Topic: The PT410X thread: Linux/BSD and Open Source Software for users and beginners! (Read 41917 times)

celticgeek · « **Reply #50 on:** 03 May 2013, 14:34 »

Comments about the Acer C7 and ChrUbuntu.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #51 on:** 03 May 2013, 14:58 »

Well I ordered the Samsung one, but there's probably some stuff that's relevant to both in there. Thanks!

ankhtahr · « **Reply #52 on:** 03 May 2013, 15:10 »

I've read a little bit more negative comments about the Samsung one though. Also the software selection is a bit more limited, you know, because ARM.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #53 on:** 03 May 2013, 15:39 »

Yeah, but solid state and longer battery life pushed me towards it. Also Linux isn't the primary goal, just something I might mess around with.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #54 on:** 06 May 2013, 15:53 »

It arrived today, set up the wifi and signed it, then turned it off. For some reason my SD card shipped separately and won't be here until tomorrow or Wednesday. I'll install Chrubuntu then.

MisterHeal · « **Reply #55 on:** 24 May 2013, 21:03 »

Quote from: Eternal_Newbie on 05 Apr 2013, 08:37

I haven't used it recently, but AFAIK the nearest thing to that I have found is the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird and Mozilla Seamonkey. You should be able to sync it with Google Calender or any or calendering system that supports CalDav

I dual boot and Win7 and Slackware 13.37 but spend most of the time in Win 7 these days. Haven't gotten round to updating to Slackware 14. Used Slackware since 10.1 . My main reason for using Slackware is that it was the only Distro that would actually install on my PC at the time. Apparently USB keyboards were too revolutionary a concept for the Debian, Ubuntu, SuSe and Fedora installers of the time.

EDIT clarification, spelling

Thanks for the suggestion, I thought about it but I'm not sure I wanna install Thunderbird just to use a plugin for it.

I ditched Arch Linux on my laptop and #! on my desktop for Linux Mint 14 xcfe on both. I don't really have time to mess around with Arch Linux anymore, mint provides an easy solution. Really I haven't touched it since I installed it because schools over and I started work.

I keep telling myself I'll step up a apache web server on my raspberry pi "this" weekend but I never get around to it...

@Method Of Madness did you ever get Chrubuntu on your Chrometop?

Method of Madness · « **Reply #56 on:** 24 May 2013, 21:16 »

I did, but I had issues with the SD card. I eventually just took it off and returned the card. I think I'm just gonna use Chrome OS, it's strictly a travel/note-taking secondary laptop anyway.

Jimor · « **Reply #57 on:** 04 Jun 2013, 17:27 »

Had to reinstall Linux Mint 14 to my laptop after it failed to boot. Most likely caused by a degrading HD, so not an OS issue except that I'll need to get a checkdisc program to identify and isolate bad sectors. Nothing lost as I'm strictly using the laptop to get online when the desktop is in use and maybe play some old games via DOSBox.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #58 on:** 04 Jun 2013, 18:06 »

Run shutdown -rF now, that'll trigger a forcefsck.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #59 on:** 04 Jun 2013, 18:16 »

That just sounds wrong.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #60 on:** 05 Jun 2013, 06:11 »

what's wrong about a forcefsck?

no, but seriously, a fsck (filesystemcheck) is probably the way to go. Maybe installing smartmontools and running smartctl to readout the S.M.A.R.T. data of the HDD would be a good idea too.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #61 on:** 05 Jun 2013, 06:34 »

That's what it stands for? Why not call it an fsc then?

bhtooefr · « **Reply #62 on:** 05 Jun 2013, 06:37 »

celticgeek · « **Reply #63 on:** 05 Jun 2013, 06:38 »

Longer Version.

Loki · « **Reply #64 on:** 05 Jun 2013, 13:06 »

Quote from: bhtooefr on 05 Jun 2013, 06:37

unzip | strip | touch | finger | grep | mount | fsck | more | yes | fsck | fsck | fsck | umount | sleep

That command sequence isn't valid, but it consists entirely of commands that you could expect to find on any given modernish *nix box.

There was a guy on a browser game website who was an admin. Apparently, he and his wive were highly verbally abusive to staff, including the website owner, but held all the strings, so to speak.

The guy had this as his signature. I learned at some point from some moderator that had a normal user used this, they would have received a warning at the very least.

