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

[grumpy-cook]

I've found this to help with your new Ubuntu installation Oxie -

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-ten-things.html

[oxieman]

Thanks GC - will have a closer look later.

Actually on the XP Linux now trying to master this Wokspace Switcher - not very well at all - must be an age thing.

Tried GParted and nearly filled my pants earlier and Win XP hung when trying to enter it.

I did install a few things, mainly XP CD burner, which required .Net Framework. Infrarecorder seemed to not do iso's

Anyway fixed now - This m/c has been up and down more times than a whore's drawers lately!

It seems quite extensive and poss over the top for my requirements - Will be giving Mint a try soon - poss on the other disc (8Gb shold fit) - Did notice a burner on this and thought might try later...

Oxie...

[oxieman]

Just had a look - Called Brasero Disk Burner.

Will remember that - Wonder what cup size it is :^O

Oxie...

[grumpy-cook]

Burners - I use ImgBurn for Windows, K3B for Linux, both excellent.

[oxieman]

Quick upadate.
Had a look at the Ten Things and like the Bootchart comment. Reminds me long ago when the HiFi fanatics used to gesticulate about noise on their systems, they went to great lengths and could only realy detect any difference on a scope.

Have seen that site GC but not that page, Domino as I call it.
Got rid of the Unity thing, quite easy - When you know how - Type login in search and under Apps (Has a spanner) - at  the bottom you can select Classic as default Session.

Been messing about with 'Wine' but loaded the wrong one and got version 1.0 - had to uninstall and get version 1.1.2 - Managed to get it to work - See screenshot - not without reading some of OE's posts.

1.2.2-0ubuntu6 (wine1.2)
This Guy was Happy:-
From the 'Reviews' section after installing 'Wine'
Runs all the programs I needed from Windows! Bye bye M$

Had some probs with access from C: drive and in the end copied over to Linux Dir called Program_Wine in my ~ Home dir.

Poss to do with access rights or filesystem being NTFS and not 32.

Still lots to play with, have enough on this drive to put Mint as another partition/volume but will leave alone for the moment as not as brave as OE.

Will take a leaf out of that guys article and sit down and work out a plan - Bet I won't stick to it though.
Have a good weekend.

Oxie..

[otherego]

not as brave as OE. Awful Confessions time. I occasionally have a couple of beers - and it doesn't take a lot - then go shopping.

My flat is full of ancient laptops. g-c finds this hilarious, and might have a point.

But at least one doesn't mind trying things out on a twenty quid Thinkpad.

The latest victim is an Eee PC. These little brutes exert an unhealthy fascination - would have been more relevant when I was still moving around a lot - I think they're clever little things, though, although the ones I buy are the early versions.

This one was purchased as a non-runner. I need to drink as much as I did when I made that purchase, and I might remember why it seemed such a good idea, or at least what grand project it inspired.

I've never seen such an abused machine. I can only assume it was used in a workshop, or that the owner's children used it as a non-wheeled skateboard.

However - although the keyboard and touchpad are history, I was amazed to discover that the motherboard and screen appear more or less intact.

Mint XFCE is installed, and is driving me mad. The update manager fails as a result of a broken package which it insistes must be fixed. It doesn't say which package. So that narrows it down to about 1300.

Now trying sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade (hey, it worked for Antix.) While I've been distracted, all sorts of complicated explanations about something or other have appeared in the terminal. I've no idea what happened to the updates.

Blow the solid state drive, I sense a reinstallation approaching...

(Quick thought re NTFS and F32 - I would have thought a current distro would cope with either quite happily. Worth messing about with permissions? g-c or ej will advise...)

[oxieman]

(Quick thought re NTFS and F32 - I would have thought a current distro would cope with either quite happily. Worth messing about with permissions? g-c or ej will advise...)

Well OE looks like I need a re-think, but a good learning curve to boot assimilate.

I did say to GC have Domino site bookmarked and as usual only had a quick look.

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From one of Dedoimedo pages:-
[Dual booting - Windows & Linux].

As an afternote, bear in mind that by default Linux can read from an NTFS partition, but cannot write to one. There are patches that overcome this limitation. Nevertheless, it is usually useful to create a FAT32 partition on the system to use when booted in both Windows and Linux, for exchange of files between the two. Well, now it's time you do this yourself!

Enjoy!

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Ha Ha - DIY

Further reading is an understatement 😮

Back to understanding this new Launcher as they call it. How often, if ever do you use fsck and with what switches? Yea, I know - leave it alone. Not sure if somethings corrupt as changing default Classic Mode don't work any more and 'lost' FF Icon from Menu Bar...

