Why Linux?

[Infrasonic]

I am currently setting up a timeshift system restore backup on a separate USB stick. The current timeshift backed up to this PC.

Which is a bit silly.

For regular backups you might find a proper SSD more reliable, (and they're really cheap currently).
Either get a standard SATA 2.5" SSD with a SATA to USB lead (cheapest option), or stick it in a USB enclosure, or get a diddy portable SSD like a Samsung T5 (which I've got) which is msata and about the size of a matchbox.

The dedicated externals are more expensive but are very portable, more sturdy, often water resistant et al. The better externals generally have optimised controller chips for USB use as well so will max out the potential performance, especially over a USB 3.1 gen 2 connection (10Gbps).

[GeoffF100]

Apart from this issue, how do you find Linux Mint XFCE?

[GeoffF100]

That is interesting. 32 GB of RAM is a lot. I expect that must be a typo.

I am using Lubuntu 18.04 on my second machine, which is over 10 years old. It has 2 GB of RAM and a processor with a Passmark score of about 1800. It runs well.

In subsequent releases, Lubuntu has moved from the LXDE desktop to the new LXQt desktop. The security updates for Lubuntu 18.04 stop in April 2021. I might be a refugee at that point.

Mint XfCE looks good to me. It is heavier than Lubuntu, but that may not matter on my machine.

[Infrasonic]

lt will be 32GB storage, probably eMMC...

[GeoffF100]

I booted Linux Mint Xfce 19.2 from a DVD on my Linux machine. It uses about 200 MB more RAM than Lubuntu 18.04. Not a show stopper, but unwelcome when I am maxed out on 2 GB of RAM. The mint ISO is 1.8 GB versus 1 GB for Lubuntu 18.04. Not really a problem.

Mint looks tidy, and is a possibility if Lubuntu 20.04 (the next Long Term Support release) turns out to be unsatisfactory.

I did wonder about new hardware. This NUC looks tempting for £119.98:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/23121 ... -/BRB0495/

The processor Passmark score is 2,112:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... 40+1.50GHz

It should be OK running Linux:

https://nucblog.net/2017/01/apollo-lake ... nclusions/

A nice toy, and not expensive, but I do not need to spend any money right now, and I am sure the technology will advance.

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

I booted Linux Mint Xfce 19.2 from a DVD on my Linux machine. It uses about 200 MB more RAM than Lubuntu 18.04. Not a show stopper, but unwelcome when I am maxed out on 2 GB of RAM. The mint ISO is 1.8 GB versus 1 GB for Lubuntu 18.04. Not really a problem.

Mint looks tidy, and is a possibility if Lubuntu 20.04 (the next Long Term Support release) turns out to be unsatisfactory.

I did wonder about new hardware. This NUC looks tempting for £119.98:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/23121 ... -/BRB0495/

The processor Passmark score is 2,112:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... 40+1.50GHz

Do be aware that Celeron is old as the hills and very slow.

[GeoffF100]

Do be aware that Celeron is old as the hills and very slow.

There are many Celerons in every generation of Intel processors. The quad core Celerons have about twice the performance of the dual core Celerons. 2,112 is about 25% faster than the processor in my current Linux machine. The memory in the NUC will also be faster, as will the graphics and the data highways. It supports SATA III whereas my existing machine supports only SATA II, and USB3 rather than USB2,

A better choice may be this Gigabyte Brix:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/28566 ... r/BRB0565/

It seems to run Ubuntu:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1130505 ... -4105?rq=1

More info:

https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Mini-PcBare ... -rev-10#ov

The Intel Celeron J4105, which is Gemini Lake rather than the previous generation Apollo Lake, has a Passmark score of 2,645:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... Hz&id=3159

The Brix also supports DDR4 memory rather than DDR3. It looks worth another £18.

[hiriskpaul]

I booted Linux Mint Xfce 19.2 from a DVD on my Linux machine. It uses about 200 MB more RAM than Lubuntu 18.04. Not a show stopper, but unwelcome when I am maxed out on 2 GB of RAM. The mint ISO is 1.8 GB versus 1 GB for Lubuntu 18.04. Not really a problem.

Mint looks tidy, and is a possibility if Lubuntu 20.04 (the next Long Term Support release) turns out to be unsatisfactory.

I did wonder about new hardware. This NUC looks tempting for £119.98:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/23121 ... -/BRB0495/

The processor Passmark score is 2,112:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... 40+1.50GHz

It should be OK running Linux:

https://nucblog.net/2017/01/apollo-lake ... nclusions/

A nice toy, and not expensive, but I do not need to spend any money right now, and I am sure the technology will advance.

Have you tried the Raspberry Pi Desktop? PC version of Raspian, https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/r ... pi-desktop.

Never tried it, but PIXEL desktop supposed to be very efficient and good on low spec hardware.

