Tag: 3366ff

cats and computer mice

whbeebe1 Comment
“Yeah, I did the thing. So what?”

I use Logitech (a.k.a. logi) trackball mice, specifically the MX Ergo. I have three of them that I’ve been purchasing since my first example in 2018. Normally they retail for US$100, but I always waited for a sale and would pick them up for US$20 to IS$30 off. I like them because it minimized my hand movement and keeps the pain in my right hand at a minimum. All I have to do is move the ball to move the mouse pointer, and that requires very little effort for my thumb. The rest of my hand rests naturally on the mouse and doesn’t move.

The other night I came back from taking my two dogs out for the evening walk (we walk twice/day, once in the early morning and once in the evening). As I came into the main part of the house from the kitchen I noticed that little innocent Nicholas was intently playing with a ball on the floor. As I got closer, I realized it was the trackball from one of my mice. As I frantically looked around, there was one of my mice on the floor, having been pushed a fair distance (for a cat) over the edge of the table where it normally sat.

The trackball in the MX Ergo is meant to be popped out in order to keep the cavity it rests in clean of dust and lint. I regularly will pop out the trackball and blow compressed air into the cavity to keep it clean, then just pop it back in again. Because I wasn’t around to observe what happened I can only surmise that Nick managed to figure out that (1) he wanted to play with the trackball, (2) it was “stuck” in the MX Ergo housing, and (3) he would have to push the whole thing off the table to get the trackball free for him to roll the trackball around.

MX Ergo showing trackball removed from its socket. Nick was after the trackball.

I have never considered animals “dumb,” nor took them for granted. But after this incident my appreciation and general concern about their intelligence has risen to a higher point of wariness. I’m making sure that the MX Ergos are better placed and better locked down. If Nick has done it once, then he will attempt to do it again. And the other cats are always watching and learning from one another.

Links

Logitech MX ERGO — https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-ergo-wireless-trackball-mouse.html

fedora 39 vs rhel 9.3 — rhel, part 1

whbeebe1 Comment

I wrote earlier how it was my eventual intent to switch from Linux Mint 21.2 to RHEL 9.2. Before I even had time to plan such a move, The Fedora Project released Fedora 39 two days after I’d downloaded the RHEL 9.2 DVD ISO at 9 GiB. The Fedora 39 ISO, by comparison, weighs in at a svelte 2 GiB. With both ISOs on my little Linux Mint system I’d thought I’d create a QEMU virtual machine of both and give them both a tryout. First up is RHEL.

RHEL 9.2 right after installation with a successful registration with the Red Hat mothership.

Since Red Hat has torpedoed the RHEL source code hangers-on, downloading and installing a RHEL clone anonymously has become impossible, assuming you want an up-to-date matching bug-for-bug release that can accept bug fixes and updates over time. Since I’m looking for what will become my future daily driver Linux distribution, I have no problems with either registering with Red Hat for a free developer account or registering the RHEL instance once it’s up and running. That developer account allows me to download for free an up-to-date Red Hat desktop DVD ISO for general personal use, not for resale. I’m sure I could download the server version for free, but that’s not what I’m looking to do.

After updates, we’re now on RHEL 9.3

Once my installed and running Red Hat workstation instance was registered, I was able to update to all the latest RHEL 9.2 patches, as well as install the EPEL repository references and then install a few EPEL packages such as neofetch (see above). That’s when I found out that my starting 9.2 instance had been updated to 9.3 (Plow).

Setting everything set up has been without any drama. If you’ve been working with any Linux distributions over the last two years, then you won’t be surprised at the pure Gnome desktop. Red Hat comes with the added assurance that the critical bugs will get fixed, in spite of what some critics may say.

I now see eye-to-eye with Red Hat’s attitude that groups like the original CentOS (before Red Hat bought it) as well as follow-on Rocky and Alma Linux are free-loaders, and the people who used those re-builds of Red Hat source to underpin their businesses are also free-loaders. If you’re building a business on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux then you need to price in the cost of RHEL and pay for a copy of RHEL. Open source means free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer. No-where is it written that open software must always be free to use, only free to study and extend as necessary.

Or to borrow the words of the late science fiction author Harlan Ellison, “pay the writer.”

Links

How to install EPEL on RHEL and CentOS Stream — https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/install-epel-linux

Harlan Ellison’s Wonderful Rant on Why Writers Should Always Get Paid — https://www.openculture.com/2015/11/harlan-ellisons-wonderful-rant-on-why-writers-should-always-get-paid.html