The Orange Nerd

Linux

In this page I share my history and experiences with Linux.

The Early Years

I first read about linux in computer magazines in 1997; that was the same year I bought my first PC after receiving my first salary. Commodore died in 1994 and Apple was nearly a joke, so the obvious choice was a PC, and at that time, PC meant Windows, which was both heart breaking and causing dilemma for people who... I'd say weren't Microsoft fans.

Being interested by these Linux articles, I bought a book containing a CD with several distros to learn the basics and started to experiment.

Redhat : Let's Move On

I don't have a lot of memories with redhat, and the few I have are not good ones. At that time, redhat was not yet the RHEL enterprise crap thing, and the desktop tried to mimic Windows 95 : same start menu, same window buttons, but it was ugly. I also remember I did not like the package manager, although I don't remember why.

Slackware : My Pick

I have fond memories of slackware. I used this distro from 1997 to mid 2000s, at home and at work.

At home I used it for basically everything but gaming. Netscape Navigator had a compiled version (which often crashed), there were IRC clients I had to compile from source (like a lot of software - there was far less choice than nowadays, and software was nearly never packaged for your distro). Wine was already good enough to run mIRC32. I also installed slackware on a second machine to act as an ISDN then ADSL router (no internet boxes yet). Compiling software was often a problem : there was often compiler or librairies versions mismatch between the developper's machine and my machine, and the software just... didn't compile. That was nearly never not a smooth experience, but I really liked hacking with this pioneer spirit. Everything is so much easier nowadays.

At work it was a different experience : I used slackware (and later mandrake) on a machine that was basically just a X server, to connect to another machine, on which nerdy colleagues and I had our environments. It was much more convenient to connect to the company's SCO unixware machines from a linux machine, than from a windows machine. Until... someone decided we could not have a machine not created from their windows master, and my early linux years ended.

Hiatus

At home for some reason I stopped using Linux too - I don't remember exactly why but it has probably something to do with netscape's situation. I tried several distros (debian, ubuntu, elementary...) on laptops through the years, and always ended with non working devices (especially wifi, bluetooth and touchpad). I came to the conclusion that linux was just not mature enough for laptops.

At work I was using Linux sporadically, mainly to compile the buildroot system used to master the... windows machines. Until I switched to another team, making stuff like scripts and packages for the cash desks fleet powered by linux. My own work machine is a macbook pro since then - the company has no linux master for employee's PCs. Nowadays I mainly do cloud things.

Windows 11 and end of 10

At some point I got a brand new personal windows laptop, and just a few years later, learnt that it will not be compatible with windows 11. I remember my reaction was like "are you kidding ? not supporting a four-year-old machine any longer ?". I was angry with that and decided I will never have a Windows PC again.

That was the moment I decided to try the most up-to-date distro we can imagine : arch. Given the peripherals problems I always encountered with laptops, I did not have a great confidence in this process. It was a pleasant surprise : everything worked, no wifi, bluetooth or touchpad issues. Even the special keys were working.

Back to Linux

Since a few years I am also using various macs, at home I used the mini (m1) a lot for programming (mainly cross-platform projects in rust), but also some embedded projects (atmega, stm32). From time to time I used to use debian on a visionfive 2 to assemble or compile linux projects for riscv64, but that was not very practical.

When I converted my laptop to Linux, I discovered that arch came with packaged pre-compiled toolchain for riscv64 cross-compilation, debug, and that qemu can execute riscv binaries. I started to use this laptop more and more, to the point it became my daily driver, until I bought a more powerful mini PC for development and hacking, on which I installed arch, and this machine became my new daily driver. Et voilà ! The circle is complete, my PC journey started with Linux, and successive events in my computer life brought me back to Linux.

Apple

I've never been an apple fanboy. Why do I use their products ?

First mac and first impressions

I got my first mac at work, a macbook pro 15" (2019). I did not like the keyboard, nor the lack of HDMI port which forced me to always have an adaptator at hand. But I appreciated the overall build quality.

Talking about the OS, I liked the menu bar, which reminded me the Amiga Workbench; all the apps using the same top-placed menu, instead of apps having their menu in their own window. I'd love Gnome to have a similar menu approach. In fact, I'd love Linux to have such a user interface, minus the file requester. POSIX compatibility was also greatly appreciated, as it meant access to a large part of the Unix/Linux software library.

The more I used this machine, the more I liked it.

Apple Silicon

Following the release of the M1 mac mini in late 2020, I was reading and watching a lot of reviews, because I was interested and very curious to know the performance and compatibility of the ARM transition. As the reviews were very positive, I bought a 16 Gb machine which at the time became my daily driver.

I appreciated the gain in compilation speed (I was often compiling Rust code), and even for simple tasks like internet browsing, the gain was very noticeable. But really, one of the thing I liked the most, was the complete lack of noise.

Nowadays this mac mini is no longer my daily driver nor my hacking machine (see the Linux section). I've done a fresh install of the system, I still use it regularly and appreciate it. It's more a machine for relaxing and basic uses (this site has been partly written on this machine with the Zed editor).

