Jolt Country

Well it's another two year bump and I might be getting the hang of this linux. Actually, they might be dumbing it down for us n00bs. Went with Slacko Puppy and it runs like a dream on my Dell inspirion antique laptop. It even had an .exe that lets me install and dual boot right from Win7. It's all loaded in the ram, which is nice and fast. Slacko Puppy even did all my lan drivers for me (which Ubuntu still wont).
So now we try it out for a while and see what's missing.


THE
WOOF
AARDVARK

Lotsa bells and whistles that I'll never use. Gonna try installing MAME on it. I'm a glutton for punishment.



THE
BEAT ME MORE
FOR THAT HIGH SCORE
AARDVARK

NIIIIIIIIIIICE!

I am just a few days away from having all my computers running again. And I have this little tiny Fractal Design case that can take a Mini ATX system. I'd like to put a hot HOT HOT Mint system there.

Here I am back in Ubuntu land, it must be a yearly thing. Since my Zune* wont sync wirelessly in W7 anyways and since I'm really tired of fighting with the black screen of WGA, here I am again. Anyone want to take bets on how long this go-around lasts? Actually, Slacko Puppy is still on my laptop but the battery wont hold a charge anymore. It's either my Cyanogen modded Nook tablet or this desktop as my main computers. This one has a keyboard and mouse so it's the big cheese. That's a Crazy Doodles joke.

THE
MUST GROW A
UNIX BEARD NOW
AARDVARK

*Don't judge, my clock radio has a zune charging port. It's an antique!

I still have Ubuntu running on my Acer Aspire netbook. I don't use it daily (or even monthly) but occasionally I fire it up, run the updates, and shelve it again.

If you're not doing heavy media editing, the Raspberry Pi is coming dangerously close to being a cheap desktop replacement. Quadcore and a gig of RAM for $35, with HDMI out, built in wireless, and four USB ports.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

You know, I'm starting to like this. There's only two or three programs (not apps!) that wont run in ubuntu and I can simply reboot back into W7 and deal with them.
Another thing I've noticed is that software for this OS is a lot like the Google Play Store. Lots of programs and lots of half-ass coding, like bad phone apps that lock up some of the time. you install it and see if it sucks, rinse and repeat. Android has helped me deal with this sort of behavior.


THE
PAVLOV SOFTWARE
AARDVARK

I'm considering giving Qubes OS a run (it's the OS that SnowDen uses, dontcha know and based on Fedora) and hearing Aardvarks pleasant thoughts on Linux has given me hope that it may work out.

AArdvark wrote:You know, I'm starting to like this. There's only two or three programs (not apps!) that wont run in ubuntu and I can simply reboot back into W7 and deal with them.
Another thing I've noticed is that software for this OS is a lot like the Google Play Store. Lots of programs and lots of half-ass coding, like bad phone apps that lock up some of the time. you install it and see if it sucks, rinse and repeat. Android has helped me deal with this sort of behavior.


THE
PAVLOV SOFTWARE
AARDVARK

[youtube][/youtube]

Ya know, that might just be do-able. I bet if I hooked up my 2TB storage drive to it and put all my stuff on that I could get rid of the tower entirely.


THE
SHRINKAGE
AARDVARK

Posting from a mac mini. Did not know that a body could use standard keyboard and mouse for uh Apple device. The cat ate my funky Apple keyboard cable and I really loath that one button mouse. So I plugged reg'lar stuff in and it works. I'm getting ready to blow osX away and put lubuntu on this thing. I don't care for Apple software and I'm kinds sorta getting the hang of basic linux. Now I need to find a DVD that I haven't used already, that's the really hard part.


THE
SHINY WHITE
iAARDVARK

Ok that project went south in a hurry. I'm just giving myself ulcers for no good reason. The mac wont play nice so back in the packing crate it goes, with all the other random pieces of hardware that I keep.

Maybe after the holidays I will get serious about downsizing my desktop.



THE
SHRINKAGE
AARDVARK

Update: just blew up win7 (again) and installed Linux Mint as my one and only OS. lets see how this goes

OK pulled out mint and installed Solus. Also took out the noisy-as-hell Nvidia cards and am running onboard graphics. It's quiet and I really don't need the horsepower. My kid had these two hulking SLI cards in the tower so he can play (waves hand in vague manner) those PC games he likes. I don't play games on the PC and I like the shhhh. Will update this as I learn a thing or two about Solus.


THE
QUIET IS GOOD
AARDVARK

Annnnd right back to Mint. Solus requires a 7 digit password, no exceptions. Plus it kept resetting on me. Too bad, I like the interface better than the others. When I find some blank DVDs maybe I'll put that in my Mac mini.


THE
BETTER THAN FREE
AARDVARK

Weird. I installed Solus in a VM and a 6 character password worked.

Mint does this weird thing on me.

It will sometimes lock up when I'm running automatic tests at home. OK. So I will cold boot it.

When it comes back up SOMETIMES it will list my username on the screen. It will say "robb" in lower case on the screen. When it does that, it still wants the login name and password.

I might have written about this before, but to hell with it.

*I can not believe what terrible UX that is.*

SOMEtimes it puts my name there? Well, when you see your name, you are not thinking of having to type your username in again. So at least a dozen times I've typed my password.

Which shows up after I hit enter, when it asks me for my password.

One of the things without capacity is mankind's ability to fuck up a login screen. All it should ever be is two text fields, one for username, one for password and a Submit button. The number of people who over-complicate this is almost all of them and I do not understand why.

https://solus-project.com

Rolling release, no "install another ISO 6 months later" silliness.

Install once, done. Good for 20 years.

I've got a problem at the moment myself. My Linux computer pretty much locks up every day while I am away. I think stability is the biggest problem with the Linux distros I've used over the last 5 years. They can't stay connected to WiFi and now this instance of Cinnamon Mint I have can't even stay up.