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So I've been pleasantly busy with my new computer and operating system. I'm becoming a Linux user.
Regarding my new PC - as in personal computer not political correctness, lol - it's this neat little box I've 'assembled' - well, not really, all I did was put in my drives and a memory module. But hey, I'm quite proud of that already! First time touching the insides of a machine is quite exciting, especially if it still works afterwards :P
So I unscrewed the box, put in an ssd, a spinning hard drive and a memory module, closed it and... nothing, all i saw was a black screen, no signal on my monitor through any cable or channel - is that what they call them? Anyway, I've tried HDMI, display port, mini display port and the monitor said it was getting nothing and entering power saving mode.
This gave me a bit of a scare that there was something wrong with the PC itself. But googling the question gave me an idea to put the memory card inside a different slot. It has 2.
So that worked. I'm not sure whether it means that if I wanted to buy more memory that slot wouldn't work or maybe it would as long as the other slot is not empty... Oh well, I'm ok with 8Gb memory for now. Everything works very fast.
My Intel Nuc greeted me with its visual bios and I was just happy that it's alive! :D lol
My messy desk. I regret nothing! :D
So then the battle for Linux began.
Which amounted to me trying to install Mint and Ubuntu a couple of times each and failing at the same spot (grub installation, with or without internet on)
I am usually too impatient to start digging into what the problem might be when i just want to get to the new thing already, so I just decided to give a try to another distribution which actually worked and has been working for ... 3 weeks now.
So the winner is ... Linux Lite.
My first impressions as a Windows person first opening a Linux desktop were something of this sort:
- wow, it actually works and is quite user-friendly
- all seems to work out of the box, like videos of various formats just play, you don't need to go install some codeck packs or drivers; wifi just connects...
- the graphic editor might actually replace Photoshop for me for a lot of tasks
I just found myself not opening Windows for days.
I'll keep it on my old laptop just in case. Now that I was able to get that old thing running at a decent speed again, without monstrous lags and freezes. Uninstalled all the Java to hell, that did it. I might install it again should any app complain that it needs it. So far much better without it.
Also, I've decided to install Linux alongside that Windows system. Although my partitioning only allowed 14GB to be used for a new OS. But as Linux supposed to be very small Ive decided to give it a try. Again, I've tried Linux Mint, since lots of people seem to be praising it nowadays. It worked for a day but then started booting into a black screen. I tried rescuing it with a coupple of suggested on the net options, like booting with nomodeset etc but to no avail so I ended up installing Lite version there too, which makes even more sense since Lite is the version to be used especially when you're short on resources. There's also Elementary distro for that but I haven't been curious enough to try it. I can now see how Lite does on my laptop.
From time to time, when I sstart my PC, there will be no internet, for some unknown reson, wifi just doesn't show even in taskbar, gone. A reboot cures it. So that's the only problem I have so far experienced on my system and I consider it a minor annoyance since a reboot is very prompt and the problem fixes itself. I will at some point try to solve that, I think.
But a surprising advantage of running Linux appears to be greater internet speed. I can clearly see that on my dual boot laptop. It's the same machine and same wifi, same browser, same speedtest.net and the results are totally different! 23Mbps down for Windows and almost 50Mbps for Linux!!
And that's my laptop that only has the older Wifi standard, my new Intel NUC is doing over 70Mbps on that wifi.
Oh wait, with a little router configuration change it does even better, this is the best I get on Wifi on my NUC with Linux machine:
And if I were to use cable it'd probably be the 100+ or whatever the provider actually gives, but I don't really need that. Heh, having seen the internet speeds in different countries,at least I can take some small pleasure in saying "I come from the land of good internet" :D Otherwise, of course, the list of what else is good about my country is far from extensive.
Finally, of course, I'm just happy to stay away from the spying, intrusive Windows. It feels great to be actually using open source, free software. I'm sure I could run into some problems down the line, e.g., break something myself)) but so far I feel it's a good idea to try and switch to Linux.
