Given that I grew up as a power DOS/Windows user, I often have gripes about how frustrating Linux is and they were almost never ready for people who just want to get common things done by intuitively guessing where the feature is (therefore having to RTFM or search the web for answers).

I deal with HP/Agilent/Keysight instruments a lot and appreciated their effort put on user experience (UX) design. It’s not that user who’s stupid if they have to dig through 5+ levels of menu buttons to measure a Vpp (peak to peak voltage) and the software aren’t smart enough to default to the only channel in use. That’s what Tektronix did to their nasty user interface and raised a generation of Stockholm Syndrome patients who keep buying Tek because they are traumatized by the steep learning curve and would rather walk on broken glass than having to learn a new interface from another vendor (that’s called vendor lock in).

I certainly appreciate Cinnamon desktop environment (came with Linux mint) designers willing to not insist on the ‘right way of doing things’ and follow a path that’s most intuitive for users coming from a Windows background.

The last time I used Linux Mint was 19. There’s still quite a lot of rough edges. Some services got stuck (time-outs) right out of the box and systemd went through slowly. It’s just not fast and responsive. When I tried it again when Mint 20.1 was released, my old i3 computer boots to the GUI in 5 seconds and I was hell of impressed. The icons and menus are also now sized balanced proportions like Windows (can’t stand the big and thick default menu-item fonts like Ubuntu).

However, there’s one big impeding factor for me to make Linux Mint my primary computer: the packages repositories are one generation behind Ubuntu (the most widely supported distro)! Software often have bugs that the developers solved, living with old, ‘proven’ software slows down the iterative process.

I’ve been through hell trying to access Bitlocker volume with Linux Mint 20.1 as not only it doesn’t work right of the box like Windows, I’m stuck with a command line dislocker that doesn’t integrated with the file manager (like Nemo). The zuluCrypt available with Mint 20.1 is too old to support Bitlocker properly. Trying to upgrade it to 6.0 has Qt dependencies which is unsolvable. I was able to download the unsanctioned old revision in debian package but there’s more unsolvable dependencies.

The alternative option of compiling from the source is met with more dependencies fuckery and now the restrictive Mint repository might not have the exact version of the compiler required by the source code package. Aargh!

I was about to give up Linux Mint and install Ubuntu and try to hold my nose changing the desktop to Cinnamon. Luckily I’ve found somebody who read my mind: there’s Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix!

Not only Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix supported Bitlocker right out of the box (no need to fuck with zuluCrypt which doesn’t integrate with the file explorer anyway)! Most of the defaults make sense, buttons are often where I expect them to be. Even Win+P key works identically! The names/lingo are close to Windows whenever possible, and honestly the default Yari theme is visually slightly more pleasing than Windows as it makes very good use of the visual spaces!

Here’s a few transition tips

I use Winsplit-Revolution in Windows (old version is freeware) that uses the numeric keypad to lock the window to the 9 squares grid using Ctrl+Alt+{Numpad 1-9}. Save the keyboard shortcuts in case if you want to install it again on another computer:

dconf dump /org/cinnamon/desktop/keybindings/ > dconf-settings.conf
dconf load /org/cinnamon/desktop/keybindings/ < dconf-settings.conf

There’s no Ctrl+Shift-Esc key which I often use to call Task Manager (called System monitor). I had to make the shortcut as well to feel at home.

I’m trying to cross compile my router’s firmware as I made a few edits override the update DDNS update frequency. Turns out it doesn’t work on the latest Linux so I’d need to run an older Ubuntu just to keep it happy.

RANT: Package servers keep pulling the rug on outdated linux frustrates the hell out of me. Very often developers didn’t make a whole installer for it so we are often wedged between downloading a package at the mercy of its availability from package managers and their servers or compiling the damn source code!

With the promise that Qemu might have less overhead than Hyper-V or VirtualBox (indeed it observably is), I tried installing Qemu on Windows host and it turned out to be a frustrating nightmare.