The website eventually got rid of both of them, but there was a lot of manure-hitting-the-windmill involved.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #65 on:** 10 Mar 2014, 12:29 »

So apparently our Fachschaft has made it to planet.debian.org. The article on March 5th about creative usage of Screen Message is about us.

Loki · « **Reply #66 on:** 11 Mar 2014, 03:58 »

Link for laziness and posterity

Link to original post

Congratulations!

ankhtahr · « **Reply #67 on:** 11 Mar 2014, 11:37 »

Hehe, thanks. Funfacts: The Developer of the Screen Message script we're using for it is working at our University, and Ive met the developer of the also mentioned "Infobeamer", as he's member of our hackerspace.

hedgie · « **Reply #68 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 16:34 »

Here's to hoping that the dist-upgrade goes through without difficulty and whatever the new version of KDE is that it doesn't do anything too strange to my UI (I did the upgrade on my laptop last night, but since I use LXDE as desktop on that machine, I don't know what if any KDE strangeness will happen).

ankhtahr · « **Reply #69 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 16:59 »

pff, dist-upgrade. I prefer rolling releases. At least for machines that aren't servers.

hedgie · « **Reply #70 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 17:09 »

I've tried rolling distros before, and they aren't really my thing. It's not like the actual upgrade process is that difficult, since I have a bash script to disable the old repos, change the version number, and enable/refresh the new ones before performing the upgrade operation. Arch certainly has its advantages, but I'm pretty content with my current setup.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #71 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 17:12 »

I wasn't criticising. That's the goodthing about Linux, you can just choose what you like better. Except for systemd. Not much of a choice there sadly.

Edit: I just noticed that my currentpostcount has my birthdate if you read the 9 twice in ddmyy

hedgie · « **Reply #72 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 22:13 »

Oh, I know you weren't. And distro wars are essentially obligatory for *nix users. I think I'm the only person I know who favours OpenSuSE strongly, though. Most people I know are using *buntu or Mint. A couple on Arch. I've tried all of the above as well as Cent OS, and some of the non-Linux *nixen (OS X, *BSD, Solaris). Mainly just 'cos for general computing, I like something that's bloody easy. If I ever get around to running a server again, though, it's going to be CentOS or FreeBSD for sure.

celticgeek · « **Reply #73 on:** 14 Mar 2014, 22:15 »

Mint, of course.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #74 on:** 15 Mar 2014, 01:53 »

My choice for anything not a server:

Edit: Eh, I was originally going to press preview, but I hit "Post" instead. Well. Anyway: Arch Linux with XMonad is my way to go. On my servers I currently have Debian. I am considering to try FreeBSD, so I currently have it in a VM, trying to figure out how to do stuff with it. There are some programs I need to run on my servers which aren't available for BSD, so that might actually take some work.

And by the way, I don't have anything against OpenSuSE. It was my starting point to the Linux world. I used it for four years I think. But then at one point using YaST became too annoying and I tried other distributions. About a week with Kubuntu, then Debian, Aptosid (called sidux at that time), Sabayon, OpenSolaris for a year, Debian again and then Arch.

hedgie · « **Reply #75 on:** 15 Mar 2014, 03:06 »

There's a very good reason that I only use YaST for stuff I'm too lazy to do "properly". That said, I don't touch it for package management. I have always used zypper instead. Same goes for a lot of other things really. YaST is essentially just a front-end for stuff anyhow, and there are some Novell goodies thrown in that I like. Of course, I'm also a KDE junkie who loves emacs, so YMMV.

rschill · « **Reply #76 on:** 15 Mar 2014, 09:55 »

I love mint like I used to love Ubuntu and for the same reasons.

I'm have no tech cred at all. I stick with it for the fact that it just works 99% of the time and almost all the programs and applications I'd want are in one place, just a click away.

hedgie · « **Reply #77 on:** 21 Mar 2014, 13:50 »

You aren't the only one. Mint works great, and does more (IMHO) than any other *nix distro out of the box for users. I actually know an older guy who switched (mostly, still keeps a Windows partition around) to Mint after getting computer VD for the last time, and does everything on Linux that isn't Windows exclusive.

hedgie · « **Reply #78 on:** 15 Apr 2014, 12:43 »

Interesting. It looks like my pet distro will soon have an option for a rolling repo for all the KDE stuff:

http://www.muktware.com/2014/03/opensuse-offer-rolling-release-kde-software-experience/24829

I wonder if they're testing the waters for moving to a full rolling-release distro, or expanding the option to other repos.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #79 on:** 17 Apr 2014, 17:53 »

spent a while with a FreeBSD VM this evening. I quite enjoyed it. I'm not advanced enough to say anything about the Kernel in comparison with Linux, but I like the userland. I might try to do more with FreeBSD, and when I'm comfortable enough with it, switch all my servers over to it.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #80 on:** 19 May 2014, 13:40 »

Tried out KVM today. Thought it was much more complicated than Virtualbox, but it's actually easier using qemu.

