Hi Andrew,
Nice to hear from you again and lovely to hear about your set up.
At the moment, having bought the hardware, and having installed the software in
both computers, and having played around with them for a while, setting up my
various accounts, and making one computer for experimenting on and the other
one as my main computer for communications etc. I have decided on the following
priorities.
My laptops are HP 255 G6 Laptop, AMD A6-9225 2.6GHz, 4GB DDR4, 1TB HDD, 15.6"
LED, DVDRW, AMD, WIFI, Free DOS.
I have installed Ubuntu 18.04 on both of them, though I will be changing over
to Linux Mint 19.1 a bit later, as I have heard a lot about it.
1. To learn more about the BIOS, particularly about secure booting and
something called UEFI.
When I first installed Ubuntu, I installed it straight onto my new laptop. I
only discovered afterwards about safe booting and UEFI compared with legacy. I
don't know very much about them and don't know what difference these settings
might make, particularly when it comes to installing some kind of virtual
machine or Virtual Operating System software. I need help and advice on that,
either from personal experience or some good urls to visit for documentation or
video tutorials.
2. Back up and disk imaging.
Obviously, backing up private and personal data is essential when experimenting
with new operating systems and software. Coming from a windows background, I
have found disk imaging helpful, as well as carrying out back ups via
proprietary software. However, I understand that the Linux operating systems
have a different file system and architecture, to which I am a complete newbie,
and that there are other ways of doing such things.
In particular, when I add new software or use BASH or the Terminal (or
Terminator), I am worried about crashing the computer and having to go through
all that time wasting procedure of re-installing the system. I know that there
are other ways of repairing Linux operating systems. Any help as above
regarding procedures or software or articles or tools I can use to fix faults
etc. would be much appreciated.
3. Networking.
I have always had trouble setting up networks and connecting various computers
together, and I am finding that I am having much more difficulty in setting up,
connecting and recognising my computers via my home wireless network. In
particular, getting my computers to recognise a hard disk which is connected
via a usb to my wireless router, for back up purposes of my private and
personal data. Some advice as above in this area would be most helpful.
4. The Terminal.
Learning to use Linux commands and the Bash Terminal
There are the main areas which I am exploring at the moment. I have noticed
that a lot of stuff I look up, is couched in language I don't understand, and
there are a lot of techies out there, who just whiz through stuff, leaving me
completely bemused and at a loss as to what to do. The number of times, too,
where I have taken what has turned out to be bad, or incomplete or
misunderstood advice, has led me up the garden path to spending hours on
wearisome re-installs. I have been playing around with Bash Terminal, learning
some of the commands and using them. I have discovered a chap on Youtube
called J Collins who does some good videos on lots to do with Linux and is easy
to understand. Like me he does go on a bit about things which are irrelevant,
but at least he makes the subject more interesting and he stimulates my
imagination...
5. Learning to use Synaptic Package Software to find specific software and
finding suitable repositories and setting them up on my computer.
Any help with the above, from anyone, would be most appreciated...:-)
ATB
Dougie.
On 22/03/2019 01:13, Andrew Hornback wrote:
Dougie,
If you're looking for "new to you" hardware, I'm still well impressed with
various flavors of Linux and BSD on the older Dell Latitude E-series systems.
In my current fleet, I've got a pair of E6410s that were built for very
specific purposes and an E6510 that I use for some multimedia production work
(and to support an older audio recording interface since the manufacturer no
longer makes drivers available for it under Mac OS X).
The EXX00 and EXX10 systems are the same ones that I was buying by the pallet
load from Dell back in 2010... the key to keeping these systems relevant today
is to make sure you upgrade the RAM (both of these series of systems max out at
8 GB) and a good SSD in place of a spinning drive would be a God-send from a
performance standpoint. If you're really going to "go for the gusto", look for
a Dell Precision laptop from the same era. Effectively the same chassis with a
better motherboard, processor and graphics section. All of these systems are
pretty well supported at this point, can run virtually any version of Linux,
BSD, Solaris or Windows you want to throw at them, and have decent
upgrade/maintenance paths since there's plenty of documentation available for
them (unlike my ruggedized General Dynamics GD6000 out in the garage...)
