Category: Linux

fastfetch replaces neofetch

whbeebe
fastfetch running on Ubuntu 24.04 and RPi 5

It’s been the gist of many posts how neofetch is no longer supported, and it’s been years since the last release. And that lack of support for neofetch is beginning to show when certain features don’t work the way they used to. So I went asking the Great Internet Oracle what was a suitable replacement for neofetch, and their were a lot of votes for fastfetch. I pulled the installation packages for Linux Mint and Ubuntu on RPi 5 and installed on both. It works just fine.

fastfetch running on Sonoma 14.5 and M1 Max MacBook Pro

Fastfetch appears to be available for many operating systems, especially Linux. There is no release package for macOS on the fastfetch GitHub repo, so I downloaded the source from the repo and built it on my MacBook Pro. It built without error and runs just fine.

If you have Homebrew installed on macOS, you can install fastfetch within Homebrew, and it will be the current release. I built my copy because it’s absolutely easy enough to do.

If you do decide to build fastfetch on macOS, then you’ll need CMake. I installed CMake on my Mac via Homebrew.

Links

fastfetch — https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch

Homebrew — The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux) — https://brew.sh

alma linux 9.4 aarch64 for raspberry pi 5 fails to boot and install

whbeebe
Raspberry Pi 5 boot failure with Alma Linux (iPhone photo)

I tried to install AlmaLinux-9-RaspberryPi-GNOME-9.4-20240514.aarch64.raw.xz onto my Raspberry Pi 8GB. I downloaded the file from Alma Linux to my Raspberry Pi 5. I used Raspberry Pi Imager v1.8.5 to flash the file onto a 128GB SanDisk Extreme Plus micro SDXC card, identical to the card that Ubuntu 24.04 for Raspberry Pi 5 executes from. Ubuntu works just fine, thank-you-very-much. Every time I read one of these breathless articles on a Linux support website (9to5Linux in this case) about the latest distribution that will run on a Raspberry Pi 5 and then waste my time downloading, flashing, and watching that distribution even fail to boot, I get a little more annoyed.

Look folks, I don’t know why there are so many who are vocal against Ubuntu, and are always looking and promoting alternatives. All I know is that the best distribution for a Raspberry Pi 5, one that will boot, install, and Just Works, is Ubuntu 24.04 for the Raspberry Pi 5.

By the way, don’t leave a comment about how I have to open config.txt and set os_check to zero as noted above. The test is simple for any distribution: it works straight out of the box, or it fails. Ubuntu worked straight out of the box, Alma Linux failed.

Update

I found the text file config.txt and added the line “os_check=0” to it. When I attempted to boot the Raspberry Pi 5 with this modified file, the screen was completely blank. I didn’t even get the screen you see at the top of this post.