As I said, a big learning curve as used to another system from years ago!

Oxie...

[otherego]

Part of the fun of Linux is the way things keep changing. The advantage is that constant progress is made; the drawback is that it's all too easy to get left behind.

This is a problem for keen but inexpert users like me. Without knowing a lot about what is going on under the bonnet, and how to fix it when it goes wrong, there's much to be said for sticking with the more conservative mainstream distros. Indeed, I stick with Mint Long Term Support (currently 9, based on Ubuntu 10.04 - I think) for my everyday computing.

It just works. Updates are handled effortlessly by the Update Manager. But even I can see that it's starting to look ever so slightly dated.

Which brings us to Mint 201104 Xfce.

Whilst the usual GNOME version of Mint is based very much on Ubuntu, the Xfce branch is based on Debian Testing.

It is incredibly light on resources. I wish I'd written the numbers down, but with Firefox and OpenOffice Writer open, it seemed to use between 150-160MB RAM. We're talking AntiX numbers here, with all the goodies/conventional apps of standard Mint thrown in.

Seemed ideal for the little Eee PC, with its 900MHz CPU, 512MB RAM and no swap - the idea is to save writes to the now primitive but still expensive little solid state drive (non-replaceable in the 4G version - the chips are soldered to the system board.)

And that's where things have rather fallen apart.

First of all, despite its light use of CPU and RAM, the installation itself is fairly hefty - 2.8GiB before any updates.

Which brings us to the real crunch. I cannot make it update.

It's now been installed to the 8GB Eee PC twice (sod the SSD, I was getting tense), and the third VirtualBox installation is approaching completion as I write.

It incessantly complains about broken packages, then refuses (Synaptic) to repair them, or various dependency problems. By the time I tried things like sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, the damage was done. Something is now filling 4.4 GB of hard drive space, but no updates have been installed.

So - one more try. It really looks like a delightful distro, but it's really for people who enjoy it when things break and have to be fixed. It's a rolling release based on Debian Testing - which I suppose suggests that it's not exactly meant to be a stable workhorse.

*Sigh*

One more try, then I think 512MB of RAM is just going to have to learn to live with Mint GNOME or PCLinuxOS - the latter seems slightly quicker in live sessions on the little machine.

Hopes oxie's having more success....

[otherego]

I see I managed to change all the post titles. Pox on't.

Sorry about that.

I think it's time to give up on Mint xfce and leave it to the boffins.

Following a fresh installation (number 5, all told), I bypassed the Update Manager - problematic according to at least one forum - and went straight for sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist upgrade, which had done the trick for a couple of forum posters.

It downloaded stuff and everything seemed to be going swimmingly - until it got started on "Reading changelogs." (This brought at least on attempt with Synaptic to a halt - forget the exact details now.)

The whole exercise finished with the terminal page I'll try to show on the attached screenshot. I left it for twelve hours - when I eventually went back to it and closed it, it insisted that there was a process active in the terminal. Nah, not after twelve hours (I should have checked - it was probably the one labelled along the lines of "python upate... sleeping" in System Monitor when I looked earlier.)

Perhaps I should have tried something like apt-get install dist upgrade ???

The second post on this page (by "rhodry") suggests yet another approach, without X server running. Looks too hard! To be honest, there's a limit to how much of one's life one can devote to this sort of thing. Might delay deleting the vdi for the moment, and try this in due course:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=67561

Other forum members seem to think that totally unnecessary and overkill. Might try that as an absolute last resort if I can generate the enthusiasm.

I've re-checked the iso's md5sum several times - really not sure what else to try.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be most grateful - I'll probably leave it a day or two before wiping the virtual machine.

[otherego]

Bah, forgot the attachment.

No, I won't. "The content type of the file is not allowed" or something. It's a .png picture of a terminal output, for goodness sake.

Just sometimes, I want to take the owners and operators of the outfit that provides these boards and rub their faces ever so hard with a particularly sweaty sock.

[otherego]

*Sigh* Mint Xfce 1, OE nil. the search for an Eee PC-friendly distro continues.

Time for another look at the miniaturised PCLinuxOS (mini-LXDE), I think. And possibly Xubuntu.

I feel slightly better now. Looking back to post 1090, I see even ej got fed up with Debian Mint...

[oxieman]

*Sigh* Mint Xfce 1, OE nil. the search for an Eee PC-friendly distro continues.

