Cool...... I put linux on the laptop and now it seems far more usable then it was before. With Windows 10 it kept running out of storage space due to updates and stored files. I'm glad I can use the USB just by plugging that in..... Hopefully Libreoffice will read Openoffice files. I think they're both fairly compatible.
The wifi seems faster now too with Linux, Firefox is just blasting along.
Windoze is a nasty resource hog plus it's always spying on your system and reporting back to M$. Not to mention the inconvenience of updates that you might not be able to control and which take hours of your valuable time to install. That said, you should always take time regularly to update the packages on your Linux system to apply any security and bug fixes. It's a lot quicker than a Windoze update though.
Different distros have different package managers (yum, apt, ...) so you need to become somewhat familiar with what your distro uses if you use the command line rather than a gui. If you need superuser control, which you will for package management, you'll also need to learn how to use sudo (or do the naughty thing that I do and use su to access a shell logged in as root).
Any formatted USB stick that you plug into a modern Linux distro is usually mounted automatically under the /media hierarchy and should appear as a browsable file system.
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Linux has evolved a lot, the first attempts I did at running Linux was Suse Linux 9.xx on a Compaq Deskpro machine, a Pentium II 400Mhz machine with 384Mb RAM and a 20 Gb HDD, it worked but in those days you had to edit several config files to get yer screen working, I had it hooked up to a IIyama 17" screen and it took quite a bit of effort to have it run at the desired 100Hz instead of a headache causing 60.. beyond that, some media file stuff was iffy, but after a while it did work okay-ish.
Afer that I started with Xubuntu 6.06 LTS that already was a huge improvement, most stuff worked without too much headaches, later on I got a laptop running Vista..
kicked that OS off the machine and used Kubuntu 8.04 to 9.04 and then Linux Mint 13.xxx which was I really liked, it worked flawlessly, then 15.xxx was even better, 17.xxx again an improvement and now 18.xxx which runs pretty well on that now old laptop.
I also have used Redhat when it was still free, tried the later Fedora, Debian, Suse and OpenSuse, Vector Linux, Puppy Linux, U-Xu and Kubuntu PC-BSD (yes a BSD), Antix and a lot of other distros, at the moment I am very happy with Mint, it works on a whole slew of machines I use old, new, powerful and slow.
Afer that I started with Xubuntu 6.06 LTS that already was a huge improvement, most stuff worked without too much headaches, later on I got a laptop running Vista..
kicked that OS off the machine and used Kubuntu 8.04 to 9.04 and then Linux Mint 13.xxx which was I really liked, it worked flawlessly, then 15.xxx was even better, 17.xxx again an improvement and now 18.xxx which runs pretty well on that now old laptop.I also have used Redhat when it was still free, tried the later Fedora, Debian, Suse and OpenSuse, Vector Linux, Puppy Linux, U-Xu and Kubuntu PC-BSD (yes a BSD), Antix and a lot of other distros, at the moment I am very happy with Mint, it works on a whole slew of machines I use old, new, powerful and slow.
Yeah I am using Mint 18.3 Cinnamon..... I am going to have a good play with it later on and see what I can do some more. Is there a GUI way to do updates? I really don't like that you have to learn sudo commands, so not a fan of that part of things.
Yeah funny this little machine was going to be chucked out now I'm somewhat interested in using it. I am still scared to open it up and fix the micro SD slot. It still has half an SD card jammed in there. The board has these weird connectors I think you have to lift up the rear of the connector and slide the ribbons out, at least that's what they show on youtube when I watched a teardown of this machine.
Yeah funny this little machine was going to be chucked out now I'm somewhat interested in using it. I am still scared to open it up and fix the micro SD slot. It still has half an SD card jammed in there. The board has these weird connectors I think you have to lift up the rear of the connector and slide the ribbons out, at least that's what they show on youtube when I watched a teardown of this machine.
Horses for courses - I prefer the command line to a gui. Just have to be careful using rm and similar commands. The vi editor is very powerful for those who are not emacs aficionados. There should be a gui for software package management that allows you to do updates and upgrades but I'm not familiar with Mint.
If you can't fix the SD card slot, there are cheap SD adapters that you can plug into USB.
^Thanks. As I mentioned, I'm not familiar with Mint and I don't like GUIs but I suspected there would be a GUI to do updates. Things have moved on in the 20 years since I first used Linux.
The driver manager in mint keeps asking for my password, and I forgot to note it down anywhere. Not that you should keep looking in there should you?
Is there a way to reset the password or is the driver manager easy enough to just leave alone?
Is there a way to reset the password or is the driver manager easy enough to just leave alone?
Assuming you are still able to sudo as root, you can reset your password by entering the command "sudo passwd <loginname>" at a command prompt, where you should replace <loginname> with your login name. By the way, the command "sudo passwd" allows you to change the root password.
Command prompt, is that a terminal window?
Yes. On some versions of Linux, you can also switch to a console window by entering the triple key combination [Ctl][Alt][F#] where # is an integer between 1 and 6 -- entering a 7 takes you back to the graphical session.
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OK I'll give that a try see how that goes. Couldn't I have installed this without a password?
If you used the command line from a terminal window and used sudo with the equivalent command. Someone with root privileges is required - otherwise anyone could install potentially damaging software on a system - spyware, keyloggers, trojans, viruses etc.
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Even if I was the one who put linux on this laptop? I thought I could install it for myself without a password.
You have root privilege but it's assumed that someone could take advantage of an unattended, logged-in machine, which I admit is unlikely in your case.
Is it so difficult to remember a password? Write it down and lock it away securely if you can't. Alternatively, write the password or a reminder clue on a post-it note if you're not worried about security.
By the way, you'll probably have to reinstall anyway if you forget your own password and don't have NOPASSWD specified for your login in /etc/sudoers, for example:
Code:
<loginname> ALL(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALLWhich should all be on one line.
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Yeah well the fun begins when I try the sudo command you mentioned..... Failing that if I do a reinstall is there an option during setup to avoid passwords?
Linux indeed has come a loooooooooong way, I am by no means an expert and so far I never had to be one..I can easily say that running Mint since version 13 has been easier than running Windows 7 or 8(.1) in certain aspects.
As for the password thing.. eh.. you kinda need it else you do have to reinstall which is not much of a hassle but in any unix-ish OS your PW is used extensively, Linux asks for it at any occasion where you need to change something that could influence the OS.
And NO there is NO way to avoid passwords, update? pw, install drivers? pw, etc etc etc
I find some Debian derived distros come with NOPASSWD set in /etc/sudoers for the default desktop user (usually pi), which makes it extremely easy to change the password for root or any other user. It's a massive security hole, of course, but it does help when first setting up a system.
