Linux

[BigDParticipant 3024]

Dual Booting Xubuntu and Win 8.1 right now.  Win for games only.  I think I booted into Windows sometime last year.  With Steam running on Linux, I really haven’t felt the need to boot into Windows at all lately.

Also running Ubuntu Server for, well, services.  After having a home server that also does proxy services, DAAP, UPnP, syncing, so on and so forth.  You go into panic mode when you don’t have your server between you and the world.  So much so I had bought a netbook to install Ubuntu Server so when I am out and about I have a portable server.

I know, super weird.  However, my surfing is faster, safer, and much more fun.  And there is nothing like hacking and compiling something from source so it does exactly what you want.

Don't stick your dick into anyone you aren't willing to put up with for eighteen years and nine months.

[harpo-my-“SON”Participant 2410]

I dual boot separate hard drives. I have windows xp that came with this machine. I wanted to try ubuntu but was apprehensive,  until a friend was junking an old box. I took the hard drive installed it along side my original with ubuntu. this computer sat in a closet for three years when I booted it up again ubuntu had some bugs. I am working them out slowly because I really liked it. especially compiz cube desktop. ubuntu will boot and I can browse with internet but the taskbar goes away upon me logging in.The error codes suggest an incomplete upgrade and now there is another upgrade available but installing this may complicate the problems I already have. Eventually I will have  a working  linux  distro on this machine even if it takes reformatting the extra drive and starting over. Will probably stick with a debian because I am already familiar with the commands and repositories. On second thought I can adapt. Is it not wonderful having no limits on your choices?

I was bound to be misunderstood, and I laugh at those who misunderstand me. Kind mockery at the well intentioned, but unfettered cruelty towards those would be prison guards of my creative possibilities. This so as to learn as much from misunderstanding as from understanding. Taking pleasure in worthy opponents and making language fluid and flowing like a river yet pointed and precise as a dagger. Contradicts the socialistic purpose of language and makes for a wonderful linguistic dance, A verbal martial art with constant parries that hone the weapon that is the two edged sword of my mouth.

[peterfaParticipant 833]

You can use a Virtual Machine. You can get a free hypervisor (runs VMs) from Oracle: VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/)

[Lazarus LongParticipant 365]

RoyDal wrote:

I am going to replace the hard drive with a solid state one — no moving parts, nothing to crash into anything.

Be mindful that you do all of the relevant research on the solid state drives before committing to one. They do still have several potential problems that can be as bad or worse than a regular hard drive. While you are correct that solid state drives have no moving parts they do have some potential downsides such as they have a finite number of reads/writes, obviously the higher quality the solid state chip the longer they last but they are also more expensive. Solid state drives are actually degraded every time you write to them or read from them. Unfortunately if they were not designed with this in mind where the writes are randomly distributed across the chip you can wear out sections of the NAND very quickly.

Because of this limitation they are not necessarily the best for operating systems or for swap space since they will be written to a lot in those situations, though they will certainly perform quickly in those capacities.  Most companies that I have seen will do prorated warranty of a solid state drive based on how much capacity is worn down in the chips. Once the NAND has worn down the information will not stay stored properly so when the machine is shut down any information in the worn section of NAND would be gone. This is again something that if they are designed correctly the software will know and move information out of those NAND chips.

The testing I have done with solid state drives has led me to believe that they may be best suited for storage of information that will not be written frequently but will be read often or you simply want to load really quickly. I can say that in addition to using a straight solid state drive the hybrid drives are really quick as well since they incorporate a few GB section of NAND that stores things like program executables for windows boot etc that do not get written a whole lot but read frequently and can seriously speed boot times. The only thing about those is you tend to have to boot about 8 times or so for the drive to learn what to store.

Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self. -Terry Goodkind

[RoyDalParticipant]

Lazarus Long wrote:

Be mindful that you do all of the relevant research on the solid state drives before committing to one. They do still have several potential problems that can be as bad or worse than a regular hard drive.

I had not thought of that. Thanks for the tip. I think you saved me from yet another irrecoverable crash! More research is in order; I might end up using the one I bought for long-term storage and find another that is designed to host an OS.

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[peterfaParticipant 833]

I like the Samsung ones: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147360&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Internal+SSDs-_-N82E16820147360&gclid=CMCK2POyhsQCFUU8gQodsGcAwg&gclsrc=aw.ds

What you can do is use the SSD for / and get a HDD for /home, and maybe /var. Then you’re system is optimal. Also, disable atime so that it doesn’t write everytime you look at a file. There are other optimizations as well.

Your system will boot super fast and run super fast, but your files will be safer and your SSD will last longer.

