Linux Adventures!

Ha! I had a wonderful time working on 3 (THREE!!) cool projects over the last month. Unfortunately, I don't think I have any images I want to share, so this might be my first text-only blogpost. Let's go!!

The 3 projects I worked on were...

1. Building a media server (with linux)
2. Switching my laptop to linux
3. Rewriting my website without Astro (on said laptop)

What do you mean by "Media Server"?

Answer: a place where I can store the movies and shows I own and stream them from there.

Over the last couple years, my partner and I have been lamenting the number of streaming services we subscribed to. One of my goals for the year was to set up a media server. We kicked that project off on the eve of the new president's inauguration because it sounded like new tarriffs might raise computer part prices.

1. We tried out Plex and decided to use their local server software
2. We researched specs, picked out computer parts, and ordered them
3. I built most of the computer (first time ❤️) before realizing I was plugging stuff into the wrong motherboard
   • We meant to buy a Micro-ATX form factor but bought a full ATX board. I did not notice. It is large.
4. We ordered a bigger case for the bigger motherboard, and I finished the build a few days later
5. I installed linux on a PC for the first time 🐧

My next mission was to digitize our DVD/Blu-Ray collection. There are probably a lot of methods to do this, but here's what's been working well for me.

1. I bought a DVD/Blue-Ray reader/writer. I don't think it was crazy expensive.
   • I also bought a power supply adapter for it since my model was made to be mounted in a tower instead sitting on my desk
2. MakeMKV is both software and a troubleshooting reference for getting media off discs.
   • Resources from MakeMKV allowed me to flash the firmware of the drive (so it could read discs effectively)
   • MakeMKV software is the first step in getting a good video file
3. Finally, HandBrake is what I use to transcode the video. This is where I pick the audio and subtitle settings and align all the videos to a reasonable format before copying them over to the media server.

Switching to Linux

I have 2 PCs I use on a regular basis for gaming and development. My main PC is a tower on my desk and my secondary PC is a laptop I take to and from work. Most days I'll tinker on the laptop over lunch, working on a project or some such, then commit those changes to github so I can pull them down on the other PC. After working with the media server PC running Pop OS, I decided to switch my laptop over as well.

Truth is, my laptop isn't in the best shape. It's from 2016 and it runs super-hot sometimes. It served me extremely well playing Monster Hunter World (2018) and Cogmind before that, but it's seen better days. It couldn't upgrade to Windows 11 and was really slow to boot up most days.

Pop OS Linux has been great.

1. It runs cooler
2. The battery lasts longer
3. It boots up faster
4. I can still run Monster Hunter World
5. It feels good to not be on Microsoft

• Tinkering with settings to get Steam games to run
• I still don't fully understand the file permission sytem
• The Pop!_Shop aka the software catalog doesn't always have the version you need for whatever you're looking for. It's very convient, but you might shoot yourself in the foot.
• I've not had the energy to fix bluetooth

Rewrite the Website!!

One of the first things I worked on setting up with the new OS was figuring out what my development environment was going to look like, especially for Godot. Fortunately, Godot and VS Code were so inconsequential to set up that it's not really worth talking about the process.

Setting up Astro and the web dev side was another story...
It wasn't really that hard, but it was enough of a hassle that took a step back and decided the Astro route just wasn't for me. I don't remember the specifics, only that I had to research weird error messages related to not having the right versions of npm or node.js installed. It wasn't that hard, but it hit home with some of the issues I already had with the website, mostly that I didn't understand how to customize well within the Astro framework.

Queue HTML for People! This website/tutorial was a really great springboard into html+css development, which I think will give me the customization, control, and creativity that I was looking for. The current (early 2025) iteration of my website isn't all that far from the starter project!

Having settled on a new paradigm, the next challenge was to figure out the best way to move my old blogs into html. Astro allows you to write pages in markdown, which is great (I love markdown!), but that's not what I need. I tried writing my own md-to-html parser in bash, and I got ~70% of my use case before deciding to move on and find something else. Pandoc seems like a really robust and flexible format converter and I think it will do nicely.

I also really wanted an rss feed set up so that the entire blogpost is included in the feed. The old rss from the Astro site would just link back to the blogpost. I was able to get that set up relatively painlessly as well, it will just involve a little copy and paste to get blogs added to the feed. Now you can add it to feedly or whatever you use and you should start getting the full blog instead of just a link.

Conclusion

I have had busy, busy month, but I've been able to crush 3 big projects! I hope you enjoyed reading about my linux related escapades. The next step in this journey is to work on some game-dev projects on the linux machine, as well as to continue importing older blogposts and such onto the website. Thank you for reading!
-nuzcraft