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

[otherego]

Nice one, g-c.

my lan adapter had become eth1 from 0.

Presumably no Windows OS involved? I gather that unless one gets the identical make/model of motherboard, that OS insists on "reactivation" following a motherboard change.

And at least I've finally got my weather applet giving me the weather where I actually live. I'd love to visit Innsbruck - I was just getting a little fed up with having its weather sitting on my desktop all the time, with no information about what was happening here.

[otherego]

Might be a good idea not to treat oneself to a nice, new Samsung laptop just at the moment.

It looks as if UEFI (sneaky way for manufacturers to keep buyers of their equipment using Microsoft ingenious new boot arrangement preventing "unsigned" OSs from booting, thus hopefully avoiding boot sector infections) could prove even more of an irritation than it initially appeared.

More expensive, too.

There does seem a chance that this is more a manufacturing defect than anything else, but still...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/31/ubuntu_uefi_bricking_samsung_laptops/

A couple of bits from that article:

Linux users accidentally bricked their new Samsung laptops by booting their favourite open-source OS on the shiny computers...

In some unfortunate cases, when the computers are switched on again, the firmware - stored in a chip soldered to the computer's circuit board - refuses to start up the laptop, effectively ruining the product...

One bloke complained he had destroyed two motherboards investigating the fault...

Oopsie.

[otherego]

I loathe telephones.

I sincerely hope that Alexander Graham Bell got at least a week in Purgatory, having his bare feet tickled with feathers.

I can't remember when I last actually answered one of the beastly things.

But they have (limited, in my case) practical uses, especially the mobile variety. Trip and break an ankle? Ring for help. Find a dog wandering lost? Get the inevitable telephone number off its collar tag and alert the owner. Find a person collapsed on the pavement? Ring for an ambulance.

And so on.

The other huge advantage of the mobile telephone is its ability to send and receive text messages. One can send somebody a message to be read and (should they so choose) replied to at their convenience.

If they allow the wretched device to make a noise when it receives a message, then that is a self-inflicted injury. I still feel less of an intruder sending a text message than actually ringing them ( and no, I do not "call" people. Neither do I use a "phone."Ugh.)

And yet - I quite like the idea of a smart telephone. It would be useful to have internet access anywhere. Presumably one can still stop the wretched thing actually ringing or attempting to take voice messages.

I would see a smart telephone as a way of using the internet when I'm out of the flat, and perhaps even for other normal computing activity, rather than as a way to waste money exchanging unnecessary verbal inanities.

Telephone companies and the like seem determined to extract the maximum amount of money (fair enough, it's called business), whilst tracking users to the maximum (which is just rude, and even the most basic mobile telephones, like mine, do that.)

I was therefore intrigued to see that Ubuntu is shortly to be available on telephones. Not my favourite distro, perhaps, but infinitely preferable to snoopalicious Google Android.

More here, with further links in the article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/15/ubuntu_touch_developer_preview/

If I could find the funds for a supported device (and that's one of the things which worries me - I would really like to be able to buy any smart telephone and bung the operating system of my choice on it), I might even be tempted.

I'm a little worried, though, that it might install Ubuntu alongside, say, Android rather than instead of it.

Perhaps I'm being dumb (alright, alright...) - but does Ubuntu-For-Telephones (presumably for ARM processors or whatever and including the drivers necessary to specific devices)  include standard Ubuntu apps, such as Libre Office and Firefox? A telephone which is really a mobile computer and which doesn't rely on the cloud might even be tempting.

I've yet to figure out what "apps" on smart telephones are, but would prefer to use the usual native Ubuntu stuff.

All very academic as I can't afford one of these gadgets. But does anyone know whether this would enable one to use Ubuntu as Ubuntu on a mobile telephone, in place of whatever ad-slinging data-guzzling software the manufacturer or network supplier might usually favour?

[otherego]

Never underestimate the power of marketing.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of new Linux users start off with Ubuntu. I know I did.

But a post on this board earlier today typifies the sort of irritation which new users can experience before fleeing back to the familiarity of vulnerable old Windows - in this case, Ubuntu's policy of leaving out non-free but universally (and legally) used non-free stuff in the form of Flash Player.

Mint includes the essentials, has (IMHO) easier to use desktops in Cinnamon and MATE, and not least of all, lacks that Amazon shopping search thingummy that's caused such ructions in Ubuntu.

I know one of the things which makes GNU/Linux unlikely ever to catch on in a big way with everyday users is the sheer, overwhelming choice of distros - but the more I mess around with it, the more convinced I am that Mint is the idea distro to suggest to someone trying GNU/Linux out for the first time.

