[Palomine]

Not seeking feedback per se, but just thought I'd share some of the oddities and quirks that I've turned up since my recent conversion to Ubuntu Linux (currently running version 10.04 32-bit). Attached is a curious error message that came up this morning while I was moving (too?) quickly between windows and menus (no malware suspected, I just got ahead of the GUI despite 4 CPU cores... filesystem operations only seem to use one core at a time )... I was amused by the wording of the message.

 

[BacE]

Not seeking feedback per se, but just thought I'd share some of the oddities and quirks that I've turned up since my recent conversion to Ubuntu Linux (currently running version 10.04 32-bit). Attached is a curious error message that came up this morning while I was moving (too?) quickly between windows and menus (no malware suspected, I just got ahead of the GUI despite 4 CPU cores... filesystem operations only seem to use one core at a time )... I was amused by the wording of the message.

 

Would be even weirder if you're using a trackball. 
B"could not grab your ..."acE

[Palomine]

Though it's not absolutely perfect, I still think that Ubuntu just rocks. If highly advanced aliens with only the best interests for humanity in mind automagically reset every single PC on the planet currently running ANY version of Windows to Ubuntu, I strongly suspect that the percentage of folks who'd go back to Windows after tasting Ubuntu would be less than 5%.

Taste some Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

I kid you not... it's that good.

 

[100ProofBE]

Though it's not absolutely perfect, I still think that Ubuntu just fuckin' rocks. If highly advanced aliens with only the best interests for humanity in mind automagically reset every single PC on the planet currently running ANY version of Windows to Ubuntu, I strongly suspect that the percentage of folks who'd go back to Windows after tasting Ubuntu would be less than 5%.

Taste some Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

I kid you not... it's that good.

 

Welcome to the revolution, Pal! RX and I switched to Ubuntu 2 years ago and, marring a couple of minor hiccups (buggy as hell on our netbook), have thoroughly enjoyed our vacation from the Redmond overlords. We both still dual boot since it's just easier to run Windows for a couple of things, but if you've got the horsepower, Ubuntu is a powerful and user-friendly distro. I highly recommend it to anyone who hates Windows and refuses to buy Apple's disgustingly-overpriced shiny toys.

Edit: Never seen that particular error before, but Ubuntu/Canonical's help forums are generally pretty good at identifying and answering common issues.

[sidewalkpsycho]

Getting used to the Unity environment might be a bit of a challenge.

[TheZookie007]

The guy behind Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, was the first African ever to go into space as a space tourist. He's like the South African version of Sir Richard Branson, only without the wife and kids. I had the chance to meet him once in Randberg, but the event got canceled at the last minute. Maybe the next time I'm in London (where he currently lives) I might get lucky. I read his blog regularly; he seems like a real nice, down-to-earth chap

[Palomine]

Had some computer issues lately... suffice it to say that my move to a great "new" (four-year-old) machine didn't go as smoothly as hoped and I've already spent a dozen man-hours troubleshooting it. I've tried everything: re-seating RAM and cards, trying different amounts of RAM, different graphics adapters and different drivers for them, different boot drives on different SATA ports and even different distributions of Linux (Mint as well as my usual Ubuntu). Each time I'd make a change, it'd run for just long enough to get my hopes up (that I might have fixed the problem) but of course, it was just false hope: sure enough, no matter what I changed, it would eventually freeze again.

Out of time and patience (for now), I've set up a different/temporary machine instead of going back to my most-recent PC, which has been suffering various maladies of old age (including frequent 'thermal event' shutdowns). So, I dug through my garage and brought in a little circa-2006 Dell Optiplex desktop (the small 'pizza box' kind that sits under a monitor, not the tower kind) that I had literally fished out of a recycling bin a couple months ago and pressed it into service as a temporary replacement. I mentioned this machine before here: http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9989535.0.html Compared to the new PC or even the other/most-recent one (which has dual Xeons) the little Optiplex is undeniably feeble: a Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a graphics card so modest it's small enough to fit in your palm. Parts of the chassis are stamped "Foxconn" so I presume they made it for Dell. The diminutive box only had room for a single internal hard drive, so I stuck a little SSD inside the case with Velcro (I bought it to be the boot drive for the new PC) and installed Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' (64-bit) with the Cinnamon GUI onto the SSD. I then put my one internal data drive where the system drive normally goes.