Also I spent a short time yesterday with my MPD (music player daemon) setup. I now have my cubietruck at home stream it's output via Icecast. So now, wherever I am, I have access to my music collection, as long as I have internet access. Streamed in q8.0 Ogg Vorbis (256kbit/s), and with listener authentication via htpasswd (so it's non-public and I don't have to pay internet radio fees). It's really neat. And now I've discovered, that my Android MPD Client has support for streaming, so when using Android I don't even need to use two separate apps for controlling and playing Music from my mpd.

I just have to remember to turn off the ALSA output when I'm not at home, because otherwise my flatmate will hear my music as well. Kinda bad when it's around midnight.

hedgie · « **Reply #81 on:** 24 May 2014, 01:10 »

I am starting to love having Netflix again. Although this reinstall of pipelight was not anywhere nearly as painless as the last two times I did it (same machine, and on also on my laptop running an older version of the OS). For those who don't have it yet, and want an easy install

http://software.opensuse.org/package/pipelight

(they have supported versions for all new(ish) versions of OpenSUSE, CentOS, and Fedora as well as Debian 7. Only posting this 'cos a lot of folk I know, even ones who know way more about this stuff than I do hadn't heard of it (and had probably given up hope).

ankhtahr · « **Reply #82 on:** 24 May 2014, 11:41 »

sometimes I seriously wonder, whether some admins wonder what's going on with me, based on my GeoIP locations. I tend to use VPNs, so it can happen, that I'm visiting from Germany, then I'm visiting from Sweden, and now from Iceland, all within the same hour. But I guess people with access to such logs know about the existence of VPNs.

hedgie · « **Reply #83 on:** 25 May 2014, 07:14 »

VLC isn't working at all, but kaffiene is, despite uninstalling the former (and reinstalling), and I got all the codecs before I even installed VLC in the first place. I'm actually contemplating a restart just to see if it actually fixes things.

hedgie · « **Reply #84 on:** 25 Jul 2014, 22:23 »

derp. Who would have thought that switching Wine over to the current snapshots instead of the stable release would break Pipelight?

ankhtahr · « **Reply #85 on:** 25 Jul 2014, 23:05 »

well, as pipelight heavily depends on Wine, no wonder

hedgie · « **Reply #86 on:** 25 Jul 2014, 23:42 »

Obviously. But I have to be able to laugh at myself for being such an idiot. Odd thing is that the issue that I've been getting (I had to switch Pipelight providers after it broke w/ wine stable, and *that* repo required a higher version than stable) lately with Netflix is a "DRM issue", rather than Silverlight not working.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #87 on:** 26 Jul 2014, 02:53 »

I've never gotten anything depending on Silverlight working. Not even on Windows. On both my notebook and my PC. Well, no Amazon Prime video for me. Their selection sucks anyway. So I uninstalled pipelight because it was only giving me trouble, even when I wasn't using it.

hedgie · « **Reply #88 on:** 26 Jul 2014, 12:42 »

TBH, I didn't have much of a problem to get it running under Win7 Pro on my old laptop, but I don't know if the issue right now I'm facing is with Silverlight qua Silverlight, or maybe there's something else in my WINE install that isn't providing the DRM libraries that Netflix requires. It's rather annoying to switch video inputs on my display and then be stuck with the tinny laptop speakers (it appears that the audio-out port on that thing is fscked), and I'd really rather be able to watch stuff on my (*nix only) desktop. Further proof, I guess that DRM is evil and having that shit stripped is a pretty legitimate reason to pirate stuff IMO.

Stoon · « **Reply #89 on:** 26 Aug 2014, 12:03 »

Hey all. Running Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon here.

My only complaint about it is the backup software that comes bundled with it sucks. Really bad. Will only get through part of a backup then just hang. Nobody likes it.

Every backup software I've tried has an incredibly bad interface, not clear how to use it, or just doesn't work.

