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Topic: General Unix/Linux Thread (Read 145876 times)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I'll take your word for it. :D

For starters, C++ back then didn't have namespaces and modern C++ puts a whole crapload of stuff that used to be public ( and which the KDE1 source tries to use ) into std::.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #26 –
I keep forgetting that UNetbootin has become pretty much useless ever since they decided to remove the "show all devices" option. And now the ancient version that still offers that functionality no longer works either…

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #27 –
What is UNetbootin? What do you need it for?

My own latest little Linux lessons:

1. KDE + VLC is no happy marriage. I mean, VLC works as usual for everything, but so does KDE. Namely, I have the desktop lock automatically timed and the lock works even when VLC is playing full screen, which is when it shouldn't work. I have spent hours going patiently through settings both in VLC and KDE and tweaked and tried some to no effect :( The only solution is to use some other media player that is more KDE native.

2. When wrestling with the above problem, I ran into a nice-looking media player Kaffeine, whose project looks unfortunately have had a short life. On the surface it contains some versatile promises (something to do with TV) that I am looking forward to try out. At least DVD plays okay.

3. Another media player that was recommended on the interwebz is called Miro. I got suspicious when I saw that its required dependencies bear names like geoip and such. Those are apparently required for its torrent function. I installed it anyway to give it a fair chance.

At first launch Miro asks permission to auto-launch at system startup and sniff for media files all over the home directory. It contains a webkit-based browser that is necessary to browse its media-sharing website, embedded in the interface, sign-up required. The top news on the site was a lengthy request for donations.

Then, before I had a chance to do anything with it, Miro caused a hickup of the desktop environment on my little Packard Bell Intel Atom dual core netbook for two minutes or so. After the hickup was over, mouse pointer had vanished. Keyboard still worked. So I uninstalled Miro right there, before I rebooted to get the mouse pointer back. That's about it on this piece of software.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #28 –
Quote from: ersi on
What is UNetbootin? What do you need it for?
If you use it to create bootable USB sticks, isn't it enough to do it as per instructions here?

1. Stick the USB stick in. By the end of the procedure, all previous data on it will be lost and it will only contain the bootable iso file.

2. Determine the device:
Code: [Select]
sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*

The device listed multiple times, with a number in the end and without, is the one to use. E.g. /dev/sdb

3. If you have automount enabled, unmount the device.

4. cd to the folder where the iso file is.

5. Create bootable device:
Code: [Select]
sudo dd if=filename.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync
The device path is an example. However, it must be without number in the end.

Bottom line: UNetbootin not needed for creating bootable USB sticks.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #29 –
Quote from: ersi on
1. KDE + VLC is no happy marriage. I mean, VLC works as usual for everything, but so does KDE. Namely, I have the desktop lock automatically timed and the lock works even when VLC is playing full screen, which is when it shouldn't work. I have spent hours going patiently through settings both in VLC and KDE and tweaked and tried some to no effect  :(  The only solution is to use some other media player that is more KDE native.

While inelegant, you could write a shell script that checks for VLC's existence every few seconds.

Quote from: ersi on
3. Another media player that was recommended on the interwebz is called Miro. I got suspicious when I saw that its required dependencies bear names like geoip and such. Those are apparently required for its torrent function. I installed it anyway to give it a fair chance.

If you're talking about apt-get, you can always use --no-install-recommends. Not that the rest of what you wrote inspires any confidence in this "Miro" thing. I'd probably just use plain MPlayer if I didn't want VLC's Clone filter.

Quote from: ersi on
If you use it to create bootable USB sticks, isn't it enough to do it as per instructions here?

If you want to erase the existing data, sure. If you want only one OS on your USB drive, sure. Also, can you properly use it as a USB stick afterwards on all operating systems or would that need yet another format?

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #30 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

If you're talking about apt-get, you can always use --no-install-recommends. Not that the rest of what you wrote inspires any confidence in this "Miro" thing.
Indeed, the Miro thing was on my machine for max fifteen minutes. I am not looking for any clever ways to get it back. There are enough workable video players around. I only tried Miro and wrote about it because Linux.com ranked it high once upon a time. My trust for their criteria sank a bunch.

Quote from: Frenzie on
Quote from: ersi on
If you use it to create bootable USB sticks, isn't it enough to do it as per instructions here?

If you want to erase the existing data, sure. If you want only one OS on your USB drive, sure. Also, can you properly use it as a USB stick afterwards on all operating systems or would that need yet another format?
I don't know any other operating systems any more besides Linux :) You are right, multiple partitions on the USB device may be desirable, but I haven't needed it. Maybe GParted can do something in this area?

