Friday Ephemera
Patriarchy detected. They were “taken by surprise.” || The circle of life. || Altered stone. || I think not. || Enthusiastic newcomers. || Wine glass of note. || Where to put the baby while you use a public toilet. || Medieval trade routes. (h/t, Brian) || Important notice of note. || He spent 3 years building a pyramid of pennies. || Periscope spectacles for the height impaired. || More liveliness in London. || Tesla vs Lovecraft is a game. || Gorilla crow. || Glories of the 1980s. || Thank goodness the clever ones are in charge. || Always respect the media. || Always trust Google. || Entirely unrelated. || One and four, obviously. (h/t, Tim) || And finally, via Dicentra, things that will be found by future archaeologists.
Ah! Found it!
Wow. I’m not certain someone could be more incorrect than you were with the above.
“Linux Youth”? Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office when I was born.
I’m using Firefox running on Xfce in Slackware64 14.2 to type this reply. I only boot into Windows 10 to play games and I haven’t bothered to do that in weeks. (Mainly due to finding out that some of my favorite games were designed by an absolutely rabid anti-Trumper. I deleted them all from Steam after finding that out and haven’t bothered to run Windows since.)
If all you want to do is write novels, web browsing and email, why the bleep would you pay Macbook prices to do really simple stuff?
I use a MacBook Pro, 15-inch, 2018, for work and it is, at best, OK. Since I work in a corporation that otherwise uses Windows machines for non-engineers, OSX integrates rather well with the Windows corporate world.
There’s no particular reason to need that in the private world. If you are self-publishing, there’s no real reason to use MS Word since you can use other software to create e-pub images. The only web browsers you won’t find in Linux are Edge, Safari, and MS Explorer. There are more email clients than you can shake stick at.
IMO, OSX is a bit of a dog’s breakfast, split between the OneStep and BSD worlds that the OS used to be (OneStep based) and wants to become (BSD). I think the desktop paradigm OSX uses is absolute shit and their key remapping is annoying if you’ve been used to using anything other than a Mac.
YMMV, of course.
My brother has been building and servicing business computer systems for more than 30 years (he was recently promoted to the head of his department, so yes, he knows what he’s doing), and has used Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems for various things. I asked him about putting together a Linux machine, or at least installing an additional hard drive with it on my existing computer, and he answered me with one word:
Don’t.
The longer version was that all of the specialized software I use for work is Windows-only (fwiw, the primary vendor claimed for years that they were developing a Mac version, but eventually abandoned the project because of (apparently) various roadblocks from Apple and a relatively small demand. All of their competitors are also Windows-only. Yes, I know, I can run some sort of emulator to make it/them work in Mac or Linux OS, but tech support told me straight up I would not be getting any help from them if I ever had a problem.
My brother also stated that he fully expected he’d be fixing my computer on a near weekly basis, and since getting help from him is like pulling teeth, well…
BTW … Andy Ngo wasn’t the only person sent to the hospital by Antifa … thread.
Andy Ngo wasn’t the only person sent to the hospital by Antifa
A dedicated post.
“Linux Youth”? Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office when I was born.
Heh. I was the very tail end of Truman. For work a giant homemade desktop with a giant monitor. It can be dual booted into Windows or Linux Mint. For travelling, one straight up Linux box that runs every thing including Photoshop and Illustrator. One dual boot laptop because there is a DAW that only runs in Windows 8 or above, and I can’t be bothered to set up a virtual machine just for that, particularly because 8 and above are abominations.
I suspect the Linux fear is because to get the absolute most out of it you occasionally have to actually write a command, but, as you say, if all you ever do is write, surf, and e-mail, once you install any version, seeing as how they all come with office suites, browsers, and e-mail, you never have to touch the thing and can install it on any $200 laptop.
A dedicated post.
Damn. I was sure we could get to page three with a little Vi vs. Emacs action followed by tabs vs. spaces. Oh, well…some other time perhaps.
So to the local computer gurus, is there a site that gives the ignorant layman a step-by-step path for installing Linux on a computer? I currently have Win7 on my home computer, and apparently it’s going to become a liability soon.
Jaberwok – only hard part if you are not familiar with it is making sure your computer can boot from a USB stick (or DVD) which involves getting into the BIOS. If you are familiar and comfortable, mush on, if not, have a pal who is give you a hand.
The basic steps are: download an ISO image (basically what the OS installs from) with the version you want; make a bootable USB stick from it; boot your computer from it; follow the instructions on screen to try it, or install it if you like it. It is less painful than a clean Windows install.
Good versions for those transitioning from the OS your computer was assigned at birth are Linux Mint, Zorin OS Core, and Xubuntu.
Mint has a good step by step guide that walks you through what happens after, how to set up dual boot, and whatnot.
All the versions work the same as Mint, they just look a little different, some versions suggest using Rufus to make the bootable USB stick (easy to use) instead of Etcher. They all come with open source office suites that are very similar to MS office, they all have browsers, usually Firefox (but you can get Opera with a built in VPN), all have email clients if you don’t want to do webmail.
The beauty part is you can try any version before you install for good – I went through every Ubuntu version before I settled on Zorin and Mint.
I went through every Ubuntu version before I settled on Zorin and Mint.
When just loading some variety of Linux onto a laptop, an advantage with Kubuntu is that it has the collection of tools that are built into the KDE windowing interface.
I have a laptop that I use for my school Stuff, where the advantage with Kubuntu is that it has all those tools on hand with a handy interface to make use of, and I can have 12 visual desktops to get project work done, while also having the wireless connectivity get connected rather easily.
And yes, among the followup advantages of *nix over Mac and MS Windows is not having to pay rolling and increasingly exorbitant prices instead of just doing a download of free software. Indeed one can set up as many desktops as one needs to drop assorted things on, instead of having to be limited to the one desktop of MS Windows. Dunno if Mac does multiple desktops.
Myself, I run FreeBSD on my home systems and have those advantages given by a one coding project, monolithic installation—Linux being that kernel that Linus Torvalds runs, with the flavor of the month wrapped around the assorted infinite number of Linux distributions. Then again, FreeBSD is A) a bit more set up for remotely accessed server Stuff, and as such does first install with just a command line with all the windowing Stuff needing to be installed, and B) those home systems are all desktops, and an ongoing advantage with a desktop is a permanent hard wired, cable based connection . . . and we’re discussing what to put on a laptop, which tends to be rather more wireless based for internet access, connection to other computers.
I have put FreeBSD on the laptop, but the wireless management is not what it could be, and I’m entirely too swamped in work and school to drop everything to fix that, yet.
So for the moment I’m running Kubuntu on the laptop and going from there . . . .
Muldoon, Hal, thanks for the feedback. I’ll look over those links and maybe hit up some of the guys in my employers’ IT department.
I’m not a power user. Surfing the web and doing MSOffice stuff is about it. A few more domestic applications, but nothing too fancy. Not a gamer (unless Mah Jongg counts:-D).