(If you have not already read Part 1, you'll want to, for context. Scroll down, please.)
We join our intrepid hero as he has just installed Ubuntu MATE on his brand spanking 6-year-old eBay purchase. Installation was mostly fine - one partition, normal installation, ZFS, because I can - and because I enjoy making myself regret these decisions when I later have to reinstall because I've got the urge to dual boot, since ZFS likes the whole drive to itself.
Yes, I know ZFS is incompatible with the GPL. Bite me.
Better yet, bite Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth - most likely, he can sue your ass many times over. Best of all, bite Oracle and Larry Ellison - they really should re-license ZFS under the GPL - and Solaris, since they apparently have no use for it any more.
(Yes, BSD licence fans - I know I just turned your "Haha! Linux fans and their silly licence wars!" argument on its head - multiple incompatible implementations of everything, which your licence, and licences like it allow, are part of the reason BSD is fragmented, and never wiped the floor with Linux - and the same goes for System V and BSD versus Windows. I actually like the BSDs (more often than not I dual boot OpenBSD with Linux, though it's getting easier to do it on the desktop with FreeBSD, too), but their licences are stupid.
Did Red Hat become a multi-billion-dollar company by violating the GPL or choosing a we-don't-care-if-you-hide-your-modifications licence? No?
No.)
The Ugly
BUT - and it's a big but, I cannot lie - there's one big problem - no WiFi. Now, I do happen to have an Ethernet cable. But it's mostly plugged into my Raspberry Pi 400, which doesn't like its WiFi chip being overloaded by downloading Manjaro upgrades (I'm not convinced Manjaro is the problem here; although it's a rolling release, it's more likely the size of the downloads than the frequency that's the problem) - and unlike the Pi 400, I can take the laptop and use it outside, in a coffee shop, when staying somewhere overnight, etc., right? Especially once I've replaced the battery with a new one. Or buy a battery pack. Taking the Pi 400 outside? Not such a great idea. Using a computer without networking in 2021? Inconceivable! Naturally, whilst I might have been able to write this blog post without network access, I certainly couldn't have published it anywhere.
(As an aside, the computer doesn't even have an Ethernet port - not even one of the daft ones with a thing at the bottom that slides down to give you more space and allow you to insert an RJ45 jack -, and I don't have a USB to Ethernet adaptor, although I've now bought one for emergencies, which should arrive soon.)
I do remember reading somewhere, (I think), that XPSes preloaded with Windows have different hardware than the Linux-based "Developer Edition" ones - could this be the source of the problem? I'm so used to Linux working on ThinkPads that I barely gave compatibility a thought - although I did avoid an otherwise attractive-looking ASUS laptop because it was supposedly a PITA to install Linux on it.
A quick Google search, and within a short time I've purchased an allegedly Linux-compatible TP-Link AC600 WiFi adaptor from Argos - in the UK, if you order early enough Argos will deliver in the evening of the same day. Plug it in - no joy. Drat. Even the CD (which I can read using my T440p, though the XPS doesn't have a DVD drive) is bereft of Linux drivers. In fairness, the nature of Linux kernel development means that hardware tends to be either supported out of the box, or not at all. However, another Google search reveals that there is indeed code on GitHub to support the adaptor - but it requires software that isn't included in the default install of Ubuntu (or its derivatives, like MATE). How to proceed?
Not being accustomed to this kind of thing, I wasn't aware that one can download software into a specific directory by using the "download" option in apt-get - but how to get it onto the laptop? It was rather late at night at this point, and I do have a talent for missing the bleeding obvious, so it took me a while to figure out I could download all the necessary packages on a USB stick, put the USB stick in one of the XPS's two USB-A slots - it's too old for USB-C, and the slot I thought was a USB-C slot turned out to be mini-Display Port. Ah well.
So, drive in one port and WiFi dongle in the other, I boot up, install the necessary .debs, compile the software, install, take the dongle out and put it back in, as instructed - nothing. I repeat the last step - still nothing. I reboot with dongle in port - STILL nothing.
Google search three (or four - I went down rather a rabbit hole at this point) - tells me that there are pre-built .debs for the internal WiFi card - or is it both? I try them. Still no joy.
More experience with this sort of thing might have told me something which you folks are probably screaming at me right now - during all of my travails, each time I tried to install proprietary drivers, Ubuntu would ask me to set a Secure Boot password, and would claim that I would be asked to repeat it on boot, but I never was - I was usually presented with a screen, but all it had were options like "continue," (or words to that effect), "pick something from somewhere," etc. (Again, it was late, and at no point were the words "Secure Boot" or "password" presented onscreen on boot.)
However, eventually - probably way past the point when I should have just gone to bed and let my mind cogitate over it until morning - I suddenly thought "I wonder if Secure Boot is the problem." So, I rebooted, pressed F12 for the BIOS settings, switched Secure Boot off, saved the settings, rebooted - and hey presto! When I logged in, *both* the internal WiFi card *and* the USB dongle worked and presented me with options for several WiFi networks nearby (I live in a terrace, known in the US as a townhouse), including my own. Select, provide password, bingo!
This is an excellent example of why Linux won't get off the ground as an operating system, *unless and until* it's widely available preinstalled - whether it will or it won't even if it ever is widely preinstalled, is another discussion, but widespread availability preinstalled would remove one big barrier. If I, a Linux veteran of 24 years - though by no means a programmer or an expert - have this much trouble installing Linux - and remember, though I haven't tested the webcam, just about everything else on the laptop worked out of the box - then Joe Bloggs or John Q. Public certainly isn't going to want to futz around with it like this. Pre-install it, and the problem goes away. (And unlike OS/2 did back in the day, Linux doesn't suffer from a lack of software support. Other than games, Linux has analogues of just about every single category of software you can think of, barring some niche areas - and even some of those niche areas, like movie production, have long since adopted it. Most of those areas have pretty good compatibility with their proprietary counterparts, and wider availability would only help. Games, meanwhile, are getting easier and easier to support, despite being written for Windows, thanks to Valve and the magic of Steam and Proton.
It's also an excellent example of why Secure Boot - in execution, if not in theory - and I'm not sure about that last bit - is A Dumb Idea. It's supposed to stop you (or anyone else) futzing up your drive and potentially gaining access to (or erasing) vital data, but all it did was put stupid roadblocks into a process I was mostly able to complete anyway - as the old saying goes, if you have physical access, all bets are off. Coincidentally, I read on a mailing list thread on UNIX history some complaints about DEC's old hardware diagnostic tools - and then someone pointed out that bad as they may have been, at least, unlike for Intel hardware, they existed. If Intel were the kind of company that provided useful hardware messages, we might not be stuck with a Secure Boot that's broken as designed - or they might realise that it's a bad idea anyway. I want *other people* not to screw around with my machine without my permission, but *the owner of a machine* should be able to do anything with a computer that doesn't involve the commission of a crime - and using a computer in a certain way (such as repairing it, upgrading it or loading an unofficial operating system on it on one's own initiative) should not in itself constitute one.
I feel quite guilty that I didn't pick up a new machine, preinstalled with Linux (which you can get here and here in the UK and Ireland, or here in the US or Canada); but my budget currently doesn't allow it, and it's slim pickings if you want to pick up a Linux laptop second-hand (in UK Linux podcast land, Entroware are *everywhere*, but I didn't see a single Entroware laptop for sale on eBay, and haven't when I've looked in the past). Plus, although you can install any Linux you like on it once you have it, GNOME (which ships with Ubuntu proper) and System76's PopOS, which is based on GNOME, don't appeal to me.
Here's to more Linux adventures, and hopefully, more preinstalled Linux.
Bon voyage.
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