Anybody have any recommendations for something that's easy to use and works? Keep in mind I'm not a coder.

celticgeek · « **Reply #90 on:** 26 Aug 2014, 12:13 »

My approach has been to use an external hard drive (i use Thermaltake BlacX dual bay docking station for this purpose) and do a complete backup of my data every couple of months).

The data that I back up is about 450 Gbytes, and it takes a while, but is relatively easy to do, just copy everything over to a folder on one of the external hard drives.

I am using Mint 14 at this point.

ankhtahr · « **Reply #91 on:** 26 Aug 2014, 16:20 »

Okay, so I am currently fighting with Asterisk. I have no knowledge about telephony, so this is a little bit difficult to me. What I want to achieve is have all the 14 phone numbers I have arrive on my Cisco phone at home. I have the SIP firmware on the phone, so that won't be a problem. What could be a problem is running this asterisk behind the NAT of my router, but I don't think that should be such a big problem because I only want clients from the LAN to be able to use that server. What will be a problem is creating a dialplan and config for Asterisk, because those config files are kinda confusing, and Asterisk is such a big piece of software that there's far too much config for what I need.

hedgie · « **Reply #92 on:** 26 Aug 2014, 19:12 »

Quote from: Stoon on 26 Aug 2014, 12:03

Anybody have any recommendations for something that's easy to use and works? Keep in mind I'm not a coder.

How comfortable are you with the command line?

Stoon · « **Reply #93 on:** 28 Aug 2014, 23:38 »

Quote from: hedgie on 26 Aug 2014, 19:12

Quote from: Stoon on 26 Aug 2014, 12:03

Anybody have any recommendations for something that's easy to use and works? Keep in mind I'm not a coder.
How comfortable are you with the command line?

I don't mind it just as long as the instructions are in English. People tend to say something like "That's easy, just do a ...." and then lapse into obscure codese. Or they skip steps assuming you know stuff.

This reminds me, the new edition of Linux for Dummies was supposed to come out in June, I should see if the book store has it.

hedgie · « **Reply #94 on:** 29 Aug 2014, 01:34 »

I was just asking since it's pretty easy to do an automatic, versioning backup using rsync, and it doesn't really take much coding, just messing with one's crontab a bit. I'll try to dig up the actual script (it's not very long). I'm not much of a coder either, but when I used to have a Mac, I had to get friendly with the terminal in order to actually *do* anything, since Apple locks-down the interface so much to keep the window-lickers from causing too much damage.

cesium133 · « **Reply #95 on:** 09 Sep 2014, 12:30 »

So my advisor is having me write as an appendix to my thesis an instruction manual for a computer program I wrote a while ago. The instruction manual is supposed to be able to introduce an experimental physicist who may not be familiar with a lot of details of computational physics to the program. One problem I just noticed, though, is that a new user may not be familiar with the Linux command line interface that the program runs on. I'd rather not add another section to the appendix that would be irrelevant to people who are already familiar with Linux and distract from the purpose of showing how to use my program. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a really good tutorial for the Linux command line that I could link to along the lines of "If you're not familiar with the Linux command line, read this."

Stoon · « **Reply #96 on:** 07 Dec 2014, 15:47 »

I'm keenly interested in this tablet. Based on Linux, respects privacy, good specs (except for the battery looks like). Can use Android apps. Raised $1.2 million in the first two days of their Indiegogo campaign. Wow.

http://jolla.com/tablet/

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet

cesium133 · « **Reply #97 on:** 22 Jan 2015, 19:45 »

I love how PulseAudio was supposed to fix all that was wrong with audio on Linux, but on every install of Linux I've done since then I've run into audio problems where the solution turned out to be uninstalling PulseAudio...

ankhtahr · « **Reply #98 on:** 23 Jan 2015, 09:32 »

PulseAudio is practically my arch enemy. I hate it with burning passion.

ALSA works perfectly fine, so I don't really see why I'd need pulse to replace it. Okay, there are some neat features in it, but mostly it feels just like bloat.

And it resamples all your audio, which sucks huge donkey balls.

pwhodges · « **Reply #99 on:** 23 Jan 2015, 10:20 »

Quote from: ankhtahr on 23 Jan 2015, 09:32

And it resamples all your audio, which sucks huge donkey balls.

What?! Are they trying to be Microsoft?

THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

Author Topic: The PT410X thread: Linux/BSD and Open Source Software for users and beginners! (Read 41917 times)