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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Just skimming the surface

Opinions/guidance expressed are intended to benefit the reader (mostly) but no responsibility should be assumed for the accuracy and no warranty is implied/expressed or given - so eBay may pull this post

[ej-solutions]

My similar sized, physically and identical sized HDD Iomega unit was arround the same price 2nd hand. You got a bit of a bargain, G_C.

Have managed to get telnet running, with the possibility of ssh (bit of overkill for internal use) and have upgraded to Optware. I've also managed to 'chroot' into Debain Etch and looking to get a later version running.

I reckon all this is possible with the Buffallo unit too - see nas-central.org and www.nslu2-linux.org

Not that you'll want to mess with someone elses unit but should you get one of your own....

Access to a command prompt does allow rebuilding/reallocation of the array, which may not be available on the web front-end.

[A NAS without RAID1/5 is a joke!]

P.S.

Hi, to "the crew".

[grumpy-cook]

Hi EJ, it's good to see you.

Thanks for the tips and links. I was impressed with the NAS, so much so that I want one myself, so your info will come in handy.

[otherego]

In the unlikely event that anyone else ever needs to use a floppy drive on a Mint9 (or Ubuntu equivalent) machine - this seems to be working:

Check that /etc/fstab/ includes a reference to the floppy drive (something like /dev/fd0 /media /blah blah);

Right click Menu;

Go Menu > Edit Menu > Accessories > New Item;

in the Command Box enter    udisks --mount /dev/fd0

in the Name Box enter  Mount Floppy

Right click Menu and Reload Plugins, and the Mount Floppy command should be available under the Usual Menu > Accessories - easy enough to attach it to Favourites, or to plonk an icon on the desktop.

Shove a floppy in the drive, click Mount Floppy and it actually works.

Bit of a mission just because they thought it easier (if I'm correct) to simply not load the floppy driver on start than to fix a bug that was causing start problems on the vast majority of machines without floppy drives - I could be wrong there.

And one could just open a terminal and enter the udisks -- mount blah blah every time. Bit too much like hard work for my taste!

[otherego]

Has anyone tried Mint 11 (Katya)? I think Ann might have test-driven the live CD.

It's the slowest VirtualBox installation I've seen yet. (Perhaps I need to update my VBox; last time I tried that, the new version proved horrible.)

There seems to be some sort of problem with Guest Additions, too. Although I'm pretty sure it's installed, graphics are not particularly smooth - 'tho speed is generally not too bad.

A pretty interface, but I'm not convinced it's time to replace 9/Isadora yet, to be honest. I tried the GNOME version, as is my wont. I suppose the trick will be to install it to a real machine. I seem to remember that ej decided to reserve a partition for trying out various distros rather than putting up with VBox and its occasional bothers. Perhaps it's time to go this route, as GRUB generally takes care of the other systems on the machine quite happily.

There seems to be a move towards emphasising social networking with appropriate apps receiving a certain prominence - fair enough, I suppose. And I like the idea of using Libre Office. Might be my imagination, but I'm sure it's quicker and lighter than OpenOffice.

Whether it continues to enjoy an "ethical edge," I'm unqualified to say...

The installation, with updates, has so far taken 3GiB of space. (I used the DVD version, with all the codecs.) Not bad at all, but machines like the Eee PC with the 3.7GiB hard drive are being left behind by the steady growth of systems.

Nice to see progress continuing, and new things being tried.

[ej-solutions]

Got hacked off with 'anomolies' when using Mint Debian (rolling distro), so installed Mint 11 in the spare partition (now 6Gb). Just pointed home to the existing partition and installed my usual programs. Seamless... just about.

All in, I'm finding it very good.

There a graphics driver glitches but nothing major. 😞

It holds the Dell laptop fan on for eternity (hello, Fn+Z to turn off)

The poxy Broadcom wireless card (should change it for Intel) needed what amounted to a simple tweak to get it to work.

[Added: blacklist ssb to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf]

Quick to boot/shutdown.

[Wubi is too far back in the distant past to assist and these days Windoze is only run in VirtualBox]

[otherego]

Good to see you around, ej.

It holds the Dell laptop fan on for eternity - amazing how often the fan seems to be the source of trouble on laptops running Linux - but I guess this beats having it not start at all...

With people occasionally showing an interest in trying Linux, I've been trying to figure out an easy way of rescuing their Windows MBR if they decide to ditch Linux for some reason.