(Cowers behind flame-proof shield.)

[otherego]

I recently had a bit of a problem with VirtualBox 4.1.12. I unashamedly use the Oracle version - the all-free one looks a little too hard for me.

After problems following the manual installation of the latest and greatest version previously, I now try to stick with what's in the repos.

USB support packed up (again) - checked the users and groups stuff.

Turns out it needed an "Extension Pack."

Turned out to be easier than some googling suggested. I went to the "Download_Old_Builds" pages and downloaded the extension pack for 4.1.12.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_4_1_pre14

After that, I opened VirtualBox, and simply dragged and dropped the file into the VBox window. An installation dialogue appeared, I entered my password, and it installed fine.

A couple of sites I'd sought advice on advised all sorts of clever command-line stuff - probably superior, but I do think there's sometimes merit in taking the easy path.

As long as one's reasonably certain the downloaded binary is safe, I suppose.

[otherego]

After a fun couple of days being rude about Windows 7, I suppose it's only fair to mention that I've had problems with Mint Update on the Mint 9 box (only supported for another month, alas - I really think it's been my favourite distro so far.)

The updater kept insisting that broken packages were preventing updates from happening. Synaptic showed no broken updates. Among other things, I tried:

apt-get clean,      apt-get update,    apt-get upgrade,   dpkg --configure -a,   apt-get install -f

What finally did the trick seems to have been apt-get purge (not sure whether anything's vanished that shouldn't have) followed by apt-get dist-upgrade

Part of the problem was that I couldn't for the life of me work out which of something like 29 packaged was the troublemaker.

Whilst it's a shame that GNU/Linux lacks anything like the Microsoft Fixit facility, I have to say, in all fairness, that I can't remember when I last had a major problem with Mint Update. I've already had two with Windows 7 this week.

[otherego]

I need to look seriously at replacing the soon-to-be-retired Mint 9 on my number 2 workhorse.

That's been running very happily with a 10GB /root partition, but I thought I'd better make some room for the inevitably more bloated later versions.

The partition set-up is simple enough - /root, /home and swap, seen from left to right by GParted. /root is a primary partition; the others live in an extended partition.

I decided to shrink /home from left to right, then shrink the extended partition it lives in, then extend the / partition to its right.

Using GParted on a live DVD, I shrank the /home partition (took about five hours to shrink it by ten gigabytes, but that was fine. Horrible previous experience has suggested that shrinking bits of partitions with data in them is best started just before going to bed and then left to its own devices.)

Groovy. I now had a 10GB chunk of unallocated space in the left hand bit of the extended partition (which holds /home and swap.)

And GParted gave me absolutely no option to shrink the blankety-blank extended partition. It was locked, and staying that way. I'd not mounted it, and was puzzled, especially as GParted's options to unmount/unlock the offending bits were greyed out.

It took a fair amount of coffee before it dawned on my soggy little brain that a live CD tends to mount any swap it finds on a computer. And that meant that /swap was mounted. And /swap is a logical partition inside the extended partition. Interesting - it seems that if any partition within an extended partition is mounted, then the whole extended partition is treated as mounted.

sudo swapoff -a effectively unmounted the swap partition, and I was able to shrink the extended partition into the 10 GB unallocated space on its left hand side. It was then a matter of seconds to extend /root to its right, so that it is now a shade under 20GB.

Best of all, the computer booted up as if nothing had changed.

For the truly bored, I'll try to include a shot of the partitions before I got started, just to try to show what I'm rabbiting on about.

Now, if I could just make my remastersys copy of Mint 13 from another computer work - seem to remember there's a problem with updated kernels and remastersys or something...

[oxieman]

OE

I said I would let you know how the Pent 4 CPU went - on another thread.

This after trying Mint 14 under VB gave me the message "This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU - pae, please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU".

With changed CPU [as below] in VB

[oxieman]

*sigh* - Previous post "over the limit" - Hic...

Even tho' I enable PAE/NX in settings it becomes greyed out [disabled] - assume this is because I do not have Virtualization [VT-x].  I have no option in BIOS  😞  even if it was capable.

Had an option to "Ignore" this and install - I ignored, It did work, but it's painfully slow to install [I will try anything once] and use - completely unusable.

I did put Mint 14 on an old 10Gb drive just to exonerate VB but stopped  as Foxconn is wireless only and would have to use "Ndiswrapper driver installation tool" for Windows and .inf file etc.
Never been there, so aborted the exercise - was quite responsive for a single core and the little memory available.

Interestingly the "splash screen" when shutting down had an orange " * VB Additions disabled not in a Virtual machine"  - no [OK], twas just blank.