[RoyDalParticipant]

I’ve found some interesting articles. These will keep me occupied during long winter nights:

The Best SSDs – The Wirecutter:
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-ssds/
(This one boosts my confidence immensely. I now believe they will do the job for me and will last many years. I’m ready to make the move … almost. First, I’m going to study up on the how-to part.)

The Complete Guide to Solid State Drives – Lifehacker:
http://lifehacker.com/5932009/the-complete-guide-to-solid-state-drives

How to Migrate to a Solid-State Drive Without Reinstalling Windows – Lifehacker:
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[peterfaParticipant 833]

lifehacker.com is owned by Gawker Media, so it’s not reliable.

[Lazarus LongParticipant 365]

RoyDal wrote:

The Best SSDs – The Wirecutter:

They do make some good points about SSD’s in general. I agree completely that you want to get an SSD from a company that makes its own NAND. I do not, however know how their chips compare to Samsung but Samsung is a good brand for SSD and I know they make high quality NAND. The only other thing that would really matter to me personally is if the SSD is made by a company that also has experience in the hard drive industry. There are a lot of optimizations that are in hard drive code and companies that do have ot been in the Hard Drive market probably do not have some of those optimizations.

 

Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self. -Terry Goodkind

[RennieParticipant]

Linux isn’t going to escape the corruption of women either and maybe not even open source. Now that’s become the new thing, they’ve showed up right on schedule.

[– Deleted on Request –Spectator 936]

Rennie:

 

Yup, that Tux…..  a symbol of male patriarchy and privilege, isn’t he?

 

[RennieParticipant]

нσтησσв wrote:

When it comes to linux, it’s typically best to stay away from the ones with female developers in them https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WomenInUbuntu They tend to be crap. OpenSuse, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, all have stability issues ( especially \w laptops ) On top of it, they use systemd, which is so obviously a back door for the government ( or whomever is behind it ) But then again, UEFI is just as bad, if not worse. Best to stick with Unix/BSD or redhat OS’ Gaming wise, the more mainstream the better the game support will be. Mint is ubuntu and the top two linux distros are mint and ubuntu. They will also probably be one of the first to have .net ported over to them, so you will have greater support when it comes to running windows programs on linux.

Systemd is a big mess, the guy writing it seems to be hell bent on it assuming the roles of most of the operating system functions. He also seems to have an army of fanatics who viciously defend the thing against all critics and attack anyone who speaks against it.

Gave up on Linux a long time ago, then went to BSD, things were good for a few years, but now I think that’s it’s threatened by the same forces that are acting on and against Linux. So I will probably have to say goodbye to it in the future too.

So that’s leading me back to proprietary land and Windows, since atleast for now, it’s still a business class OS. I really hope the whole thing with the cloud falls apart, because I do not want anything to do with it.

[– Deleted on Request –Spectator 936]

Rennie:

 

Actually, FreeBSD is quite good now.  It’s quite stable, though there are some quirks with the Mate desktop and Slim log-in manager.  PC- BSD is, on the whole, pretty good as well.

 

I gave up on Ubuntu when it adopted Gnome 3 as its desktop.  What on earth were they thinking?

 

[RennieParticipant]

– Deleted on Request – wrote:

Rennie: Actually, FreeBSD is quite good now. It’s quite stable, though there are some quirks with the Mate desktop and Slim log-in manager. PC- BSD is, on the whole, pretty good as well. I gave up on Ubuntu when it adopted Gnome 3 as its desktop. What on earth were they thinking?

I know I’m posting from FreeBSD right now, I hope it never ends up like Linux did, because it has served me well in the past 5 years. I would hate to have to get rid of it. I don’t use desktop environments  (DE’s) anymore, I have a basic window manager with the needed graphical toolkits and then I just add the software I want from ports. All administration is done from the shell. To think I used to avoid the command line and now I can’t live without it.

[– Deleted on Request –Spectator 936]

Rennie:

 

I know what you’re referring to.  There are times I prefer using the CLI, but, on the whole, the desktop is more convenient.

 

One reason I like using FreeBSD is that I can build my OS from the ground up.  Many Linux distros have a lot of extra frippery that I don’t use, but it gets loaded into memory anyway.

 

[peterfaParticipant 833]

You can thank Oracle for making a X server necessary. Some of the software you cannot install without it.

[RennieParticipant]

peterfa wrote:

You can thank Oracle for making a X server necessary. Some of the software you cannot install without it.

That’s probably because the new people didn’t want to deal with the command line. But, oh how I long for that romantic and by gone age of computing.

[– Deleted on Request –Spectator 936]

Rennie:

 

Getting under the hood and tinkering with the system is one reason I like FreeBSD.

 

[RennieParticipant]

– Deleted on Request – wrote:

Rennie: Getting under the hood and tinkering with the system is one reason I like FreeBSD.

Yes,I’ve got mine customized a fair bit too.

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