The other day I was listening to the latest PostmarketOS podcast in which they spoke about their participation DEFCON 33, WHY 2025 and FrOSCon 2025, and it sounded like they had fun, sold merch and got stickers. They also briefly mentioned that a meaningful difference between Ubuntu Touch and their own PostmarketOS is that the former still uses a layer of Android for hardware abstraction (Halium) while they themselves attempt to go without that.
Ubuntu Touch uses Libhybris to talk to Android HAL
They didn’t mention it, but this could be what makes porting devices to PostmarketOS very much harder than for Ubuntu Touch, as indicated by the number of devices offered on both sides with full and complete hardware support. Ubuntu Touch has many, PostmarketOS just one, the Purism Librem 5, a device that wasn't build with Android in the first place. GPS fixes with Ubuntu Touch can take some time, but the warning notice about that is just to prevent disappointments. I have a OnePlus Nord N10 that gets a GPS fix within half a minute. Although much slower than with phones tied to Google or Apple, this really is fine.
Sharing pictures
Another thing they mentioned was that people who daily drive Linux phones always find workarounds for what they’re missing, such as actual snapshot cameras. I do that too, but not only won't let it me share immediately the pictures I took, I also cannot show them on my phone when I'm with someone. But while hardware problems mire PostmarketOS, it’s the state of the software that is Ubuntu Touch’s problem. Native apps are few and far between, and more than a few need fixes and updates.
The default calendar app sometimes ignores timezones, the running tracker doesn’t reliably track runs, the contacts app doesn’t sync contacts and sharing images to the matrix client doesn’t work, to name just a few issues. It particularly doesn’t help that PostmarketOS apps don’t run on Ubuntu Touch (and vice versa). You can install snaps and even NixOS packages, but those are hit or miss. With so few apps, there will typically only be one app for each of your use cases, if at all, and if that one doesn’t suit your needs, you’re out of luck.
Great, but not too great
Just yesterday, at an orchestra rehearsal (I always have a lot of those at this time of the year, which is precisely why I’m blogging less at the moment) a friend told me he ditched his smartphone altogether. Too many stimuli, he said. I think that is great, if not outright brave. Sometimes I’m in a shop wondering why my payment isn’t accepted and realising I didn’t put enough money in my account. Not having a smartphone means not being able to correct that then and there.
But you don’t just use smartphones for yourself. My friend is in fact the ensemble’s project leader. Today I spoke with someone else from his team. She told me that she and others now have to send him SMS text messages, while the rest is reading everything in their WhatsApp group. So now everyone has to type everything twice, which often turns out to mean that he misses things.
Perfectly
I like to tinker with technology and am generally okay with things not working perfectly for myself, but often I don't have the time and things do need to work. I also need people to be able to reach me without it becoming too much work for them. So even though PostmarketOS gives me more freedom, Ubuntu Touch is in fact more suited for me. And adb(1)’ing into a phone and then adb(1)’ing from it’s own terminal into a virtual LineageOS device running on it (you’ve got to have a banking app) is just funny. And now that I can use Matrix for WhatsApp and Signal. I could probably daily drive my N10.
In July 2024, I bought a monstrous laptop, a huge Acer Nitro 5. I installed Pop!OS on it, called it Flexo because its red and black colour scheme can make people think it's evil, and left it at that. Since then it has been a gaming machine for my kids and served me well during cold astrophotography sessions.
# echo flexo > /etc/hostname
Actually, later I installed Arch on it, simply because it is more up-to-date, and I’m used to it. But that wouldn’t be the last operating system it’d have to endure. Just last week, I needed to flash an older phone with an even older version of its own operating system and in order to do that, software, provided by its chip manufacturer, was needed, and this software was not available for Linux, Arch or otherwise.
Because astrophotography is a rather data intensive hobby (or potentially: the climate of my country doesn’t allow for lots of clear and moonless night skies), inside Flexo there are an extra M.2 and SSD, both of 1TB capacity. Since I expected the Windows installer to name them differently, I copied the files of both of them to the other while downloading Windows 10 and putting it on a bootable USB stick.
That last command took a very long time, and maybe it wasn’t even needed, because the Windows installer still complained that there was no suitable partition. I was able to delete the primary partition of one of the 1TB disks and then chose to install Windows on it. I had no way of knowing then if that was the M.2 or the SSD1. After installing, the installer rebooted Flexo directly to Windows. And then again. "Sit back and relax while we work our magic", it said 😂. And then it did a third reboot.
After all this I had a working Windows 10 machine. Flexo started without even offering me to boot Linux. Earlier, I had booted it with an Arch USB stick to fix the /etc/fstab file (it needed removal of a line referring to a disk) and reinstall GRUB to create a boot menu with both operating systems.
But that boot loader didn’t load. Instead, Windows was booted automatically and F2, the key that would previously get me into the laptops firmware, just locked the machine. Booting with F12 did allow me to select either the Windows or the Linux bootloader I installed earlier. Selecting that let me boot either system as well, so that was the one I wanted to automatically pop up when starting the machine. But since I couldn’t get into the firmware, there was no way for me to set it as the default.
