Month: July 2019

14
Jul
2019

Ubuntu Cosmic on Pixelbook – Possible!

The folks who use Crouton to run Linux on their Chromebooks tend to be an impatient bunch. Every time a new Ubuntu release comes out, they start peppering @dnscheid with questions about whether it’ll run.
 
As of this writing, Bionic is the most recent supported release.  But Cosmic and Disco both exist as well, and people want to install them. I haven’t made it as far as Disco, but I can answer these two questions:
 
Can Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) be installed on a Chromebook?
 
Yes.
 
Should you install Ubuntu 18.10 on a Chromebook?
 
So very much no.
 
Can I do it anyway?
 
Hold my beer. 

Step 1: Create a chroot with Xenial

Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial, despite being obsolesced years ago, is the most recent version of Ubuntu that can be installed directly with crouton.  To get to Cosmic, we’ll have to upgrade a few times. This first section is basically an excerpt from the official instructions at https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

  1. If you haven’t already, download crouton from https://goo.gl/fd3zc
  2. Press ctrl-alt-t to open a crosh shell
  3. Make the installer by typing sudo install -Dt /usr/local/bin -m 755 ~/Downloads/crouton
  4. Install by typing sudo crouton -t xfce -r xenial -n cosmic
  5. Follow the prompts

Congratulations! You now have Xenial installed. Enter by typing sudo startxfce4 -n cosmic

Step 2: Upgrade to Bionic

Now that you have a functioning chroot, it’s time to upgrade to Bionic – the most recent version of Ubuntu which is still fully functional on a Chromebook.

  1. Enter your choot by typing sudo startxfce4 -n cosmic
  2. Enter a terminal by typing ctrl-alt-t
  3. Install Release Upgrader by typing sudo apt install ubuntu-release-upgrader-core
  4. Initiate the upgrade with the following commands:
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    sudo apt dist-upgrade
    sudo do-release-upgrade
  5. Follow the various prompts
  6. Log out, restart your Chromebook, and enter your chroot to make sure everything worked.

If all went well, you have yourself a fancy new Bionic installation.

Step 3: Replace a bunch of drivers

If you try to reproduce the above steps to install Cosmic, you will discover that you can never get a clean apt upgrade. Instead, there’s a set of 5 packages that keep being held back:

The following packages have been kept back:
xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded.

If you try to get rid of them, you’ll end up cutting off your display, which is sadness. Instead, we need to replace them with different versions, and then revert to these versions post-upgrade.

  1. Remove the troublesome drivers with
    sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
  2. Install the friendly drivers with
    sudo apt install xserver-xorg-core-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-input-evdev-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-input-wacom-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-18.04
  3. Type sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and change prompt=lts to prompt=normal
  4. Execute the upgrade with
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt autoremove
    sudo apt dist-upgrade
    sudo do-release-upgrade
  5. Do not reboot after the upgrade! You will lose your video.
  6. Reverse steps 1-2:
    sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-core-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-input-evdev-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-input-wacom-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-18.04
    sudo apt install xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
  7. Put back the packages that were autoremove’d earlier:
    sudo apt install libcurl3 libegl1-mesa libglu1-mesa libgtop2-common libnih-dbus1 x11-apps x11-session-utils xfonts-base xfonts-encodings xfonts-scalable xfonts-utils xinit xinput xserver-common

Now you can exit, reboot, and log back in.

Congratulations! Also, your system is now unusably slow.

Good news: you upgraded to Cosmic. Good job, give yourself a hug.

Bad news: It’s gonna be slow. Mad slow. Unusably slow.

But it was a fun academic exercise, wasn’t it? Remember, we don’t upgrade software to use it, we upgrade because it’s there.

Posted by Adam Labay, 0 comments
07
Jul
2019

An Exceptionally Simple Class Grade Distribution Chart for DCPS Teachers

This is the latest in lame GSheets hacks I put together for Kelly.

Every Monday, she hands out progress reports. And every Monday, two manners of delusion ensue:

  1. The kids who are doing poorly assume that they’re doing no worse than anybody else (the system must be biased!)
  2. The kids who were doing well but have been slipping assume that they must still be at the top of the heap, because they’re the smart kids so of course they are.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could point to a classwide grade distribution to show where each student fits in the grand scheme of things?

Indeed it would.

Enter, the grade distribution chart.

It’s driven by this GSheet, which simply takes grade reports from Aspen and turns them into stacked dot charts that can be printed and stapled to your data wall (remember data walls?). You can’t see it in the sample, but there is also a dot at the class average.

It’s anonymous, but as long as the students have their progress reports (which shouldn’t be a problem given that this is generated from them), the kids can see exactly where their grade stacks up against their peers.

The biggest utility, though, is for classes who remain convinced that they’re “the smart ones” and thus must always be at the top of the heap. When they inevitably try to rest on their laurels, it’s always satisfying to show them getting blown away by the “earnest plodders” in the remedial group. 🙂

So, how do you use this beauty?

Two sections follow: initial setup and regular use.

Initial Setup

  1. Open the template GSheet. Make it your own by clicking File | Make a Copy.
  2. Rename the tabs to match your section numbers. Stick with the existing syntax since the other sheets are designed to expect an A-B section number syntax.
    • If you need more than 5 sections, just click on one of the tabs and choose Duplicate. Remember, though, that you need to do this 2 times: once for the Raw sheet and once for the Chart sheet.
    • Further, you’ll have to direct the Chart sheet to the appropriate columns in the Data sheet. In short, you may need to get in touch.
  3. Go to the Data sheet and change the titles, making sure to retain the format of Course A-B with section numbers.
  4. Update the titles of each chart sheet appropriately (alas, there’s no easy way to make them auto-update).

Regular Use

  1. Open Aspen and navigate to the Gradebook for a particular section.
  2. Load the Scores page.
  3. Run the Assignment History report.
  4. Set the format to CSV and accept the warning.
  5. Open the report file in Excel.
  6. Click the top-left chiclet (the gray square between the headings for Column A and Row 1)
  7. Copy to the clipboard.
  8. In the GSheet, open the appropriate Raw tab.
  9. Click the same top-left chiclet to select everything.
  10. Hit Delete to clear out the old data.
  11. Click Edit | Paste Special | Paste Values Only to paste the data.
  12. Repeat for the remaining sections.
  13. To Print, open the appropriate Chart tab.
  14. Hit Ctrl-P to get to the Print Preview dialog. The charts are formatted in Landscape for improved visibility.
  15. Click Next to get to the Print screen.
  16. Print per usual.

Posted by Adam Labay, 0 comments
02
Jul
2019

One Billion URLs

Last night I archived my billionth shortened URL for ArchiveTeam’s URLTeam project.

The rig that runs these is pretty fun, and I may post about it. But for now, I just find 1 billion URLs to be cool.

Posted by Adam Labay, 0 comments