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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: zero on January 17, 2014, 11:51:48 PM

Title: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on January 17, 2014, 11:51:48 PM
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on January 22, 2014, 04:10:23 AM
One of the things I forgot to mention about most Linux distributions is release cycles. Every so often there's a release with a LTS suffix. This stands for Long Term Support. LTS releases come out every two years in the Spring and each LTS release now has a supported life span of 5 years. This means there's 3 years of overlap for support between LTS versions. If the version you're using is stable and does what you need, there's no need to upgrade until the support ends for your version. Ubuntu (in all flavors) 10.04 and 12.04 were LTS releases. A lot of attention is given to stability for these LTS releases. For that reason most people who prefer stability over bleeding edge features will opt for LTS.

Every 6 months or so there are also interim development releases. So, between 10.04LTS and 12.04LTS there was 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10, the normal progression of version numbers. Support for these versions now only lasts 1 year with about 6 months of overlap. While these versions usually contain the latest and greatest features, they're often less reliable than the LTS counterparts. Once you start down that upgrade roller coaster and wish you had an LTS version instead, you're kind of stuck until the ride comes to an end with the next LTS release. The only other option is to wipe and reinstall the prior LTS release, then wait for the next LTS release, perhaps even several months after the next LTS to wait for all the wrinkles to be ironed out.

Such is the boat I'm in right now. I made the plunge to try 13.10 because I wanted to see what sort of little annoyances had been fixed since 12.04. Certain video drivers I was waiting for are now native to the kernel, mouse cursors were fixed, system settings were reorganized, it just seemed to work better. That is, of course, until tonight when it just decided that the Linux partition should disappear. I mean POOF! It just vanished. The boot loader gave me "Error: no such partition, grub rescue>_". Um, WHAT??? Where did it go? I tried a program testdisk to recover it which is normally very good at such things without success. I tried boot-repair-disk which told me it had repaired my bootloader but when I rebooted all I had was my original Win7 Home Premium. Probing with Gparted showed that where my Xubuntu used to be was now unformatted empty space.

Just for S&G I am now reinstalling 13.10 one more time on my laptop, with much less faith than before. If it crashes hard like this again I'll revert back to a clean install of 12.04LTS, deal with the little annoyances and wait until about August or September before upgrading to 14.04LTS due to come out around April. Thankfully I have my list above to serve as a guide to rebuild by. {sigh} Or who knows? Maybe I'll get really brave and try another flavor altogether next time!

For more information about release cycles see this article. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: prowlingbear on February 07, 2014, 01:41:58 PM

Great summary and just getting ready to convert a couple of old XP boxes over to Ubuntu so this was also most informative.

pb
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: cyborggold on March 16, 2014, 07:10:26 AM
This is a decent overview of the different flavors of Linux, thanks! I am going to start working on converting my mother to Linux as her older machine is too slow running XP to actually do anything, lol. I also appreciate the software list, it covers 95% of everything she would need to have on her system.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on March 16, 2014, 02:41:47 PM
Thanks, guys. I've also been playing with Debian Wheezy which draws from all the same repositories so there's not much of a learning curve. I still prefer XFCE the most but might try KDE for my desktop environment on one or two machines.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: smith on March 18, 2014, 06:10:58 PM
As a happy, satisfied Linux user it seems a good idea to add some info to this thread...
I've used & tried MANY distros; and I am fine with Linux in it's native forms
BUT=> if it can be like windows a bit=> why not ??

Therefore I strongly recommend what I am using myself - Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with LXDE added on top of it.
This has all the robust goodness of Linux with a sprinkling of windoze-likeness added for the sake of comfort.

Of course there are a bazillion Ubuntu variants available - and there is a very minimal Lubuntu as well that uses LXDE, but that is not the road I have chosen to travel as it is a bit TOO minimal for my liking.

Using Ubuntu as a base OS=> I just add in the goodies that 12.04 does not come with (codecs, etc..) and strip out any extra/useless apps that I will not use and it is great, fast & extremely reliable.

This is very easy to do, and as described is very "Grandma-friendly" and resembles the familiar windows GUI quite a bit.

Regarding other variations of Linux=>
There is great good in having a 'play box' to try out different distros upon after one is comfortable with Linux.