[GeoffF100]

The Raspberry Pi desktop uses essentially the same technology as Lubuntu 18.04: LXDE desktop + Debian based O.S. I am not sure about the security aspects of the Raspberry Pi. Otherwise, I expect that it would suit me well. I use my Linux machine for emails (I do not like doing that on my main machine which does online banking and stockbroking). I also use it for general messing about with Linux, and some web browsing and general home office stuff.

Chromebooks also run a lightweight version of Linux, e.g. for £299:

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 8-pdt.html

The Celeron N4000 processor in this Chromebook has a Passmark score of 1,432, which is just over half that of the Brix. It also has 4 GB of memory, half the maximum on the Brix. The Brix has plenty of power for a home office machine running a lightweight version of Linux. It is also much more convenient than a second tower system. I could get a second hand third generation i3 tower system (Passmark about 4,000) for about £60.

As I have said, I will probably just hang onto my old Linux machine for now, but it is interesting and instructive to investigate the possibilities.

I have just learned that the Linux versions based on Ubuntu 18.04 (Lubuntu, Mint etc) are using old versions of the Linux kernel. A newer version of the kernel ships with the versions based on Ubuntu 19.10. New hardware often requires an up to date kernel. The kernel can be updated but that is complication and possibly a source of trouble.

[Infrasonic]

Chromebooks also run a lightweight version of Linux, e.g. for £299:

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 8-pdt.html

The Celeron N4000 processor in this Chromebook has a Passmark score of 1,432, which is just over half that of the Brix. It also has 4 GB of memory, half the maximum on the Brix.

I've got a Lenovo S340-14 Chromebook with the same specs (N4000, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) and it's fine, does 1080P video no problem, runs multiple tabs in Chrome + other Android apps. For the money (£179 from Currys on offer) I've been pretty amazed at how good it is.
It also has a Beta Linux facility that I've not tried yet, but in theory I should be able to run Libre/Open Office and other Linux apps. I read this week that even MS have done their first native Linux app. port, so things are changing it seems!
https://www.google.com/search?q=ms+linu ... 66&bih=635

[Infrasonic]

https://www.howtogeek.com/449691/what-i ... change-it/

The Linux swappiness value has nothing to do with how much RAM is used before swapping starts. That’s a widely reported and widely believed mistake. We explain what it really is.

[Infrasonic]

I seem to have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle again.

I created a timeshift back up on to a USB pen. When it was all Done, I rebooted the system, but I forgot to disable/remove the pen drive.

Now regardless of what I have plugged in, when it reboots it starts with the BIOS screen and refuses to move past it. Exit, saved and exit....it just ends up back at the BIOS screen again (And most of the options there are unavailable (not that I would know what I was doing anyway)

https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+m ... e&ie=UTF-8

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Thanks.

As I had recently 're installed mint, I decided there was nothing to lose by reinstalling it again and then using my timeshift usb that I had set up earlier today.

I think it's worked ok.

TBF I think Mint has had it's day.

I've been a Linux nerd since 2001, and have experimented with zillions of these distros e.g. Suse, RH, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, Mint back in the day. Have rebuilt kernels, farted around with the System-V boot scripts (before Debian kicked off the "Upstart" project - i.e. more dynamic configuration that most Linuxes these days will use) built new drivers etc. I was so impressed by RH 9 that I spent almost a decade stuck on Centos+Fedora Core. I used to spend ages playing with configuring new FC distros to load the nvidia, ethernet, sound card drivers etc. etc. Yes the tedium was immense.

I remember when Mint first hit the streets. It's winning feature being that it had Debian's awesome package manager and all the non-free multimedia stuff rolled in out of box (Debian used to very coy about anything that wasn't FSF).

But for the last few years I've realised that all my configuration hassle days are over, and have gone whole heartedly for the Ubuntu LTS distros. It seems that just about every s/w package I could ever want is available including all the multimedia support you'd need, hardware *just works* (support for Nvidia is excellent, no need to build driver, or faff with xorg.conf or whatever it's now called), and bugs get fixed, and software updates are good and frequently available.

Not wishing to seem arrogant, just my current opinions!

Matt

[hiriskpaul]

I am not sure about the security aspects of the Raspberry Pi.

Anything in particular behind that remark? Debian seems solid, is it PIXEL that concerns you?

[GeoffF100]

I am not sure about the security aspects of the Raspberry Pi.

Anything in particular behind that remark? Debian seems solid, is it PIXEL that concerns you?

I am not saying that anything is wrong, just that I do not know. Certainly, the official Ubuntu distributions (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc) seem to get all the updates. I have not had any trouble with Lubuntu 18.04. Updates arrive virtually every day. Everything seems to update itself. On Windows, LibreOffice asks me to update it. If I say yes, it does not do it. It reinstalls itself and leaves lots of rubbish behind.

Snorvey seems to be having to jump through hoops with Mint. I am not having to do any of that. Some of the earlier versions of Lubuntu had problems with missing libraries (notoriously 16.04 LTS), but they seem to have sorted that out in 18.04.

