The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

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[otherego]

Seems to be working OK (after my broadband came back to life while a Tiscali rep and I were trying to understand one another on my dreadful mobile.)

And Mint 9 is out:

http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1403

Now to join the thousands undoubtedly downloading it as I write.

I'd still like a look at Zorin. Have you seen how much stuff has to be "allowed" before the download will commence? (Actually, I don't know myself yet - eventually chickened out and decided to try it another day.)

No joy with Peppermint, either. Using Unetbootin to put it on a flash drive let me fire it up on the Eee PC, but I couldn't get Google Docs to launch. Firefox was fine, though.

And it flatly refused to run on the Virtual Box machine. I need a modest lotto win for some new hardware, I think!

[grumpy-cook]

Very odd, still can't get to distrowatch.com

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[ej-solutions]

Got Mint 9 🙂
[And updated a whole load of other distros whilst on my mind].
For G-C: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/
Plus of course, linuxmint.com ;)

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[grumpy-cook]

Thanks EJ, but I wasn't looking for a download, I just wanted to check something. I can't get to it at all - not even via the IP address. No problems with anything else so I don't know what is going on.

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[otherego]

An hour and a quarter later, and the download's 58% complete. Don't know how much the slow download's attributable to high traffic and how much to dear old Tiscali (usually reliable, just I'm on an "up to" 2mbps package.)*Sigh*

Should have tried the torrent, I suppose.

If anyone else is yet to download Isadora, it might be worth considering the CD rather than the DVD - hopefully not so many takers, and adding the extra software is unlikely to take long once installation is complete.

A nice PDF user manual on the Mint site, too. Should have read that last time, I suppose...

[*scyllabub*]

I've downloaded Zorin 32- and 64-bit. Each of them took a very long time but I used the Asus and put it aside while I surfed on Ubuntu on netbook. Ubuntu told me there were updates for me, but after an hour and then finding that only 5 of 88 files had downloaded 😮 I aborted.

Now you tell me Mint9 is out 😐

GParted - I can't find it in Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and when I went to download it I only found it for Windows. Don't anyone go out of their way for me, I'll have another go soonish.

[grumpy-cook]

Have a look in the package manager (Synaptic?) Scylla.

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[otherego]

GParted - I can't find it in Ubuntu Netbook Remix

System > scroll down to Administration - it's the right-hand of the first line options offered.

[otherego]

(Looking at it in UNR as I write.)

In some distros, I seem to recall, it comes under titles like "Partition Editor."

Back later to ask how to replace a netbook screen. Don't all run away!

[otherego]

Actually, the netbook can wait a while.

I think it's time to treat the long-suffering desktop to Mint 9.

At the moment I have Ubuntu and Mint 7 on this drive (160GB), with Windows 2000 on an 80GB drive. I never seem to use Ubuntu, which means that it's using up a lot of space on a small hard drive to no effect.

The grand plan is to delete all partitions on this drive, and install Mint 9. After some deliberation, I thought I'd keep it simple as always - root, home and swap. Omitting Ubuntu will leave some space to mess around with Virtual Box - a much easier way of trying distros and replacing them. Goodness knows whether the smart new GRUB will still allow W2000 to play.

Rather than try to salvage the shambles my partitions have become, I'm not even trying to preserve the old /home - so an old 80 GB hard drive has been pressed into use, shoved into an external enclosure and had all my data squeezed onto it. Hope it lasts long enough to transfer it all back...

Suppose I should check that the old warhorse can actually run Mint 9, but I'll be awfully surprised if it can't.

Wish me luck...

[otherego]

Another late night thanks to these wonderful machines.

A quick question while I wait for my backup to transfer to the desktop's new Mint 9 installation (so far, so nice).

I'm finding the Mint persistent install to a flash drive far more useful than I'd expected, but am a little concerned about security. It'd be interesting to know what others think.

Presumably, as an essentially live distro, it runs with root privileges. Does anyone know a straightforward way to overcome this?

Presumably the system files are read-only (I honestly don't know this) - yet the fact that changes can be persisted between boots, even on different computers, makes me wonder whether the whole thing might be a little more vulnerable than Linux normally is.

Not exactly urgent, but interesting. Google hasn't helped me much so far.

Any ideas how to protect a persistent flash drive install?

[otherego]

I've now got Mint 9 running on the desktop and (after a distinctly anxious spot of DIY replacing the screen) on a netbook with a 8.9" screen.

The netbook may be of interest to Scylla and others with similar items.

It's an early Aspire One, with the usual "wide-screen" aspect ratio which now seems the norm.

So far, Mint 9 simply works on both the desktop (an elderly Dell GX260 - 2.0GHz CPU/1GB RAM) and the netbook (1.6GHz Intel Atom/1GB RAM.) I'm pretty sure it would function very happily on even lower-spec machinery, down to 512mb RAM.

I think it copes with the netbook and its little screen just as tidily as Ubuntu Netbook Remix does; I personally prefer the Mint lay-out.

One interesting observation. I confidently told Scylla where to find GParted, as I was looking at it at the time while running UNR off a flash drive. Mint also showed it during a live session.

Once Mint was installed - no GParted! Most odd and of course, it only took a minute to install it through Synaptic.

