Is anybody else using Linux?

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Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
I've not really played much with WINE apart from failed attempts to run iTunes. Is it tricky to find config settings for it?
I didn't have to change anything for WINE. The config settings I changed were for some .ini files for the Windows games. WINE is still just as I installed it, and I never had to touch any WINE-related files.
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
Having just had trouble getting SportTracks (workout analysis software that I used for tracking my cycling trips when I still used Windows) working in Linux, due to some font issues, I tried out an alternative. It's called Golden Cheetah, and my first look at it impressed me. It's open source software that can be installed for Windows, Mac or Linux. The only hassle will be importing all my trip files: for the last 6.5 years I have over 3000 of them. I feel tired just thinking about it... :tired:
 

newfhouse

Resolutely on topic
The only hassle will be importing all my trip files: for the last 6.5 years I have over 3000 of them. I feel tired just thinking about it... :tired:
I've not looked in detail at either software but I'd be surprised if you couldn't write a script to automate at least part of the process. I've used Turtle Sport as a middle man between Garmin and other programs in the past, admittedly not so many files that I needed automation. Maybe worth a look.
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
Actually, I tried TurtleSport last year, so thanks for the reminder. Perhaps I'll try that one also, and compare it to Golden Cheetah. They're both open-source software, which helps.
 

newfhouse

Resolutely on topic
I don't have a power meter (or any need for one, I'm mostly a commuter) so I don't know about its analysis capabilities, but I'm sure it won't be as forensic as Golden Cheetah. Speed, distance and elevation are all that I bother with and I'm really only interested in logging annual distance.

And a big thumbs up for using open source solutions for everything, from software to transport.
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
Same here. I just record my rides, and like to look at the routes and elevation graphs. All the power / heart / etc. analysis is unnecessary for me also, so I may just end up using TurtleSport.
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
I'm still on Linux, and don't miss Windows one tiny bit. :stop:

Just now, I successfully converted an AAC audio file to an MPEG file, using the ffmpeg command in a terminal window. :wahhey:
Here it is, in case anyone's interested (non-geeks, please avert your gaze now):
ffmpeg -i "my old audio file.aac" -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -vn -acodec copy "my new audio file.m4a"
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
I just found a way to (a) filter out all the crap in web pages and (b) not slow down my web browser because of it.

One way to filter out the rubbish is to use a hosts file with a very long list of sites that you don't want to be connected to, e.g. ad-providers, malware sites, etc., and map those names to either your loopback address 127.0.0.1 if you want to block the site and let them know they're being blocked, or 0.0.0.0 if you just want the remote site's attempt to contact you to meet with no response at all (I tend to prefer the latter, because it just rejects the contact attempt immediately, and doesn't wait to time out).
The big drawback with this is that it makes your /etc/hosts file very large (mine has over 15,000 lines in it), and loading of web sites is considerably slowed down. So what did I do about that? Well, this sums it up:
victor@desktop-victor:/etc > ll hosts
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jul 16 11:08 hosts -> /run/user/hosts
The directory /run/user is mounted in RAM using the tmpfs file system, so that means that the file /run/user/hosts sits in RAM, so reading it is a lot faster than reading it from the hard disk. I just created a soft-link from /etc/hosts to /run/user/hosts. I then found that my web browser's loading of web pages was heaps faster.
:addict:

And now to finish with a very bad pun:
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
:rofl:
 

Custom24

Über Member
Location
Oxfordshire
@Shut Up Legs a less technical solution is to use something like Ghostery. Admittedly this means Ghostery is looking at you rather than all the other stuff but it is easy to set up and your browser will run a lot faster
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
@Shut Up Legs a less technical solution is to use something like Ghostery. Admittedly this means Ghostery is looking at you rather than all the other stuff but it is easy to set up and your browser will run a lot faster
Thanks, I installed and tried it, looks promising. I'll still continue using the extended hosts file, though.
 
OP
OP
Chris S

Chris S

Legendary Member
Location
Birmingham
I've now ditched Black Lab Linux in favour of Lubuntu. My old laptop has 1GB of RAM and 1.8 ghz processor and it's internet ready within a minute of pressing the On button. That's faster than my new one running Windows 10.
 
I've now ditched Black Lab Linux in favour of Lubuntu. My old laptop has 1GB of RAM and 1.8 ghz processor and it's internet ready within a minute of pressing the On button. That's faster than my new one running Windows 10.

I am guessing that it's running faster as it isn't full of adware and "Trials" pre-installed by your Laptop retailer and manufacturer.
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
I just had to use a fix I hoped to never have to use: emergency file system repair via bootup. For some reason, my Linux desktop PC found some filesystem corruption, and as a preventive measure it remounts the root filesystem (i.e. the one mounted on the '/' directory) as read-only.
So I had to
  1. reboot.
  2. hold down Shift key at the BIOS splash screen to show the grub menu.
  3. select Advanced.
  4. select Recovery mode.
  5. select "Drop to root shell".
  6. run the following to repair filesystem errors: fsck -A
  7. run the following to remount '/' as read-write: mount -o remount,rw /
  8. run the following to continue booting: reboot
Once I'd done all that, after Linux was running again, everything seemed normal, so it seems to be all good again. :okay:
Sorry, I omitted step 0: before doing ANY of the above, while Linux was still running with '/' mounted read-only, I backed up about 2GB of essential directories to an external disk, because backup ALWAYS comes before any corrective action, ALWAYS! :rolleyes:

Anyway, just thought I'd post the above, in case any of you ever need to use it. Fortunately, having '/' mounted read-only isn't quite as bad as it seems, because it's the filesystem mounted on '/home' that contains most or all of your working files. So I was still able to read emails, run Firefox, etc. But I was getting odd errors when starting up Dolphin file manager, and running the 'sudo' command for any reason just didn't work properly.

Regards,

--- Victor (the ex-birthday 'boy').
 
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