One other thing, [re-coreinfo] and showing CPU capabilities, [you possible know this OE] if you boot Mint 14 into a live session - the capabilities are shown under: Menu > Administration > System information > Devices > Processor.

Just seen your latest post ^^^^ - Just wondering if 'EaseUS Partition Mgr' would do it - I only use that under Windoze.

Oxie...

[otherego]

I've not tried Mint 14 - just downloaded it. (Just hoping a momentary power hiccup didn't mess it up, as I was downloading four versions.)

The PAE requirement could start proving a problem. It seems that any reviewer testing a Linux distro on an "old" computer means something about three years old. I'd love a computer that's only three years old.

They do fess up to it if you dig around a little:

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2216

Look under "Important Info" - it says, "PAE required for 32-bit ISOs."

That, not to put too fine a point on it, sucks. A spot of googling suggests that PAE has been available on Intel Pro CPUs since 1995, but that's a fat lot of use on all the old machines still around that have CPUs that don't support PAE. Must see whether it works on this machine (P4 2.8 GHz Hyper-threading, with some sort of built-in 64-bit support), and on #2 machine with its 2.0gig P4.

The latter flatly refuses to run the Cinnamon version of Mint 13. I initially assumed it was a problem with a Remastersys custom DVD I was trying, but a plain Mint 13 32-bit DVD was also a flop. I eventually get a desktop - some sort of fall-back; not Cinnamon - but instead of the default green and whatnot Mint 13 desktop, it's a beautiful deep blue. And it doesn't let me try any boot options.

The menu works, but launching things doesn't really. A darker-blue outline of a square appears where I was hoping to see, say, Writer. And that's it. Whether the problem is the graphics card, the CPU or what I have no idea.

The MATE live DVD ran quite nicely, so I think it's going to have to be MATE. Good thing it's also nice. (Might be worth trying XFCE etc, but idleness is setting in.)

At least Mint 13 doesn't seem to insist on PAE, and it's a long term support - which is useful for my everyday machines.

Even tho' I enable PAE/NX in settings it becomes greyed out [disabled] - assume this is because I do not have Virtualization [VT-x]. Be interesting to see what happens on this machine and on the older one (actually, I don't think I'm feeling masochistic enough to try VBox on that - perhaps I should. Anything heavier than Windows 2000 seems to upset it. A shame, as I tried a lot of distros on earlier versions of VB on that machine - slow, but enough to give me an idea of what the distro was like.

Just wondering if 'EaseUS Partition Mgr' would do it - actually, GParted worked fine. I have found Easeus better on Vista machines. They tend to become un-bootable following a GParted shrink, and I need to try to dig out a repair disc. (Organised people must find life so dull.) I seem to remember Easeus is also fairly sedate if it needs to shift a partition containing data, but might be misremembering that.

*sigh* - Previous post "over the limit" - Hic...  Now there's a sensible idea. Tonight was a gym night (thank goodness no can see yours truly wobbling fatly from machine to machine) - I was so darned hungry when I got in that supper was the first priority. Seems a little late for the first beer, and I don't want to be up all night - but it always makes a live distro attempt go more smoothly. (Or seems to.) Perhaps just one...

[otherego]

Bah and double bah.

Mint 14 flatly refused to start on VBox on the older of my old computers (P4 2 GHz 2GB RAM Dell GX 260) - even the MATE version kept bombing out with the "aborted" comment on the VBox interface.

Booting the computer itself from live CDs was a little better, with Cinnamon booting in fall-back mode (= the machine obviously can't handle Cinnamon and I end up in some elderly Gnome 2 type desktop), and MATE working rather nicely.

It looks as if PAE is now essential on Mint 14, which is a lemon IMHO. My real concern is that future kernel updates on other versions might eventually kill Linux on my ancient hardware.

Both the MATE and Cinnamon live CDs worked in VBox on this machine (P4 2.8 HT 4GB RAM and some Nvidia 256MB graphics card - marginally less ancient Dell GX 620). Interesting - Cinnamon was light on RAM but very heavy on CPU (graphics problem???); MATE was much more responsive. Sorry, I didn't jot down any figures - but seem to remember that CPU use was much lower, but that RAM use might even have been a touch higher than the Cinnamon session.

So, as far as I can see - non-PAE CPU = no LinuxMint beyond version 13/Maya.

And MATE might be a better bet than Cinnamon for low-powered machines like mine, where the option exists.

And purists will very properly point to the lighter desktops.

Trouble is, I really like Cinnamon.

*Sigh*

[otherego]

The old Dell GX 260's finally been "upgraded" from Mint 9 to Mint 13 MATE.

