So after 3 and a half years of using my passive cooled ZBOX, I got myself a new Computer. This time it’s AMD Ryzen instead of an Intel Celeron. Lets first talk about all the bad Stuff with my old Setup, now that I migrated most of it over.
Did you know Celeron CPUs are shitty at decoding Videos? Yeah if I did anything in VLC Media Player the Video would turn into a garbled mess until the next Key Frame.
Still Image portions in Videos? You guessed it, that alone causes a garbled mess!
Skipping back 3 seconds, while the playback speed is higher than 1x? Yep, garbled mess!
Ever heard of bad DisplayPort Cables? Yeah that one seems to be a duh, but what if the Cable is alright, and the damn Port on the Computer is so fucking flimsy that merely touching the Cable disconnects the Monitor? And thanks to a Bug in Kubuntu, all widgets on that Monitor just turned into a jumbled mess in the process!
Now whenever that happens (as in if I actually plug it out and back in to test it), only the Wallpaper resets, but the Widgets are fine!
Back in 2018 ecryptfs was slowly being phased out. I did not know that when installing Kubuntu, and ofcourse chose THAT option instead of Full Disk Encryption via LUKS.
It has caused so many tiny Issues and performance problems, like Filename Limits being shorter than usual, or just generally more SSD writes.
Speaking of borked Setups, I installed Oracle Java 8, while it still existed in the repositories.
I should have went with OpenJDK 8 instead, considering I only use it for Minecraft anyways… And yes, now I tried more up to date Versions of OpenJDK first (18 and 11), they did not work with Minecraft 1.7.10.
Glad I am no longer playing that Game in online Mode looks at all the security Issues and the lack of MS Account.
A lot of those weird Issues, and bad configurations on my end, especially the ecryptfs one, prevented me from updating my distro to any other major Release.
I basically had a deadline until April this year to get a new Computer because of that, since security updates would have stopped by then.
I know I would technically not have needed a new Computer, but I did not want to deal with accidental data loss, also hey, it’s way more performance now!
My Home Folder was just a giant mess, I cant believe the default of so many damn Programs is “lets dump all our Files into the Home Folder, but it is okay because its in our hidden Folder!”, and more importantly I cannot believe that most Distros decide to “lets put the cluster of User Folders like Downloads, Desktop and Documents into the Home Folder too! That will surely not cause any Issues with people who have viewing hidden Files enabled!”…
So yeah, now I have a home Folder inside my home Folder just for keeping my own Stuff sorted away from the garbage dump that is the default home Folder…
I also merged these cluster Folders to be just one “desktop” Folder, so whenever I download something, it is instantly on the Desktop, whenever I save a File?, Default Save Location is the Desktop, taking a Screenshot?, the Desktop!, a place where I made sure I can navigate to other places easily.
And yes I am a “keep-the-desk-clean” kindof person. I do not understand people just having a Downloads Folder with thousands of unsorted Files in it. If something is in the Desktop or Downloads, it has to be dealt with!
Now that I listed most of the Issues I had with my old Setup, time for talking about my new Setup!
AMD Ryzen 7 4800U (8 Cores/16 Threads, 1,8 to 4,2 GHz)
AMD Radeon (1750 MHz)
DDR4 16GBx2 Dual-Channel
M.2 2280 512 GB SATA-SSD
a Gigabit-Ethernet-Port and a 2,5-Gigabit-Ethernet-Port
Wi-Fi 6; BlueTooth 5.1
Not much to say about it, it’s definitely an upgrade for sure (especially for playing Factorio, lol, yeah I am still stuck playing that…). Guess I should talk about Software Issues I had, lol.
When I booted it up I very much noticed that ofcourse Windows 10 was installed (even though I did insert a bootable USB Stick!). And there was no fucking way to avoid booting into Windows first, because the Boot up is just way too damn fast.
You know the “Internet Explorer exists only to download a better Browser” meme?
Well in order to install Linux you HAVE to go through the Windows Setup, there is no way around it, unless you have physical access to the Drive and some other Device to stick that Drive into!
Now what did recently make the News with Windows 11? Oh yeah you MUST HAVE A MICROSOFT ACCOUNT AND INTERNET CONNECTIVITY TO INSTALL IT!!!
Imagine what would have fucking happened if this Computer shipped with Windows 11 instead of Windows 10…
Yeah not everybody has a way to avoid making a Microsoft Account, especially if they dont have any other Computer with an M.2 Slot. And plugging that M.2 out until after boot and sticking it back in, may not always work well.
But luckily that was Windows 10, and I did not connect the Ethernet Cable, so I could easily just go through the Setup and see how bad it got, and damn was it trying to push me into giving them my data… I then just booted from USB like I wanted to.
And then the first actual problem arised. When I was in Windows, the USB 3 Ports on the backside of the Computer were working perfectly fine, but on Linux they did not. Some random Software Issue must have borked on the Linux end. I plugged Stuff into the frontal USB 3 instead for the moment.
So here is the dmesg output for what happened, just for reference. This happens a few seconds after plugging in ANY device into the Backside Ports. The Device will work, and then this Error will eventually pop up in dmesg and nothing will work on those Ports until after reboot.
[ 204.763891] xhci_hcd 0000:05:00.0: WARNING: Host System Error
[ 204.763934] xhci_hcd 0000:05:00.0: AMD-Vi: Event logged [IO_PAGE_FAULT domain=0x000f address=0xfeda5000 flags=0x0000]
Turns out this is a Kernel Issue, and I needed to disable “IOMMU” in the UEFI. And now it just works.
It was a WTF Bug, but with the power of Linux and looking it up on the Interwebz, I got it fixed.
Another thing I noticed with Kubuntu was that AGAIN the Ethernet Ports in the Network Panel were autoconfigured to be 100Mbit/s on Full Duplex, even though if you have carefully read the Stats, that is not the case. On the ZBOX it pulled the same shit with 100Mbit/s on Half Duplex.
Low and behold, just manually setting it to Gigabit Speeds fixes the Issue.
Yes I did run a Speed Test on my local Network to validate that. I cannot validate the 2.5gig port though, since I do not have any other 2.5gig device.
One of the first things I did after installing Kubuntu was ofcourse the obligatory “sudo apt purge snapd”, because I am not a fan of the random downloads at random times bullshit, that snap pulls on metered Internet Connections. I do not want shit to behave like Windows Update, thank you very much.
I think I have ran out of things on my mind to say, soooooo, have a nice day! XD