Is anybody else using Linux?

[Yellow Fang]

I use Linux on my home PC. It is so old that Windows would not run on it. In fact, it is so old that LinuxLite hardly runs on it. I keep needing to open up a terminal box to kill the web-browser when it's stuck. I will get another home computer soon, but I will probably put Linux on it. Of course, Raspberry Pi's generally use some flavour of Linux. It can be a bit of a pain installing printer drivers, but I have a Windows laptop for printing stuff with.

 

[PhilDawson8270]

Your loss

Not really.

I don't run windows at home, apart from a laptop for Solidworks.

I was merely pointing out that for those not capable of willing to do the configuration it is still not viable for the majority of computer users to switch to.

 

[Custom24]

Not really.

I don't run windows at home, apart from a laptop for Solidworks.

I was merely pointing out that for those not capable of willing to do the configuration it is still not viable for the majority of computer users to switch to.

Fair enough. I misunderstood. I think the benefits are worth the effort. Ubuntu is a viable OS for most people's needs, in my opinion. Certainly it is a good bet for those who don't like windows and can't afford a Mac. I use both Ubuntu and Mac, and I'm happier in Ubuntu

 

[Elswick Cotterpin]

Puppy Linux....

 

[PhilDawson8270]

Fair enough. I misunderstood.

tbf, my reply was maybe a bit lazy and lacking in context

 

[KneesUp]

I spannered my install the other day by getting cocky - I can't remember what flavour ubuntu it was at first, but having read this thread it reminded me how fast Lubuntu was on my old machine, so I converted it to Lubuntu, and it was fine (and a little faster). Then - for reasons even I'm not sure of - I decided to try 'original' Ubuntu, and that killed it: it wouldn't boot at all. I suspect I missed off a key package, or installed one I shouldn't have.

Lacking the will for a fight, I partitioned off a bit of the drive and stuck Xubuntu on it (the same flavour as on my kid's laptop) and am now using that. I think I'll go for the quick and easy option of just deleting everything off the other drive apart from my data an then using that as a data drive, and keeping this partition of the OS in case of future f-wittery on my part.

 

[mybike]

The wife's Win 8 machine is driving her up the wall. I think I may swap the hard drive, install Mint and see how she gets on.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

I'm in the middle of exploring my regular backup options, because no matter what the OS, and your personal preferences, I think we can all agree that regular backups are very useful!
My plan is

• to have the PC go to suspend-to-RAM (aka sleep) mode after 2 hours of inactivity. This is (according to what I've read, anyway) more reliable than hibernate (suspend everything to a swap file, then semi-reboot the system from this file), although it probably uses a wee bit more power. For this, I'll be adding a script that runs the rtcwake command to my auto-startup files, so that each time the PC resumes from sleep, the script will run rtcwake to schedule the next automatic wake time. Why do this? Well, it means that when the PC sleeps after 2 hours of me NOT fiddling with it , the rtcwake command will ensure that it wakes at the specified date/time, so it can then run
• the backup application! For this, I've chosen Acera backup. I've downloaded and installed it, but haven't yet tried it. If anyone has a better suggestion of backup utility, feel free to suggest one.

By the way, what I said before about Linux Mint not being able to play WAV files by default is wrong. It is easy enough, by e.g. running 'mplayer mysound.wav'. The problem is that Thunderbird won't play WAV files, but seems to have no issue with OGG files. I then thought of getting Thunderbird to just run the above command, instead of just playing the selected sound file: this is possible, but you need a plugin that supports it. One such plugin (which I haven't tried yet) is Mailbox Alert, which lets you run any arbitrary command when any new email arrives.

 

[martint235]

I'm in the middle of exploring my regular backup options, because no matter what the OS, and your personal preferences, I think we can all agree that regular backups are very useful!

They are but I never cease to be amazed by how many people just run the backup on the single hard drive in the PC or, in this age of digital photos, to an external drive next to the PC.....

 

[ColinJ]

I have to try and work out what has gone wrong with t'Interweb on a friend's old Dell laptop on which I recently installed Lubuntu.

I tested the system here and Firefox was nice and sprightly. I watched a few minutes of a programme on iPlayer and despite the ancient hardware, the picture quality was pretty good with just a hint of stutter every now and then. I took the laptop to my friend's house, and it also worked well there.

A few days passed and I got a call. iPlayer was by then unusable. I went over yesterday to check it out. Sure enough. Firefox was running really slowly. I tried a couple of broadband speed test sites and they were reporting a reasonable 0.5 Mb/s upload speed but only a pathetic 0.4 Mb/s download speed.

I used my friend's Kindle Fire to check the download speed and got 10-12 Mb/s on that so the broadband connection appears to be ok.

I was going to try an alternative browser, but then ran into problems with the package manager. I got a message saying something along the lines of "download interrupted, run dpkg --configure -a". That led to more distractions and I had to come home before fixing the system.

I will probably be able to fix the problem if I bring it back over here and spend enough time probing about, but does anybody have any suggestions as to what could cause this problem to develop?

The laptop does not have built-in wifi so it has a card plugged into a slot on the side. Lubuntu detected it and got it working without any intervention from me, which I was quite impressed by.

 

[KneesUp]

I've just been reminded that my (reasonably new - 2 years old?) laptop needs some tweaking to get the wi-fi to work properly. It's beyond me really - I just followed the instructions on askubuntu for the problem on my model. Previously it dropped the connection every 20 mins or so, and now it doesn't.

I'd suggest trying it with a network cable to try and pin it down to the wifi card.

 

[ColinJ]

I'd suggest trying it with a network cable to try and pin it down to the wifi card.

That's a good suggestion! I'll ride over with a cable tomorrow and check it out.

 

[accountantpete]

Another happy Linux Mint 17.3 user here - apart from this morning when the Darktable photo editing software people had inserted a crafty update amongst the usual batch of Linux updates so that when I opened the program up popped a Space Invaders game. I thought I had been hacked until I remembered the date. Fortunately I was brought up on Space Invaders so I quickly polished them off and so got access to the main program proper.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

More progress: I copied 8 Windows games to the new Linux drives, and 6 out of 8 run perfectly on Linux (using WINE, the Windows emulator). For three, I had to change a config file setting, but it didn't take too long to figure out what to set.
I also verified last night that I can switch to suspend-to-RAM mode, and return to normal mode, without any issues.

 

[martint235]

More progress: I copied 8 Windows games to the new Linux drives, and 6 out of 8 run perfectly on Linux (using WINE, the Windows emulator). For three, I had to change a config file setting, but it didn't take too long to figure out what to set.
I also verified last night that I can switch to suspend-to-RAM mode, and return to normal mode, without any issues.

I've not really played much with WINE apart from failed attempts to run iTunes. Is it tricky to find config settings for it?