I've found a couple of references to using an Ubuntu live CD, but nothing, so far, more recent that 2008 - eg:

http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu-livecd/

Laptops all too often come without a proper Windoze installation CD. I'm not sure whether "fixmbr" using a Windows 98 floppy would work for XP and so on - assuming folk are blessed with a USB or built-in floppy drive.

The other option would presumably be to set up the dual boot using the Windows boot loader. I've not tried this but to be honest, it looks unnecessarily hard - especially considering just how easily GRUB sets itself up. But there, I have a couple of XP discs, and would in any case be unlikely to remove Linux altogether - except on "try things out" machines that have simply run out of space on tiny hard drives.

If anyone knows a really simple guide to setting up a Windows/Linux dual boot using the Windows bootloader, a link would be greatly appreciated. Can't say I actually see myself needing it, but it would be interesting - and someone might just benefit from it practically, after all.

And there goes 10% of my daily posting allowance, 12 minutes into the day. Time to dry up until later...

[otherego]

The quest for distros to revive old heaps continues.

One of the biggest problems I encounter is that nobody supports the dreaded old MMX CPU anymore - pitiful requests to use a kernel suited to the CPU; seems that modern kernels require a cmov instruction. (Really must look that up again - blessed nuisance.)

On a brighter note, I managed to get Salix 13.37 Fluxbox onto a machine with a 233MHz MMX processor and 96MB of RAM - had to append "huge.s" at boot, as per comments found on the web.

Wasn't pretty, but it sort-of ran.

I then tried to replace it with Minino, which actually ran from the Live CD. Still no joy. Installation appears to be complete; boot halts with an inability to find /dev/hda1. Quite common, but I've not yet found a workaround that works.

ConnochaetOS was ideal on that machine, except that I just couldn't get it onto the internet.

All great fun, though, and I plan to have a look at SwiftLinux - just downloaded it. It's based on AntiX, which remains my favourite for low-powered machines (but just won't start on the old MMX, sigh.)

I'm learning things, though - and that continues to be one of the delights of messing about with Linux.

Even if I have far too many old laptops that noone makes software for anymore.

[otherego]

Dear, oh me. I see the board is still swamped with queries better dealt with elsewhere. No wonder people can't find this board when they do need it.

To the matter in hand.

I accept that MS Windows does a reasonable job of holding our hands etc etc.

But I just finished updating a long-neglected PCLinuxOS laptop (143 files), and an XP desktop last updated a fortnight ago.

The XP machine needed three windows updates, but of course, I had to update the security software and Firefox addons.

PCLos happily updated itself and allowed me to return to surfing the internet and messing about with files and things. No restart required; a new version of Firefox was installed, so I did restart that (goodness, but FF5 is quick on this machine.)

This took less time than the updates on the XP machine which, surprise, surprise, needed a restart. And it didn't patronise me ("Updates are ready for your computer. Click here to download these updates" - which updates did it think I might imagine needed doing???) or irritate me (that schoolmarmish, "You must restart your computer..."  - frantic and bossy urgency from an outfit which produces only a few updates, and those rarely more than once a month.)

The truly terrifying thing is that I can't quite bring myself to wipe the Windows machines. This despite the fact that for my purposes, I've yet to find a compelling reason to use Windows rather than Linux for anything.

But it really is getting harder and harder to see MS as the easier OS - although I readily concede that Linux occasionallyinvolves me in intense googling and swearing - but then continues to just work for ages before the next oops.

Talk about the power of the Dark Forces of Marketing (and the stinginess of some of us who've paid for the stuff with the computer, so hate to bin it.)

[grumpy-cook]

An interesting item on Gimp here -

http://ostatic.com/blog/gimp-single-window-mode-almost-ready-hardware-acceleration-planned

Not before time imo, I keep losing bits of it.

[otherego]

Interesting link, g-c - thanks for that.

The poor old Eee PCs have been dusted off. Every now and then, I feel inspired to try to improve on the OS they came with. The little 4G is a real problem with its single, soldered 4GB SSD, lack of facility (in my model) for any additional SDD, and one of the made-on-Monday card readers that battles with anything over 2GB. The 4GB + 16GB 9xx seem much easier. They're both fun to experiment with. Poor little things.

I'm playing with Ubuntu 11.04. It's not really floating my boat yet.

The new desktop is very pretty, but it seems to take ages to actually find anything on it.

http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new

All icons rather than lists - pretty, but under Applications, for instance, I currently have to wade through eighty pretty little icons to find what I need. More dizzy and busy than whizzy, perhaps.

Apparently one can switch to the old style. I dare say I'll figure out how to do this eventually.

