gnhlug-discuss Digest, Vol 64, Issue 1
David Ohlemacher
ohlemacher at gmail.com
Mon Jan 2 22:46:34 EST 2012
I to looked at updating from Maverick and refused to stick with Ubuntu.
Unity really is a steaming bucket. I played with it in a virtual machine
for 15 minutes. It would be fine on a cell phone, but that is it.
So looking around I moved to LMDE/xfce. LMDE is fast and I like xfce. I
want stable, usable and configurable, hold the eye candy. But I have had
several issues that broke it required fixing. VmWare is not really
compatible. After installation I could no long do any apt-get updates.
Also, USB did not work at all in VMs. But it was
fixable<http://communities.vmware.com/message/1887364#1887364>.
Also, every 20-30 reboots my desktop gets screwed up and I have to delete
~/.Cache/session and logout/in. When this happens, each window gets
stacked in the upper right corner with no title bars at all and no way to
switch apps. Only the last app started can be used. Strange. There are a
few other smaller issues. One positive thing that surprised me was that
setting up my network printer took about 3 seconds. That was nice.
Even with the issues, I still like LMDE. It's been on my laptop for 3
months. I know how to fix it quickly. I may switch distros, but I think
I'll be sticking with xfce.
For xmas, we now have two new zareason systems. A desktop and a laptop,
both with mint 12. Mint 12 wont be around very long. It's unusually
painful to change simple things like adding to the panel or making a new
panel. Unity will need to make some room in the bucket for Gnome3. The
root user is called "Administrator"! Did windoze infect Linux desktops?
It seems so.
Zareason <http://zareason.com/shop/home.php> was great by the way. It was
me that asked for Mint 12; there were several choices. I appreciate 24/7
support with someone that speaks American English and knows how to spell
Linux. They threw in a 850W 80+ Gold p/s instead of the cheap 350W I was
expecting.
Anyone love KDE? I used to in the 2.0 - 3.5 days, but 4.0 was so unusable
I dumped it immediately. I liked kdevelop, but it was horriblely broken in
4.0 (spent the time to really learn vim). I hear KDE is now much better,
but I like dot files (rsync-able) and abhor registries.
-d
On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 8:55 PM, <gnhlug-discuss-request at mail.gnhlug.org>wrote:
> Send gnhlug-discuss mailing list submissions to
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> gnhlug-discuss-request at mail.gnhlug.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> gnhlug-discuss-owner at mail.gnhlug.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of gnhlug-discuss digest..."
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. How to test network quality (home) (Bruce Labitt)
> 2. mint (Bruce Labitt)
> 3. Re: mint (Coleman Kane)
> 4. Re: mint (David Rysdam)
> 5. Re: mint (Bruce Labitt)
> 6. Re: mint (David Rysdam)
> 7. Re: How to test network quality (home) (Ben Scott)
> 8. Re: How to test network quality (home) (Ben Eisenbraun)
> 9. Re: mint (Ryan Lee Stanyan)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
> To: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:02:08 -0500
> Subject: How to test network quality (home)
> The new year brings upgraded connectivity. :) Naturally I'd like to
> test my connection to see if I'm getting what I paid for. I've tried some
> the tools at dslreports and received some strange results.
> http://www.dslreports.com/pingtest/7ab34aa36277/2861823?r=64
>
> pingtest.net seems to have some issues as well. I get a fail on packet
> loss. However the test does not return useful results (like % loss) since
> it does not complete.
>
> Are there any decent tools or scripts that one can use? Stuff like iperf
> requires a server. Any network tools that "just run" that give *useful*
> results?
>
> tia
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
> To: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:42:16 -0500
> Subject: mint
> I'm tempted to try out mint. There are quite a few options. From what
> I gather, Mint is based on Ubuntu. So the latest Mint 12 is based on
> Oneiric. I have Oneiric now and really think it is a steaming bucket as
> far as productivity. It really is not made for doing work, it seems to be
> more oriented towards eye-candy. It seems to take a lot more mouse
> movement and difficult navigation to get anything done.
>
> Anyone have experience with the Mint family? How is the desktop handled?
>
> Should I take the plunge to LMDE? I've never run debian before.
>
> I'm not looking for which distro is the best ever, unless folks want to
> have fun. Just looking for something that is closer to what 10.04 LTS
> was. I run and maintain that at work for my two servers. Anything that is
> a bit more modern than 10.04 that 1) runs on older hardware (video
> especially) and can support vlc and myth?
