Usually, I do not restart my system until I have to because of some newly installed kernel. But recently I had to do some multiple reboots in a row and I wondered: Why does it take so long to shut down and boot?

While running update-initramfs -u after adding a module to initramfs I got the following warnings:

I guess it is the same with most of us when you have to fiddle around with some hardware settings then and when. You do it once and then for months you no longer have to do anything until another challenge pops up. Well, today was such a day for me.

I have always wanted to use the extra buttons on my Logitech M570 trackball with Linux. On Windows one can use a nice GUI tool provided by Logitech that allows you to quickly change these settings. For instance I like to map the forward key to ‘Page_Up’ and the backward key to ‘Page_Down’.

For some time now I ran into the problem that editing larger files in VIM became quite slow when moving the cursor. Holding ‘j’ was very sluggish. I first suspected a plugin to be the culprit but my examination was to no avail.