I tend to run the daylights out of a system when I have one that really, really
works well - prime example is the small collection of Silicon Graphics hardware
I have floating around. My purple SGI Indigo2 and little blue Indy were built
during the George H. W. Bush and John Major era while the Octane dates back to
1998. By today's standards, they're dinosaurs... but, they've done everything
that I've ever asked of them with total aplomb.
As to the low spec versions of Linux that are out there, one of my "toys" is a
management node for my home network that I built out of a HP thin client - it
boots Puppy Linux off of a 128 MB (yes, MB) USB stick that's in an internal USB
port... all of the hardware is supported, and it works like a champ. Very low
buck, low spec system, but when all it has to do is operate a serial port and a
network port, you don't need much.
Thanks,
--- A
On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 6:23 AM Douglas Rankine
<douglasrankine@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:douglasrankine@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Dear No Data,
Thank you for your most kind words. The reason I chose the latest versions of
Linux Mint and Ubuntu, was because their long term release is much more
reliable and user friendly, and I knew that I would be able to download the
latest software. My two old laptops weren't up to the job. The first one, was
an old Emachines one, which was only 32 bit and was very slow on both Linux and
Windows 10. The newer laptop was called a Zoostorm and was basically cheap
crap. It fell apart after 3 years, the two folding anchor points holding the
screen on to the body, crumbled. My new laptops were about half the price of
the old ones, and had a better spec, so I am quite happy with them. It seems
to me that one doesn't get more than 3 to 5 years out of computers these days,
all that "planned obsolescence", which is built in, and which is helping us
ruin the planet. Still, mustn't grumble, must be suffering a hangover from
celebrating International Happiness Day...:-)
I know that there are very bare bone forms of Linux operating systems, and good
luck to them that like to use them, but they are not for me, though, if I get
bored with Ubuntu and Mint, I am sure that I will move on to other things...
ATB
Dougie.
On 20/03/2019 03:09, no data wrote:
Thats awesome to hear you are expanding your knowledge of computers into free
and open source software!
Just a thought tho, your computer has to be really really really old to be
unable to run *some* version of linux. Tinycore can run on 46mb of ram with a
pentium II and Puppy Linux will run on 64MB of ram and a 333mhz cpu, both of
which have a GUI (as basic as they may be)..
You could even run linux on less if you run it headless.. but it comes down to
what you want to use it for. Either of the examples above would not be able to
handle running any modern popular software, but could be used to run specific
processes for whatever reason you might need.
Its amazing what linux is capable of, even on older hardware!
On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 4:07 PM John Young
<jya@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:jya@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Well said. Thanks for sharing a good read and generous ongoing commentary.
We've employed Ubuntu with SecureDrop and enjoyed
its security features. Agreed, it is not Windows.
At 04:23 PM 3/19/2019, you wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
Most of you will have noticed that I haven't been contributing to this
mailing list, much, of late. This is due to a variety of reasons, which
I would like to tell you about here. The Cryptome Mailing list is one
of my few pride and joys, having first discovered it way back at the
beginning of the 21st century.
First of all, when I retired I decided to get involved in a number of
different projects, which have taken up a lot of my time, and which I
had to prioritise, so that I could pursue those which I felt was most
important for my self development. As well as finishing off my house
project a la France, and my new home here in the South of England, I
have undertaken to become more involved in learning Linux. Ever since I
discovered Linux via a computer club presentation on the subject during
my membership of a computer club on the Isle of Wight, a club which is
called the IWPCUG, and is still in existence, I have become
increasingly interested in Linux as an operating system. There was a
small group of members there who were devoted to Linux, in the club,
which at the time mostly followed the Microsoft Operating System as that
was the most popular and attracted the most members.
May I say, it took me a number of years for me to move over from
Microsoft Windows to Linux, and I started off by installing Ubuntu, on a
dual boot basis, on a couple of my desktops, so that I could get to
experiment and understand it better. I have never been mathematically
inclined, nor have I been interested in programming, in fact, studying
them tended to make me fall asleep!!!