>
> Maybe I'm just looking to hold on to gnome. It worked well enough. It
> didn't have too much stupid stuff and was relatively easy to maintain.
>
> Any insights?
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Coleman Kane <ckane at colemankane.org>
> To: Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
> Cc: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 13:51:37 -0500
> Subject: Re: mint
> A friend of mine at work (GE) uses Mint for his primary desktop
> environment and swears by it. I think GNOME 3 is the desktop environment
> (rather than Unity).
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jan 2, 2012, at 1:42 PM, Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
> wrote:
>
> I'm tempted to try out mint. There are quite a few options. From what I
> gather, Mint is based on Ubuntu. So the latest Mint 12 is based on Oneiric.
> I have Oneiric now and really think it is a steaming bucket as far as
> productivity. It really is not made for doing work, it seems to be more
> oriented towards eye-candy. It seems to take a lot more mouse movement and
> difficult navigation to get anything done.
>
> Anyone have experience with the Mint family? How is the desktop handled?
>
> Should I take the plunge to LMDE? I've never run debian before.
>
> I'm not looking for which distro is the best ever, unless folks want to
> have fun. Just looking for something that is closer to what 10.04 LTS
> was. I run and maintain that at work for my two servers. Anything that is
> a bit more modern than 10.04 that 1) runs on older hardware (video
> especially) and can support vlc and myth?
>
> Maybe I'm just looking to hold on to gnome. It worked well enough. It
> didn't have too much stupid stuff and was relatively easy to maintain.
>
> Any insights?
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: David Rysdam <david at rysdam.org>
> To: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:59:06 -0500
> Subject: Re: mint
> On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:42:16 -0500, Bruce Labitt <
> bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> > Should I take the plunge to LMDE? I've never run debian before.
>
> Yes you have. Ubuntu, especially older versions, *is* Debian, but with
> shinier graphics.
>
> > I'm not looking for which distro is the best ever, unless folks want to
> > have fun. Just looking for something that is closer to what 10.04 LTS
> > was. I run and maintain that at work for my two servers. Anything that
> > is a bit more modern than 10.04 that 1) runs on older hardware (video
> > especially) and can support vlc and myth?
>
> 10.04 was released only 18 months ago. What specifically do you need
> more modern than what was in that? Debian 6.0/Squeeze was released in
> February 2011.
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>
> To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:27:42 -0500
> Subject: Re: mint
> On 01/02/2012 01:59 PM, David Rysdam wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:42:16 -0500, Bruce Labitt<bruce.labitt@**
>> myfairpoint.net <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>> wrote:
>>
>>> Should I take the plunge to LMDE? I've never run debian before.
>>>
>> Yes you have. Ubuntu, especially older versions, *is* Debian, but with
>> shinier graphics.
>>
> Yes, and I appreciate *some* of the shininess.
>
>>
>> I'm not looking for which distro is the best ever, unless folks want to
>>> have fun. Just looking for something that is closer to what 10.04 LTS
>>> was. I run and maintain that at work for my two servers. Anything that
>>> is a bit more modern than 10.04 that 1) runs on older hardware (video
>>> especially) and can support vlc and myth?
>>>
>> 10.04 was released only 18 months ago. What specifically do you need
>> more modern than what was in that? Debian 6.0/Squeeze was released in
>> February 2011.
>>
> I was hoping for slightly better behavior for video tools. myth on 10.04
> is buggy. It mysteriously crashes. Using the ppa doesn't seem to fix
> things. Yes, I know that this is a myth problem. I was hoping perhaps
> rather foolishly that a slightly more modern version would behave better.
> It would seem many developers abandon support for *maturer* versions of
> the distro.
>
> I was also looking for updated python and scientific tools. mayavi2/vtk,
> etc.
>
> I really don't need to do it. (But I did do it. I am not happy that I did
> do it.) I did want a PVR solution that worked. I haven't found anything
> close to the ability of myth. Too bad it has so many warts. As in having
> insufficient up time to be a video recorder. I want to program the shows
> I'd like to record and actually have myth record it. myth would segfault
> sometime during the week - yeah that is useful.
>
> Getting closer to topic - what are the down sides to Debian? More work
> for me? Less hand holding? But more stable - right? End of the constant
> non-compatible/broken updates?
>
>
> On topic - anyone have experience with MATE?