Included in those I've most recently installed and used are Zorin Lite, Core & Ultimate.
These are also Ubuntu variants and have been very recommended for Linux newbies & windoze users.
My opinion of them ?? They are just OK.
They do have many annoying bugs from all the tweaking the Zorin boys did.
(They are also aimed squarely at 7 & 8 users, and not XP users at all...)
Their minimal versions are free and their 'Ultimate version' is NOT worth paying for IMO.

Also just to be very clear:
I am a very happy XP user with no intentions of giving it up anytime soon regardless of all the fear-porn that is getting aimed at it's ridiculous 'end-of-life' pronouncement from the world's greediest corporation.

Running in my Linux PC is VMWare Player, in which I run a virtualized XP so that I can use all the time-proven windows apps that I wish to keep around.
This is a thrill, really - to have XP running faster & smoother in a VM than natively and Linux at the very same time on the same PC is just plain cool - and cooler still=> what does all this s/w cost ?!?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
How can that be beat ?!?

My PC h/w is not tremendously old either, hence my choice is not predicated upon having a dinosaur-age PC.
(My previous PC was a dual core Athlon 5000 with 4GB and a 300GB HDD. The one I'm using is newer still with higher specs.)

The way I see it - only those with loads of  extra $$$ or gamers NEED the latest OS & h/w.

Most regular folks just use their PCs to browse, email and make a document now and then - for such mundane things there is no hurry to constantly buy new stuff.

It seems that many folks (most of whom have never even tried using Linux for 5 minutes...) tend to bad-mouth it as if it is some sort of alien thing or some junk for those too poor to buy a new PC; such silliness is quite far from the actual truth.

The only 'old' thing about my Linux PC is the XP I'm using inside of Linux, and no matter how new my h/w, Linux handles it flawlessly - and then the virtualization allows XP to run on top of that, free of problems.

To anyone reluctant to jump all the way into Linux I say this:
Download & burn a DVD or make a USB stick of one or several distributions in their 'live' forms.
That way you can try them out free of any commitment.
If they don't frighten you in any manner, then you can install one by itself or beside windoze on most any PC.

And after that leap is made...you can plan to forget about forced reboots, data losses and BSODs for good !!!

Best Wishes to All.

smith
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on March 18, 2014, 09:00:14 PM
Very nice contribution. Thanks for that.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: Zensei on March 19, 2014, 06:29:18 PM
Hello, first poster here.

I am totally with you on Linux. I've been a user since 2000.

I am currently using windows out of necessity (work), linux and mac OSX.

The ubuntu variants are certainly the most polished and stable distros and can easily replace windows if you don't need specialized software.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on March 20, 2014, 05:58:20 PM
First of all, welcome.

Whether you subscribe to the fear porn or not, with support running out for XP and many users feeling a bit abandoned, right now is the best time to evangelize Linux to them. Lubuntu and Xubuntu are the two most XP-like variants that people can pretty much step right into. First thing I do when I install is move the application bar to the left, task bar to the bottom and presto, almost a perfect duplicate for XP right out of the gate.

Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on February 08, 2015, 03:05:23 PM
Note: This bug workaround appears to be depreciated as of 16.04.

Found this little gold nugget in the Linux Mint forums. It's called TumblerdWatcher v1.0 and it SOLVES the Thunar tumblerd process hog that often crashes and delays or prevents removal of flash media. I made a directory /home/myusername/.thunar, put this shell script in there, made it executable, then added it to the list of startup applications in Settings Manager/Session and Startup. This is a must have for anyone using XFCE. Enjoy.

Here is the raw code:
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#!/bin/bash
# Tumblerdwatcher v 1.0
# Script to check and kill tumblerd process if a loop is suspected. To be automatically scheduled at user session start.
# Homemade workaround for bug: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... rd#p554241
# The author has no responsibility for the execution. Feel free to distribute and modify it.
# Advice are welcome to rs2809@yahoo.it.

period=60                  # check period (sec)
process="/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/tumbler-1/tumblerd"   # tumblerd binary path
Pcpu=20                     # tolerated cpu usage (%)
Pmem=25                     # tolerated memory usage (%)
mountpath="/media"               # automatic mount point for removable storage
sec=10                     # time limit (sec) for opened file at $mountpath for thumbnail generation
sg="-15"                  # process termination signal (-15 is OK)
logpath="/tmp/Tumblerdwatcher.log"         # log path                     
cat /dev/null > $logpath
exec >$logpath 2>&1

