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Why Linux?

Seek assistance with all types of tech. - computer, phone, TV, heating controls etc.
JonE
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Re: Why Linux?

#31725

Postby JonE » February 15th, 2017, 1:42 pm

didds wrote:Its not unusual however to find its not possible to put windows on such a refurbed system, usually cos I can;t put a licensed and authenticated version of windows on it. The obvious choice wold be to stick something like Mint on it which will be fine for basic browsing and email, homework etc, But my fear is that should I provide such a system it just won;t get used as its "not windows" and will just end up gathering dust, thrown in a skip, or actually sold


I'm not at all sure that this is still necessarily the case - though I accept (as someone who resisted for a long time the rising tide of PC-DOS and MS_DOS on home computers) that it probably has been.

I nowadays see so many people (of various ages) who use an iThing or an Android device and may not even have knowingly used an MS Windows machine. They neither know nor care about the system that supports the things they do - they just want to do stuff and it just needs to work! Kids who are now leaving school with training in a specific office suite (and even a specific version of that suite) may remain fixed on that suite/version for a while but they seem to get over that pretty quickly in their desire to do stuff once they don't have to stick with it for school purposes.

Perhaps it's a partial shift towards working with data rather than working with application programs. I might want access to specific data and don't give a fig whether that's via a word-processor or spreadsheet or presentation package or web browser (and certainly don't care even one hoot what that's called or who publishes it). Creating information and other content for use by others is likely to be different but simply consuming data seems to be becoming increasingly mode-agnostic.

Cheers!

wilbobob
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Re: Why Linux?

#31811

Postby wilbobob » February 15th, 2017, 6:25 pm

A neighbour of ours needed to print a document and her printer had died. She brought her USB stick to our house, plugged it in, found the document and printed it without a pause for thought. When she had finished I asked if she had noticed that she was working in a Linux system. She hadn't.
I think it's true that users will find their own way to do what they want to do and ignore the OS that supports them.

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Re: Why Linux?

#32085

Postby wilbobob » February 16th, 2017, 4:07 pm

FredBloggs
I've only spent time on LinuxMint, There are other distributions. I would suggest you try LinuxMint 17.3 xfce 64 bit version. It's the lightest on hardware without too many bells and whistles. You can download a copy from here
https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=214
Burn it onto a spare USB stick as a bootable ISO. Reboot your computer with it plugged in and press probably F2 or F10 (Machine dependent) to boot from the USB or change the boot order in BIOS to boot from the USB first. It will boot slower than if installed to the hard drive, but you'll get a feel for how it works with your hardware.
Have a play to see if you like it. You won't be able to save changes you make, but similarly you will leave your windows installation untouched. Should you decide to install Mint make sure you read and understand drive partitioning in Linux, back up all your files onto external media and give it a go. You'll probably be surprised at how fast and easy it is.
The forums at forums.linuxmint.com are very nooby friendly

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Re: Why Linux?

#32244

Postby Infrasonic » February 17th, 2017, 8:33 am

FredBloggs wrote:Hmmm, interesting stuff here. I have an ASUS laptop about six years old but in really good condition. It has a fairly humble spec (Intel Celeron CPU, 2GB RAM etc) that was OK-ish when running Windows 7 but when upgraded to Windows 10 is very challenging to use. I browse in Chrome and if I have say four tabs open, launching Skype brings the laptop to its knees. It can take several minutes before Skype launches and sometimes I can't pick up an incoming call because the computer is so busy. I am surprised by this as I thought Win 10 was no more demanding of resources than Win 7 to run. Anyway, it is what it is and I have been wondering whether or not to try a LInux build on it as an alternative to just throwing it away. What do the Linux experts here think?


More RAM will help if that is possible or swapping the HDD out for an SSD will make a noticeable difference to latency, especially on an older machine.

If you still want to use W10 on it I'd seriously suggest 'clean installing' it, to a new cheap SSD if possible. I put a £30 120GB Sandisk 'C' drive in my desktop [quadcore i5/8GB RAM], kept the old 1TB HDD as the 'D' drive. Noticeable improvement.

The licensing will pick up automatically as you've already done the W7/W10 upgrade.
https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to ... indows-10/

Chrome browser and 'desktop Skype' are pretty resource intensive, the browser version of Skype less so.
In W10 'Edge' is pretty nimble, and now that extensions like Ghostery and uBlock are available it's flexibility from an ad/ privacy tracking perspective is much better. I run both browsers in parallel now with the browser Skype.

The major Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint should dual boot OK with W10 if you want to go that route.

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Re: Why Linux?

#32258

Postby Infrasonic » February 17th, 2017, 9:17 am

JonE wrote:
didds wrote:Its not unusual however to find its not possible to put windows on such a refurbed system, usually cos I can;t put a licensed and authenticated version of windows on it. The obvious choice wold be to stick something like Mint on it which will be fine for basic browsing and email, homework etc, But my fear is that should I provide such a system it just won;t get used as its "not windows" and will just end up gathering dust, thrown in a skip, or actually sold


I'm not at all sure that this is still necessarily the case - though I accept (as someone who resisted for a long time the rising tide of PC-DOS and MS_DOS on home computers) that it probably has been.

