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]

And it really shouldn't matter, but doesn't "Lisa" sound more appealing than "Asparagus"?

[otherego]

Looks as if Adobe no longer intends to support Flash Player for Linux - except on Google Chrome:

http://ostatic.com/blog/why-adobe-is-wrong-to-restrict-flash-updates-for-linux-users?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ostatic+%28OStatic%29

Earlier this week, Adobe drew a lot of criticism from the Linux community, as it announced that it has partnered with Google on a "modern API for hosting plugins within the browser" and Flash Player for Linux, effectively requiring that Linux users use Google Chrome if they want updated versions of Flash. The move was widely interpreted as a potential blow to Mozilla's Firefox browser, because Adobe won't deliver and support new versions of Flash for users on Linux unless users have Google Chrome.

Trying to lock everyone in to proprietary stuff? And it couldn't possibly have anything to do with recently criticised plans to include DRM in popular browsers, could it?

[otherego]

A pox on futex_wait_queue_me.

Occasionally Firefox shuts down obediently; more often it hangs with that message in System Monitor. Mint 9, Firefox 10.02).

I've:

checked Assistive Technologies is off;

removed Assistive Technologies altogether (don't - borked the whole installation - really must look to see what dependencies get uninstalled when I ditch something);

reinstalled Firefox;

tried a new profile.

The intermittent problem persists.

n_b_t suggested:

The second suggestion I've got is to try running the upstream version of Firefox, rather than your distro's packaged version

Must admit |I've not been quite worried enough to try that yet - might be worth a try in due course?

I suspect that it might be one of my (far too many) add-ons. The problem appeared to go away when I ditched my profile (can't be sure, due to its intermittent nature) - I suppose I should have reinstalled the add-ons one at a time and tested, but it would have taken days - being an intermittent problem, anyway.

Not serious - if FF doesn't shut down properly, you get the opportunity to kill it on shut down - I now just check System Monitor before shutting down and kill it there.

Just annoying.

And I seem to have a memory leak somewhere, too. RAM use creeps up steadily during a session, from less than 400MiB to over 600 - cannot figure out in System Monitor what is responsible, which is odd.  Clamd shows about 104MiB at the moment, and FF 162 - total at the moment is about 475.

Just a crotchety old computer, perhaps.

(No comments about its owner, please...)

[nice_bow_tie]

If it stopped happening when you used a new profile, then it sounds as though it may be a problem with your profile directory. Not necessarily an add-on (although it might be), but some other files in your profile can get corrupted which can cause various problems.

Just out of interest, how big is the biggest file in your profile?

[otherego]

urlclassifier3.sqlite seems to top the board - 40MB.

Next is places.sqlite - 10MB.

cookies.sqlite at 512kb and cookies.sqlite-wal at 576kb surprised me - I assume these are all the opt-out cookies used by DoNotTrack Plus. (I hope.)

I have a slightly embarrassing 1.1MB of bookmarks (I suspect Sync inflated this when I merged among computers - seem to be an awful lot of sites both within and without folders) - but the problem with the new profile started before I revived my bookmarks.

[otherego]

I see Firefox doesn't like my graphics card, either. From the Troubleshooting option:

Adapter Description           GLXtest process failed (exited with status 1): GLX version older than the required 1.3

WebGL Renderer                Blocked for your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues.

GPU Accelerated Windows        0/1. Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version or newer.

lspci reminds me that the card is:

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE].

Although it's been in the machine for about three years, I only enabled the card a few weeks ago (red face...) - if anything, Firefox behaves better than it does with the on-board graphics. (Dell Optiplex GX260 mini-tower. State of the art. Round about the turn of the century.

Short story - the manufacturer doesn't provide a Linux driver; Linux support for this card seems (from googling) to have declined, if anything, since about Ubuntu 10.04.

Still, I'm reasonably certain the problem lurks somewhere in my profile - add-ons seem the major suspect, insofar as the problem resumed as soon as I restored my add-ons. Should have done them one at a time, but really, life's too short to test a minor intermittent fault over a few days for each add-on.

I'll try to attach a screenshot of Firefox's troubleshooting list of modified preferences - don't think it contains anything too personally identifying...

One of those silly things not worth spending too much time on, but which somehow gets under one's skin. Probably time to move on, but if anyone has any inspirations, they'd be welcomed!

