MNT Reform 2: first impressions
===============================

After pretty long waiting and a lot  of confusion I finally have got my
MNT Reform  2 (youn know, the  MNT Reform 1  was only a limited  run of
prototype machines).

Actually, I expected after all the problems that it never arrive. So it
was a  big surprise for me  when I got the  "we have a parcel  for you"
message from the DHL.

It arrived at  the first Monday of  this year. I have  assembled it (it
worked from the first attempt... I just forgot to insert the SD card so
I only  booted after the  card has been put  into its place).  The only
problem was an incomplete WiFi antenna  but I already have had a better
one available.

The machine is bigger (and heavier)  than I expected. It's bulky but it
was expected  (one cannot put  industrial power  cells into 5  mm thing
device!).

I slightly  updated the OS  on the SD card  (there was no  "format" for
example - and the SSD drive have  had to be formatted before the OS was
transferred on  it!). I uninstalled  the GNOME desktop in  progress. It
wasn't planned  (my mistake) but I  don't miss is. I  also have removed
the Ardour as I have no use  for it. The Blender will probably go, too.
At the moment I  keep in on the disk because I have  enough space and I
am curious how it will perform here.

So now  I use it  with the "sway" window  manager and Wayland  (I never
used the Wayland with  any success before). I have had to  add a lot of
packages  (the TeXlive,  the  GNU Octave  the Gnuplot  and  so) and  to
configure a few things. People on  the MNT forums comply about multiple
keyboard setups  in the  sway but it  works for me  (I only  copied the
syntax from my  old post at the  Penguin.cz [1] - the  old good XFree86
syntax for the XKB is still valid) and that was all.

It also seems that the suspend  ("sudo sysctl suspend") works for me (I
mean that the machine also wakes  up successfully) but I now use rather
simple setup (no swap, no special  hardware excep the WiFi card and the
M2 SSD,  no connected  devices, no drive  encryption, no  sshd runing).
From the MNT forums it seems that suspend should not work.

The machine don't feel slow. Probably it  is a fast SSD which helps. Of
course, things  like code  compiling are noticeably  slower that  on my
POWER9 machine  (which is  correct) but  even the  Firefox seems  to be
fast.  However,  some things  don't  work  (like  PDF previews  in  the
Overleaf online  - even if the  Firefox itself can render  PDF in other
windows).

I use  the supplied OS  - the Debian  Unstable. The main  regression is
removal of most of Palm Pilot-related  stuff (there is no pilot-link so
the Jpilot cannot be compiled here).  The Wayland is also not very keen
of running older  Gtk+-2.x + OpenGL applications (it  randomly fails of
them). The fix I described here [2] seems to work also here, at least.

Now there  is a  problem: because at  some point I  ceased to  hope the
device will arrive I have updated my  workflow and now I have no actual
use for it.  Maybe I will use  if for some kind of  experiment. Maybe I
will try to use it more frequently  (say, instead of the POWER9 to make
my electricity bills less considerable). I don't know at the moment.


References:

[1] http://www.penguin.cz/novinky-view.php?id=832
[2] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jirka/Phlog/2022_11_01.txt

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