Computer operating systems

[CitroJim]

Mike, thanks

Will give that a try this evening...

I'll report back...

[RichardW]

Thanks gents, off to look at Toshibas then.... The old one is a 7 year old HP that is on its third motherboard (yes, the ones that the graphics chips fall off!), and it's gone again. The battery (also a replacement) is on its way out too. Think it's time to put it out of its misery.

Oh, and I need a new boiler too, as the old(*) one has sprung a leak from the main heat exchanger, and appears to be built on the same principle as the Xantia - ie hold the heater on a piece of string and build the car around it! Not a good week!!

* it's only 8 years old FFS!!!

[RichardW]

Appear to get quite a lot of machine for not that much cash - wonder what I need 1TB of disc space for though..... Unbuntu on the current ones runs in 50Gb partition, and it's nowhere near full after about 3 years!!

[Zelandeth]

Think it's getting to be time to upgrade my main desktop machine. It's still running Ubuntu 10.04LTS, but that's approaching end of life now I believe. Most likely target will be Mint 17 (with the MATE window manager), which I've had on my laptop for around a year now without any complaints.

I certainly can't complain about the 10.04 install - it was installed when that had only been out for a couple of months and hasn't ever given me any trouble since. Think the only gremlins in there have been things that *I* broke rather than the computer! The only real grumble I've had is that driver support for Wacom tablets on Linux is a joke, and every time there was a kernel update I seemed to have to do another hack to get it working properly again - that's Wacom's fault more than Linux though. Also, the version of GParted that 10.04 has access to doesn't play nicely with hard drives with 4K sectors - like the one that I installed a couple of days ago to dump our media library on to. So I'll need to pull that out again and stuff it in an external caddy and format/partition it using this machine if I don't just do the upgrade first.

Sadly will be jumping ship from Ubuntu now to Mint though as Unity/Gnome 3 and me just don't get along. The MATE desktop under Mint is a fork which basically maintains the look and feel of Gnome 2.x, and that's what I'm used to and comfortable with. Being somewhat autistic makes trying to learn my way around a new UI really quite hard, and really small details quite often will frustrate me far more than they should do.

[CitroJim]

Mint is Ubuntu underneath isn't it? I find Ubuntu 14.04 LTS good but for general day to day use I much prefer Fedora 21 now with its Gnome3 desktop..

Give it a try. It won't be everybody's cup of tea as it's more unix than Ubuntu is...

[xantia_v6]

One of my current machines (mainly used as a mail server) had a video chip that was not supported by Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, so I installed Lubuntu 14.04 LTS (which uses the LXDE desktop, but is pure Ubuntu under the skin). It has let me get a couple more years life out of the machine, but it is being replaced soon (next week?) because the power supply (unique form factor) seems to be dying.

[CitroJim]

That's a good tip Mike... I had that issue with an old desktop and ended up turning it into the forum Dev/Test server

[Zelandeth]

Yep, Mint is just Ubuntu under the skin, but with a different front end effectively. So you have pretty consistent cross compatability of software. So far it's proven rock steady on every system I've tried it on. *touches wood*

Having the same OS on all my machines seems a good way to minimise hassle as well.

[CitroJim]

Having the same OS on all my machines seems a good way to minimise hassle as well.

Yes, I agree very much with that says he with a mix of Fedora, CentOS and Ubuntu and a tiny bit of Windows

[xantia_v6]

That's a good tip Mike... I had that issue with an old desktop and ended up turning it into the forum Dev/Test server

and (it was important for me at the time) LXDE works with x2go, whereas the unity desktop (and some other 'modern' desktops) do not.

[myglaren]

That's interesting - I went to DailyMotion yesterday to watch a Jackie Evancho video that has been deleted from YouTube and every video crashed a few seconds after opening but was fine when F5'd.
As DailyMotion isn't anywhere I go normally I had forgotten that.
Might give Lubuntu a try out.
Or even Debian, one day

[Zelandeth]

...Ignore my earlier grumble about 4K sectors and the fact it was causing me issue with misaligned partition tables. Just had the brainwave to boot from a USB stick containing a more recent version of Mint, used the (newer) GParted version on there to re-partition the drive, and that's solved the problem.

What I can't believe is that it took me an entire day to realise that the solution was that simple.

[CitroJim]

I'm currently trying to update my Win8 machine to Win 10

The technique for forcing an update now seems to be as described at:
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72714 ... update.htm

This, despite the annoying website containing the instructions, seems to work...

Here they are in plain text for anyone else who wants to try to force an update..

First of all, go to "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download" and delete all files in that location so that Windows Update can start clean. If you have installed Windows on a drive other than "C," replace "C" with the proper drive letter (for instance access "D:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download" if your Windows is installed on "D").

From there on, tap the Windows key, type Windows Update, and click it to open it. Hit the Windows key again to bring up the command prompt and type "cmd." Instead of hitting Enter, however, right click and select "Run as Administrator." Next up, type "wuauclt.exe /updatenow" and again refrain from hitting enter. This command will make Windows Update check for updates.

Head back to the Windows Update window, select "Check for updates" on the left, and you should notice a status message that says "Checking for updates..." When you notice this message, go back to the command prompt where you typed the command without hitting Enter, and hit Enter now.

At this point, Windows Update should say that it's downloading the latest Windows 10. As always, however, make sure to back up your data before proceeding with the Windows 10 install.

I'll report back in due course... I doubt it'll be quick!

[CitroJim]

I now appear to be running Windows 10.... The first go at upgrading the laptop from Win 8.1 to 10 using Windows Update failed with errors and after fixing those (apparently with the Microsoft tool for the job) I could not then get Windows Update to repeat the upgrade...

However, downloading the standalone Windows 10 Updater worked like a dream...

First impression is that it's a vast improvement over Windows 8.... That as not difficult..

Going to use it now for a bit and see how it goes... I'll be sticking with Thunderbird for email and Firefox for the web though...

I'll report back in due course...

[xantia_v6]

It is important to check the licence activation state on the control panel system page, especially after a failed upgrade. If it does not say that windows 10 is activated, then you need to contact microsoft support for a manual activation, or your licence will expire in a few months.