I have stayed away from the releases with the new LXQt desktop. 18.10 was generally acknowledged to be unfit for release. 19.04 attracted some criticism, but it appears to have been mostly unfair. I searched for reviews of 19.10, but found none. It appears to have neither fans nor critics. I do not like the screenshots, but I expect that I could fix that. 20.04 LTS? Perhaps it will be fine. I hope so.

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Snorvey seems to be having to jump through hoops with Mint. I am not having to do any of that. Some of the earlier versions of Lubuntu had problems with missing libraries (notoriously 16.04 LTS), but they seem to have sorted that out in 18.04.

It's just me and this little ASUS pc. It's fought me all the way through W10 to Linux Mint. But I will prevail. Oh yes.

You're better off with something closer to Ubuntu (e.g. Ubuntu )

FWIW I've been the reluctant sysadmin for my family for a couple of decades, and I went through a long phase of installing Mint on both my wifes and mother-in-laws laptops. Mint, IMHO did go through a very long stable phase. In fact MIL is very undemanding and I've never ever upgraded her little setup (IIRC she inherited a tiny Samsung Notebook from my Dad, which I linuxised with "a Mint" about a decade ago). The wife is more fussy, and I think I reinstalled her lappy twice in about a decade, once after a HD death and once because things eventually got very silly with her browsers with Chrome, FF, various JRE, jscript and Flash plugins all ducking and diving, etc. etc. That laptop has now gone to my youngest kid, and the wife very fortunately inherited Dad's MacBook pro (yes he's very generous, but he's also set in his ways, and surrendered the Mac only to return to a Windows laptop!!).

Anyway my earlier slightly negative comment re. Mint was only because just before I installed Ubuntu-18.04 on my PC, I tried the latest-and-greatest mint and ran into a few hiccups in the install. I can't remember them exactly. So, given that Ubuntu has repos with all the non-free MM stuff which were Mint's original piece de resistance[1], I tossed the Mint disc and threw on U-18.04.

So I'm not saying Mint is necessarily bad, but it just seems to have lost it's original sparkle for me.

Matt

[1]
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu or Debian that strives to be a "modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use."Linux Mint provides full out-of-the-box multimedia support by including some proprietary software, such as multimedia codecs, and comes bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint

[GeoffF100]

I expect that TMB is right here. Ubuntu has Canonical behind it and has a great reputation. Ubuntu had over 50% of the server market when I last looked. Snorvey should be able to run full Ubuntu with 4 GB of RAM. The Ubuntu desktop is more like a Mac than Windows, but I very soon got used to that. The Lubuntu desktop looks very much like an early version of Windows, and very similar to MInt Xfce. Simplicity and a low hardware footprint were a winning combination for me.

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

I expect that TMB is right here. Ubuntu has Canonical behind it and has a great reputation. Ubuntu had over 50% of the server market when I last looked. Snorvey should be able to run full Ubuntu with 4 GB of RAM. The Ubuntu desktop is more like a Mac than Windows, but I very soon got used to that. The Lubuntu desktop looks very much like an early version of Windows, and very similar to MInt Xfce. Simplicity and a low hardware footprint were a winning combination for me.

Furthermore IIRC you can install just about any combination of desktop+window manager onto Ubuntu from available repos. There's even (this is common to all current linux distros, I believe) a "desktop switcher" so that once the init scripts start to load X they will pause and let you choose what desktop (e.g. xfce, mate, gnome etc.) to want to use. I think I spent a day or two farting around on my current install, switching between xfce and mate.

(Basically I fell in love with gnome2 back in the day, sad isn't it? and was gutted when the gnome kiddies switched to the "mobile phone" lookalike, as I refer to them, desktops. So I find myself forever trying to restore those halycon days whenever I upgrade my distro ).

Matt

[GeoffF100]

Lubuntu is essentially Ubuntu with an LXDE or LXQt desktop, and a different application load. The developers do seem to be straying off the straight and narrow though. They have recently added a different installer to the one Ubuntu uses. I do not believe it has caused problems nonetheless. Much to the annoyance of their user base the developers have said that light weight is no longer their prime objective. They dared to recommend 2 GB of RAM rather than 1 GB. There was a huge outcry and they recanted. 1 GB no longer makes sense though. There has also been a huge outcry about dropping 32 bit processor support.

[GeoffF100]

I have just run Xubuntu 18.04 LTS from a live DVD. I moved the Panel (AKA task Bar) from the top of the screen to the bottom, Windows style. I did not care for the default wall paper. I changed it for the night sky wall paper which looked really good. The available memory was about 400 MB less than with Lububtu. Xubuntu seems to be hungrier than Mint. I do not know why. The ISO file was 1.4 GB. Fatter the Lubuntu, but not as fat as Mint.

I really like Xubuntu after my desktop changes. Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint Xfce all look very similar though. Like an old version of Windows. It would be feasible to run Xubuntu in 2 GB of RAM, but there would not be much elbow room.