At work, I've traded the i7 Macbook with a M1 Pro Macbook, with the same gains cited a few lines above, less heating, and much more battery life. The presence of an HDMI port is much appreciated. The only thing I dislike on this machine is this stupid notch.

Android to iPhone : The Good and the Bad

Since my first smartphone, I have always been an Android guy, I liked the system and had no issue with it. I especially loved my S7 Edge. But I had a big problem with software updates being limited to two years. I like to keep my machines for a long time, and not receiving software updates and even worse not receiving security updates any more was a major problem for me. This is the only reason that made me switch to an iPhone in 2021.

When I got my iphone, I discovered the differences. On the positive side, the apps were faster and much more polished (in 2021; more on that later). Airdrop is very handy. The photo quality is very high. No bloat software. And that's pretty much it. In fact, when I compare to other phones, iOS seems totally outdated and has missing features like Samsung DeX or Google Desktop Mode. I also don't like how notifications work.

Let's continue with the negative aspects, which are hard to understand when coming from the Android world. The first one is the stupid Messages app. Not everyone has an iPhone, in fact in my family everyone has an Android, so I don't care of iMessage (really, in France iMessage is not a thing). When I had my S7 I used Textra which was a very good sms app, when I had my iphone I was shocked by how primitive the messages app was (and still is). No customization is possible, outdated look and features. At least now we have RCS.

Another big negative is music. On Android I put my music on a SD card (I've ripped all my CD collection). Easy when you change your phone. On iPhone the Music app is clearly made to consume the Apple music service, and to listen your own music, you have to import your titles into your library on the Mac, then sync with your phone. Totally non practical. Nowadays I use VLC as a music player, and as a way to upload my music on my phone. Much more convenient, but not as much as the SD card.

The photos situation is not very different. The simplest way to back up the photos (without paying Apple for extra cloud storage, and they will constantly try to convince you to do so) is to connect to icloud from a browser and regularly download the photos, then delete them from icloud to save space. That will work whatever the OS on your computer. Again, not as convenient as the SD card.

To sum up, the price to pay for more polished apps (this is not true anymore, sometimes the Android version is even better, for exemple the Mastodon app) and longer software support (which was the main motivation that pushed me to the iPhone in 2021) is a bit high. Even more since the software support has been improved by major Android manufacturers. My next phone will probably not be an iPhone.

Next Personal Laptop ?

I'm starting to think about replacing my personal aging i7(7th gen) Asus laptop:

With Panther Lake Intel has an interesting proposition, but I'm always afraid of proper Linux support. AMD has very good support and very nice mobile chips. But for a mobile usage, nothing beats the power efficiency of the Apple M chips, making Apple laptops the best package.

As I have a macbook pro for work, I know they have a great build quality, age well, and have a nice autonomy on battery power. Since this purchase is not planned anytime soon, I'll see how things and needs evolve. But the fact is I'm thinking more and more about leaving Apple for my personal devices.

Amiga

The Amiga always had, and still has a special place in my heart.

First Encounter

I first met the Amiga 500 with friends, early during my teenage. At this time, I had an Amstrad CPC, and the sound and graphics capabilities of the Amiga were of course far superior. I remember being impressed with games like Lotus II and Moonstone; when a friend bought a 512kb RAM expansion, we were blown away "there are digitalized voices !". I spent hours watching demos running on the demonstration Amigas in the stores.

I also spent hours with a friend discovering, hacking, playing, copying floppy disks, talking about this machine, reading magazines... There were "the ones who have an Amiga" and the others, having an Atari ST, or even worse, an IBM compatible as these machines were called. I was only wanting one thing in my life : an Amiga.

I have an Amiga !

Then came this day, in 1992 : I got my own Amiga ! The store where we bought it offered me two game I could choose : I chose Monkey Island 2 and Cryo's Dune. I still play these games today, especially Dune which is my go to game whan I need to escape and recharge my batteries.

At last, I could start hacking on this machine ! It started with making my custom workbench disk and my own utilities floppy. At some point I found a book named "la Bible Amiga" by Micro Applications (not "the real" bible), which contained enough information to start coding things in assembly; I was using AsmPro and has been using it for a long time.

I loved watching demos. Two 1991 demos have a special place in my memories : Phenomena Enigma and Silents Global Trash. I still watch them from time to time. And I remember I used to launch some games just to watch the crack intro (Vision Factory Dynablaster cracktro for instance). Coders were my heroes.

Retro Computing and Emulation

With Commodore filing for bankruptcy in 1994, the glorious Amiga days were behind. For some years, it was easy to find cheap Amigas, as they were just old useless machines no one wanted any more. Not useless for enthusiasts, who made very good deals.

With the years passing, floppies and drives failing, capacitors leaking (on the 1200/4000), it became increasingly expensive to have a working Amiga. You need adapters for display, expansions and some way to emulate an IDE hard drive and/or a gotek to not feel the pain of using floppies. FPGA alternatives come at a cost. Fortunately, a range of machines became powerful enough to emulate Amigas flawlessly.