The problem appeared a bug in the firmware making it choke on the Linux bootloader entry. The Arch forums, as always, had a solution. I had to boot into Windows and open Command Prompt as Administrator, then Mount the EFI partition:
This indeed landed me in Arch’s UEFI partition, where I could rename the bootloader file to stop it from confusing Acer’s firmware:
S:\>ren grubx64.efi grubx64.efi.bak
I rebooted, after which F2 presented me again with the firmware interface. The only problem now was that in its boot order form, I didn’t see any of my UEFI entries, just the number “2”. When pressing F5/F6 to change the values, only unreadable junk appeared. What could I do but to select one at random and hoping for the best.
After selecting the wrong one first, the one starting with "2sy" appeared the right one. So now Flexo is a dual boot machine, something I haven’t owned for two decades. I had flashed that phone days before finding the solution above, but perhaps I will have to do a similar thing in the near future, so I figured, as long as its not in the way, why not keep it there?
Last week I wrote how I basically used my new Atari STE to recreate my father’s professional music setup to let it once again play back the music I created between 1992 and 2002. But while C-Lab’s Notator software ran so that I could load and edit the files, one thing was still missing: A Roland SC-55mkII Multi-timbral Sound Canvas:
Neatly tucked away sits my Roland SC-55mkII in the previously unused space below the monitor
Or at least, something that would actually play the music so that I could hear it. The SC-55, being one of the MIDI devices that was recommended to me by the Atari community as one that plays nice with games that support MIDI, was not cheap, but does create a very high quality MIDI sound. On eBay, I found a Japanese shop simply called Books and Music, and they carried one. In the package they send me, they included a cute anime styled leaflet with a 10% off coupon code valid until one minute before the end of this year.
Perhaps, if they have a 240 to 100 volt adapter, I might buy it from them, because at the moment the SC-55 is occupying the only one I have, which means my also Japanese Sony MSX2+ is currently without power.
According to soundprogramming.net, the SC-55mkII is the successor to the SC-55, mostly adding some samples and increasing sound resolution from 16 to 18 bits. It can do 28 sounds at the same time, has an orange backlit LCD screen, pulls 9V and 900mA, is 218 mm x 233 mm x 44 mm small, and weighs 1.4 kg.
The Roland SC-55 MK II, front
When it turns on, the SC-55 presents its type number through a fancy little animation. Below the power button is a second MIDI in port. Incoming signals from this port are mixed with those received by the first MIDI in port in the back. This way, a computer can play a song through the SC-55 via port one, while a pianist can add impromptu accompaniment over port two.
To the right of these are a volume dial and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but inserting headphones won’t cut the output from the output jacks in the back. To the right of the screen are the “all” and “mute” buttons. To mute all channels, press both, to mute a single part, press “mute” and select the part with the parts buttons.
The other buttons come in pairs that change values, such as reverb, pan, or instrument, up and down. This can be done for all channels at once or, using the parts buttons, for one or more parts. The values can be seen in the left part of the LCD screen. The rest of the screen is filled with a bar graph with one bar for each of the 16 parts, where each part is a MIDI channel.
Originally, this device came with a small remote control, but mine didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I need it as much as the buttons on the front panel, not at all, that is. My sequencer, C-Lab Notator, has a much more convenient interface for everything these buttons can do.
The Roland SC-55 MK II, back
The rear panel has stereo audio input and output ports at its far left. What comes in through the input ports is mixed with the sound created by the SC-55, so this is where I connect my Atari STE’s stereo output ports to. The result is a perfectly balanced combined audio signal that continues to my little mixer panel that also has incoming cabling from my MSX and its many audio expansions.
Centred in this panel are three sad looking MIDI ports, the one at the far right labelled “IN 1”, which is what I connect the MIDI out port of my Atari STE with. Unlike the Atari, the SC-55 has a proper Thru port, which sends a duplicate of whatever the “IN 1” port receives further downstream.
There is a switch that lets you use other input mechanisms than MIDI and at the right is the AC adapter jack with a cable hook to prevent accidental disconnects. I don’t use it, but I can imagine it being a lifesaver on stage.
It’s funny to see how little is needed for a computer that is barely fast enough to play an MP3 file to drive a device like this. C-Lab’s Notator allows you to do edits while playing your song, all the while updating its progress numbers without pause. Considering there were even MIDI sequencers for 8 bit 3.5Mhz MSX computers, this is hardly surprising, but impressive nonetheless.
My father, regular readers might have read before, was a musician. For forty years, he taught music to what must have been thousands of twelve to eighteen year-olds, the first 35 years thereof as the only music teacher on his school in Emmen, the provincial border town that I grew up in. His students learned, among other things, to read notes, to analyse fugues and how to direct a symphony orchestra.
Apart from his teachings, he also was a choir director. At some point in his career he was the director of three amateur choirs. One consisted of about twenty lovely people who, even if their ageing voices would allow them to climb sufficiently high, were unable to read the notes. So he bought an Atari STFM, simply because of its MIDI ecosystem, bought C-Lab Notator and connected a keyboard. Using this he recorded all the parts of any music that the choir was to sing. It let him transpose parts effortlessly, print them more clearly than on the originals, and record solo parts to cassette tape so that the choir members could rehearse them at home by singing along.