The Firefox home page was so minimal that I could find no way of getting at any sort of menu - had to disable a bundled add-on and I forget what else. It now occurs to me that the menu might have appeared had I hovered the cursor over the very top of the screen. If that's the case - less than intuitive.

At least it's Firefox 5 (Mint is determinedly sticking with 3.6.xx.)

I'm using a persistent (flash drive) install. The slowest opening I've encountered since I last tried a recent Ubuntu on a flash drive - after what feels like ages, it gives you the choice to install or to try it out. Choose the latter, and wander off for a coffee while it thinks about it. No such troubles (yet) with my Mint 9 persistent install.

To add insult to injury, it shares with Mint that infuriating box that pops up requesting a keyring password as soon as you tell it to connect to the internet. Cancelling this leaves the wireless connection running happily. Unfortunately, the cursor is now frozen, and the keypad utterly unresponsive.

Sometimes plugging in a USB mouse works around this - on a really good day, the netbook's keypad starts working again after a while.

The standard Mint desktop,  continues to work beautifully even on a tiny screen. Much more effective, in my view, than this new Ubuntu (Unity?).

I think there's a lot to be said for a simple menu system (the previous Ubuntu desktop is good, too) - all these clever netbook remixes look pretty, but seem to me to make less efficient use of the desktop space.

Some interesting stuff from PCLinuxOS - except that not much is happening with the GNOME version, my personal favourite.

15GB hard drive space is required for the "Full Monty" version (which appears to lose Compiz, if that affects anyone.) Looks quite nice - screenshots of the multiple workspaces (hardly new in Linux, but very much part of this distro's standard interface, I think) in this page from the forums:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,73118.0.html

Not ideal for the Eee PCs, though, so I've downloaded the new standard KDE and full and mini - LXDE versions - hope they run from flash drives. Hopefully try them out over the next couple of days.

[grumpy-cook]

Sounds interesting OE. Let us know how you get on.

[otherego]

Mini-LXDE is pretty quick - takes a bit of fiddling to make it work on the 7" screen. However, the fiddling is achievable within available settings - no command line needed - and changes can be achieved by logging out and in, rather than restarting. A good thing on a live USB...

Real Life keeps intervening - will play some more in due course. But I like the idea of a minimal distro which allows stuff to be added as wanted via a straightforward package manager.

[oxieman]

OA - I think that is how (possibly) it was written and subsequently works/operates.

All good fun - If you have the time, now shall I try it on my XP PC ?

Answer - No, the C: drives not big enough, thank goodness.

Got to go - Oxie....

Well, I have succmbed - Got a larger drive and installed Ubuntu - Got the LXF mag on hols in July although I did download and burnt iso to Disk in April.

Expect a few questions from me.

Oxie...

[grumpy-cook]

Well done Oxie, although I wouldn't have recommended Ubuntu against PCLinuxOS or Mint.

More generally - there's a thought provoking article here -

http://www.hboeck.de/archives/787-The-sad-state-of-the-Linux-Desktop.html

[otherego]

Hope you have a lot of fun with it, oxie, and that you find that Linux does actually enhance your computing experience.

I know your general computer expertise not only exceeds mine by an order of magnitude, but goes back further than the five years or so I've actually had computers. (Who else managed to avoid them for nearly five decades???)

This means you won't be in the least intimidated by things like terminals and the command line.

Please tolerate a couple of observations from my own Linux-ing - I'll try to keep the essay short. Apart from anything, this means assuming people will figure out where I mean "In my own opinion" etc etc.

Modern mainstream distros seem to be easier to install and maintain than Windows up to Vista (I don't know W7.) Updating a neglected XP computer yesterday took hours. Apart from over 30 Windows updates, various bits of security softare, plus Flash (which misbehaved) and Java had to be updated. It was hard work, and I had to be there much of the time to move on to the next step.

Updating a typical distro involves saying "Yes, please" to suggested updates and wandering off for lunch. On my return, I find that Mint has updated, together with all the other installed applications (at least, those that came from the repositories. Opera remains an annoyance which I'll get round to...)

Whilst some open source software might lack polish, bells and whistles compared with proprietary competitors, I've yet to find anything that doesn't do everything I need. Thus, LibreOffice gives me a free and ethical substitute for MS Office - which is not to detract from that program's charms, of course.

Installing new apps from the repositories via Synaptic is a doddle, and there's lots of stuff available.

Installing something which is not in the repositories is more like hard work. Fortunately, viruses find the same thing.

There are really excellent forums for all the distros I've played with, and a spot of copy-and-paste into a terminal has solved many little annoyances. Very rare to come across a problem that somebody hasn't solved.