The previous installation comprised /root, /home and swap partitions. I remembered not to mark the /home bit for formatting during installation, and Mint 13 installed to / pretty effortlessly. I did the almost half a gig of waiting updates (didn't take long at all), started installing the odds and ends that I normally do - and realised that it wasn't talking to my old /home partition.

At all.

Spot the deliberate mistake... during installation, I'd remembered to make sure that the "format" option remained unticked on the old /home partition, but forgot to set the /home mount point.

I installed Remastersys and created an installation disc from my new system - just to save doing all the updates again, and to preserve the couple of programs I'd already added. Booting the computer from the Remastersys custom DVD allowed me to reinstall, this time paying more attention, and in under an hour I had a fully updated system, and had installed all my usual extra programs.

So far, it seems to be working fine. No problem communicating with the old /home directory (touch wood), which is nice. I'd backed all my data up, of course, but it's a relief not to have to copy it all back. Also quite nice to spark up Firefox on a brand new installation and find all the old settings and bookmarks intact.

When it does work, then upgrading Linux by simply installing the / bit and leaving the old /home is brilliant. I do seem to remember a problem previously where they changed the name of the file manager, and it proved simplest to just reinstall from scratch and copy all the data back later.

Just for fun, I'm trying Mint 14 MATE in VirtualBox on the same machine. It's been installing very slowly for ages. Be interesting to see whether it gets there in the end. It's been allocated 768MB of the host machine's 2GB of RAM, and the poor old thing's been making pretty heavy weather of it - 100% CPU pretty much all the time.

I was slightly surprised that the live DVD booted at all - this time I used an .iso on the host's hard drive, rather than a physical DVD. Finally got round to installing the relevant VBox Extension Pack (having worked out how to do it on this machine recently) in order to enable USB 2.0 support. I can't see how this would have helped the live DVD boot, but I'm sure it refused to previously. Most odd.

PAE's enabled, and the GX260 sure ain't got virtualisation support at the CPU level. (Wish I had a decent computer that did. I suspect VBox might work better with it. Not sure about that.)

oxie, I can't figure out why your PAE is greyed out. That P4 looks more powerful than the GX260's single core, 2.0GHz powerhouse. Might be worth experimenting further to see whether you can coax it into some sort of enthusiasm!

[oxieman]

OE - Quick post B4 the witching hour...

Decided to dump VBox on Foxconn [my sheep-dip m/c] and re-install - poss tommow if time allows - seems different versions of additions, etc possibly abound.

Had pump on central heating go walkabout last Thursday, fixed today - been frezzzing me c**bs off!  etc etc.

Let you know as and when.

Oxie...

[otherego]

Hope oxie's thawed out at last!

I'm not hugely impressed with Oracle VBox on older machinery. This is coming to you from Mint 14 within VBox - allocated 768MB RAM, and with the "execution cap" (don't remember that - is it new?) set to 85%.

This slows the virtual machine down even more, but does mean that other stuff on the computer sort-of runs - a welcome change from the normal 100% CPU activity and things like Firefox barely working, if at all.

Installing Guest Additions has improved things, but the VM really is very sluggish. Perhaps the GA installation wasn't a complete success. According to the guest's Synaptic, GA wasn't installed (I'd assumed it was incorporated in Mint 14), but installing via the terminal produced dire warnings that the existing version should first be removed - dunno.

And installing GA always seems to involve googling and messing about (admittedly easier on Windows guests, I think.)

What seemed to work was to attach the GA virtual CD (via Devices), right click on it and "Open in Terminal," then, still in the terminal, su to root (I know, I know, but that seemed easiest) and make sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

I'm unashamedly useless at changing to a directory (start throwing things at the screen after about the tenth "no such file or folder") and that process saved trying to find the wretched thing in the first instance.

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html

gives more information.

(Good grief - the shared clipboard actually works - just copied that from the host.)

ej mentioned using a dedicated small partition for testing distros, and I think this might, in fact, be the answer. Current versions of VBox and/or current guest distros take an age to install in VBox on this old computer, and then prove very sluggish there. Wonder whether I'm doing something wrong. Very probable.

But I suspect that a modest partition on the main hard drive for trying distros out might be the answer on my old heaps. Frustrating only being able to run one at a time, of course, but I'm finding the VBox "experience" frustrating. I'm sure it used to be much quicker and simpler.

[otherego]

At risk of sounding like a spoiled brat, I do wish the Mint folk would update the Mint flash plug-in.

I'd really rather not remove the existing one and try to manually install the current version of Flash Player, but it's getting a bit tedious receiving dire warnings about an outdated and vulnerable version which has to be manually (at one's own risk) reactivated every time.