# reset log file
while true

# execute endlessly
do
sleep $period

# wait a set period of time
[[ `ps -ef | grep $process | grep -v 'grep' | wc -l` -eq 0 ]] && continue

# skip to next period if not executing
ps -eo pcpu,pid,pmem,args | grep $process | grep -v 'grep' | while read dpcpu pid dpmem

# catch proccess id, cpu usage and memory usage
  do
  pcpu=`echo $dpcpu | cut -d'.' -f1`
  pmem=`echo $dpmem | cut -d'.' -f1`
  [[ $pcpu -gt $Pcpu ]] || [[ $pmem -gt $Pmem ]] && kill $sg $pid && echo "`date` PID $pid $pcpu/$Pcpu %cpu $pmem/$Pmem %mem" && continue

# if cpu usage or memory usage exceed, kill it and report values in the log file
  [[ `lsof -p $pid | grep $mountpath | wc -l` -eq 0 ]] && continue

# if no opened file by tumblerd at removable storage mountpoint, skip to next period
  lsof -p $pid | grep $mountpath | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f9 > /tmp/tumblerd.lsof.old

# list opened files
  sleep $sec

# wait for tolerated time limit
  [[ `lsof -p $pid | grep $mountpath | wc -l` -eq 0 ]] && continue

# if no more opened file skip to next period
  lsof -p $pid | grep $mountpath | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f9 > /tmp/tumblerd.lsof.new

# list opened files again
  for opened_file in `cat /tmp/tumblerd.lsof.old`

# if some file was open before....
   do
     grep $opened_file /tmp/tumblerd.lsof.new && kill $sg $pid && echo "`date` PID $pid ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^" && continue

# ...and it's still hung open, kill tumblerd
   done
  done
done
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on July 03, 2015, 08:00:45 PM
I'm adding something to my list of must have utilities. It's called pulseaudio-equalizer. Absolutely fantastic to have. Here's how...

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/10/system-wide-pulseaudio-equalizer.html

Enjoy!
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on October 11, 2015, 10:52:19 PM
I ran into a problem with Chromium locking my laptop computer up *HARD* when opening too many tabs. Thought it would warn if approaching a limit but I guess not. Another problem I have on my laptop is with the hybrid Intel/nVidia Ion-2 graphics. I'm doing all the right things to utilize the nVidia side but WebGL simply will not work. Can't rotate things in 3D at Thingiverse. However, WebGL works fine with Firefox on the same laptop. And, on both of my desktops using non-Ion-2 nVidia cards WebGL in Chromium works fine. Something many have reported that nVidia omitted from the Ion-2 drivers, even winblows users are complaining.

Looking through the bug reports I'm sensing some rumblings and dissatisfaction among Chromium users. Devs apparently deliberately pulled accelerated graphics support because some reported GPU problems without giving users the ability to enable it on demand "at their own risk". Many have switched to using Chrome. I refuse. I may, however, start using Firefox until the dust settles over Chromium.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: Adirondacks4me on November 01, 2015, 04:06:34 PM
Sure don't know about the too many tab problem but man Chromium does lock me up hard. Power cycle is the only thing
that will get me out.. So I'm on Firefox now until I see something that identifies a bad update etc.... Your initial post Z of the Ubuntu add ons etc... is priceless to a newbie...  8) AD4ME
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on November 02, 2015, 11:20:21 PM
I refer back to it myself every time I reload the OS.  :o
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on May 28, 2016, 01:15:36 PM
I have run into this problem so many times now that I am posting the workaround here.
Problem: system-config-samba does nothing when launched, even preceded by gksu.
Workaround:
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$ sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf
All this does is create an empty file libuser.conf in directory /etc.
Why we are still f#(%ing around with this "workaround" even as of 16.04LTS is beyond any comprehension.  >:(
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on September 24, 2016, 04:08:40 PM
A problem I've had since 14.04 and now 16.04 is slow response in Synaptic quick search. The problem surfaces when update-apt-xapian-index runs and chews up 100% of one processor thread while it completely rebuilds the index database. Some people have disabled xapian-index altogether but that also cripples the quick search. A more elegant solution was found here... http://www.sapnwnewbie.com/2010/11/high-cpu-usage-by-update-apt-xapi.html  I've copied it below just in case that page ever goes away. This causes the index to update rather than rebuild from scratch every time.

This process is responsible for maintaining an index of packages to speed up search on Synaptic and is scheduled as a cron job (/etc/cron.weekly).