And you know what? It's pretty damn decent. To be sure, it's no speed demon... it's tangibly slower than the new PC or the old PC: you can feel it when uncompressing a file, playing a high-rez video, dragging a window on the desktop or even just opening a folder with a lot of files inside. However, it's actually quite acceptable for regular, non-gamer use (surfing, office apps, etc...) due in part to the fact that it's running Linux in general (which is more sparing with resources than Windows or Mac OSX) and Mint in particular (which is a distribution related to the Ubuntu one I'd been using for years... I tried Mint while troubleshooting the freeze problem on the new PC in hopes that it might be something Ubuntu-specific causing the freezes... it wasn't, but I did discover that I liked Mint better, especially now that Ubuntu's moved to the 'Unity' GUI). Mint feels quicker than Ubuntu for general GUI/file operations and frankly, I much prefer it's traditional Gnome-type GUI). It's only been about 24 hours, but so far, I haven't experienced that freeze problem that plagues the new PC (so it's probably something in the new motherboard or drivers).

Anyway, this is just my way of saying I've switched from Ubuntu to Mint, and am now temporarily using a PC that's about as robust (spec-wise) as an early Intel-based Mac Mini.  

[TheZookie007]

The diminutive box only had room for a single internal hard drive, so I stuck a little SSD inside the case with Velcro  

Now that is hardcore

Pal says: nah, not really. Just making do. From what I gather, SSDs aren't nearly as fragile as hard drives: they're not as worried about vibration and they don't give off nearly as much heat, thus they can make do with somewhat less cooling... so putting them somewhere other than in a drive bay is not that unusual, within reason of course. Pic later attached:

[TheZookie007]

OK, maybe not hardcore, but definitely MacGyver-esque

[Palomine]

I didn't have a better place to put this and it didn't seem to warrant it's own thread. If you have no interest in a Linux tool to track your cumulative network usage (internet data traffic) then don't bother reading this. If you might find such a thing handy, read on.

Finally found a simple little tool that does most of what I want: it doesn't keep records or generate reports but it does show what seems like an accurate tally of today/yesterday, this month/last month and cumulative traffic. I don't think it's parsing the router like I was doing manually to keep track of usage, but rather accessing some part of a system logfile. The router's counter mysteriously seems to reset itself now and again, which makes using it to keep track of traffic problematic.

While I know there are dozens of simple little network traffic widgets like this one that are easy to find and install for both Windows and MacOSX, there does seem to be a dearth of them for Linux, so I wanted to share this one. The tool is an "applet" so you don't find/get it from the normal Administration - Software Manager (as seen in Mint, Ubuntu and presumably many other Linux distros). Instead you get it from the Panel - Settings - Applets menu, which controls which applets are seen on the panel bar. The name of the applet I installed is simply called Network usage monitor, and it uses some underlying program code called vnstat (which I think is automatically installed in most Linux OS distros by default ...if you don't have it, you can get it via the regular Admin - Software Manager). If you download and install this applet (both done from within the Applet Settings window) and turn it on, an icon for the tool appears in your panel bar. Just click (it didn't prompt for any configuration settings like port IDs as some other tools did) and it works. If you want the display to stay open on your desktop all the time I think you have to assign the applet to be a 'desklet' which can be done using right-mouse-menu Add Desklet (once the necessary stuff is already your PC: vnstat and Network usage monitor). Don't ask me why programs are divided into applications, applets and desklets, each with it's own 'find/download/install' procedure depending on where you launch them from: to me it seems needlessly complex.

In any case, the applet "Network usage monitor" does work, so if this tidbit saves another Linux user even a little time and effort, I'll be pleased.

PS: I obscured a few bits in the attached screencap, but you can see what it looks like.

PPS: on a totally unrelated note (about using an SSD as a boot drive): if I haven't already said so elsewhere/lately, let me say what a great improvement using as SSD (solid state drive) for the system/boot drive of a PC makes. On two different computers, each running at least two different distros of Linux, I've experienced the before/after of using a regular 7200RPM SATA hard drive vs a standard/relatively inexpensive SATA I/II SSD drive. The speed-up when using the SSD instead of the HD is significant and very tangible, especially on boot. By way of example: on a relatively entry-level (Core2 CPU) PC that's 8 years old and running the latest/current version of Linux Mint booting from the SSD, the whole PC boots from cold/off to login in less time than any of the recent (less-than-one-year-old, having various i3 and i5 CPUs) PC/laptops I've tried recently (all running either Windows 7 or Eight)) manage to fully wake up from **82**.

Since SSDs are so small and run so cool that you can often install them in a PC without using up a regular drive bay (provided you've got an open/extra SATA port/cable) ...I velcroed mine (Velcro as a verb, past tense? inside the case and kept the one open drive bay in my small PC available for a whopping big regular hard drive. Finally, since your system drive only needs to be big enough to hold the OS and programs, etc... (not your entire video/music library) you can add an SSD to most PCs for well under $100. (I got mine at Newegg and it was about $75.) and there's probably no other upgrade you can make at that price that'll provide such a performance benefit.

As always, please pardon the stream-of-consciousness delivery. I'm just sharing.

[TheZookie007]

Nice thread, and thanks for keeping it up.

