Dumping my Mac for Linux

Dual Booting and Configuring a Dell Alienware 15 R4 with Ubuntu 18.04 for Android Development

Context: New Job. New Laptop.

After starting a new job, I decided to finally pull the trigger on my break up with Macbook Pros. Going steady with MBPs for over 10 years meant I had to carefully weigh my decision to leave but I hope that ultimately means I'm never going back!

My new laptop is a serious upgrade. From the i9 processor to the GTX 1080 graphics card, it's a total babe that's more powerful yet cheaper than my ex. The tough part is rebuilding what I had.

Setup

The goal was to dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.10 but it turned out that 18.10 (cosmic cuttlefish) was a little too cutting edge so I had to downshift to the LTS release (18.04.1 bionic beaver). Getting everything working just right has not been easy. In fact, it's so difficult and temperamental that I decided to log everything here just in case I need to do it all again!

Background

Before diving into technical notes, lets reflect a bit. Apple seems to have forgotten developers, making progressively worse changes for us. The final straw for me was learning that the new Macbook "Pro" would have the hard drive AND RAM soldered to the motherboard! Replacing mechanical parts or upgrading RAM should not require a new machine or a trip to the "Genius Bar." Further, I heard rumors that the new machines were so obsessed with being thin that they do a terrible job cooling i9 processors, causing them to throttle down to i7 speeds. All of this made me consider what life would be like if I made the Linux switch. A good friend recommended Dell for their customer service. I called, spoke to an actual person and got several discounts, including FOUR years of premium service. Ultimately, my maxed out Alienware 15 was actually CHEAPER than the lack-luster Macbook Pro equivalent yet beefier in every way.

Switching was not as easy as I thought. From lost work productivity to retraining my muscle memory, I must admit that I severely underestimated how much time I would lose up front. It took me nearly a week to get this machine up and running. In the very first hour, I began learning the hard way that what Apple lacks in hardware, it makes up for with cohesiveness. For instance, in the 10 years that I've been using Macs, I never realized that BIOS had changed and UEFI is a thing! I never needed to know what model of graphics card or WiFi adapter was in my MBP. These are all things Linux forced me to grapple with on day one. With Apple, everything just worked . . . until suddenly it didn't! That's when Apple forces you to come crawling back with several grand in hand to repay them for all the trouble-free enjoyment you had. Sorry, I don't want to buy a new computer every 2 years. My laptop is not a smartphone and AT&T is not subsidizing it.

The moment I fully compiled my Android project, all of my second thoughts immediately faded away. Initial, side-by-side benchmarks showed that my Alienware was nearly 8 times faster than my existing MBP. I literally have never seen any Android project compile so fast. At first, I thought something was broken and deleted/reinstalled multiple times to confirm it was actually doing a clean build. Incremental builds are less than 1 second. Full builds are nearly 5 seconds. That's insane. Meanwhile, my MBP took ages and acted like it was going to overheat.

It's too early to be completely certain of whether I'm delighted with the switch. However, I'm already feeling much more like a hacker than a hipster and that, alone, might be worth it.
This is still a WIP and I may add things as I go.
[Update: 1 year later and I'm delighted and never looking back!]

Hardware Configuration

Trackpad

The trackpad was completely unresponsive. To get around this initially, I just used a corded USB mouse. Ultimately, fixing the issue required blacklisting a module and then rebooting which I found in this gist:

sudo su
echo 'blacklist i2c_hid' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
depmod -a
update-initramfs -u

Network Adapter

Wifi worked perfectly on Ubuntu 18.10 but, sadly, the LTS version 18.04 did not recognize my wifi adapter, giving this defeating error in settings:

Of course, the laptop does have an adapter, the "Killer 1550 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0" so I initially got around this severe limitation by pluggin in an ethernet cable. Then I followed these instructions on AskUbuntu to get the wifi card working:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/backport-iwlwifi.git
cd backport-iwlwifi
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
sed -i 's/CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS=y/# CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS is not set/' .config
make -j4
sudo make install

I cloned this to a place that I could easily find later because after every update it has to be reinstalled via:

cd backport-iwlwifi
make clean
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
make -j4
sudo make install

*** The output of this install contains some errors that seem related to this bug in the NVidea-390 driver but it worked so I'm not too worried about it, for now.