That article linked to by g-c is very interesting. My own suspicion is that one of the things preventing a wider adoption of Linux for everyday computing is an over-abundance of choice. Just look at how many variations there are on Ubuntu alone, for goodness sake. How on earth to choose?

Adding to this is the rapid pace of open-source development. Just as Firefox has become, frankly, a pain with its frequent new versions, so people are discouraged to discover that the latest and greatest of even the mainstream distros will only be supported for a short time (compared with, say MS Windows versions.)

A tendency to launch into exciting new ventures like the Unity desktop without trying it out on ordinary users and considering their reactions can also be offputting. And some specialist adaptations are more impressive (and fun for the developers, hopefully) than effective - eg I have yet to find a specialist "netbook desktop" which works better for me on little screens than the plainest Mint desktop. Personal preferences...

In some ways, continuous improvement can actually be off-putting to "end-users," with many distros having a limited lifetime.

Countering this, of course, is the ease with which new distros can be installed. Just back up your data, reinstall, bung your data back (unless you've been brave and preserved your /home from last time - still worth backing up, I think) and you're away in less time than it takes to recover from the latest malware attack on a certain other operating system.

We also need to decide individually just how fanatical we are about the use of free software. For me, the more practical approach of Mint and PCLinuxOS in driver provision, for example, makes them more attractive to me than Ubuntu, greatly though I admire it. Having to enable the medibuntu repo is something I have to google every time, and is frankly a pain.

And whilst I admire the principled use of Ice Ape in AntiX, I still prefer Firefox, even if it is just the same thing with none-free bits.

My own current favourites, in approximate order of preference (pretty much a dead heat, to be honest):

Linux Mint 9 - a Long Term Support release, good to  2013 Tempted though I am by 11... I find Mint very pleasant to use. The LTS versions can be a little conservative - eg Mint 9 still uses OpenOffice rather than LibreOffice, and Firefox 3.6.xx.

PCLinuxOS - better driver and general hardware support than Mint, I've found, and its "rolling release" approach hopefully avoids the need to replace it frequently. Just apply updates to get the latest. I personally prefer the GNOME version; the others seem better supported.

AntiX for low powered machines. It works on 128MB of RAM, even with OpenOffice and Ice Ape running. Clever. Lack of automation necessitates a lot of googling for the likes of me, though. But that's part of the fun.

And if one wants to try another distro, it's easy to burn a live CD, use Unetbootin to place a bootable iso on a USB flash drive, or simply replace an existing installation. Costs no more than a CD or DVD, some bandwidth and a little electricity, after all.

If you're still awake - hope you enjoy it!

[oxieman]

Thanks for the info chaps.
GC - That article made me smile re-Auntie Tilly, shame but so very true.
Will have to consider PCLiuxOS and Mint after a play with Ubuntu - have to thank you for tutorial on Macrium - Saved me loads of time. Whats the equivelent for Linux?
Bet the answer is tar cvf and xvf or dd if + of.
Got alot to learn or adapt to - will keep me off the streets.

OH at skittles so ok for a bit - poor dog ain't has his walk yet.

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OE - You underestimate yourself and overestimate me. Thanks for all the gen, lots to keep me quite for a while.

Very informative OE, have notes and will work thro' em - Thanks very much.

I had an 8Gb drive, had Grandson over to do some decorating (arranged by OH) - a long story but he said got an old PC with an 80Gb drive, you can have the drive if you want, Yeh how much - No you can have it - I'll give you a tenner - No you are ok. Anyway, gets this drive (turns out to be 120Gb) - So, how much, as it's bigger - Twenty. So gives him twenty. Ubuntu reports 2 bad sectors [10 quid each, Arhhhh].

A brief resume of what I have done/did.
Partitioned this drive, 15 Gb for Windoze, 20 for Ubuntu, then rest unallocated showing healthy.
Put in the LXF mag disk and chose alongside Windoze and off we go, suddenly realised alongside Windoze - not what I want so aborted.

Quick look at partitions - have 1.5Gb at end. Anyway started again using the iso I burnt - This time said bung it in the 20Gb - all ok, took blooming ages, right at the end it flashed up Can't run Unity - wrong hardware choose Ubunt Classic at login screen - closed.

It rebooted, I think - Had a look round, seemed all ok - has man pages - had a play with and stopped some down loads - disconnected from internet to have a look at windoze. Menu corrupts on re-boot with overwrite giving grub> command prompt. Oh no, here we go. Googled for fixes etc no help, conflicting info use Win rescue - Heh? - Anyway pressed all the keys Esc ctl Z, you name it, I tried it.

Typed help and invoked 'normal_exit' - Now have - grub rescue> as command prompt - typed 'normal' and it came up uncorrupted. Able to choose Win XP.
Now have two have 1.5Gb's at end of drive - poss due to double install, not sure tho'

More questions later after connecting it up to router and checking Ubuntu Forums.

Off to take the dog.

Cheers both, and thanks again.

Oxie...

[oxieman]

Hi OE - just a quick update.

Where can I get GParted from?

Just installed Gimp, twas a doddle using command line.

Ubuntu or Debian users can simply run apt-get install gimp to get the latest stable release of GIMP.

Log follows:-

teddyboy@teddyboy-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install gimp
[sudo] password for teddyboy:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
---
---
---
Setting up gimp (2.6.11-1ubuntu6.1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
teddyboy@teddyboy-desktop:~$ ^C
teddyboy@teddyboy-desktop:~$
------------- 68 lines ----

Quite impressed... I bet they are all not like that.

Do you like my Username  :^O  - Was to be Teddy, but not enough chars - Might not there long.

Oxie...

[grumpy-cook]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GParted

[otherego]

I have to admire you command-line experts.

Unless I can copy and paste, I invariably leave out a space or something, and end up Quite Cross.

Synaptic does it for me. I know the repositories don't always have the cutting-edge stuff, but a very irritating experience with a newer-than-in-the-repository version of VirtualBox pretty much convinced me that there is merit in using the known, stable stuff available through Synaptic.

Unless one really wants to try the other, of course.

Interesting the way that live CDs of Ubuntu and Mint include GParted, but that it vanishes on installation. Perhaps the makers have visions of us doing our installations a serious mischief, and they could just have a point.

Having said that, I always add GParted - really useful for looking at things like just how much of a partition is uses and so on. (I know other disc utilities offer this, including the Gnome System Monitor - just a personal "thing," I suppose.)

It does lock partitions that are actually in use until you tell it otherwise, which at least minimises the risk of beer-related accidental damage. (Among other means, right-click on a partition and select the option to unmount it if it is to be vandalised. sudo swapoff -a in a terminal seems to work better for unmounting swap partitions, though - they can be stubborn.

Two things I've found to my cost (acceptable cost - all part of the learning process) with GParted:

Let it finish an operation. I've permanently trashed a couple of HDDs (old, low capacity ones fortunately) by getting impatient and stopping it during a prolonged operation. Some things take forever.

Growing a partition from left to right is usually easy, as is shrinking a partition from right to left (just defrag thoroughly if it's a WXP partition, and take it as read that a Vista installation will need its boot manager repairing afterwards.) Trying to grow a partition by moving the left hand bit further left takes forever, though, and the more data involved, the worse it is.

Apart from that, I really like GParted - mostly easy to use and reasonably intuitive. I've successfully cloned partitions with its copy and paste function, though Clonezilla seems quicker. Often necessary to reset the boot flag (where relevant) on the cloned partition, for some reason.

It's also a great way of having a look at  one's partitions.

And despite all my waffling above, it's probably generally better run from a live CD, unless one's using the computer to manipulate partitions of/clone other drives in external hard drive enclosures and the like.

[oxieman]

GC and OE
Thanks GC for the link.

From the note at page bottom 'It is always best to have a GParted LiveCD available for emergencies' have downloaded .iso and have on disk.

--------

Have just downloaded and will burn later.

I have been on that site a few times, don't know how I missed it.
Went back one to CommDocs and to try and sort out the 'Can't run Unity' when I installed - you WILL be using Classic.

I have NIVIDIA GeForce 6200A in this XP m/c!
Found that as proprietary s/w they do have drivers which have to be separately installed [comes under video!]

Anyway it detected card and installed - can now see this Unity thing.

Had a play (just) and not sure I like it, but may get used to it 'if I knew how it worked' - more play needed.

OE - I asked about GParted as saw a screenshot of yours and wanted to know why I have Two 1.5Gb at end of drive - Just curious.

Found this earlier - cough... - Think I will be content to just 'Look' for the moment.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php

I missed your bits about Synaptic but have seen it.
The sepositorty repository is under Apps > Ubuntu s/w Centre.

Get back to you later - had a hard day, had to take car for warranty re-recall - actually been on a Bus to-day, decorator in, running about after people etc.

Oh yes, Linux on {FF 4.0} by the way, and no refresh icon - using F5 and other keys etc...
Catch you later - Thanks again.

Oxie...