RANT: Linux is not free in the sense of free beer. The geniuses did the most sophisticated work for free but users pay time and energy cleaning after them (aka a support network dealing with daily frustrations) to make these inventions usable. There’s a company that does the clean up to make BSD (same umbrella as Linux/Unix) usable and made a lot of money: it’s called Apple Computers (since Steve Jobs’ return).

qemu is just the core components. System integration (simplifying common use cases) is practically non-existent. Think of them as the one who produced an ASIC (chip) and the end-user happens to be the application engineers. There’s a few tutorials on qemu Linux hosts for moderately complex scenarios, but you are pretty much on your own trying to piece it altogether for Windows because there are some conceptual and terminology differences. The man page --help for the qemu’s Windows host’s VM engine was blindly copied from the Linux hosts counterpart, so it tells you about qemu-bridge-helper which is missing.

I stupidly went down the rabbit hole and drained my time on qemu. So I documented the quirks to help the next poor sap who has to get qemu running on Windows 10 host efficiently over Bridged-Adapter (VirtualBox lingo) networking mode.

• Preparation work to get HAXM accelerator set up
  • Release VT-d (hardware assisted virtualizations) so HAXM can acquire it
    • You’ll need to remove Hyper-V completely as it will hoard VT-d’s control
      • Windows Sandbox and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) uses Hyper-V. If you just unchecked Hyper-V in Windows Optional Features leaving any of these 2 on, Hyper-V is still active (it only removes the icons)
  • HAXM v7.6.6 not recognized by qemu on clean install. Install v7.6.5 first, then remove it and install v7.6.6. Likely they forgot a step in v7.6.6’s installer
  • Turn on optimization by: -accel hax
• Command line qemu engine
  • qemu-system-{architecture name}.exe is what runs the show
  • qemu-system-{architecture name}w.exe is the silent version of the above engine. Won’t give you a clue if something fails (like invalid parameters)
  • qemu-img create -f {format such as vhd/qcow2} {hard drive image name} {size like 10G}
• QtEmu sucks, and they lack any better GUIs out there!
  • It’s basically a rudimentary command line’s GUI wrapper
  • It only has user mode (SLIRP) networking (default)
  • It’s not maintained actively so it doesn’t keep up with the parameter syntax changes (i.e. can generate invalid combinations)
  • Since it uses the silent (with a w suffix) engine, likely to avoid a lingering command window, it also won’t tell you shit and why if something fails. It just ignores you when you press the start button unless all the stars align (you got everything right)
• Basic command line parameters
  • Set aside 10G for the VM: -m 10G
  • 1 core if unspecified. Number of available threads (in hyper-threaded system) show up as # of processors. It’s referring to logical processors, not physical cores.
    • Windows: -smp %NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%
    • Linux: -smp $(nproc)
  • Attach virtual hard drive: -hda {virtual hard drive file name}
  • Attach optical drive (iso): -cdrom {iso file}

I typically want Bridged-Adapter option from VirtualBox, which means the virtual NIC plugs into the same router as the host and just appears as another computer on the same network as host. This is broken into a few components in qemu and you have to manage them separately. Great for learning about how Bridged-Adapter really works, but a lot of swearwords coming from people who just want to get basic things done.

Networking in QEMU is another can of worms if you deviate from the default SLIRP (user mode). I figured out how to work it, but the network bridge is faulty and it keeps crashing my windows with BSOD on bridge.sys with varying error tag. I have short glimpse of it working if I move very fast. Looks like the TAP driver is corrupting the memory as the bridge became very erratic that I see error messages deleting it and have persistent BSOD when the bridge starts after the VM hanged at the TAP bridge on boot.

I listed the steps below to show what should have been done to get the Bridge-Adapter (VirtualBox) equivalent function if there are no bugs in the software, but hell I’m throwing qemu for Windows to trash as it’s half-baked.

First, of all, you need to install OpenVPN to steal its TAP-Win32 virtual network card. It’s not VMware or Virtualbox that it’s part of the package. Qemu didn’t care to tightly integrate or test this driver properly.

Then you’ll need to bridge the “TAP-Windows Adapter (V#) for OpenVPN” with the network interface you want it to piggy back on.

