I opened the same thread 7 days ago. I said I'd try to do it again in 7 more days.

I learned how to make a Live instance of Ubuntu use Wayland so that the person could test Ubuntu on Wayland before installing.

I didn't actually want to learn that, but I did it because it seemed like a good question to answer on AskUbuntu. I had a hunch, but decided to test it. It turned out that it worked, but was a rather convoluted hack that was far more laborious than it needed to be.

First, you have to comment out a line in a config file, add a user, give the user a password, restart gdm3, log out, log partway back in, and at the password prompt you can then click a gear icon and select Wayland. All-in-all, it was a pain in the butt - but it worked. Even though it's a live instance, Ubuntu has a rather strict minimum password requirement for no real good reason.

So, what's something new that you learned in the past 7 days?

(I'd commit to making these threads weekly, but I suspect that I'm only active here until the pandemic ends. I'm normally pretty active.)

What's wrong with sticking to using the existing thread?

There are numerous on-going threads in the General forum, so no reason to do any different in this case.

There's nothing wrong with it - except that one was for the *previous* seven days. This is for the next seven days.

You're not obligated to share. You're not even obligated to use this thread. If it results in no interest, I'll discontinue them. That will hurt my feelings exactly none.

It's pretty straightforward.

Having an "I learnt something" thread has potential to be interesting - it allows people to post assorted snippets that they might feel don't warrant a thread on their own but that they still want to share.

There only needs to be one such thread - it does not need to be re-created every week.

For example, there isn't a new "what are you currently reading?" thread every week - there is a single thread that started back in 2016 and people add to it as and when they feel like it - whether that's several posts a day or a couple of posts a month it doesn't matter; the thread remains active.

It's like you didn't even read what I wrote.

I did read it; perhaps I didn't understand it - I was certainly unsure if you'd misconstrued what I had said, which is why I attempted to clarify my position.

*shrug*

I found that Fritzing is awesome and has really come far, except for PCB planning. So I started looking at KiCAD which has also advanced very much. Both are quite useful, depending on scope.

However, while all that was going on I think I found a different way to solve the problem and won't need to make a PCB. I might buy some of the parts and breadboard a prototype anyway though. I would like to get around looking at I²C in a little more depth than just superficial usage, but my TODO list has started growing again.

I just looked that up and the tools/toys available today are astonishing. I also came across this, as a seemingly good layman's introduction:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/i2c/all

Given that it's at SparkFun, I'll assume it's accurate. I read it as far as the protocol. I used to order stuff for my son from them, but he met a lady friend and ended up moving on in life as a bio major.

I have a half dozen SBCs that I ordered for a project and never got into it. They're the old RPi - like second gen, so pretty old. I was going to build an automated driveway gate (think automated, scheduled, single-use, etc w/RFID but never got around to it).

Thanks. The SparkFun link and its link to shift registers were right about what I was looking for. It'll take some time to digest them now.

The old Raspberry Pis you have are still very, very useful for embedded projects, but motivation sounds like the barrier. You might get one of the newest models, either the 4B or 3B+ or 3A+, and then work with that to build up some steam. The 4B is easily powerful enough for a primary desktop, if storage is arranged. My reason for recommending a new one is they are powerful enough to use for many normal server activities and messier programming tasks so you can transition from "normal" GNU/Linux into embedded systems at your own pace rather than having to make a single, great leap. I started out using them that way and, because it is so easy, have started adding in more hardware and more via GPIO and I²C.

It used to be a pain to try something different or complicated involving one or more systems, now it is just a matter of putting in a fresh microSD card in one or more Raspberry Pis and having at it. With scripting, burning and configuring such a card takes only a few minutes. So in that way you can have several irons in the fire at the same time by having multiple microSD cards on file since the whole system is on the card and with a new card the whole system is new. These are way more powerful than what was roaring away in or on the server room racks back in the dot-com era.

About biology, things have been changing for a while but are about to really get moving in the various subfields. I know someone who was among the very top in the world in a subfield of biology, with a background in advanced math, who commented that the field overall has potential to change completely if people can add computers (not M$, that is politics not computing) into the mix and in particular get beyond spreadsheets. That is happening. So, if done with an eye to the future, it is a software-intensive area now.

Motivation is my *primary* barrier. Before the pandemic, I was most generally off doing something fun and interesting. I stopped 'geeking out' somewhere around the time that I retired. I'm not sure what killed the spark. I still lack the gate for the driveway. I do have my own home security system, or at least parts of it are built out by me. Rather than going with something COTS, I set up my own server, storage, and cameras.

The field has moved rapidly, and far, since DNA typing has been added to the toolbox. The taxonomy that I grew up with isn't even really used anymore. The whole kingdom, phylum, class ... isn't really seen as valid anymore. In our lingo, and from my layman's view, it's being depreciated as we discover that it's far more complex and that classification by physical traits isn't as useful as it once was.

The reality is that I don't understand it all anymore. I was never good with it, but now I'm as good as lost. A high school student will know more about current bio than I do.

Sorta related: I'm old enough so that I remember textbooks where plate tectonics was still just hypothesized. That was pretty well established by the time I was in elementary school - but I had textbooks from the time I was born.

For all the folks that run around screaming that the sky is falling, we live in a wonderful age. Well, wonderful compared to past ages. I can point and click and have access to more information than I'll ever be able to learn.

When I was at school, plate tectonics was not even a hypothesis! We were presented with "continental drift" as a classic example of pseudoscience. And the nonsense we were taught about dinosaurs beggars belief. They were slow, clumsy, sprawling, cold-blooded reptiles of incredible stupidity who thoroughly deserved to go extinct.

Today I went down to the local supermarket and purchased half a dozen genuine dinosaur eggs.

You must be older than I am. I wasn't hatched until late-mid 1950s. By the time I was in elementary school, plate tectonics was more or less accepted as the most likely answer. Our textbooks were sometimes old and I had access to textbooks from my older siblings. We mostly had books around the house, as my parents were a bit strict with regards to television viewing.

Today's understanding of dinosaurs is awesome. I call my chickens 'baby dinosaurs.' If friends don't think of them as baby dinosaurs, I tell them to picture it again - but this time to picture it as though they are bugs and then think about it from the bug's perspective. If I were a bug, faced with a half-dozen chickens, I'd be terrified.

With just a click of a button, we can learn almost anything we want to. True, most folks use it for cat pictures and porn, but the information is still there for those of us who want it. It's a fascinating age to live in.

Learned how to write an xorg.conf file for my GPU.

Someone wanted to find their installed applications (on AskUbuntu) and sort the output. I initially had just the -n, but was prompted to make it -nr to count down by size. That command works, amazingly enough.

Yesterday I migrated my LTSP deployment at home to the latest version. In the process I learned how to use Dnsmasq. I was previously using bind + isc-dhcp-server + tftpd-hpa on Ubuntu. Made a huge difference and allowed me to simplify my stuff here at home big time.

I'm still working it out but I've also learned a bit of how to work with iPXE.

As a final addition I found the bug with my AMD APU hardware. There seems to be no fix and people can't even decide where the problem is. But now I know why it's happening. Unfortunately those 2 machines in my lan are stuck on Ubuntu Xenial as anything newer causes the bug to appear and makes them unbootable. Thankfully they are read only ltsp boots though and do nothing but Kodi.