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    Charon the Ferryman
    Dash  ·  
    May 25

    Linux OS

    in General Discussion

    I really love it. Prefer it to Winders in many ways.

    I guess quite a few use it all the time. I often have questions and problems that are probably due to me being stupid, even if I am generally tech savvy.

    I have Ubuntu on dual boot, and it and Grub went wrong on me, so reinstalled it. I spent 3 days on trying to fix it, and failed.

    I have Ubuntu and Mint on VirtualBox as well, so I can play and mess it up. I don't like Mint as it happens, so it may go.

    So where does this go, especially if Charon gets stuck?

    14 comments
    14 Comments

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    C
    Charon the Ferryman
    Jun 12
    •

    Running W10 on dual boot on VMWare virtual.Irony at work but can't make W 11 install

    Like

    siva.chander
    May 28
    •

    Yup, I went to Red Hat c.1998 almost entirely due to one thing: RPM (and RPMbuild from SRPMs).


    I tried Mandrake for a short while and then went to Fedora from FC3 to F30 or so. I still have a customized FC4 distro (with some pieces written by me decades ago during the heydays of Sourceforge) which run on several Centrino-era laptops running some legacy Windows apps on Wine.


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    S
    Spike Protein
    May 28
    •

    I used Slackware quite a few years back but eventually got tired of spending time endlessly compiling things and chasing down dependencies. Then used Mandrake for a few years and moved on to Mint which I consider the best user-friendly distro. I run a couple of VPS's (virtual private servers) and one has CentOS and the other Alma Linux. I have CentOS on my main work laptop (not a distro of choice but it enabled me to exactly replicate what was on the VPS to make working on things easier). My older Toshiba L850 work laptop has Mint installed and an audio recording desktop is running AV Linux.

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    T
    TheyShouldHaveVaxxed
    May 27
    •

    Linux heads! I don’t and won’t do anything important on a Windows computer. Too risky.


    For me, I love Linux. It takes a bit of getting used to if you come from Windows, but things are so much more logical and able to be worked with.


    I posted the other day about pie-hole.net. It’s built in Linux and runs on a Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is an educational, extremely inexpensive full-on computer that is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and still packs a lot of power. The hobby world has gone nuts with them. There’s a tiny version that is about 1/3 to 1/4 of that. They have camera interfaces, bluetooth, wifi, USB, and a double row of interface pins.


    Anyway, they run Linux - a special flavor of Linux called Raspbian - but connect the video (HDMI) out to a TV or monitor, plug in a keyboard and mouse, and it’s a computer and a pretty powerful one at that.


    There’s tons of good things to say about Linux. Anyone interested should look into the Pi and then you can experiment all you want. The whole OS fits on an SD card so you can swap out complete OS versions by swapping the card and rebooting. Huge for security and keeping financial or other stuff off a main system that is more vulnerable.


    One last thing is Linux isn’t a panacea. Linux can get hacked too. The advantage is that it’s easy to wipe and reinstall the OS without affecting user files or installed programs, and thanks to Linux still being niche in spite of so many businesses and governments using it for critical missions. Linux’s profile is rising though, making it more of a target. Linus was designed from the beginning to be secure. It’s based on UNIX which was basically always a multiuser OS with built-in security protections. Windows was wide open until it became such an embarrassment for Microsoft that they were forced to do something.

    Like

    siva.chander
    May 27
    •

    I've been on Lubuntu 18.04 for a few years, and before that on Fedora (until F30 or so). I started on SLS (Soft Landing System), then went to Slackware 3.x, then Red Hat 5 or so, and stayed with it for ~2 decades before switching to Lubuntu.


    For fixing grub/bootsector problems, keep an install CD or DVD handy, and boot with it to go into rescue mode, then re-install grub and reboot - that should fix grub problems most of the time.


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    W
    WolfenBane 🐺 SAV Werewolf
    May 27
    •

    I've tried a couple of distributions out, and liked them a lot, some for their simplicity, and others for how well they look & 'feel".

    For anyone starting out, I'd highly recommend Zorin OS. It has a windows 10 "feel" to it, and is user friendly for those starting out on the linux adventure.

    I use Ubuntu Mate the most, still user friendly, but allows for a little more customisation than Zorin.

    Deepin is the "eye candy" but being developed by a team in China, and it's repositories based in China kind of puts up a lot of red flags (no puns intended) for me.

    One to watch is Garudalinux with different editions targeting different types of users, including a "gamer" version with apps like "steam" already built in.

    Sadly the 2 programs I use the most for video editing, and web cam filters requires Windows to run, I've tried, and tried to get them to work on linux, but after countless hours of hitting a "brick wall" I gave up, and went back to windows for those programs.

    I avoid trying to dual boot, as after a windows 10 update, it screwed up the grub loader and like yourself, I tried everything I could but to no avail.

    Best to try it on a separate computer, much safer that way.

    Like
    T
    TheyShouldHaveVaxxed
    May 27
    •
    Replying to

    All the distributions are great for Linux heads but confusing for those new to Linux.