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #31 –
Looks like dd should also be able to handle specific partitions, so I guess you would always be able to use fdisk or gparted or whatever to make a couple of partitions and then use dd to write to them. But then how do you create a bootloader on the disk so you can choose at boot? Note that UNetbootin doesn't exactly handle such scenarios gracefully either, but at least it's fairly easy to manipulate.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #32 –
This is not directly a promotional post for a specific distro, but well, here it is http://canaima.softwarelibre.gob.ve/

Canaima is Venezuelan national OS, a Debian modified to suit the institutions and the people of the country. Or so the website says.

Somebody mentioned a national OS of China. Here about this one too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylin_%28operating_system%29

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #33 –
And apparently LibreOffice has a Chinese fork called NeoShine?

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #34 –
I'm not completely sure when or how this would come in useful (easy graphs, perhaps?), but I'll drop this link to PyLaTeX just in case.

https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #36 –
I had a somewhat interesting experience getting my Canon printer working in Ubuntu the other day. At first I thought I could install the printer driver metapackage and it should work, but it didn't. So I searched the web for the answers and found a thread in Linuxquestions about my issue. A poster answered the driver was available on Canon's Asian site. Figuring that I missed the OP saying he was Asian, I tried the US site. According to the US site, there was no driver for Linux. So I followed the link to the Asian site, successfully installed the driver and my printer works fine. I find it odd that Canon would make the driver available on the Asian site, but not the American.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #37 –
Quote from: Sanguinemoon on

I find it odd that Canon would make the driver available on the Asian site, but not the American.

Possible that the Asian branch of Canon made it available by accident. The headquarters didn't mean to, but they don't have control over what is going on in all the departments.
 

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #39 –
I'm using kate or bluefish, mostly because of the built-in file browsers - very helpful if you have to mess with lots of files ( like the NetBSD source tree ).
For terminals I got used to joe, and on ancient hardware where kate or bluefish would be too slow or too fat there's nedit.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #40 –
This is kind of random, but I'm tired of folks saying Gnome is lighter than KDE. On launch, they seem to use about the same ram but Gnome seems to inflate more after usage and might even have a memory leak. The real culprit for using up all the ram is Firefox anyway, not the desktop environment.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #41 –
On a Dedoimedo review, OpenSUSE Gnome Shell ate 700MB RAM straight out of boot, while Kubuntu KDE ate 400-something MB RAM. Clearly a lot comes down to your (distro's) configuration. Also, Gnome 3.6 had a memory leak where every interaction with the top panel increased memory use. I hope/assume that's fixed by now.

I've got Opera using 2.1GB, Firefox 350MB (3 tabs), operapluginwrapper 139MB, and everything else uses less. I'm currently using 64% out of 6GB. I'd be more concerned about CPU and disk I/O than about 100MB RAM more or less (even or perhaps especially so on my netbook).

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #42 –
I don't think the memory leak is fixed. I came home from work to find my machine swapping like crazy and nearly unresponsive. At first I suspected Fx was acting up, but discovered that Gnome-shell 3.8  was eating 1.4 gigs of ram (obviously without the user interaction you mentioned.) Ram usage is a bigger issue for me, since I have 3 gigs of it here. With Fx having 8 tabs open, Libreoffice with a large document open,  the Last.fm desktop client and Goldendic, I'm using 77%; which is high for me (I usually run about the percentage of ram as you are, maybe a little higher.) CPU usage is usually around 15% on either desktop.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #43 –
Quote from: Sanguinemoon on
1.4 gigs of ram

Ouch! :(

Quote from: Sanguinemoon on
Ram usage is a bigger issue for me, since I have 3 gigs of it here.

Sure, but on my netbook I've got 2GB, and on my older kinda broken netbook merely 1GB. I use Xfce because I like the interface better, with better battery life and lower RAM usage more as blissful side effects than as a reason for choosing it. Of course if a DE really uses too much RAM you'll notice, but whether it uses 270MB or 300MB doesn't sound like a substantial difference unless you're on 512MB RAM.

Edit: LXDE using something like 110MB, on the other hand… that's a far more significant difference. ;)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #46 –
My main job decided to go over from Windows to Linux in a few months. I will be sharing how they succeed :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #48 –
Quote from: ersi on

My main job decided to go over from Windows to Linux in a few months. I will be sharing how they succeed :)
The transition will also mean an entirely new computer park. The OS will be Linux Mint.

I hope they will offer the old machines to employees. Some among them are reasonably capable.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #49 –
At work they replaced an aging IBM database server running AIX with some x86 box running SuSE Enterprise Linux. Wasn't nearly as much of an upgrade as everyone was hoping for. Sure, some big, rarely used operations got a lot faster. Too bad other, frequently used ones, got slower.

Also, they didn't let me have the IBM box. Damn them :right: