pacman -S xterm sakura

10. Now let's log into DWM again and have a look around at our new stuff. If you did not run into the "missing libssl.so.46" and "missing libcrypto.so.44" errors from step #6 above, you may run into them here. If so, just follow the commands I listed in step #6 to overcome those errors. Log into DWM:
startx

11. You'll probably find that iceweasel-uxp, the web browser on Hyperbola, has been removed. Open a terminal by hitting your DWM menu key combination left-Alt-p and typing in the first few letters of your new terminal 'sakura' and hit Enter. Go into the terminal and install the new version of the iceweasel-uxp web browser:
doas pacman -S iceweasel-uxp

11. Now have a look at your nice new iceweasel-uxp web browser, which is the latest version from June 2021, instead of an old version from 2020. Start it by using your DWM menu key combination left-Alt-p, and typing the first few letters of 'iceweasel-uxp', and hitting Enter. Go to a website with some videos, like the invidio.us site 'yewtu.be', and find a video you want to watch. If all goes well, you will have video and for our first time in Hyperbola you will have sound!!

12. I'm going to add a few packages from Hyperbola 0.4 beta's repos so I can do some stuff in DWM, like write documents, browse the web with my favorite minimalist web browsers, watch and listen to media, etc. Hyperbola does not have Libreoffice at this time, so I'll install my favorite little word processor, 'focuswriter', and a classic spreadsheet program, 'gnumeric'. I'll install the minimalist web browser 'netsurf', the cli web browser 'elinks', and the cool classic Opera-style libre browser I've been wanting to try, 'otter-browser'. And of course, I'll be installing 'mpv' for music and videos:
doas pacman -S focuswriter gnumeric netsurf elinks otter-browser mpv

13. Try out some of these new programs. Hit the DWM menu key combination, left-Alt-p, and start to type in the name of one of the programs you've installed - 'focus'. Hit Enter when 'focuswriter' shows up in the menu. Enjoy!

14. NOTE - while sound is working with iceweasel-uxp, it will not work with mpv (for now) unless you start your media as follows:
mpv --audio-device=sndio [link_to_media_file]

Also, I've been able to get alsamixer running with root privileges to increase/decrease sound volume, but not as the regular user:
doas alsamixer

I'm assuming some of these sound issues will be ironed out while the beta rounds into form for a regular release.

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Logged into DWM and only using 74mb of memory. How sweet is that?

DWMonHyperbola6.jpg
lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

I don't understand: where is 3D Wayland?

I need it for my new Rust VR/AR project.

VR.png
andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

You need a bigger set of goggles: https://virtualrealityreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/P1070789.jpg

That thing in your picture is too puny to run an advanced technology like Rust on Wayland.

lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

That is exactly what we are going to need in order to see the various parts of your Hyperbola guide at once.

EDIT: The page has moved, so here it is, so we have it handy when time comes:

VR_headset.jpeg
lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

To be honest, I'm capturing just my left eye.

(Credits included in the picture)

https://spacepub.space/w/dYTG6u5Z5ycDD8P7cGDu83

VR_2.png
Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

Ahh, just couldn’t resist.

Back in January some rip roaring discussions were going on in the Troll hole. I think some posts leaned towards being offensive (lacking in kindness or civility) and a lot of misinformation was being linked to and spread. Since the subject was health related and it was viewed that lives could be damaged by the wrong information, one thread was taken down. A new thread was started with the question, what happened to that thread?

Eventually the moderator spoke up and explained the basis for removal:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/whole-thread-seems-missing-does-forum-censor#comment-155738

One part read “Besides that, these long, complicated to follow and controversial topics may generate so much activity at a given time that THEY CAN IMPACT THE OVERALL TONE AND FEEL THAT THIS COMMUNITY PROVIDES, PARTICULARLY TO NEWCOMERS AND MEMBERS OF SOME AGE GROUPS. We want this site to still be mainly a place to discuss Trisquel GNU/Linux, free software and closely related topics.” All caps my edit.

I haven’t posted for a long while but do check in and get caught up regularly and I have been seeing a lot of posts that might negatively impact the “overall tone and feel of this community” and make Trisquel and Free Software less attractive to prospective new users.

Andy writes - “As I said before:- - pot calling the kettle black – do as I say not as I do – posts by the pious, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, anti free speech-information, downvoting brigade who misuse the voting system…?
Thankfully they are just a miniscule 1% of our community; as most silly bully boys are.
When exposed they predictably start crying. It wasn’t me Sir – It was him.. sob, sob.”

Might such insulting rants spread throughout this forum be a real turnoff to people coming here with an interest in trying Trisquel?

I am really interested in andyprough’s topic Hyperbola part 3. I installed Arch once and was impressed that by default it didn’t start up a ton of services I generally don’t need. I doubt if there is a totally secure OS but reduction of a systems attack surface by not running services you do not need is a sound security priciple regardless of the OS. Being Archlike and totally free, I would like to try Hyperbola. It wasn’t the easiest install process so all the guidance andyprough gives here is great. And being about free software it totally fits in “general-free-software-talk.”

But Andy’s posts are largely off topic and ruining this valuble thread. Andy asks “WHAT IS OUR MODERATOR DOING ABOUT IT…?” Well we just might see, Andy.

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

>"I am really interested in andyprough’s topic Hyperbola part 3. I installed Arch once and was impressed that by default it didn’t start up a ton of services I generally don’t need. I doubt if there is a totally secure OS but reduction of a systems attack surface by not running services you do not need is a sound security priciple regardless of the OS. Being Archlike and totally free, I would like to try Hyperbola. It wasn’t the easiest install process so all the guidance andyprough gives here is great. And being about free software it totally fits in “general-free-software-talk.”

I am here to help!! Let me know any problems you run into if you try to install Hyperbola. Maybe we can work through them together.

Keep in mind, Arch by default installs massively bloated structures such as systemd and dbus which INCREASE the attack surface. What Hyperbola is doing, with their upcoming 0.4 release, is getting rid of almost all that bloated and unnecessary scaffolding - giving you just simply a distro that stands on its own without needing a massive series of code structures in order to stand and deliver a proper computing experience.

In a way, Hyperbola is kind of the "anti-Arch", even while it shares the Arch pacman package manager and still follows some of the KISS philosophy which would/could/should make Arch desirable if it had been designed bloat-free.

jahoti
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Joined: 07/31/2021

> Andy asks “WHAT IS OUR MODERATOR DOING ABOUT IT…?” Well we just might see, Andy.

I truly hope so; they have moved a few threads off the "Trisquel users" board, at least. It will certainly not be hard for them to find evidence of issues if they do find the time to address them :).

Long live Andyprough's miscellaneous OS posts!

Legimet
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Joined: 12/10/2013

It appears that Andy is gone and his posts have been deleted.

jahoti
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Joined: 07/31/2021

Indeed, quite a mixed blessing. At least the days of copy/paste posting should be over.

Geshmy
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Joined: 04/23/2015

'I am here to help!! Let me know any problems you run into if you try to install Hyperbola. Maybe we can work through them together.'

Thanks for that. I have a laptop I might try Hyperbola on. Not sure when.

lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

Hyperbola Milky Way v0.3.1 is currently the most active torrent among the few GNU/Linux distros I am seeding through Transmission.

EDIT: I only seed fully free GNU/Linux distros.

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Hyperbola is very Arch-ish, and people do love their Arch-ish distros. Arch-ish distros are constantly hyped by the youtube influencers. DistroTube is closing in on 200,000 subscribers between his youtube channel and his LBRY channel. That's nuts.

Plus Hyperbola is very hard to install. So when you are at a nerd party and one friend says "I use Arch" and the other friend says "well I use Gentoo", you can say "well I use Hyperbola" and shut them up. Everyone wants to be that guy.

lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

> That's nuts.

Agreed. Is it safe to let two bald guys hog the market for GNU/Linux distro vlogging?

I'll be off sketching my own libre GNU/Linux distro channel.

jahoti
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Joined: 07/31/2021

Who's the other bald guy?

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Distrotube (Derek Taylor) and Luke Smith is probably who he's referring to. They both sing the praises of libre software constantly, and both have huge subscriber bases. And both are bald.

andyprough
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To start vlc with proper sound, use
vlc --aout sndio

sndio is apparently the openbsd sound system. Hyperbola is stuffed full of openbsd stuff - the xenocara version of xorg, the sndio sound system, the doas program to replace sudo. There's probably a lot more, I'm still learning.

andyprough
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Trying out the Lumina desktop on Hyperbola 0.4 today. This is a lightweight desktop that seems to try to provide most of the typical desktop functionality.

lumina.jpg
andyprough
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Here's what some of the programs look like on Lumina.

Libreoffice with the non-gtk, non-qt look - all the corners are very sharp 90 degree angles. I had to change all the colors - it was a severe mixture of whites and light greys that was going to hurt my eyes.

iceweasel-uxp web browser has the old classic Firefox look and feel. It's based on a fork of palemoon, and palemoon was split off from Firefox before Firefox went with the photon/quantum/proton series of appearance changes. iceweasel-uxp worked well on all the sites I tried it on, even on the javascript heavy ones. It handled one website that I've had trouble getting modern Firefox to display accurately, so I'm somewhat impressed. It has privacy and security extensions available like the classic version of noscript, a Hyperbola-forked version of legacy ublock-origin, and a powerful anti-fingerprinting extension, so it can be run pretty safely and privately.