The name of the TAP adapter is what you enter as ifname= parameter of the tap interface in qemu command line. You have to tell qemu specifically which interface you want to engage in. I named the virtual network card as ‘TAP’ above. After bridging it looks like this:

You are not done yet! The bridged network (seen as one logical interface) is confused and it won’t be able to configure with your physical network card’s DHCP client. You’ll have to go to the properties of the Network Bridge and configure the IPv4 with static IP.

You can use ipconfig /all to find out the relevant adapters acquired DHCP settings and enter it as static IP. Coordinate with the network administrator (can be yourself) to make sure you own that IP address so you won’t run into IP conflict if you reboot and somebody took your IP.

After these are all set up the parameter to add to qemu call is:

-nic tap,ifname=TAP

There are complicated settings like -net nic and -netdev -device. These are old ways to do it and have bloated abstractions. -nic switch combined them into one switch.

Then welcome to the world of Windows 10 bridge.sys crashing frequently and you might get a short window of opportunity that it boots and ifconfig acquire the IP address settings from your router (or network the physical adapter is on)’s DHCP server.

It’s like a damn research project finding out something is technically feasible but definitely not ready for production. Welcome to the FOSS jungle!

Postscript: I put Hyper-V back and realized it’s insanely slow with Linux Mint as it does not support hardware graphics acceleration. It’s night and day of a difference. Qemu is fast, but it crashes on Windows 10 if I bridge the adapters!

My email service provider has recently pulled the plug on TLS 1.0/1.1 support as they reached end-of-life. This means old email clients not written for TLS 1.2 and above will not work when it tries to connect to the server with SSL support!

Google did this in 2014 but offered a compatibility option called “allow less secure clients”. Back then I didn’t know it means TLS 1.0/1.1 until I learned it the hard way when my shared hosting email provider pulled the plug on the old TLS protocols and I scrambled to figure out my email stopped working with cryptic IMAP errors (like suggesting my computer might be lacking memory, which is not true).

One method to continue using the old clients is through tunneling. You use something line sTunnel to act as a non-SSL server to your email client (usually localhost if installed on the same computer as the email client) and the tunnel server will on your behalf talk to the real email server with proper TLS settings (provided by your email service provider).

Stunnel config that needs to be changed from defaults. If stunnel was installed by entware (opkg), the config file is in /opt/etc/stunnel/stunnel.conf.

1. Disable (comment out) drop privileges
2. Remove the [dummy] section since we are going to set up sections for each (server, port) pair. stunnel won’t start without any port forwarding sections.
3. It already has an [imap] section that’s commented out. Change the local port number and the target server url:port to your liking. Do [pop] if you use POP3 email instead of SMTP
4. Do the same by adding a [smtp] section for outgoing email

You might need to comment out

; You might need to comment out this drop privilege (3rd line in default conf file)
;setgid = nogroup

; Examples of forward sections with a '50' prefix to SSL port numbers to 'convert it to non-SSL' heading to stunnel
[imap]
client = yes
accept = 50993
connect = target_server:993


[smtp]
client = yes
accept = 50465
connect = target_server:465

Can look at the log by just executing stunnel. Use Ctrl+C to quit monitoring the logs.

Of course you want to make sure the stunnel service/server is always started on boot. If you are using entware (or jffs scripts) for your router, add the call to stunnel to /jffs/scripts/post-mount and make sure you set the script to executable so it’ll run:

#!/bin/sh
...
stunnel

Note that it’s post-mount because entware packages are installed on persistent storage (like USB drive or SD card in your router) that needs to be mounted before the files can even be read.

Remember to go to your old email client and change the email server address to computer running stunnel service (can be the same computer as the client, a raspberry pi, or a router). Unless you are managing a company with many old email clients, I recommend installing and configuring stunnel on the same OS which the old mail program runs instead of relying on a centralized router to manage it because it’d be very confusing if the centralized stunnel service is down and you don’t get any warnings that are not cryptic (as mentioned at the beginning of this article).