Recently, I started working on a flutter project. I started on my own 10-year old MBP. (running Linux mint 22.1 BTW) It has “just” 8GB RAM. Flutter development is (near) impossible on this machine.

As per the documentation Android Studio requires 8GB and with Emulator 16GB, while 32GB is the “recommended” configuration.

But it is not just the documentation. I tried to push through. Decided to use Physical device rather than Emulator. But even then, it was just too slow.

I have been almost exclusively using Ubuntu and its derivatives as long as I remember ¹

Benefit of using such mainstream distro was that for the most part, all the software was available in deb format.

But recently things are changing.

More and more software is being made available via snaps, flatpak or appimages

Much can be said about pros and cons of each of these. But that is not the point of this post. 😄

During Ganeshotsav, Jnana Prabodhini Prashala organizes a variety of workshops for students. For these 10 days, there are no regular classes — instead, students immerse themselves in learning new skills.

This year, I had the privilege of conducting a Mass Media workshop for 20 boys from 5th to 7th standard (a mixed group).

I don’t need to emphasize how bright these children are — after all, they are among the 80 selected out of 1200+ who appear for the entrance exam. Still, knowing this in theory is very different from experiencing it firsthand.

Yesterday, before I installed Hyprland on Mint I was researching Hyprland, and someone/somewhere mentioned pikaOS

PikaOS is a gaming/optimization-focused Linux distribution that emphasizes ease of use and high compatibility. Built on a Debian base but with cherry picked and custom compiled packages ensures that Pika is stable whilst being bang up to date!

I had mentioned in my post about Omarchy that I would have liked if it had Live ISO

I like to “try before buy install”.

Ever since I read (and watched videos) about Omarchy I so wanted to try it. As I mentioned, the ISO directly wants to install it on the machine. There is no live - try before you install - option. So I didn’t.

I wanted the next best thing.

Try Hyprland with disturbing the cart too much.

Why not try setting it with Linux Mint that I’m already using ?

Reddit forums were discouraging.

I had tried Omakub a while ago. While it is nice, it is Ubuntu under the hood, and Gnome and I did not like the aesthetics of it.

I then used KDE for long time via Tuxedo OS, and then settled on Linux Mint Cinnamon flavour.

Recently I came across Omarchy via the Reowrk podcast

It is next incarnation of DHH’s (dare I say infactuation?) move to linux.

As is the natural progression, one enters Linux world via safe Ubuntu (or derivatives) before venturing into distros like Arch Linux, Gentoo (or NixOS)

So DHH moved from Ubuntu to ArchLinux, and the result is Omarchy.

Main selling point (per the podcast) is Hyprland tiling window manager.

Like DHH, I too had tried tiling window managers in past (i3) but I couldn’t really get it.

I liked the idea, but probably make it stick.

So I wanted to give Omarchy a try.

Luckily the ISO booted fine (unlike AnduinOS) but there is no Live mode to try it out.

It asked me few questions. But when it reached “where to install”, I had to bail out.

In past, my attempts to install Arch derivates like Manjaro, CachyOS and EndevoursOS had failed because WiFi did not work. I so wanted to use Arch/Derivatative, but this was a blocker.

Here it recognized and connected to my Home Wifi (via Terminal - no less) during the initial setup.

Other thing that does not work is Camera.

I tried lsusb and looks like camera may still not work.

So far so good.

But I’m in the middle of development project, and can not afford downtime.

So I’m very likely to try Omarchy once I have some downtime.

I was told by AnduinOS by one of my friend. I was told that it looks like Windows 11

I was intrigued.

Spoiler Alert : It does not 😄

All it really has is the centered menu button - which was to the left bottom for the longest time. Everywhere. Gnome, KDE and other DE (even until Win10) ¹

It is based on Ubuntu and uses (skinned) Gnome.

It did not boot on my MBP (Currently running Linux Mint)

I just got the grub prompt. The USB was not recognized as EFI boot. 😢

I have tried too many live ISO on this machine, so I *know machine is not a problem. Maybe AnduinOS write the disk (a bit?) differently ? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I did try it on a windows PC (Dell) - and it booted fine.

The website does say it supports only x86_64 architecture - which my machine is.

A little bit searching revealed that my old Apple machine may not be fully ACPI compliant.

Overall, I am not impressed.

It may be very good Gnome based distro.

But it is not for me.

I’m happy with Linux Mint. Thank you.

Let me explain the usecase

I’m working on a flutter app that talks to REST API. During the development, the server wil lbe on localhost but in production it would be real server.

Solution ? Use --dart-define

Way to do this is pass the value during the build time like flutter build apk --dart-define=BASE_URL=http://10.0.2.2:8000

10.0.2.2 is a special alias to your host machine from within the Android emulator. ¹ When running the app on an Android emulator, it allows access to your local development server.

This Linkedin post, reminds me of the following dialog from the movie “I, Robot”

“That was somebody’s baby. 11% is more than enough. A human being would’ve known that.”

No, I don’t mean to say losing uncommitted work is same as someone’s life.

But more “we” (society) trusts machines, such scenario are going to be more and more likely.

(If you haven’t seen the movie, narrator is in an accident, there is another girl in another car - both cars are drowning. Robot jumps and saves the narrator, cause he has 45% chance of survival, the girl only has 11%

I wanted to try this new (still under preview, but when has that stopped me 😄) type checker named ty ¹ from astral

Installing(?) was as easy as uvx run ty ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I wanted to try it on Django project I’m working on.