Also here's a screenshot of the Lumina file manager, which appears to be called 'Insight'. This gives some idea of what native Lumina programs look like with their very dark theming.

And a screenshot of the Lumina "Media Player" program. Hyperbola is "hyper" about software freedom issues - their version of Media Player will not play "evil" formats like mp3, but an .opus song is acceptable. You download songs with the Hyperbola forked version of youtube-dl called "hypervideo". It seems to work with the same options as youtube-dl, but it defaults to downloading in free software formats. hypervideo worked well for me - it was quite fast in fact.

hyperbola-lumina-libreoffice.jpg hyperbola-lumina-iceweasel_001.jpg hyperbola-lumina-file-manager.jpg hyperbola-lumina-media-player.jpg
andyprough
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Lumina has nice wallpapers:

hyperbola-lumina-blue.jpg hyperbola-lumina-green.jpg hyperbola-lumina-red.jpg
nparafe

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How did you managed to get window-decorations in lumina?

I have installed the package (both core and utilities) but so far I cannot close/open/drag windows using the mouse or show all the items in the panel.

nparafe

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Solved!

My .xinitrc was:

slstatus &
exec lumina-desktop

windows decorations appeared when:

slstatus &
exec start-lumina-desktop

Great guide(s) btw.

Installing and configuring Hyperbola, reminds me the gnu/linux from the 99's era. I am totally lost and I loved every damn second of it.

p.s.: have you found a wifi network monitor gui?

p.s.2: I still cannot get sound to work even in iceweasel-uxp. alsamixer command don't seem to work
Edit: Forget p.s.2.. I needed to install alsa-utils but it was in vein. The reason the sound doesn't work is that the laptop's sound card is dead :'(. I have also tested it with trisquel mini.

andyprough
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>"Installing and configuring Hyperbola, reminds me the gnu/linux from the 99's era. I am totally lost and I loved every damn second of it."

Yes, it's like feeling your way around in the dark. Very cool experience, and amazing how well the system actually works. I need to spend more time in it this year.

>"p.s.: have you found a wifi network monitor gui?"

No, I never looked for one, and I haven't been back in Hyperbola since I posted those Lumina screenshots in November 2021. But we have one of the the community leaders of Hyperbola here on this forum, SkedarKing. I'll text him and ask him to drop into this thread and try to answer this and any other questions you might have.

>"The reason the sound doesn't work is that the laptop's sound card is dead :'(. I have also tested it with trisquel mini."

Plug in headphones, see if you get anything. I ripped all my nasty old sound system out of my 11-year-old Dell laptop, and I still get sound through the headphone jack through the motherboard. I can also plug in external speakers. It's worth a shot. If not, you can get one of those USB-2.0-sound-card dongles with the headphone and microphone jacks (if you are on a laptop), see if that works. I used a USB sound card dongle on another laptop for a couple years.

SkedarKing
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Joined: 11/01/2021

for wifi monitor gui, you need dhcpcd-gtk and wpa_supplicant.

I primarly use sndio + libsndio and jwmkit's mixer or soundbraid to get it running. :)

It seems to work well enough for me. :)

Heads up btw, you need to have dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant added to rc-update.

Aka, you need them ready to start when you reboot. You don't have to reboot, I don't think, but if needed, it might be easier for you.

Otherwise, you need to restart either dhcpcd or wpa_supplicant

and then whichever one you didn't start afterwards, open dhcpcd-gtk and then get it working. ;)

Btw, it still puzzles me that uxp stuff is even in the repo still.

Since Luke is mostly like, this isnt going anywhere... ;)

I use claws-mail for emails and badwolf + hblock.

hblock is a way to block ads with your /etc/hosts, and to update it, go to the hblock folder which you unzipped, and do this:

doas ./hblock

then you will be able to block most of the irriating ads and a good amount of trackers too.

Hope this helps.

nparafe

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Joined: 10/20/2020

Thanks, I will try the suggestions.
"you need to have dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant added to rc-update" can you explain?

andyprough
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>""you need to have dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant added to rc-update" can you explain?"

@SkedarKing sent me a text message to pass on to you:
Try for example with dhcpcd,
doas rc-update add dhcpcd default
If you want to start it before rebooting:
doas rc-service dhcpcd start
And when you reboot and start dhcpcd-gtk, wait a few minutes before you click on it, then you can either left click or right click.

Hope that helps - let us know if you have any trouble. I assume that the instructions for wpa_supplicant would be the same.

SkedarKing
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Joined: 11/01/2021

What andy posted, is how you can start other runlevel applications, including haveged, if your on 0.4... its for gnupg since dbus will be defacto gone.

Among other things...