This is the cron job, triggering the process:

#!/bin/sh

CMD=/usr/sbin/update-apt-xapian-index
IONICE=/usr/bin/ionice

# Rebuild the index
if [ -x $CMD ]
then
if [ -x $IONICE ]
then
  nice $IONICE -c3 $CMD --quiet
else
  nice $CMD --quiet
fi
fi

Edit the lines to show the following:

#!/bin/sh

CMD=/usr/sbin/update-apt-xapian-index
IONICE=/usr/bin/ionice

# Rebuild the index
if [ -x $CMD ]
then
if [ -x $IONICE ]
then
  nice -n 19 $IONICE -c 3 $CMD --update --quiet
else
  nice -n 19 $CMD --update --quiet
fi
fi

The modification will help reduce CPU usage. -n 19 option (you may already have this) gives least favorable scheduling priority. --update option causes the process to update the index instead of rebuilding it every time.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on December 04, 2016, 05:07:50 AM
Here's another tip for Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu 14.04, 14.10, 15.04, 15.10, 16.04 and possibly 16.10 laptop users.

Problem: Touchpad so sensitive to touch it's almost unusable. It's way too sensitive.
Cause: Default xinput settings are not based on any real world logic.
Solution: Modify xinput settings.

This problem has plagued me for years and for years my only solution has been to use an external mouse! Here's how to fix that. Open a terminal window. Enter...
Code Select
xinput --list

It should look something like this...
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:~$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    id=2 [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              id=4 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              id=14 [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                    id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard              id=5 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            id=6 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                id=7 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                id=8 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            id=9 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                            id=10 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ USB2.0 UVC VGA WebCam                    id=11 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Eee PC WMI hotkeys                      id=12 [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            id=13 [slave  keyboard (3)]
:~$

My touchpad is the line that says...
Code Select
SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              id=14 [slave  pointer  (2)]

To see a complete list of your current xinput settings, enter...
Code Select
xinput --list-props "full device name or ID"

Notice, you can define your device by NAME or by ID. However, I find that the ID number sometimes changes, whereas the name itself never changes. So, to make absolutely certain you define the correct device every time, on the command line here's the command I enter to change the sensitivity...
Code Select
xinput --set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Finger" 55 60 0

The numbers correspond to touch low (the pressure it releases at), touch high (the pressure it engages at) and press (only for trackpoint emulation so leave that at 0). The default values are something ridiculously low like 12 15 0, so basically just getting your fingertip close enough to move air near the touchpad causes the pointer to move. Leave the third number at 0 and play with the first two. The difference between the first two is for hysteresis. I like  a difference of 5. My wife's Dell 6520 is set to 107 112 0 for roughly the same sensitivity as my Asus 1215n at 55 60 0. My newest Asus Zenbook UX32VD uses 25 30 0. So as you can see, there's a wide spread of values depending on the make and model of your laptop. The full command line for my new UX32VD laptop is

Code Select
xinput --set-prop "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" "Synaptics Finger" 25 30 0

Once you're happy with the settings, it's time to make them persist between sessions. In your home directory, find the file named ".xsessionrc". If it does not exist, create a new one using mousepad, leafpad, gedit, vi, nano, what ever plain text editor you have and prefer. Now just paste your entire command line into this file and save. That's it! Every time you log in, your settings are restored.

Some people have expressed that this solution does not work if you've disconnected & reconnected (unplugged, replugged) a device. Their problem is likely related to the ID # changing upon reconnect. I tried to post my explanation of using the device name rather than ID at StackExchange (AskUbuntu) but it's very difficult to earn enough reputation points there to post anything at all!

I hope you find this tip useful. I cannot tell you how pleasant it is now to use my touchpad again.
Title: Re: Alternatives to windoze
Post by: zero on September 24, 2017, 11:29:01 PM
Problem: Synaptic fails with "W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/root/.synaptic/tmp//tmp_sh' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)"

Solution that works and is safe at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptitude/+bug/1543280

QuoteChristian Mertes (cmertes) wrote on 2016-09-11:   #20
Thanks for this nice workaround, John, but I would strongly suggest not to execute that first line. If you have already, set the permissions back to 755. Instead, the better way to fix this permission problem is the following line:

sudo chown _apt /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/

May I at this point also say that the continued existence of this trivial bug is a disgrace and a reason for me to question if there are structural problems within the core Ubuntu development community that may easily lead to more serious problems.

I totally agree with Christian's sentiments here. Very disappointed that this bug has affected so many for so long and still has not been addressed.
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