NVidea Driver : Fix broken hibernate/suspend/resume

Resuming from hibernate did not work. If the laptop ever went to sleep, then it would never wake up! This is a terrible user experience. Fortunately, the fix for this was pretty easy; just install the Nvidea drivers with:

ubuntu-drivers devices
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Other Tweaks During Setup

• prevent double spaces
  There is a physical hardware problem with the spacebars on several of Dell's computers and this Alienware 15 is one of them. Tapping the spacebar near the edge results in a double space being typed and it is highly reproducible. At first, I thought adjusting the delay for repeating keys would help but I confirmed that it makes no difference. Literally, the only solution is to retrain my hands to hit the spacebar closer to the middle! I'm following this thread for any updates until I get the courage to try removing and cleaning the keys.

Developer Configuration

Eventually, I got the machine to function but that meant I was only at the starting block. Next, began the journey of making it fit for development. Here's a list of some of the things I required:

• an iTerm2 replacement
  I chose Tilix and I'm VERY happy with it. I was able to recreate my "quake-like" terminal triggered by a hotkey. This required mapping Alt + ' to the command tilix --quake and then updating the settings so that the window closes whenever it loses focus.
• install github & bitbucket ssh keys and .gitconfig (self-explanatory)
• bring over all my setup/config files from github
• apt install xclip to replace pbcopy and pbpaste
• install oh-my-zsh via:

  sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

• installed java
• installed rust & cargo via rustup
• download android studio and install it into the /opt folder (making sure to include CMAKE and the NDK for rust integration)
• modify the .desktop launcher file to make certain that ANDROID_HOME is defined in the environment (rather than using local.properties files like a dinosaur)
  found here: ~/.local/share/applications/jetbrains-studio.desktop add: Exec=env ANDROID_HOME=/home/gmale/kg/setup/android/sdk /opt/android-studio-canary/bin/studio.sh %f
• installed kvm for the android emulator with these instructions
• installed pats-boostnote for note-taking and linked it to google drive using these instructions. This method worked best:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa
  sudo apt install google-drive-ocamlfuse
  mkdir  ~/kg/work/google-drive
  google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/kg/work/google-drive

• find a replacement for diffmerge (doesn't work on latest versions of ubuntu)
  Decided to go back to p4merge and it seems to work well. This post made it even easier.

Linux Equivalent of ipconfig renew and ipconfig release on Windows

I've looked this up 3 times so I finally decided to jot it down so I don't forget it.

Problem

Can't remember the Linux commands equivalent to:

ipconfig renew
ipconfig release

Symptoms

• Your IP is assigned via DHCP on a Linux box
• You've unplugged from one network and plugged into another and the old IP address hasn't cleared out
• Don't want to shutdown/restart the interface you just want to refresh the DHCP settings

Solution

sudo /sbin/dhclient -r is equivalent to ipconfig release
sudo /sbin/dhclient is equivalent to ipconfig renew
sudo /sbin/ifconfig is equivalent to ipconfig

The dhclient command broadcasts a DHCP message to your DHCP server, resulting in a new lease. A slower way to achieve the same result is to shutdown the interface and bring it back up via (assuming your target interface is eth0):

sudo /sbin/ifdown eth0
sudo /sbin/ifup eth0

This same, slower approach can also be done graphically on RedHat by clicking System > Administration > Network, choosing your interface (eth0) and clicking deactivate followed by activate.

Mac OS X : Open Ports, Network Connections, PIDs

Yesterday, my MacBook Pro was acting VERY strangely. I was hacked! (or so I thought) I feared that some evildoer hacked my home network and ran amuck.

Quickly, I had to figure out what was happening on my network. I wanted to know what ports were open, what connections were live and which applications were using those connections. Finding Linux info was easy. Mac OS X info? Not so much!

After hunting dozens of Google pages, here's what I've come up with:

Check All Network Connections
Run the following shell command to display all network connections:
netstat -an | grep 'LIS\|WAIT\|Recv-Q'

This will show all ESTABLISHED, LISTEN and TIME_WAIT connections and also displays the header for convenience.
Show Processes On Network
The command above is good but it doesn't show you WHO is on those ports. The following allows us to see the PID and Name of each process using the network!
sudo lsof -Pnl +M -i

Note: the first flag is -PNL (the last character is not a one). The first time I ran the lsof command, I couldn't see the ports that were listening. This was my main concern (evildoers love listening on ports). The key is to run this command as root (via sudo). Also note, with the netstat call, you can use egrep 'LIS|WAIT'. Honestly, I haven't gotten around to learning what egrep does. All I know is you don't have to escape the | symbol with egrep.