C-Lab Notator SL’s manual and discs
My brothers and I, blind as we were, never discovered the Atari’s TV modulator so we never used the machine to play games. I do remember using the same set-up to create my own music, though. I was about sixteen then and must have gone through some creative period, trying out different styles ranging from very abstract chamber music to what my father could only describe as a bunch of stupid ostinatos.
A bunch of stupid ostinatos (1992)
By the time I left home to go live on my own, I had settled on a somewhat more recognizable style. A few years later, I bought a PC and, using a cheap keyboard that needed my Soundblaster Audigy to produce sound, I used the Cakewalk MIDI sequencer to create music my friends were patient enough to play for audiences just as patient.
MIDI was never the end goal. Having people play your music, especially for an audience, is a fantastic, if scary, experience. It feels not unlike witnessing your child meet other people. You hope for the best, but it’s out of your hands. You realise it’s the music that’s playing the players, and the audience, not the other way around.
Quintet for wood and french horn (2000)
Still, it was the MIDI file standard that allowed me to transfer from Notator to Cakewalk. When I discovered Linux and stopped using Windows 98, I used Brahms (no longer maintained) and later Rosegarden, transferring my files between them using the same file format.
This summer I bought and upgraded an Atari STE, to correct my younger self’s shameful oversight and drown myself in a huge library of gorgeous games. Some of them, such as Cruise for a Corpse, use MIDI to play in-game music. I don’t have the room in my study for even a small sized keyboard, so I asked around on an Atari forum if there were any stand-alone MIDI playing devices that worked well with these games. I got several suggestions but some didn’t look very good and others were expensive.
And then, two weeks ago, I saw a C-Lab Unitor-N on marktplaats.nl (a Dutch eBay-alternative). A Unitor is a MIDI expansion device, made by C-Lab, with SMPTE (synchronisation) and extra MIDI ports. It has to be plugged into the expansion port of an Atari, and also contains the anti software piracy key without which Notator won’t run. They are quite rare and normally much more expensive than what was asked by the seller. I instantly bought it.
The C-Lab Unitor-N MIDI expansion
During the anticipatory waiting period, I turned on my Atari, which, through circumstances, I hadn’t touched for over a month. But something was wrong. About half of the times, it wouldn’t respond to the keyboard or mouse. A reset would sometimes solve this, but then the Atari would freeze after a few minutes.
Already constructing the scenario in the back of my head that I would have to find some local Atari expert to try and fix my machine, I ordered a replacement keyboard from eBay. It arrived after a week. Installing it was easy, and the problem hasn’t surfaced since. Better yet, even tough I had cleaned the original keyboard thoroughly, this one was much cleaner. Reflecting, I should have expected something like this. The power LED on the old keyboard never worked, and I was suggested at least once that this could indicate a bigger problem.
My Atari with the Unitor-N firmly attached
The Unitor-N arrived a few days later, with three 3,5" floppies containing Notator, and a manual in German. I attached the Unitor, copied the files from the disks to the MicroSD-card that emulates my harddisk, and started Notator. Loading my thirty-year-old MIDI files and seeing the notes on the screen, I felt I had come full circle.
Piano Trio in C (1992)
What you can’t see in the photo, is that the Unitor actually clips into place, in such a way that it’s quite hard to get it off again. You have to depress the clip to have it let go. It also has four little feet underneath, making it sit neatly on the desk besides the Atari without bending or wiggling anything. It makes for a very robust ensemble. Its two extra sets of MIDI ports brings the total amount of MIDI channels of this system to 48, enough for a Mahler symphony. There is also something with 15 poles called “multi-port”. I haven't the foggiest.
Of course, without an external MIDI device, there is no way to actually listen to anything that comes from all this. As you can conclude from the audio fragments in this post, I have already solved this, but that warrants its own post, as, in fact, does Notator.
There are times that I make my life harder than it needs to be. I don’t mean having kids. They’re lovely, awesome, if not hilarious, and a lot more. In 2024 I closed my PayPal account, and with good reason, if not many of them. With a PayPal account you waive your moral rights (whatever that may mean), they track you even if you opted out from tracking, they hold onto content that you’ve deleted, to name a few things, each of which should make you avoid them like the plague.
Since then, acquiring hardware and software for my retro gaming efforts has become much more of a hassle, making me turn to eBay more often than I’d like. eBay is as bad, if not worse, but everybody else selling antique computer apparel requires me to have a PayPal account. Yesterday, I found myself in need of some hardware expansion for my Atari STE. Said expansion is only sold via sellmyretro.com, which accept only PayPal payments. eBay didn’t carry it.
Coffee
Also, many of the indie websites I often frequent carry logos claiming a particular fondness of coffee, and I don’t feel I’m different in that regard. But Ko-Fi, after I had opened an account there, appeared to only accept PayPal or Stripe payments. Stripe was a bridge too far for me, so, as you already observed by looking at this site’s sidebar, I caved.
Ubuntu Touch uses Libhybris to talk to Android HAL