Time for another look at the miniaturised PCLinuxOS (mini-LXDE), I think. And possibly Xubuntu.

I feel slightly better now. Looking back to post 1090, I see even ej got fed up with Debian Mint...

OE - Found this last night, working my way thro'

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-11.04-natty-narwhal,2943-7.html

small white triangles are very meaningful - Am warming to it!

Check out the drop-down at the bottom [Prev & Next] - That's if Xubuntu has it - Still have probs with mounting/sharing but checking on usage before the ultimate solution of a re-install - so many poss reasons - after running grup repair and other thoughs I have.
Keep you informed - not on till later this eve, not that matters - Cheers.

Oxie...

[otherego]

Interesting article, oxie - ta.

It's obviously worth persevering with new things. Funnily enough, I find the shiny new desktop strangely claustrophobic on the Eee PC's tiny screens. And I still feel as if it takes me longer to figure out where things are - but this is just a matter of experience - haven't actually counted the number of clicks required to find an app.

Inspired by oxie's efforts, I though I'd try a more "modern" distro. Thanks to  the Eee's infuriating (soldered-to-the board and definitely not upgradeable) 4GB/3.72GiB hard drive, this is not proving as simple as I'd hoped.

The Xubuntu 11.04 installer (Xubuntu seemed worth a try on the low powered machine) spat its dummy out on discovering that it had only 4 GB to play with - it demands a minimum of 4.4.I'd set up a 3.72GiB drive on VirtualBox to sort-of simulate the Eee.

Fortunately, this chap seems to have found a solution:

http://gobitech.blogspot.com/2011/06/install-ubuntu-1104-on-asus-eee-pc-701.html

But finding the necessary lines in the appropriate file (and it helped to remember that the text editor in Xubuntu is Mousepad and not Gedit...) was hard work.

At least the installer now agreed to a minimum disk space of 3.1 GB, and is ploughing through quite the slowest installation I've seen in a while.

If it eventually gets there - I may bore you further tomorrow...

[otherego]

I'm going through One of Those Patches.

The whole thing died a horrid death. Some problem to do with the slideshow accompanying the installation. Found a solution to that, and tried again.

This time the installer crashed somewhat later in the proceedings. The error message invited me to send the details to Launchpad, and gave a specific page.

Which doesn't appear to exist.

I've tried installing it on two separate computers (albeit VirtualBox in each case.)

I don't think I'm meant to use Xubuntu 11.04.

Or Mint Xfce.

And given the way things are going, I've shelved my good intention to update the (expensive in its day,and under-utilised) Vista desktop.

One can only take so much before resorting to appropriate measures.

Which won't leave me sober enough to be trusted with a partitioner, much less a recalcitrant Windoze machine when I have heavy objects to hand.

[oxieman]

I don't think I'm meant to use Xubuntu 11.04.

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OE,  Sorry to hear that, more  wine called for...

On my last post I nearly added "Hope I am not trying to teach Granny to suck eggs" and I know I shoud have done.

Will update on my 'Linux activities' later as looking after grandkids for a couple of days + decorator here yesterday and expected tomorrow - no peace for the wicked.

Tried Kubuntu - the one with Dolphins - (Not keen tho'), which was prior to the "Ultimate Solution" - which installed cleanly - most of the installation was when I was sleeping!

Not tried Wine yet - Sorry you have not had too much success.

Oxie...

[otherego]

It's all part of the fun, of course.

Mint 9, Ubuntu 10.04 and Xubuntu 10.04 work fine, after all.

I wonder whether the distros I've been battling with dislike VirtualBox? I'm reluctant to update it until a newer version appears in the repos - my last non-repo update proved a most irritating exerience. (And Mint Xfce flopped on a real, live Eee PC. A real shame since it is very low on RAM/CPU consumption, and fast even with 512MB RAM. I just cannot find a way to make it update.)

PCLos LXDE might yet prove the way to go. I haven't figured out how to get a 24-hour clock on it. The silly little things that put one off... And of course, LibreOffice has to be installed separately, although a VirtualBox installation still ended up a respectable, Eee PC-friendly size. It defaults to a really strange screen resolution, which doesn't help by using about two thirds of the width of a seven-inch screen. Easily resolved, though, at least in the live session.

AntiX remains a reliable lightweight choice - works fine on ancient Toughbooks. I just liked the idea of a really lightweight distro which allowed all the usual Mint-type repos and bits and pieces, with no cleverness required.

[otherego]

I see I've just been scolded on the pumpkin thread. Silly me - I thought this was a tech board and that I was posting about tech matters; it seems that I have, all along, been masquerading as an eBay expert. Which I sure don't claim to be...