[Hiram]

I gave Linux Mint Debian a go a few days ago - very nice it was too.  I did have a persistent suspend problem that I always seem to get with Linux, so I gave up (I'm lazy).  Other than that, it the way to go I reckon.

Funny you should mention that Hiram... on almost all the PCs I've converted to Linux, the **82**/suspend/wake usually doesn't work right, necessitating a full shutdown and boot instead (an old IBM ThinkPad running Ubuntu was a notable exception: it **84**/woke perfectly). As a result, I usually don't even try to **82**/wake PCs anymore... I just shutdown and reboot. This isn't such a big PITA... since Mint is installed on a SSD for my boot drive, the PC boots up almost as quickly as some other PCs wake from **82** running Windows 7 or 8. Seems a small inconvenience to me: having to boot instead of wake... instead of all the cumulative time/labor/expense required to keep a Win PC safe from viruses, etc... -Pal

[Palomine]

Yes, it's over-priced (we all know this, so there's no need to be the umpteenth person to say so if that's your only comment) but here's an interesting tiny little PC called the mintBox ...the first one branded by Linux Mint. The ribbed metal case is nice (it looks to me like Darth Vader's router ) and the specs and I/O are decent too (again, if you don't take the price into account).

Details here: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2055

[Keisha_Evans]

You might just convince this girl to give Linux another try.  It's been years.

And I agree about the SSDs.  Mine isn't velcroed in place, but it might as well be.  I guess it's only because I didn't think of velcro at the time, lol!

Thanks for the info!

Keisha

[Palomine]

OK, a couple of Linux tidbits I happened across this week:

First, if you've ever asked yourself "I wonder what OS Edw@rd Sn0wden would use?" this is your answer: https://tails.boum.org/

Tails is a hyper-privacy-intensive derivative of Debian Linux (Debian's also the basis of both Ubuntu and Mint) and it incoporates Tor and a host of other privacy-protection features by default. As with most any distro, you can DL and install it on all or part (a partition) of a PC, or you can make a 'live' USB key with it and use that to boot a PC that way and unplug it when you're done. Tails goes to extreme lengths to leave no traces online... I can't repeat all of what I read about it, but have a look at the link above if you're curious and really want to protect your privacy. I haven't installed it on anything yet myself, but will let you know what I think if/when I find the time to do so. If you wanna give it a try: you can download it here: https://tails.boum.org/download/index.en.html

Next, though even a full-blown 'regular' version of the more popular Linux distros (such as Ubuntu or Mint) are delightfully light on system resources and run great on six to nine-year-old PCs with very modest specs, there are some other/sometimes/semi-related distros that are specially tailored just for older and/or more-modest-spec machines such as Lubuntu (a 'lightweight' derivative of the popular Ubuntu). While I didn't get around to Lubuntu, last week I did confirm that the latest full/standard versions of Ubuntu (14.04 LTS) and Mint (16 Petra) won't install on some really old PCs... they'll install fine on 32-bit CPUs (pre-IntelCore2Duo) but not those that are so early that they don't incorporate PAE support (Physical Address Extension: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension ) like the circa-2005 Pentium M-based laptop I saved from the recycling bin last week. After downloading and burning fresh iso/installers for both the latest Ubuntu and Mint only to find them not installable on this cute but ancient little laptop, thanks to the informative error message from the Ubuntu installer, I knew what to look for, so I googled around a bit and found this:

#! (aka Crunchbang) Linux http://crunchbang.org/ is yet another Debian-based flavor of Linux (man, is Debian cool or what? ) and while it's not made specifically for legacy hardware it does come in both PAE and non-PAE 32-bit versions: http://crunchbang.org/download (as well as a regular 64-bit version for more recent machines of course). Yes, being a 'niche' distro, there's not as much support online for #! (much less than for Ubuntu or Mint anyway) and some of the system tools aren't quite as polished as for Ubuntu, but I'll be damned if #! didn't breathe new life into that old Pentium M/512M RAM/40GB HD laptop! Not only does the minimalist #! GUI look great (it only takes about 10 minutes of using it to go from "what the hell?... where is everything?" to "Dang, all GUIs should be like this!") but with #! installed, that old laptop runs the latest/greatest versions of Firefox, GIMP, Chrome, LibreOffice, etc... and they all run pretty snappy too! I'm not saying that websurfing on it is just as fast as on a present-day i7-based laptop, but it's perfectly usable for pretty much any everyday task that's not CPU or graphics intensive (I wouldn't undertaking gaming or video editing on this old little PC for example).

Well, I just wanted to share... I still run/use/love Mint on my 'main' PC (an old Dell Optiplex desktop from around 2006) but I can't help but be intrigued by other Linux distros too. Heck, I might even put Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on something, now that they've 'put back' a bit of the GUI stuff I missed when they switched to their 'Unity' GUI.