https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint-cinnamon-first I would suggest joining the Mint forum.
I'm going to keep on eye on that and join the mint forum...... Mint is perfect for small spaces like an Emmc storage
Can't advise you on Mint I'm afraid. There are others around here who can but I doubt they will respond if bombarded with trivial questions. I would also recommend doing some preliminary research yourself whenever possible.
Well, I'm thinking about taking a (metaphorical) hammer to my laptop It had slowed to a crawl on startup so I decided to go with a reset, but now the processor seems to have lost at least 300mhz per core. I have considered going Linux, but I play a lot of blu-rays on this pc and Linux doesn't seem quite as friendly in that regard? (I know some people say vlc, but I've not had much luck with regards that and blu)
You don't say how you're measuring performance degredation but I've never heard of it manifesting itself as a slowdown in the speed of CPU cores - more likely an increase in the number of tasks that the cores have to perform in terms of accessing badly fragmented file systems or running unnecessary processes, whether benign or malignant. I would suggest running a cleanup tool to defrag your file systems, reschedule or stop running unnecessary services, and remove malware. You don't say what OS your laptop is running but if it is Windows and the CPU is Intel, its performance has likely been stymied by the latest patches for Meltdown and Spectre. I have seen reports that, when they have not bricked the system altogether, the patches have affected media playback performance on some systems - presumably due to the increased processor overhead of keeping user and kernel memory spaces segregated during system calls.
Ah............... That might explain the occasional jerky playback of my dvds and blurays... Did those patches drop for Windows 10? I must check my update history, and would they be listed?
The Microsoft position: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...your-windows-devices-against-spectre-meltdown A non-Microsoft viewpoint: https://blog.barkly.com/meltdown-spectre-patches-list-windows-update-help And another: https://www.pcworld.com/article/324...otect-your-pc-meltdown-spectre-cpu-flaws.html If you want to check whether your machine is patched: https://m.windowscentral.com/inspec...ck-if-your-pc-vulnerable-meltdown-and-spectre
HEY..... That's a very handy little tool..... I have an AMD cpu and am protected from Spectre but not meltdown and according to the tool I should be OK
Seems your machine is patched then. AMD CPUs are supposedly immune to Meltdown. No Spectre patch currently offers 100% protection as this would require a redesign of the CPU. However, the patches that exist are generally considered adequate. I also enable strict site isolation in Chrome (by turning on enable-site-per-process under chrome://flags) to be on the safe side. Here is the description of that flag:
It's an AMD A8-4500m processor (win10) and it looks like a false alarm, at least with regards the clock speed. Coretemp was the one saying it was now running 300mhz slower. Windows, Speccy and CPU-Z all claim the proper speed or a little faster. (I'm slightly distrustful of speccy as the temperatures it was giving the first time around were awfully wrong). Bootup to the login screen is slower (by stopwatch) as is actually logging on (though not from when you put your password in to windows actually being usable). Still, tonight, it's been a bit faster I'm ok with meltdown (amd I guess), but I don't think a spectre patch for my chipset has been released yet, at least not on the manufacturers site. I've also done recent defrags, but there may be another repair option I can try. All the drivers are as up to date as they can be (though unfortuately, one or two can no longer be updated as they are not supported.)
It is patch Tuesday.. as usual, wait with patching a few days.. M$ hasn't been free from troubles and bad luck with patches. https://www.askwoody.com/2018/march-2018-patch-tuesday/
Well I still have my windows system and my laptop now on linux not sure which I like most. But today I bit the bullet and did a clean install of Windows and so far so good, but it didn't do MBR, for some random reason the installation made my SSD into GPT format but it is all working and the installation is more streamlined then before and less bloated. The quirky video issues I was having with DVD and Bluray are also gone. So I'm kind of happy now, just I'm not going to go mad installing stuff now. BTW Linux Mint is fine for watching videos too, I have an external drive on the laptop for watching movies. Works like a charm.
Mint comes with VLC player and most of the standard codexes come with it installed so it can play about any media file. Some distros, like Debian are strict in only using open source solutions.
VLC is a great little program too. In fact a lot of the stuff Linux can do with media is done with programs much smaller then what you get in Windows so are the windows programs just bloated code?
I think I got the most recent one. Went through ok on my end. Wanted to stop the damn thing too, but it snuck through. Thankfully I have a pretty recent back up. Haven't run into any big issues yet. Only bit was I had to reset my laptop to get wireless back on. Here's what updated: Adobe Flash Player for Windows 10 (KB4088785) and a cumulative Windows 10 one version 1709 (KB4088776)
I'll take that as a rhetorical question. Similarly, does anyone use Windows Media Player out of choice?