A few years ago, I put my Amigas back in action (they where sleeping in my garage), I even wrote a blog about it (in french). But I had a flood at home and my Amigas retired again. I have two working 600s, one 1200 who needs a recap, a 500 who needs a new membrane, and a completely dead but well equipped 4000. I don't have the budget nor the motivation to take care of these machines right now.

Talking about emulation, I've used winUAE and Amiberry on various machines but my favorite emulator is vAmiga (macOS). I'm using even more its web variant (because of course it's cross-platform) vAmigaWeb. vAmiga emulation is very accurate, with CRT filters it feels like a real Amiga on a real CRT monitor. But it lacks some features one may want like faster processors or RTG. Still, this the most convenient solution for me, especially the web version.

Amiga Documentation & Online Community

When I was a teenager, my only source of information were books and magazines. Years later, Internet gave me access to documentation, tutorials, and source codes I could only dream of back then. And soon I learnt enough to achieve an old teenage dream, code my own intro. Not impressive, but I was happy and a little proud 😊.

Initially I was coding using AsmPro on an expanded A600 (2MB + hard drive) and 1084S monitor, today I prefer the modern comfort and cross assemble/compile with vasm/vbcc (I made an installation script for linux/macos). The community is very active on forums, youtube, github, and it's not difficult to find information or help.

Coding

In this page I talk about my coding experiences.

Childhood

I first used computers at workshops organized at school. The idea was to learn the basics of programming using the logo and basic language, on Thomson TO7 or MO5 computers, which were the computers deployed in schools by the "informatique pour tous" (computers for all) educational program.

Later I had an Amstrad CPC which was delivered with the basic language manual, this was the first time I could read and try to understand the complete features offered by the language. Yes I said try to understand 😑.

At that time there were computer magazines containing program listings filled with DATA statements, I remember I could not understand how we could implement the logic of a program that had just data and no code...

Assembly

When I studied electronics I learnt assembly (6809, 6811) and used this language for embedded projects during all my studies. I love the simplicity of this language and never miss an occasion to include assembly parts in a program written in a "high level language", for fun, and because some times it's just more convenient for me.

Some times I write a project totally in assembly, for instance I had a lot of fun writing a base64 encoder in riscv assembly for linux, as a RV64 and linux system calls learning project.

Low Level then Abstractions

I love to know how things work, to design things, and to see these things working. I've learnt, among other things, digital electronics, boolean algebra, I've designed and built address decoding circuitry with logic gates, firmwares for embedded systems, this kind of things.

Since the very beginning I'm interested in low level topics, my projects are often around CPU or machine emulation, and I'm often reading articles about OSes. I'm also interested in computer history and how these machines and their conception evolved through the years. And for the most part, this is a people history.

C, Rust, Zig

I learnt C quite lately in my computer life. I remember coding a cracktro-like intro on Windows with code blocks, in C and OpenGL, and finding an assembly version of a module player. I had some trouble with pointer syntax (not pointers, that was very familiar to me), when and where to put the star and the space.

Later I learnt Rust, like everyone I had some trouble with the borrow checker, until it totally made sense. After that I had a hard time with lifetimes, until I understood stack frames, and that also totally made sense. I made several emulators, libraries and programs (including at work) with this language. I even had some fun in embedded world with microcontrollers (stm32).

One day I heard of Zig and was very interested in this language (even if I hate the name), ported my Z80 emulator, and started to love this language more than Rust. But with breaking changes coming with nearly every version, my interest faded a little, mainly because at some point a working program ceased to work just because of a compiler update. I still follow that project but I guess I'm waiting for the moment it will be more stable.

Misc

You've just opened the junk drawer.

My take on Internet Browsers

Fix inverted <> and @# keys on a french Mac keyboard on Linux

Home

It's been a long time ! Nearly 30 years since I first made a personal page. At that time web technology was different, and the web itself was very different : very few corporate sites, lots of personal pages, no ads everywhere...

In their personal pages, people were sharing their interests and passions. I want this page to have the same spirit, it will be a place where I share my centers of interest, mostly around computing and technology. It's more like a biography than a blog with technical articles.

I also want this page to be technically simple, just html and css, no javascript, no use of whatever framework. No use of LLM (otherwise, where's the fun ?). These are my own words, no automatic translation (I'm French). The orange nerd is not my nickname, just a name that came in my head when I was seeking for a site name. I love the orange color.

About me

My name is Nicolas, I live in north of France, I'm interested in electronics and computers (new and old) since my teenage. I started with a 8 bits Amstrad CPC6128 in the 80s, then went 16 bits with an Amiga 600 in the early 90s and switched to a 32 bits PC in the end of the 90s.

For communications, I spent a lot of time on citizen band in the early 90s, then when I got internet in the late 90s I fell in love with IRC. I have never been very active on facebook, deleted my twitter (X) account, and nowadays my social media of choice is mastodon.

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