Customising an Acorn style keyboard ►
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This entry is part of my Project Zebra series covering migration to Linux for personal computing use.
Title reference: Following Pine by Tony Harrison, which itself is making a reference that may be even more apocryphal than the rest of what's known about Socrates. I'll add that bit at the end.
Nate Graham writes about release cadence and user support:
http://pointieststick.com/2026/07/19/whos-responsible-for-bug-reports-on-old-software-versions/
As a Debian user, I accept that patches will be limited to security issues and waiting until the next milestone release (usually two years apart) for other fixes or newer versions, or making my own arrangements to find newer packages or appimages. I prioritise stability for the main system and step outside that occasionally.
As a Mint user, or user of another distro targeting or appealing to newbies that's based on an LTS release of another distro, or as someone who has no background on the ecosystem, that might need some spelling out.
So app devs still should have sensible triage processes; e.g. most active project FOSS git type sites seem to have reporting processes where people need to confirm they're running a latest release. Some software might have links that communicate a version number to a support site when visited, although I've never really noticed that or bothered to look in software for links to support sites. I don't notice many bugs in software, to be honest, mature projects tend not to have really noticeable ones.
Speaking of one that does, XnViewMP drag and drop under Wayland seems like it'll be resolved by a Qt6 build, and from my point of view I may as well switch to the beta until I notice a regular release has happened:
https://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=50710
I've taken the screen protector off a tablet to see if it cures or reduces the phantom touch issue with the digitiser. There wasn't anything visibly trapped under or lifting the glass, but clearly something was making it periodically register constant contact in the same spot where the beginning of a swipe on the top bar would be. It seems to have made input more responsive too, swipe entry is smoother, tap to wake is more reliable, etc. The tablet's still fairly underpowered, an extra gig of working memory in the next configuration profile up would probably have made all the difference, but it doesn't have to do much. I'm leaving protectors on the tablets that I use less frequently, and it's still an easy way to pick up cheap dedicated camera monitoring ones as it makes minor cracks ignorable. But I hadn't realised how much it'd compromised the UX.
It's been an annoying period for battery devices, both a power bank and a hedge trimmer flaked out on me before I'd estimate they should have. Could be the heat, I suppose. At least the power bank seemed to successfully reset and charge again.
Not sure if I've burnt any CDs since switching to Debian, but I had to add my user to the operator group, restart, then change permissions in the settings of K3b to get it to burn a car copy of the 40th anniversary TF:TM soundtrack.
Plasma shell, specifically the panel and app launcher, was getting increasingly unresponsive after hibernation, although it did recover eventually, so either it wasn't being prioritised appropriately or something else was causing lag. It was getting annoying enough to try to troubleshoot.
systemd-analyze outputs seemed a red herring but I'm bookmarking this in case it's relevant in future:
https://dev.to/lyraalishaikh/stop-guessing-why-linux-boots-slowly-practical-systemd-analyze-for-real-bottlenecks-4kij
This was a more useful suggestion:
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/plasmashell-freeze-after-getting-out-of-hibernation-howto-troubleshoot/153078/14
Junking the Plasma 5 stuff I'd modified in /home/admech/.local/share/plasma after going back to a more default theme, colours, window decorations, and login screen (then reinstating my preferred icons, and keeping the splash screen off) plus switching application launcher does seem to make a huge difference. It means that there's a little bit of transparency added back to the desktop environment I'd prefer not to have at all, but settings under Desktop Effects significantly reduce that and I can live with the standard Kickoff launcher. It's just a shame the layout isn't a little more adaptable to better suit a top panel.
So yeah, whilst some Plasma 5 QML worked with Plasma 6 without show-stopping problems, in this case it apparently causes more subtle ones.
In the course of searching I also came across the 'needrestart' command line tool, and removed chkrootkit and rkhunter which I'd tested previously.
Anyway, that'll do for this collection of notes. Other things:
Chris Cox talks about the end of Acorn and his time with the company:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ULiSi2-E8-M
Thundercats on the ZX Spectrum, which I'm not surprised to learn was a rework of another game, but am more surprised someone updated in 2024. Conveniently playable in a browser for quick outings:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbFEWENmIA
https://vtrd.in/release.php?r=d620a0710103fad451371ae38144db7a
Interesting article about query strings:
https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/07/13/http-gets-a-query-method-so-complex-searches-can-stop-pretending-to-be-post/5270192
No surprises that mecha-Hitler has gone rogue again:
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/14/musk-promises-purge-after-grok-build-caught-sending-entire-repos-to-the-cloud/5271123
What would your unwinnable last stand theme be? I think I'd pick Cannon and Ball for the modern age:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pMCDWofVeEU
Miscellaneous link dump:
https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/07/27/cassette-simulator-rewinds-digital-audio-to-a-more-analog-time-in-hiss-tory/5279018
https://thepulp.net/pulp-links/doc-savage-links/
https://www.comicsbeat.com/will-murray-dead/
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/30/open-source-project-fools-ai-scrapers-with-poisoned-font/5281303
A bit more on the blog entry title reference... it's a line from a rambling existential poem that I assume was an example in a university lecture because I certainly don't recall the rest of it. It was published in 1986.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n02/tony-harrison/following-pine
Who lives for the future, who for now?
What good’s the cigale’s way or the fourmi’s
if both end up as nothing anyhow
unless they look at life like Socrates
who wished, at the very end, to learn to play
a new air on his novice lyre. Why?
said his teacher, this is your last day.
To know it before I die, was the reply.
However, whilst there seem to be early sources (Quintilian) describing Socrates as a keen learner well into later life, and specifically about learning to play music, the claim about learning to play a new song just prior to being condemned to drink hemlock seems to be a modern elaboration:
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/99657/what-is-the-origin-of-the-account-of-socrates-learning-to-play-the-flute-in-pris
Emil M. Cioran published Drawn and Quartered in 1979, so it's quite likely it or a literary reference to it was fresh in Harrison's mind at the time.
https://waterbloggedbooks.wordpress.com/2018/05/28/socrates-and-the-flute/
While they were preparing the hemlock,
Socrates was learning how to play a new tune of the flute.
“What will be the use of that?” he was asked.
“To know this tune before dying.”
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