But apologies, Scylla, if I had you searching your menus over and over again. It looks as if GParted is present on the live CD/flash drive, but that it is not installed by default when one installs to the hard drive.

[*scyllabub*]

Yes, I did look for it - but I mustn't pretend I spent hours so's to make you feel guilty 😉

My latest obsession is finding a new telly for the World Cup, so Linux has taken a back seat. That's not to say I'm not using it, I did yesterday - but I do NOT particularly like this Ubuntu: (1) can't fix keyboard how I like it; (2) can't totally disable touchpad; (3) text is fuzzy, inexplicably and randomly; (4) it's clunky-looking, not easy on the eye, and I do like a sharp, neat appearance.

I've got 32-bit and 64-bit Zorin downloaded, but I think I should go for Mint9 next - if only I can focus on how to re-use the partition that Ubuntu is on. Don't tell me now, I can't take anything in, this hot weather :(

[grumpy-cook]

Just spotted this, looks like an interesting lightweight distro -

http://peppermintos.com/

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[otherego]

Peppermint is worth a look, I think. I mentioned before (post 840 or thereabouts) that I'd not had much luck, but finally got it installed earlier to a 4gb virtual machine.

It runs quite nicely on 256mb of RAM, and although I'm still not convinced about cloud-based apps (privacy/tracking/data-mining/security), it installed Abiword, Gnumeric and finally that behemoth, OpenOffice, very easily from Synaptic. All that used about 2gb of the virtual drive, which is impressive.

I still suspect Antix to be the leader in the low-overhead stakes. It's hard to compare it with Peppermint as I still haven't figured out whether Guest Additions can be installed, or how to do so, in Antix. (Peppermint was absolutely horrible in VBox without Guest Additions.) It does seem to use less RAM, and I've had great success with it on the old Toughbook with its Pentium 2 and anything from 128 to 384mb of RAM. Not sure Peppermint could match that - but it is so much easier than Antix. And Antix with OpenOffice.org 3.2 takes up 2.2gb of hard drive territory.

(I'm looking for a suitable replacement for Xandros on the faithful Eee PC - don't really want to subject the solid state drive to too many installations, although I may be overestimating the threat of its early demise. Trouble is I've got the version where the SSD is soldered to the system-board - and Otherego can't safely solder anything more fragile than a car battery terminal.)

All great fun, though. Back to trying to figure out just what this wretched "keyring" is in Mint, why it murders the Eee PC's touchpad, and how to get rid of it.

[otherego]

My googling skills are at an all-time low tonight.

If anyone knows a link to a really simple article on the Mint keyring, perhaps they would be so kind as to post it here? Ta!

[ej-solutions]

Without Googling...
Keyring: a device to hold/store all your keys on. In this instance, keys are your passwords, the keyring being the Master Password. Now why didn't they just call it that in the 1st place?
Handled much better (in the background) with Mint 9.
Note the release of LXDE Mint 9, for lower resource usage - I'll hold off for the Fluxbox release :)

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[ej-solutions]

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=48818&p=281495&hilit=keyring#p281495

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[*scyllabub*]

Ubuntu Netbook Remix:

Keyboard settings :

CapsLock acts as Shift with locking. Shift pauses CapsLock.

I want "... Shift RELEASES CapsLock".

Is this already an option that I'm not recognising because of the lingo?

What is "Default"? It doesn't say.

= = = =

I don't want to have to enter ANY passwords but I've set up two, and every time it asks me for one I enter the wrong one.

= = = =

I need to DISABLE the touchpad PERMANENTLY, not just "while typing".

= = = =

I've been using Chrome 5 in Ubuntu for the past couple of days and it's very neat, I do like it - but it will only import Firefox favourites and I use Google. Fancy Google Chrome not incorporating Google favourites!

= = = =

Those are my grouches, which I imagine will apply whatever Linux distro I use :(

[otherego]

This is weird. I'm sure ej's 2nd post of the night wasn't between 857 and Scylla's post when I looked earlier.

Many thanks for the explanation and the link. The problem arises in my Mint 9 persistent flash drive install - which is otherwise the best persistent install I've come across. Without paying attention, I introduced a keyring which demands the router's WEP access code every time. It connects fine, but the cursor stops responding to the Eee PC's touchpad for the rest of the session. An external mouse works fine. An interesting irritation.

Scylla, you have my sympathies. Passwords in Linux can cause annoyance - but do help to keep things safe. Out of interest, which two did you set up? I thought Ubuntu just needed one - unlike the separate user and root passwords favoured by most distros. Next time you install a new Ubuntu-based distro, keep an eye out for the automatic log-in option. I've not used it, but would assume it gets you straight to your account without signing in - presumably you just need your password for operations requiring further privileges.

Mint 9 works beautifully on both the Eee PC (horrible 7" screen with a max resolution of 800x480 - but Mint accommodates this just as well as the original Xandros does) and battered Aspire One (8.9" screen - amazing how much better than the Eee's screen that is - still tiny.) It also works a treat on this old desktop, with its 17" 1280x1024 screen. (Wish manufacturers would go back to 5:4 screens - I honestly prefer it to the "wide screen" aspect ratio - 'tho I suppose the latter allows 8.9" screens to accommodate most web pages, at least laterally.)

Although LXDE and Fluxbox are tempting, I'm really impresses at how effective Mint 9 is on lower-spec machinery.