New Computers: N900 to S5, X60 to... X200?
Procrastination has led me to focus on upgrading computers...
I think I'm 70% sold on replacing my X60 with a Libreboot X200. I've made some progress on speeding up the X60 (e.g. see the IceWeasel improvement, but feedback on my pump.io post and a great discussion on LibrePlanet Ontario mailing list. I'm going to get my T61 working again though, as another spare, and to help solidify the X200/T400 decision... but I imagine later this year I'll get an X200, and then do the Libreboot installation on my X60.
Then, in mobile computing, I bought a new, unlocked S5 from canadagsm.ca for a great price (sketchy, but the guy answers the phone and emails... I think unprofessional, but not unreliable).
It took me like 20 minutes to go from stock Samsung to Cyanogenmod 12.1 last night, even troubleshooting a minor flashing hiccup (thank you Freerunner flashing experience!).
I'm gradually setting up applications, will probably swap the SIM soon since, even though I plan to continue using my N900 for gpodder (I have it heavily scripted in Maemo and am loving it...), I can always create a WiFI hotspot with my S5 if I need to use my N900 online...
Still a few items I'm trying to figure out in Android/CM though:
- Maybe dumb question, but how do you get ESC/CTRL/TAB etc. in apps like Connectbot?
- There's nothing in F-Droid for Nagios (or Zabbix...). What do you use for monitoring? I'm looking at maybe setting up Nagios with Twilio to just send me SMS...
- What do you use for cron/scheduling in Android? In Maemo, I have fcrontab scripts to do things like put my N900 into silent mode at specific times every week when I'm in class/rehearsal... (Though my wishlist feature is not to set times manually, but to have it read my calendar, say look for a special character in the event title to signify which events to go silent for...)
- What do you use for backups in Android? I like rsync4android, because I'm using rsync for backup everywhere else, but that's not in F-Droid and I'm not sure if the GUI is proprietary... I'd be happy with CLI rsync if I can schedule it with cron (my Maemo solution)...
Overall, pretty happy to have found some next gen (relatively) freedom-friendly computers that fit my workflow and budget -- nevermind to have lasted this long with computers from 6-8 years ago!
Kyosuke likes this.
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How to get Esc, Ctrl and Tab: install Hacker's Keyboard. It's an additional keyboard that you can switch to when using the terminal (or use it all the time if you wish :-)
As for backups, it's a bit of a messy situation. You can always mount the drive to your computer and backup the "user files". Addressbooks, contacts and calendars are typically synced to some online service (I use Kolab, another good choice is OwnCloud).
sazius at 2016-01-09T09:42:33Z
Blaise Alleyne likes this.
Thanks for the tip on Hacker's keyboard!
Re: backups, on my wife's Nexus, contacts/calendar are taken care of by DAVdroid, some photos/videos through ownCloud instant upload, but I also installed rsync4android from the Play store and configured an rsync backup should can manually trigger (but rarely does) of the rest of the user files.
I still like the idea of an incremental and ideally automated backup of as much as possible... though I've never really had to restore anything. (That may change soon, as she lost her Nexus outside the apartment a couple days ago and hit hasn't resurfaced!)
Anyways, thanks for the tips!
Hackers keyboard always! For backups try “oandbackup”. I don't have a Google (nor any GApps installed) account, so I can't comment on apps from Play Store.
Debacle at 2016-01-10T10:24:58Z
Blaise Alleyne likes this.