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Thread: Linux (Ubuntu, etc)

  1. #11
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    Ubuntu is rad unless you happen to a specific thing you want to do that it doesn't support, like Windows games or Adobe products. Then you're hosed. For most of American homes, though, it's beyond plenty.

  2. #12
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    I forgot, Ubuntu also recognizes my probably ten-year-old Sansa Fuze 4GB mp3 player. That's good, as I still use it sometimes.

    I'd like to get a newer box or laptop with a HDMI output running Ubuntu so I could run a cable to our HDTV for streaming. My old laptop is kind of quirky. Sometimes Firefox will suddenly crash while I'm watching a video, and I get these pop-ups saying "System Problem Detected. Send Report?" I always hit Cancel on that one, and once in a while when I boot up I get something like a blue screen of death and an angry beep saying there's no hard drive detected, so I imagine this laptop is on its last legs. I would be fun to see how this OS works on a newer, more powerful machine.

    Finally, I got into the series Star Trek Enterprise (the one with Scott Bakula) a while back and was enjoying streaming it for free with the large external monitor from Hulu.com - just the plain Hulu, not Hulu Plus. One night I turned off an episode on the Ubuntu machine and went to bed with an iPad and headphones, thinking I'd finish the last few minutes on that device before going to sleep. Nope. It said I had to open an account with Hulu in order to view anything from the iPad, using the Safari browser. The Ubuntu machine gives no such message. I can browse and play whatever I want there on Ubuntu without having to create an account or anthing else of that nature.

    Have you guys seen the System76 Meerkat? Looks pretty cool to me.

    https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat#


  3. #13
    Subaru Unimpreza SportWagon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Yes, I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 on an older laptop connected to a large monitor and it's a fine basement computer for emailing, websurfing, and streaming video, like the occasional weekend movie I'll watch while doing boring stuff like ironing, getting my cycling gear ready for the work week, etc.

    [...]

    Speaking of Ubuntu, I keep meaning to make an account at ubuntuforums.org to ask why I no longer get updates, and why the Ubuntu Software Center closes itself (or crashes) when I try to launch it. I'm also unable to update Firefox, even though I keep getting messages that it's out of date and I have to click "Allow" to watch Flash videos. Maybe I should ask in our Ubuntu thread at this forum, since I just hate making yet another account at a website with yet another user name and password to remember. Other than no updating, the old Dell runs great, and I can't see the need to use any other OS, at least for my current needs.
    Did your install create a ridiculously small /boot partition which quickly
    overflowed with kernel updates?

    In a command-line (shell) window, what does "df -h /boot" say?

  4. #14
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Update for SW - sorry, but I've done nothing more about this yet. I need to spend some time learning about Ubuntu and/or Linux, because I don't even know what a command-line (shell) window is, or what df-h/boot is either.

    All I know about the installation was that I chose to make it a 100% Ubuntu machine. I don't have the option of booting in WinXP any more.

    I do still have the installation CD and have thought of just reformatting it again, since I don't have anything saved on this PC, and the few programs I've downloaded are easily downloaded again - Thunderbird, Open Arena, scanning software, etc.
    Last edited by George; December 14th, 2015 at 11:51 AM.

  5. #15
    Subaru Unimpreza SportWagon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Update for SW - sorry, but I've done nothing more about this yet. I need to spend some time learning about Ubuntu and/or Linux, because I don't even know what a command-line (shell) window is, or what df-h/boot is either.

    All I know about the installation was that I chose to make it a 100% Ubuntu machine. I don't have the option of booting in WinXP any more.

    I do still have the installation CD and have thought of just reformatting it again, since I don't have anything saved on this PC, and the few programs I've downloaded are easily downloaded again - Thunderbird, Open Arena, scanning software, etc.
    Well, for a start I said "df -h /boot" not "df-h/boot".

    Code:
    sportwagon@ubuntu:~$ df -h /boot
    Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/sda1       134M   97M   28M  79% /boot
    sportwagon@ubuntu:~$ df-h/boot
    -bash: df-h/boot: No such file or directory
    sportwagon@ubuntu:~$
    If what I think happened happened, you'd need a fairly extensive command-line session to get things to the state where the graphical Update Manager would work again.

  6. #16
    Subaru Unimpreza SportWagon's Avatar
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    Anybody else tried 16.04 yet?

  7. #17
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    Yes, but in very limited capacity.

  8. #18
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    So I initially ran it in a VirtualBox. Just download the "CD" and put it in the virtual drive. Tested, and eventually installed on the VirtualBox.

    Then I got distracted though booting a loop-back root of an old 10.04 image on the same VirtualBox.

    But eventually I wanted an actual 16.04 bootable USB, and it seemed problematic. Intermediate versions of the standard Ubuntu startup creator wouldn't install a different version CD image, and a third-party one I had seemed to produce a stick which failed to boot.

    Initially I had tried elevating the privileges of the VirtualBox so its running 16.04 partition could write to a USB device (stick). I had thought that had not worked, but likely it had. Among other things I'd forgotten which F key to press and even where to look for the boot process telling me that. After I verified the USB stick process with an older bootable USB, I tried creating the stick in the 16.04 VirtualBox again.

    And it worked!

    Got some boring stuff to do before the end of today so adding a multiboot to 16.04 directly will wait a day or two.

    I notice in a little playing, with a couple of alternative window managers (alternatives to Unity), that the "xsetroot" command seems to be silently ignored.

  9. #19
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    Sounds like an interesting virtualbox interaction. I have only run it on metal doing a few specific tasks (namely lamp) without any issues. I only refresh these systems once in a while, so coming from 13.xx (IIRC) it was a nice improvement. Every time everything gets easier. Pretty soon I'm going to have to stop upgrading stuff or I'll no longer be needed.

  10. #20
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SportWagon View Post
    Well, for a start I said "df -h /boot" not "df-h/boot".

    Code:
    sportwagon@ubuntu:~$ df -h /boot
    Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/sda1       134M   97M   28M  79% /boot
    If what I think happened happened, you'd need a fairly extensive command-line session to get things to the state where the graphical Update Manager would work again.
    Finally, here is my answer:

    Code:
    ubuntu1@ubuntu1-Latitude-D620:~$ df -h /boot
    Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/sda1        73G   15G   54G  22% /
    I notice SW's result include the word "boot" that I have bolded in the quote above. I don't know what that means, but I wanted to clarify that mine does not say that. The lack of that word in my results is not due to incomplete copying and pasting on my part.
    Last edited by George; March 14th, 2016 at 06:13 AM.

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