Topic: First impressions (and questions) from a new user
Hello,
I am a new Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre user and want to share my first general impressions I had when installing and attempting to use the system. Since this also involves the system in general I think this forum section should be appropriate.
To start off I think it is fitting to say why I am here.
I currently am mostly a Devuan GNU/Linux user, but I am getting more and more dissatisfied with how Debian (and as a result Devuan) is evolving, so I am always on the search for alternative distros/solutions. From what I have read Hyperbola seems very fitting for me, in particular due to the omission of a lot of bloated (and somehow trendy?) software. In particular I despise freedom issues due to trademarks and the constant breaking of software due to (what seems to me) unnecessary updates and due to centralized rolling-release package managers/repositories like pip and npm.
This is why I installed Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre on one of my laptops that seems to fully support it.
I already knew about Hyperbola for quite some time now and always appreciated the focus on freedom but I never really wanted to go anywhere near it, since I always associated it with rolling-release (Which I now learned it isn't) and I didn't want to either lose the functionality to install software or deal with something breaking (in what feels like) every week.
I have already used icedove-uxp (on Devuan, locally built) before, which was what got me to know about Hyperbola in the first place, but I switched back to claws-mail.
First of, some things I am slightly annoyed by:
I dislike the network interface naming scheme - I'd much rather have the classic ethX and wlanX names. I know I can probably change this somewhere, but I mostly don't care, so I didn't check.
Slim (the graphical display manager) uses about 15 MiB of memory even after logging in. When I use startx I don't have this issue. Since the laptop I installed the system on only has 256M of memory, this does make a difference to me.
Due to the limited amount of memory on the device I am trying out Hyperbola on, I also had to install from a different device by swapping the harddrive.
A major issue for me is however the absence of bluetooth support. I have briefly checked the forum for this and from what I understand this is mainly because of bluez depending on dbus. I would be really interested in using Hyperbola on my more modern Tablet PC, but I also want to use my bluetooth keyboard which is obviously not possible. Is there any hope of bluetooth ever working on Hyperbola again (obviously without a dbus dependency) or am I stuck with a different system on my newer devices. Or is Hyperbola completely against adding bluetooth support (I read the wiki article but I didn't really understand, and I personally don't care about those kinds of security issues that much, I just want more freedom on my devices). If Hyperbola is not completely against re-adding bluetooth support, is there any way to help?
Though while I have some hope that Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre will run on some of my newer devices, I highly doubt that HyperbolaBSD will (once it exists, at least at first). I guess I will just have to try then.
I had a problem that my trackpad was in absolute mode. I switched the driver to synaptics now and my trackpad works. However while doing this I tried to use
Xorg :0 -configure
(as instructed to on https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id … s:xenocara) to create a auto-generated xorg.conf but it failed for me and said unrecognized option.
May just be my opinion, but I sometimes found the wiki to seem very incomplete.
I also have an issue with shutting down. When I shut down with
shutdown now
the shutdown hangs after saving the system clock for me. Shutting down with
openrc-shutdown -p now
works. Did I forget to do something while installing or is this intended.
Now one of my other main issues is, I'm currently terribly unhappy with the state of free software. This is not related to the system in any way, so perhaps it is not fitting here, but are there any recommendations for where to (preferably locally) meet other people also promoting free software in Hyperbola's sense or contributing to Hyperbola.
On the Emulators page on the wiki it also states that Hyperbola's goal in including emulators is to encourage it's users to develop free software for running in them. Does Hyperbola also provide a place for it's users to develop and share free software or games like this or are there any recommendations where to get or contribute such software.
Sorry for the long ramble, I just want to contribute to ensuring software freedom and compatibility in some way, which is why I installed Hyperbola on my old laptop so I at least have one machine which runs truly free software.