[otherego]

Good grief, this thread had slipped a long way down. Surely someone else must be having interesting Linux experiences? Or perhaps Linux computers simply don't produce as many interesting snags...

I've given up on the futex_wait_queue_me hassle with Firefox on the desktop - simply remember to kill it in System Monitor.

Today's yawn inspirational success story:

Among my other purchases on this site, I acquired a couple of old Toshiba L- laptops - an L30 and L100.

If I connect them to the router via an ethernet cable, no problems. Trying to use wireless is a different story, with browser pages loading slowly or, in the case of eBay and the Beeb (which of course are two of my most-visited sites grrrr) not at all.

I'd largely given up. Same atheros driver as other computers work; I just assumed old Toshiba L-whatevers hated Linux wireless operation.

Messing about with Mint 12, I thought I'd try it on the L30. Delightful, but the same page loading problem.

But this time I actually seem to have duckduckgoed something useful:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11474316

It seems that "driver ath5k is buggy, you need to deactivate the hardware encryption of it via:
Code:

echo "options ath5k nohwcrypt=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf
sudo modprobe -rfv ath5k
sudo modprobe -v ath5k"

Didn't occur to me to reboot, so I went ahead and tried an additional suggestion - to disable ipV6 - then rebooted.

Not sure what did the trick, but I now have a workable wireless laptop. I'm deeply indebted to the chap who came up with all that.

As for Mint 12 - this is a mighty powerhouse of a machine *ahem* with a single-core 1.46GHz Celeron and a gig of RAM, some of which is shared by the graphics chip.

Yet it runs fine. I'll try to attach a screen-shot showing resource use with Writer open, and a Green Day (hey, I like Green Day) video playing on YouTube.

The CPU was certainly earning its keep, but coping, and just over half the RAM was in use.

The more of Mint 12 I see, the more I like it - especially with the Cinnamon desktop, even if I still can't get the seconds showing on the clock.

[otherego]

Bit of bother with GRUB 2.

Dual-boot - Mint 9 and Windows XP on the trusty desktop.

XP was such a mess that it seemed simpler just to reinstall - which, of course, overwrote GRUB in the MBR.

In the past, I'm sure I rectified this simply by running sudo update-grub (having booted Mint via the GRUB 2 CD) - this time, it didn't work, and XP kept irritatingly appearing when I started the machine.

Before trying anything complicated, I used the GRUB 2 (actually, I think it's called SuperGrub, like the older version - just with a 2 on the end) again to get Mint running.

Taking a deep breath, I went to Synaptic and reinstalled GRUB. (If anyone else has the same problem, the bit needed is actually called grub-pc. Installing just GRUB would presumably replace GRUB 2 with the legacy version and cause all sorts of fun and games.)

I opened a terminal and ran sudo update-grub again.

Problem solved.

Might be of use to someone - hopefully nobody will actually need to know this, of course - but this seems a straightforward solution to the problem of reinstalling Windows which then kills GRUB in a dual-boot.

I assume that legacy GRUB would need more traditional methods - reinstalling from a live CD and all that - 'tho seem to remember that Mandriva-style distros PCLOS, Mepis???) include a useful GRUB repair facility if one can get the distro booted in the first place.

[grumpy-cook]

Interesting little article about the new release (4.0) of Slitaz and it's browser-based settings panel -

http://ostatic.com/blog/slitaz-4-0-arrives-with-new-tazpanel-goodness

[otherego]

I see Ubuntu 12.04 is out today  - I'm just downloading the desktop version. (The download's proceeding apace - they must have some serious server capacity - I'd have expected it to be somewhat oversubscribed on its launch day.)

It's a long term support (LTS) version, and I see they're supporting it for five years.

Looking forward to the new Mint LTS (Mint 13?) - presumably in about six weeks from now. Wonder whether they will have slimmed it down to a more Eee PC friendly size? Probably not... It'll also be interesting to see whether they also support it for five years. Suspect I may have missed some announcement there - but I'm sure All Will Be Revealed, anyway. (Also be interesting to see what desktop environment they go for - or whether the choice-of-two plus Cinnamon of Mint 12 continues to be offered - might be what makes Mint 12 a touch porky on small hard drives, perhaps.)

[otherego]

701MB download.

Seven hundred and one?

Time to try to squeeze it onto my last CD...