I nowadays see so many people (of various ages) who use an iThing or an Android device and may not even have knowingly used an MS Windows machine. They neither know nor care about the system that supports the things they do - they just want to do stuff and it just needs to work! Kids who are now leaving school with training in a specific office suite (and even a specific version of that suite) may remain fixed on that suite/version for a while but they seem to get over that pretty quickly in their desire to do stuff once they don't have to stick with it for school purposes.

Perhaps it's a partial shift towards working with data rather than working with application programs. I might want access to specific data and don't give a fig whether that's via a word-processor or spreadsheet or presentation package or web browser (and certainly don't care even one hoot what that's called or who publishes it). Creating information and other content for use by others is likely to be different but simply consuming data seems to be becoming increasingly mode-agnostic.

Cheers!


I agree, the OS is becoming less important.

If you throw Android into the equation in addition to all the Linux web servers et al, then you could argue that Linux is a 'dominant' OS by gross numbers, just not in desktop (currently).

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Re: Why Linux?

#32262

Postby didds » February 17th, 2017, 9:31 am

You could buy a cheap usb webcam top use for your skype facetime call and use that instead?

didds

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#32263

Postby Infrasonic » February 17th, 2017, 9:32 am

Thanks very much for those thoughts. I had looked into getting more RAM a while ago but the installed RAM is now pretty ancient and not so easy to find at a fair price any more. I hadn't thought about an SSD, if I can one cheap enough, I could indeed try a clean Win 10 install. Still an issue with RAM then though.


Less so because the swap/paging file will be on an SSD, so the latency will be a muliple less. That's why SSD's make such a difference to older hardware.

Webcam. Again if you keep your eye out via deal sites like... (http://www.hotukdeals.com/search?action ... rds=webcam) then a cheap external should do the job, just research linux driver support first.
I'm waiting for the 1080P Logitech to hit a decent price.

didds
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Re: Why Linux?

#32264

Postby didds » February 17th, 2017, 9:33 am

is the downloaded file you have - before uncompressing it - an iso file? i.e. its name is <something>.iso ?

If so, THAT is the file you need to burn.

If not, you need to download the .iso file.

https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

cheers

didds

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Re: Why Linux?

#32266

Postby wilbobob » February 17th, 2017, 9:36 am

You can use a program called Rufus to burn your unzipped folder as an ISO. Copying the files across to the USB doesn't make it bootable.
http://rufus.akeo.ie/

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Re: Why Linux?

#32268

Postby Infrasonic » February 17th, 2017, 9:44 am

wilbobob wrote:You can use a program called Rufus to burn your unzipped folder as an ISO. Copying the files across to the USB doesn't make it bootable.
http://rufus.akeo.ie/


A good point which is slowly being addressed...http://www.pcworld.com/article/3144644/ ... o-try.html

The first thing to know about the new version of Fedora is that you don’t have to download an ISO file and write it to a USB stick...

...Visiting the Fedora website from my Windows 10 desktop, I was was offered an .exe installer to download instead of the customary ISO I’ve come to expect. ...

Infrasonic
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Re: Why Linux?

#32309

Postby Infrasonic » February 17th, 2017, 11:55 am

PS - Not buying any electronics goods in Korea, way too expensive compared to anywhere in Europe, yes, even LG and Samsung!


In Samsung's case probably because they have to fund their bribery pot...http://www.independent.co.uk/news/samsu ... 84876.html

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Re: Why Linux?

#32439

Postby Breelander » February 17th, 2017, 4:37 pm

FredBloggs wrote:OK, this is on my Win 10 laptop. No Winzip installed on this machine.

a) Rufus won't run
b) Mint ISO downloads just fine
c) Windows bootable USB/DVD creator doesn't recognise the Mint ISO file

Life's too short, I spent all day on this...


Rufus is a pain to get the settings just right, even I avoid using it. You can create a bootable USB from a command prompt using Diskpart. Then in Windows 10 you can double-click on a .iso to mount it as a virtual drive (or 'open with...' and choose Windows Explorer) then just copy the contents to your bootable USB. More details here...

Rufus has caused a lot of issues for people who haven't picked the correct settings. I personally avoid it because there are much more reliable methods to create a bootable USB flash drive that is bootable in both UEFI and legacy BIOS computers...
https://www.tenforums.com/installation- ... post848485

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Re: Why Linux?

#32562

Postby Breelander » February 18th, 2017, 3:26 am

FredBloggs wrote:However, as soon as I put the USB memory stick into a USB port, Rufus reports it is not responding. Putting the memory stick into the USB port before launching Rufus doesn't work either! So, with this, and the screenshot on the previous page of Windows failing to recognise an ISO file when it sees one, I give up!


Forget Rufus, it's more trouble than it's worth. And that screenshot was of the Windows 7 USB/DVD downloader, a tool specifically for copying an iso of a Windows 7 install DVD onto a USB. It was saying your iso wasn't a valid Windows 7 install disk, that's all. You don't need any software, you can do it all with Windows 10. If you want one last attempt, this is how.