    To anyone interested, all a distribution is is a customized set of applications and desktop (or not) that someone decided would be useful for some purpose. Basically there are just a handful of “top level” distributions and a crap ton of distributions derived from those. I even built my own distribution a while back for a project. Just a few clicks, some typing, and presto.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions


    Top level distributions are those like Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo. These represent different approaches to OS concepts, updating methods, and such. For anyone who remembers, this would be like the differences between DrDOS and MSDOS, Windows Desktop vs. Norton Desktop, etc.


    Then, for example, someone decides to make up a hacker/cracker distribution loaded with hacker cracker tools and you get something like Kali Linux which is a full Linux OS, and you can load lots of other Linux apps onto it, but fire it up and you’re at a hacker console ready to do battle. Similarly there are distributions for office work loaded with office stuff.


    There are science and research distributions, general office distributions, hacker distributions, etc. See the target audience column at that Wiki link. They are all Linux but each is customized for particular uses, or customized to be appropriate for just regular general use. There is even a distribution (or was) that looked almost exactly like Windows. That’s all distributions are - specialized and customized distributions people find useful and share. Microsoft doesn’t let you make specialized distributions of Windows and hand them out. That’s why there’s no analog in the Windows world.


    In picking a distribution, new users in general should probably just go with a major to learn with or get used to, and then, if you want to check out the specialized distros, have at it. I’d recommend Debian or Ubuntu (based on Debian) as a starting point, or a popular distro based on Debian - Linux Mint. The advantage to Mint is the codecs - the sometimes proprietary bits of software that decode movies and music. All the commercial distros (where you can pay for support) have to charge license fees for codecs. Linux Mint is community supported and has the codecs available free. You do need to enable that, but it may or may not be important to some. The codec packs don’t cost much for other distros, though.

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    T
    TheyShouldHaveVaxxed
    May 27
    •
    Replying to

    I thought of an analog to distributions in the Windows world. It’s like the Dell, Acer, or other hardware branded versions of Windows with the particular adware they choose to load. It’s still Windows but it does get personalized by various computer manufacturers and retailers.


    That’s something like what a Linux distribution is except with Linux the difference is it’s the applications preloaded, desktops, etc - for some kind of purpose. In the Windows world the customizations are who gets your tracking data, what ads you see, etc. But it’s kind of like a Linux distribution conceptually.

    Like

    D
    DavisBacon
    May 25
    •

    It has been many, many years. Long enough that I started on Slackware... long enough that I used Windows "batch" files for multiboot -- but I can barely remember. I worked in the tech field, Unix platform (Solaris on x86 no less -- who does that? --my company did).

    But I've given all that up.

    I now teach violin, privately... a surprisingly hard way to earn a living... and my brain has otherwise gone to mush...

    I miss the technology field! Interesting co-workers (not all of them)... cool toys... the creative challenge of working as a technology generalist, mostly in Operations... where every day is a struggle, since it's constant bootstrapping, working for a start-up... but I was young, then... sigh! 🙂

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    C
    Charon the Ferryman
    May 25
    •

    I upgraded an ancient Toshiba laptop doing a linux install. Works fine. I have an old box with W 98 on it so maybe I will do something similar. 20 years back it was an expensive hand build I got cheap off a guy who worked in Kosovo at the time. I just need to invest in some coal to fire up the boiler. I like my Toshiba L50. It is as sound as a pound and what I use all time. I am currently unable to put a VPN in the partition because I can't access while in Russia due to blocks. I may try to install it in virtual box under VPN and switch the files over, to see if that works. If I break the distro so be it.

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    V
    vaxxed and thankful
    May 25
    •
    Replying to

    Yes, Linux is running fine on old computers. On Toshiba Laptop I worked in 1993 and we had a mobile phone big like a little suitcase...

    Don't understand why you cannot install a VPN, my English is not well enough. Are you in Russia?

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    C
    Charon the Ferryman
    May 26
    •
    Replying to

    @vaxxed and thankful Yes I am. I flit back and forth to UK but as wife is disabled, she is waiting for hip op I can't go back yet. This may be July and so I have to wait. She will need me to help her as she mends after hospital. I could go back tomorrow if I wanted. My windows has Tunnelbear installed. Acess is blocked so I can do nothing , I can do it in VirtualBox so maybe I can save the right files and add them to the install

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    P
    Publicenemy
    May 25


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    vaxxed and thankful
    May 25
    •

    Aaahh, a linux user, how nice, Charon!

    I run on Kubuntu but now without dual boot, cause I separated some years ago and detected that I don't need MS Windows any longer for private use.

    So for your grub problems I have no solution.

    As I work in IT with Unix and Linux over 25 years, I didn't want to solve IT problems in my free time and therefore the decision to separate both systems on different computers.

    Keep it as simple as possible.

    Our family box for internet use is a very old computer which was too slow for MS windows but fine enough for Linux. As 2nd Linux computer I use a powerful laptop where I can work with my music and video apps.

    Our problem sometimes is the security settings in firefox browser, we like to run highest security level and e.g.for SAV for each login session I have to allow cookies to all wix sites manually as we don't want to automate it.

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