One can't possible get through the week without watching cats fall over on YouTube.

[oxieman]

Have thawed out now 😉
Thanks for all the info OE.

Have been playing with the Foxconn without too much progress.

On the MSI at the mo' and have been checking various versions of GA, Ext pack etc.

A couple of screen shots follow.

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Re the Foxconn, I deleted VBox [Add/remove progs] but found that the .VirtualBox dir [progs/Oracle] still remained with the Ext Pack as an old

[oxieman]

Whoops forgot 2 images - hope they are below 64k :^O

Oxie...

[otherego]

VirtualBox tends to mystify me, I must say.

Trouble is, when it works, it's a useful way of trying out distros. Just wish I was better at making it work.

A spot of browsing (apologies, I didn't bookmark any URLs) suggested that current versions of Ubuntu, and thus Mint 14, do very poorly in VBox - very slow. I didn't come across any resolutions. (I'm still using whichever version of Oracle VBox is in the Mint repos - 4.1.12, I think.)

A few interesting thoughts in this article:

http://www.jdpfu.com/2012/09/14/solution-for-slow-ubuntu-in-virtualbox

Enabling the IO/APIC doesn't seem to make much difference - although I think it should, as I believe the Linux kernels have the relevant drivers. I know it has to be enabled prior to installation with Windows guests.

Acceleration "does not apply" on my hardware. Interesting that that chap allocates 128MB RAM to the graphics. Might mess around with. I'd have expected it to slow things down, but perhaps the CPU is battling with the graphic demands of a modern distro, or something like that.

I'm messing around with Mint 13 on virtual machines and so on, it's noticeably better than Mint 14. In fact, on the Dell 620 (2.8GHZ hyperthreading, ta-da ), it runs almost like an installation on a proper, if low-powered, computer. Mint 14 comes nowhere close. (I installed the MATE version, of which more shortly, of each.)

Perhaps Mint 14 just doesn't hack it on VBox, presumably along with the matching Ubuntu - Precise Pangolin or Quantal Quental or whatever it is. Might be interesting to try burning it to a DVD and actually installing it on one of the old machines, just to see whether that's more impressive.

As far as MATE vs Cinnamon is concerned, I'm really beginning to like MATE more and more. On low powered machines, it is far more responsive (and the Dell 260 can't run Cinnamon in any event.)

In some, little ways it has a more polished, or mature feel to it IMHO. Odd little things like being easy to set the time and date to one's preferred configuration without all that horrible strftime stuff, for instance, and the retention of my favourite weather widget - just as in Mint 9 GNOME. Minor stuff - but I do think it's more responsive on older kit.

Oxie, I'd have thought that MSI would fly with 3.0 GHz dual-core available. Perhaps it's just Mint 14 being obnoxious in VirtualBox?

[oxieman]

A thousand apologies OE.
My post at #1,380 got truncated [64k limit].
My fault entierly, should have checked image size [+ it's b64 encoded size etc] - post got to "as an old"

Oxie is a great big naarrrna :^O
Truth is, am too lazy to pratt about with attachments - just drag image [or send] to desktop, then drag into de post box.
now here comes 'a rant' >>>..... eBay gives me a post/editing box the size of a gnats whatsit [with a needed scroll-bar] when I have a decent sized monitor!!

Anyway.
Here is the full text that was 'after the image' when posted:-

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Re the Foxconn, I deleted VBox [Add/remove progs] but found that the .VirtualBox dir [progs/Oracle] still remained with the Ext Pack as an old version.
Also the 'VirtalBox VMs' and associated logs remained - am talking XP host, may different for your set-up.

I viewed the logs [Notepad], and search or find "version" they differ and common to various VMs.

Screenshots from this MSI m/c - also the CPUZ.

Will persy veer have another play with the Foxconn - for some mysterious reason the wi-fi started to work!
Still too slow to use.

Oxie...
Correction ends...
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Oxie, I'd have thought that MSI would fly with 3.0 GHz dual-core available.

MSI times to "boot" Mint13 and 14 in Vbox; from start, includes me typing username and my password to the 'Welcome Screen' [yea, I know, but still have the box ticked "show this dialoge at startup"] :-
Mint 13 is 40 secs.
Mint 14 is 43 secs (with USB device attached).

Foxconn for 13 and 14 - Go and make a cup of tea!
Unfotuanatley I decided to restore [Macrium] back to my last backup (MSE was 26days out of date), and so I just have Rpi under VBox now.

May have another try, but am convinced it's down to my crappy old Foxconn BIOS.

Oxie...

[oxieman]

Good grief, only MSI and Foxconn should be in Bold :_|

Oxie...