2024-03-17

Apple to Linux Journal - Linux troubleshooting successes!

Today marks one month exactly with Linux and I was glad to solve two of my three issues that have continued since install. And, to be clear, these were obviously not deal breakers, just bothersome. Linux Mint is meant to be an easy way into Linux and it absolutely has been. Windows and macOS are not without their problems and that fact should not be forgotten. In one month of use I've had no other problems or bugs to deal with. Mostly it's just been a fun exploration of new apps and yes, some of that certainly requires learning but that's to be expected on any new app on any operating system. And, I'll add, not only has it been a fairly easy transition, I've been able to continue getting all of my work done. Daily website updates have been easily accomplished and today I delivered my first document laid out in Scribus on the LinuxMini. This is all being done from a 2012 Mac that feels as fast as the 2021 M1 Mac. Okay, on to today's successful fixes!

First, I've been having an issue when streaming music with the two apps I've settled into: Shortwave and Rhythmbox. I'm mostly using Rhythmbox which is perfect for streaming music from a local network drive. Far better than Apple Music which was useless for that purpose. In any case, the issue I was having was that after 30 minutes of perfect playback the app would start to stutter every few minutes. Just a one or two second gap but often enough to be annoying. After several searches over the past few days I finally found the solution in this post at the Linux Mint community forums. Apparently, the most recent version of Linux Mint migrated from an audio subsystem called PulseAudio to Pipewire. It was suggested that reverting to PulseAudio might fix some issues. So I gave it a go and I've not had any problems since. Each of these three lines is meant to be entered into the terminal one at a time (Disclaimer:It worked for me, but you know, at your own risk and all that):

apt purge pipewire pipewire-bin
systemctl enable --user pulseaudio
sudo reboot

If that doesn't work and you want to revert that change and use Pipewire again, run the following lines one at a time:

systemctl disable --user pulseaudio
apt purge pulseaudio
apt install pipewire-alsa
sudo reboot

The second was a fix for bluetooth and, as it turns out, the problem was, at least in part, user error. I found the fix on this thread on the Keychron subreddit. In my case this was not a Keychron problem. Two of my keyboards are Keychrons but I was also unable to pair to my trackpad, mouse or any other keyboard. I was mistakenly choosing the option to connect and, apparently, because the computer had already identified and connected to my bluetooth device, my click to connect was actually disconnecting. What I should have done was choose Pair. Here are the steps:

1. Put Bluetooth device in pairing mode
2. Open Bluetooth on the Linux computer, it's an app called Blueman and resides in the panel. When the app opens click the Search button.
3. When it finds your bluetooth device right click it in the window choose Pair. Once paired right click again and click trust. That's it.

Here are the specific instructions with a few more details for anyone using a Keychron keyboard:

1. Remove the keyboard from known bluetooth devices if it's there.
2. Hold Fn+[1-3] to start pairing with the keyboard
3. In blueman-manager press "Search" (or type scan on in bluetoothctl)
4. DO NOT CONNECT THE DEVICE, pair it instead. Right click on device in blueman-manager and select "Pair" (or type pair <mac> in bluetoothctl)
5. Pairing takes a couple of seconds after which keyboard disconnects. Wait until it fully disconnects
6. Now, connect the keyboard. Double click it in blueman-manager (or connect <mac> in bluetootctl)
7. After keyboard is connected, make it "trusted". Right click the device in blueman-manager and select "Trusted" (or trust <mac> in bluetoothctl)

One last problem to work out is to get proper file sharing set up on the LinuxMini. Currently I have read access and can copy files from any folders I've set to share but I'm unable to write to those folders. From the reading I've done it seems like this is a known issue that others are having. In my use case it's not a problem at the moment as I'm using the M1 Mac Mini as the local cloud file server and two way sync does work between that Mac and LinuxMini via Syncthing. And, importantly, I have full read/write access to that M1 Mac and all it's attached drives from the LinuxMini.

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