Due to my involvement in many other projects, it took me a long time to
knuckle down and devote myself to exploring the world of open source.Â
As time has gone by, I have watched and used Linux operating systems, in
particular Ubuntu, both because I became increasingly disenchanted with
Microsoft OS 10 in particular, even though it was free upgrade on the
previous Operating System, and because Linux operating systems improved
so much, particularly Ubuntu, that I felt that they had become user
friendly enough for even most ordinary folks to use and learn from. The
latest Ubuntu 18.04 for instance is easy to install and use, though,
like all operating systems, if one doesn't know what one is doing then
crashes become inevitable. Self over confidence is the big obstacle,
though it is also the way that one learns...how to make the same mistake
many times before one manages to find a solution:-).
Recently, two of my laptops decided to go down the pan, one after the
other, at 5 years of age, they were just too old, even for Linux; so I
had to buy new ones, and decided to move over completely to Linux,
installing different Linux operating systems on each one, Ubuntu 18.04
and Linux Mint 19.1 on the other. It was very easy to do so, as simple
and as straightforward as installing Microsoft 10 from a DVD or a USB
flash drive.
I hope John won't consider the following as advertising or marketing on
behalf of some corporation or company, but I have to say, that after
doing a lot of research I came across an HP laptop being sold by
ebuyeruk. com for just under £200.  What attracted me to it was not
only the spec, which was reasonable and good enough for what I wanted to
do with my computers, but because it came with DOS, and not MS Windows,
and I knew enough at the time to be able to install a Linux Operating
system on to it.
After much deliberation, I bought one, and installed Ubuntu 18.04 onto
it. It went like a dream, an hour or so later, I was on the WWW and had
installed my various email providers and it all went a treat. However,
not all was well, and after a few little "experiments" of installing new
software and trying out a bit of this and a bit of that; I managed to
crash the computer and, my knowledge being so scant, I didn't know how
to restore it, not at all like Windows 10!...so finished up
re-installing the whole system...:-(. It is very difficult to get
access to the Internet when the only computer one has, has crashed!:-)
:-)
It was at that juncture that I decided to buy another HP computer, of
the same model, HP255 G6, as the first install and experiment had gone
so well, and without having at least one computer to work with, I had
little chance of learning problem solving without access to the internet
and World Wide Web, so I spent another couple of hundred quid to get my
second one. Most of the adverts I have seen for Linux using computers
has a cost of anything from £1000 to £2000!!!
Since then, I have been really enjoying myself, exploring all those
resources which the WWW has to offer, from Linux based sites to Linux on
Youtube. Youtube in particular, I have found invaluable, there are some
really good resources on there, and, after spending a lot of time,
watching videos and listening to tutorials, got a better understanding
and more rounded approach to the subject. I feel much more confident in
what I am doing, and, by having a second computer, keeping one for my
main form of communication, and the other for experimenting, I am
finding that I can rescue myself from many basic difficulties. Linux,
for me, has been great fun and is a great way of learning about
computers and operating systems these in my turpitude, as well as being
open source and free to users, there is a wonderful community out there
which helps others, and most of them do it voluntarily and because they
want to freely share their knowledge and experience. There are those,
of course, who like to belittle others, or joke at one's expense, but
one has to learn to find more helpful sites and disregard the trolls.
I hope this posting encourages those of you who are interested in all
aspects of computing, and who still use MS or Mac operating systems to
consider moving over to Linux, and other open source systems, as they
have improved a lot, and are so much more secure, and they are very
powerful too, as long as one persists in ones learning and practicing on
them. In particular the discovery of virtual software and virtual
machines has been of great help and service to me.
I realise that I am very lucky as an individual of course, I am in
retirement, and have a small pension and the facilities and time in
which to indulge myself in these areas, there are many people in this
world who don't have the same kind of opportunities, the money or the
time to do such things. I believe that one should always take advantage
of opportunities which are presented to oneself, so that one can self
develop one's knowledge and ideas and explore the world around one. So
many of our fellow human beings don't have such opportunities, so, those
of us who do have such a luxury, should make the most of what we have
and enjoy and learn and listen and entertain and be entertained by
knowledge and exploration as well as sharing it with others. The WWW is
such a marvelous resource, in my view, developing all the time, and
giving people the opportunity to learn so much more in their individual
lifetimes that it is an opportunity not to be missed.
ATB,
Dougie.