1. Insert your USB
2. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator.
3. Type DISKPART
4. at the diskpart prompt type LIST DISK
The list disk command displays all the disks on the computer. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive.
5. type SELECT DISK X
where X is the drive number of your USB
6.Type CLEAN
This command deletes everything on the USB.
7. To create a new primary partition on the USB, type CREATE PART PRI
8. To select the partition that you just created, type SELECT PART 1
9. To format the partition, type FORMAT FS=Fat32 QUICK
10. to make it a bootable partition type ACTIVE

You now have a bootable (but empty) USB. Next mount the iso as a virtual drive. Right-click on it and select 'Mount' (if Mount isn't offered as an option, select 'Open With...' and choose Windows Explorer, if Windows Explorer isn't in the list, choose 'Look for another app on this PC' and find C:\Windows\explorer.exe). Your iso will appear in File Explorer as a new DVD drive, just copy all the files from it onto the bootable USB you have just made. Job done.

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Re: Why Linux?

#32566

Postby Breelander » February 18th, 2017, 5:33 am

FredBloggs wrote:Need to go food shopping shortly, will try again later.


Sorry to say, I've just tried it out myself. Made the USB OK, but it had problems booting. Other operating systems I put on it boot OK, but not, it appears, Linux. :(

I found this for you which does work (takes its time - be patient).
UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions without burning a CD.
http://unetbootin.github.io/

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Re: Why Linux?

#32571

Postby UncleEbenezer » February 18th, 2017, 6:52 am

Breelander wrote:Sorry to say, I've just tried it out myself. Made the USB OK, but it had problems booting. Other operating systems I put on it boot OK, but not, it appears, Linux. :(

Why not? What didn't work? How far did it get towards booting?

Some candidate thoughts off the top of my head:
- If it won't boot, is that your BIOS settings expecting a Microsoft signature (under a label like "secure" or "trusted")?
- Did you try in text-only mode, so that any crucial error messages weren't lost under a partially-launched GUI?
- If the issue was unsupported hardware (unlikely these days, more of an issue last century), a different distro might do the job. Slackware was particularly good at that, because it would let you hand-select things that other distros automate away on principles not totally unlike windows's "plug-and-pray".

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Re: Why Linux?

#32654

Postby Breelander » February 18th, 2017, 4:18 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Breelander wrote:Sorry to say, I've just tried it out myself. Made the USB OK, but it had problems booting. Other operating systems I put on it boot OK, but not, it appears, Linux. :(

Why not? What didn't work? How far did it get towards booting?


At boot my laptop recognised the USB as bootable and tried to boot from it, but with all the files from a 32-bit Linux Mint 17.3 .iso (mounted as a virtual disk) copied to it I got "no operating system found, press any key to try again". I then just deleted the Linux files and copied Microsoft's WinRE recovery environment files to it - that booted successfully. The BIOS was set for 'Legacy OS Boot'. Being quite old it pre-dates 'secure boot', though it does offer EFI boot (disabled by default).

With limited time to investigate I thought it better to find a utility that worked reliably rather that try to explain the intricacies of BIOS tuning :)

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Re: Why Linux?

#32662

Postby UncleEbenezer » February 18th, 2017, 4:48 pm

Breelander wrote:At boot my laptop recognised the USB as bootable and tried to boot from it, but with all the files from a 32-bit Linux Mint 17.3 .iso (mounted as a virtual disk) copied to it

Aha! You don't copy files to the USB. The ISO is the filesystem, not a set of files within a filesystem. You need a low-level utility (dd on unix/linux/mac/etc; google would no doubt find something for windows) to copy (or burn, in CDROM language) the ISO to the USB.

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Re: Why Linux?

#32669

Postby Breelander » February 18th, 2017, 5:17 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote: Aha! You don't copy files to the USB...

Works fine for copying files from a WinRE boot CD (or a .iso of one).
You need a low-level utility (dd on unix/linux/mac/etc; google would no doubt find something for windows)

It did - UNETBOOTIN :)

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Re: Why Linux?

#35691

Postby Infrasonic » March 2nd, 2017, 1:28 pm

As this has come up a few times...https://blogs.skype.com/news/2017/03/01 ... -download/

Since the launch of Skype for Linux Alpha a few months ago, we have been focused on building a new experience that is in line with Skype’s ongoing transition from peer-to-peer to a modern cloud architecture. We want to create a Linux version of Skype that is as feature rich as the existing Skype on desktop and mobile platforms. Today, we’re pleased to announce that we are ready to take the next step and promote Skype for Linux from Alpha to Beta.

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Re: Why Linux?

#38312

Postby Infrasonic » March 12th, 2017, 6:54 pm

http://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-the- ... b-browser/

Firefox is easily the most popular Linux web browser. In the recent LinuxQuestions survey, Firefox took first place with 51.7 percent of the vote. Chrome came in second with a mere 15.67 percent. The other browsers all had, at most, scores in single percentages. But is Firefox really the fastest browser? I put them them to the test, and here's what I found.


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