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________**_________________
>> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
>> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>> http://mail.gnhlug.org/**mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-**discuss/<http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: David Rysdam <david at rysdam.org>
> To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:02:29 -0500
> Subject: Re: mint
> On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:27:42 -0500, Bruce Labitt <
> bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> > On 01/02/2012 01:59 PM, David Rysdam wrote:
> > > On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:42:16 -0500, Bruce Labitt<
> bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> > Getting closer to topic - what are the down sides to Debian? More work
> > for me? Less hand holding? But more stable - right? End of the
> > constant non-compatible/broken updates?
>
> I actually upgraded directly from Ubuntu 10.04 to Debian 6 with zero
> problems. That is, I kept my /home (and dotfiles) and just replaced the
> OS and had no issues other than having to install packages I want that
> weren't installed by default.
>
> I can't say I've been more stable because I wasn't *un*stable before
> (reboots basically dictated by power outages). But a lot less updating
> for sure. Hasn't been more work.
>
> However, it *has* been MUCH more of a hassle getting accelerated video
> to work, because it requires the non-free drivers which Debian is less
> willing to handle for the user. I'm not sure I can really blame Debian
> for following their charter, though. It's just that I've had to fall
> back onto my own ignorance.
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com>
> To: Greater NH Linux User Group <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 18:36:24 -0500
> Subject: Re: How to test network quality (home)
> On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Bruce Labitt
> <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> > Are there any decent tools or scripts that one can use?
>
> I've had SmokePing recommended to me for this purpose.
>
> -- Ben
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ben Eisenbraun <bene at klatsch.org>
> To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 18:49:21 -0500
> Subject: Re: How to test network quality (home)
> On Mon, Jan 02, 2012 at 06:36:24PM -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Bruce Labitt
> > <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> > > Are there any decent tools or scripts that one can use?
> >
> > I've had SmokePing recommended to me for this purpose.
>
> Seconded. If you have a machine running 24/7, it produces very nice
> RRDTool graphs of packet loss and latency that you can show to
> engineering types and get a reasonable response.*
>
> -ben
>
> * The times I have showed the graphs to first-level tech support types,
> the answers have ranged from "what's 5% packet loss between friends?" to
> "our email doesn't show images" responses...
>
> --
> empirical veracity is sacrificed on the altar of theoretical parsimony.
> <howard raiffa>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ryan Lee Stanyan <ryan.stanyan at gmail.com>
> To: Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>, Coleman Kane <
> ckane at colemankane.org>
> Cc: GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:55:26 -0500
> Subject: Re: mint
> Also with Gnome Shell you can extend the desktop environment using
> Javascript as far as I heard. There is a website for it, though it will
> only work with Firefox.
>
> https://extensions.gnome.org/
>
> On Mon, 2012-01-02 at 13:51 -0500, Coleman Kane wrote:
> > A friend of mine at work (GE) uses Mint for his primary desktop
> > environment and swears by it. I think GNOME 3 is the desktop
> > environment (rather than Unity).
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On Jan 2, 2012, at 1:42 PM, Bruce Labitt
> > <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > I'm tempted to try out mint. There are quite a few options. From
> > > what I gather, Mint is based on Ubuntu. So the latest Mint 12 is
> > > based on Oneiric. I have Oneiric now and really think it is a
> > > steaming bucket as far as productivity. It really is not made for
> > > doing work, it seems to be more oriented towards eye-candy. It
> > > seems to take a lot more mouse movement and difficult navigation to
> > > get anything done.
> > >
> > > Anyone have experience with the Mint family? How is the desktop
> > > handled?
> > >
> > > Should I take the plunge to LMDE? I've never run debian before.
> > >
> > > I'm not looking for which distro is the best ever, unless folks want
> > > to have fun. Just looking for something that is closer to what
> > > 10.04 LTS was. I run and maintain that at work for my two servers.
> > > Anything that is a bit more modern than 10.04 that 1) runs on older
> > > hardware (video especially) and can support vlc and myth?
> > >
> > > Maybe I'm just looking to hold on to gnome. It worked well enough.
> > > It didn't have too much stupid stuff and was relatively easy to
> > > maintain.
> > >
> > > Any insights?
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> > > gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> > > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> > gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnhlug-discuss mailing list digest
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20120102/6a911425/attachment-0001.html
More information about the gnhlug-discuss
mailing list