Never mind - it cheered me up after a frustrating half-hour. Dear old Xubuntu 11.04's installer has just crashed on me yet again. Wonder what on earth is going on?

Nobody else seems to be having the same problem - unless I'm just having an off-day with google search terms, which is more than feasible. I've double-checked the sha256sum, and the live session runs quite happily.

Perhaps it is a problem with VirtualBox (can't remember the installed version offhand; it's the one in the repos) - same thing on two computers.

If time and inclination so permit tomorrow, I might just try installing on one of the old laptops. I'm reluctant to subject the EeePc to more reinstallations than absolutely necessary, due to the soldered-on SSD being non-replaceable. (Strange thing - four chips - I think - soldered directly to the motherboard. No single SSD as such. A common controller, presumably.)

Pity - I quite like the OSX-type dock along the bottom, and which only appears when the cursor dips right to the bottom of the screen.

Xubuntu 10.04 was much simpler, and pretty impressive. With Firefox (1 tab), Writer and System Monitor running, it was using less than 190 MiB of RAM, despite no swap partition being present. This makes it another good candidate for the EeePc with the 4GB hard drive and half gigabyte of RAM.

Decisions, decisions. (And I still like the looks of Xubuntu 11.04, despite myself.)

[oxieman]

Excellent OE, glad they all worked ok.

Having a read of LXF mag I got on July hols and and just googled about a mention of 'Tiny Core Linux'

Bet you have seen it - may be suitable for your 'Eee PC' - not sure on the technical suitability - Its v3.8 now.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=tinycore

Have been back and read your posts since I started this venture and understand what you have and GC have been saying more fully - have to suss-out VB sometime.

Oxie...

PS, just seen your post - not read it yet - Post before the witching hour..

[grumpy-cook]

OE, you may find this article of interest -

http://maketecheasier.com/build-lightweight-linux-for-low-end-laptop/2011/08/31

[otherego]

Bet neither of you deliberately planned to keep me up late...

Thanks for those links. I tried the Debian-based homebrew, but the installer flately refused to find a suitable driver for the trusty Satellite 320's Xircom PCMCIA ethernet adapter. Most odd, and I plan to try it on another antique in due course.

Trouble is, all the antiques use the old Xircom. *Sigh.*

I've been meaning to try Tinycore for a while, but must say I've been a little intimidated.

A basic frugal install to the old 320 went surprisingly easy (once I used the "Multicore" CD - a whopping 43MB, I think.)

It handled the Xircom fine, and so far I've managed to get Abiword and Dillo working.

I thought I'd installed Firefox and Opera, but clicking on their icons does nothing. More research required - unmet dependencies, perhaps. Installing apps is essentially a matter of scrolling through a vast list and clicking on something. But there is obviously a little more to it than that for some apps. (Sudden thought - wonder whether the installer list includes apt?)

Dillo launches instantly and works fine, as far as it can on the modern internet.

eBay confronted with Dillo puts me in mind of an enormously fat man presented with a green salad for his lunch. Much querulous wheezing and a flat refusal to do any work at all.

So I'm not posting this from the 320, alas.

A piece of good news is that Xubuntu 10.04 installed effortlessly to the EeePc (the large size one with an 8GB SSD, ta da - 'tho the 7" screen and miniature keyboard remain beyond the magic of Linux to rehabilitate. I've given up on Mint Xfce and Xubuntu 11.04 for now; still tempted to give PCLOS Lxde mini another try, though. It was a bit of a coin toss - aided by the fact that Xubuntu proved even lighter during live sesssions - which I accept are not necessarily fully representative of a hard drive installation.

Finding my way to the forum involved an encounter with a picture (on the sign-in page) of the sort of battle-axe-with-attitude that puts Gentlemen of Sensibility off marriage for life. (One shudders to think what she was advertising.)  The quick addition of Adblock Plus saw her off faster and cheaper than any divorce court, however, and apart from causing me serious eye-strain and severe typing challenges, the Eee seems to be coping with eBay just fine.

With Firefox and Writer (plus the System Monitor) open, RAM use is 200 MiB. This is 15MiB more than I observed earlier - hope FF hasn't sprung a memory leak...

But I must say that despite 512MB RAM, a 900MHz CPU and no swap, Xubuntu is so far proving most responsive. It receives the same long-term support as Ubuntu 10.04/Mint 9, which is a practical convenience, too.

But I wasn't planning to extend the evening to 0115.