[nice_bow_tie]

I see that one of the selling points of Ubuntu according to their website is:

No viruses

Life's too short to spend it worrying about viruses.

Which is brave of them considering the recent problems with malware on Macs, another platform that was supposed to have 'no viruses'. 🙂

[nice_bow_tie]

Though to be fair, they're probably right...

[otherego]

I supppose that while people stick to the official repositories to install software, the risk remains minimal. Must say, even I occasionally install binaries from other sources, and I'm fairly cautious.

Android seems to be compromised fairly frequently, although I suspect that might be a result of "Apps" being installed, then found to be malicious. Again, unlikely to be a problem with mainstream GNU/Linux while one sticks to the repos. As long as they're not hacked.

Meantime, I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 to a virtual machine. Probably be fairer to try it on a real computer, but so far it has been one of the most frustrating experiences I've had so far. The live CD is an absolute slug. If you wait long enough for it to load up, then it refuses to connect to the internet on its own.

Launching the installer has not improved my vocabulary. Sluggish just isn't in it. After twenty minutes, it asked me which time zone/locale to use. It offered London (close enough), but didn't respond when I clicked continue. Other than to reposition me, after a protracted wait, in Aukland. And refused to pay the slightest attention to my attempts to go back.

One more try, I think.

[otherego]

I'm still using Mint 9 on my desktops, and will probably keep it for a while longer.

It's sometimes a little tedious when its repos don't provide stuff included in the newest versions. I'm keen to try LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice - and plan to have a go at this shortly.

Using Remastersys, it took about forty-five minutes to create a backup DVD allowing me to simply reinstall all my current programs (and updates, I think), should I mess up.

I'm typing from the resulting live DVD now.

A jolly useful little program, that, and it saved me a lot of time after a bit of a blunder not long ago.

Also makes it easy to take a new laptop, for instance, and install an up to date copy of what's on one's desktop - programs and all.

(There is also provision to save data, but I assume that would involve saving an iso to a suitably large hard drive. One of the advantages of separate / and /home partitions - 'tho obviously, I still back up anything serious before playing around.)

Doubtless be back later with tales of woe about trying to replace OOo with LibreOffice.

[otherego]

That was suspiciously easy - I now have LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice on Mint 9.

Be interesting to see how it works. It seems to open documents impressively fast, but I've not tried beyond that.

If anyone wants to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice on an older Mint (and presumably other Ubuntu-based) distro, many thanks to the chap who wrote the tutorial I used:

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/336

Just involved the following commands in a terminal, and went very quickly:

sudo apt-get purge openoffice*.*

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libreoffice

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

(or  sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde  if appropriate)

sudo apt-get install language-support-en

Done!

[oxieman]

I must get back and do a bit more re-Linux 😞

Time permitting...

Oxie...

[otherego]

'Tis fun, oxie - go for it!

I've had a very aggravating evening trying to install Microsoft's latest.

First, I dug out an underutilised netbook, only to discover that its keyboard has expired during its prolonged sulk at the back of a cupboard.

Then I tried VBox, with no joy - only to discover that Windows 8 won't work on VBox unless Virtualisation Technology is enabled on the host machine.

The most youthful host machine to hand is so old that it's not even dual-core, much less capable of Virtualisation Technology.

I might try wiping an XP hard drive on another old laptop and try that. Probably not tonight.

On a much happier note, the Mint 13 RC has been released:

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=07255

I'm downloading both the MATE and the Cinnamon versions as I write. Not sure whether this is necessary - Mint 12 came with both MATE and GNOME something; it was easy to install Cinnamon, though, and to choose which one to use on every boot.

Perhaps one can install either version of Mint 13, install the "other" desktop environment and alternate as desired.

I sincerely hope it all proves less irritating than my attempts with W8 so far. On previous Linux vs Windows behaviour, I'd be very surprised if Mint doesn't prove the pleasanter - at least for me.

[oxieman]

All interesting stuff OE.

Have a mithering Mekon at the moment OE - will respond fully when I can.

GC might know what I mean 😄

One virtue - she never goes on-line.  

Oxie...

[otherego]

Sometimes bachelorhood has its merits, although on balance, I'd probably change that if I had my time again.

In the meantime, I will smugly enjoy guzzling post-gym beer while trying to dual-boot Mint 13 and W8 at midnight.

With no scolding whatsoever.