Also, this message was brought you by my new portable, foldable bluetooth keyboard from China that is taking over the world one inexpensive gadget at a time ))
It's much more fun sitting comfortably on the sofa to type this than at the table, especially since it's chilly and my hands get cold. My notebook's keyboard is broken, so I'm using my tablet + this little keyboard. btw, the tablet has acted up once a couple days ago, I almost thought it would have to be opened up and/or taken to repair. But it came right, whew.
F*ing electronics. They sometimes almost give you as much shit as people)))
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Kirk
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18-04-2017
@Irina Your foray into the land of Nod...When I quit being a software engineer, I quit having to deal with all the issues of my environment that needed to be monitored, addressed, fixed just to then be able to do my job as a developer. Really don't miss it. Windows is just layer after layer of band-aids, year after year. Gates started his fortune stealing some code, and hired engineers that just built black box on top of black box, not daring to pull any threads that lead all the way back to whatever he stole and doctored. Microsuck is a mess, but for quite a while at least 80% plus of work to be had used that environment and you had better know it well. Rebooting an application or environment to just make it work is the sign of super klugey software, meaning someone didn't or couldn't figure out how to design robust code.
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theMeme
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22-04-2017
If the WiFi module stops working, it often has something to do with power management. So if your PC goes in sleep/suspended mode the module gets turned off, and it does not get turned on again. You might try to disable the power management for you WiFi. Ah yes, and just restarting the network manager via sudo service network-manager restart, might do the job of making your wifi work again too, instead of restarting the PC.
Btw. good to see that you’ve made the right choice |
Irina |
22-04-2017
Hehe thanks, theMeme. Although I didn't mention this problem to find a solution, Iwill probably go on my OS forum and ask there. I've tried restarting network manager, doesn't do anything to solve that. Also, WiFi module isn't off when there's no connection, I've checked through terminal. It shows that it is connected, but defacto nothing, can't even access my router at 196.168.1.1 It's actually good for me to be learning Linux a little bit, my websites are all on Linux servers, I have root access there and it's nice if I am not completely ignorant. Of course, I have hosting's support for that but some things are not included in free service. But the truth of the matter is, i think, that I just like a challenge once in a while, I like to explore something new for no good reason, play with it, see that I can do it, and drop it in favor of some new quest. Or just be lazy for a while and learn or create nothing! LOL that image))))) Neh, I've disabled updates on my Windows7 PC long time ago. Not secure, I know, but what the hell, I'm taking my chances with that rather than having them install all their telemetry quietly while I'm sleeping))) - - - update 23-04-2017 - - - !! Heh, well, I'm not sure if this was the culprit at all times when WiFi was gone, but I've just removed dnscrypt-proxy and names started resolving even the second I did that, without restarting. The installation broke somewhere along the way, it was not showing up in software list but was running at startup, I could see it in system logs. I might try reinstalling it at some point, when I feel extra secretive again, lol))) 'Wireshark' is good for analyzing what's going on. |
theMeme
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24-04-2017
Ah, I see you are taking privacy and security seriously. But I would’nt be too paranoid about DNS spoofing as long as you’re not connected to a public Wlan or something. An if your are using an VPN, they may have their own private encrypted DNS resolvers anyway. And yes, network sniffers (like Wireshark) are every paranoids best friend. Unfortunately I have to use Windows too, as I also do some windows specific .NET development. And so the first thing I do after a Windows installation is sniffing for suspicious traffic (including unwanted telemetry data), try too disable it and/or create block list (a long list in Windows 10!) and add it too my router (as blocking such traffic on the local machine does not always work). I am not totally against telemetry, as it can be very useful for developers. But it should voluntary (and not on by default) and be transparent about what exactly gets transmitted.
I would do at least do the security updates for Windows 7. But ok, if you are dual-booting from the same hard-disk that can be a bit risky, because sometimes Windows rewrites the MBR (and overwriting grub bootstraper) of the hard-disk it is installed on, after a major update. And then you have to try to get the bootloader back, which can be a bit of a pain in the ass. |