*^$*(^%() Linux!

[farzooks]

About ten days ago, I discovered that my old Oki LED printer wasn't supported by Win7/64 - no driver for it, anywhere, and nobody had successfully tried, either. This was doubly galling, because apart from being a great old compact 'laser' it was really cheap to run, as parts for it have now got dirt cheap as New Old Stock is being sold for peanuts. I only use it once in a blue moon, and it's really economical to have it there, as it can sit for months between uses and not clog, unlike inkjets.
That was the start of it. Just to see if it was supported in Linux, I bunged in an old Ubuntu CD and ran it as a trial - it recognised the printer straight away and spat out a test page. Great.
I installed that version, then found a couple of days later that it was no longer supported and I really should be running the latest one - ok, so I did that, and the printer still worked.

Could I get the satellite card to work? Of course not.
So I installed a more TV-card-friendly version - Mythbuntu, which is supposed to recognise TV and sat cards and just work - of course it doesn't - that would be too much like pure luck. The printer didn't work either, but that was easily fixed.
The card works in VLC, but only for one mux at a time and when I want to change a channel, I have to enter the various parameters all over again. However, this shows the card is working and some level of driver is in there.

It's like knitting your own string vest, all this pissing around with stuff in Linux and I'm getting to the stage of seriously considering ripping it back out, going back to Windows and simply configuring one of the old PCs as a printer mule. I was trying to avoid that, as it's a bit of a waste of space most of the time.

[boyofford]

Love linux, and most of my stuff is running some sort of linux but can be tough at times.
I tend to work the other way round and buy stuff I know works, but surprised how much just works these days... Started using linux about eight years ago and was worse.

[farzooks]

Oh, I've tried various flavours of Linux CDs over the last decade and liked one or two of them as short-term trials but never done a full installation until now. I was so hacked off with Windows (which to be fair, just works most of the time, if resource heavy) that I jumped ship, knowing what I was getting into. At the end of the 90s, when I first tried it, it was a fecking nightmare, so left it for years. The past three or four years especially have seen a revolution in ease-of-use and installation. I really like the layout of the Unity desktop (but it hides too much away for my taste) and the XCFE on Mythbuntu is ok, but a bit like WinNT4 in its spartan-ness. Still, the addition of the Cairo Dock makes quite a difference and I'm thinking of changing desktop.
I'm not giving up on it really, it's just so bleedin' frustrating when the so-called installation screens are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard and look like they've been written by somebody living in a wattle-and-daub hut, miles from civilization, where bandwidth is measured in pigeon crap.

[daveyboy37]

Windows sucks... PC, Tablet or Phone.. It just sucks!!

On PC it sucks because updates don't break it.
On Phone it sucks cos there aren't 1000+ clock and weather apps for it and even worse, with the apps they do have that are not free, they force you to give them 7 days trial before they ask if you want to buy.
Windows tablet is worst of all though. With these you can only run the thousand of apps already mentioned and every piece of software ever devised for windows.

Like I said.. It sucks

Bias disclaimer . I maintain a Linux online Server, 2 windows online servers a home based windows server, 2 iPads, 3 android tablets a Windows Tablet, 2 Galaxy S4, a Lumia 920 and a Lumia 1020 and finally 2 I-Phones.

[izan]

VM any OS you have: ISO/CD/DVD.

www.virtualbox.org/






Have fun
I

[farzooks]

VM will definitely be going in, as I need it (or wine) for Photoshop. I was using VM on the W7 box on occasion, and had a hard time getting it to see the USB ports (another reason for change - if it had done that and operated the printer, I would have halted there), but this time around it is only necessary for box-internal use and won't have to talk to the outside world.

[izan]

Mostly win based here, so it's Virtual PC or VMware or Virtual box...whatever works...whatever works.

cheers
I

[boyofford]

I got into using Linux bit before Vista came out, at first so I couldn't do work at home! But vista sealed the deal.
I never progressed from linux newbie really, tried all sorts of distributions, mostly in multiboot as livecds not as good, but in the end I'm just using ubuntu based distros. Still not convinced by unity, using gnome for desktop pcs.

Been messing with linux based satellite boxes more recently and as cut down versions of XBMC are readily available so I just use them now for media centres, used to have to mess about more(one raspberry pi and one old Dell dimension running off USB with no harddrive)
I've got a windows install in a virtual pc which I use snapshots to go back in time when has breakage, but only use for studying and the odd thing.
Use GIMP in linux instead of Photoshop.

Used to be my winter hobby, motorcycles being my summer one but since got house/kid not got time for either!

My brother got old pc for his kids few years ago and was round there every week fixing it seemed, ran windows 7 slowly but even with xp he would break it and it would get riddled with viruses all the time despite virus software so in the end put lubuntu on it and not had to do anything to it in literally years!

[djs]

I haven't been near Linux for over 18 months. I configured a dual boot XP/Ubuntu PC ages ago specifically to run some old XP software whilst having a quick start option. I also used various types on an Acer netbook.
The wi-fi on the Acer never worked from day one, but it did with "mint" Linux. Stupid thing.

[farzooks]

One of the trials I put in was a slightly old Mint - I rather liked it, but it wouldn't play nicely with the graphics card, although that may have been sorted in the current release.
I'm also in the process of building a HTPC out of an old HP Pavilion box with an Intel Duo 5700 (and might upgrade that to the most the motherboard will take), so now I'm wondering whether to stick W7 with XBMC on that or go for XBMCbuntu. It's a toss-up, because that one needs to be fit and forget, unlike the desktop here, where I can meander away at it to my heart's content.

[Deleted]

Jan 1, 2014 16:33:26 GMT farzooks said:

One of the trials I put in was a slightly old Mint - I rather liked it, but it wouldn't play nicely with the graphics card, although that may have been sorted in the current release.
I'm also in the process of building a HTPC out of an old HP Pavilion box with an Intel Duo 5700 (and might upgrade that to the most the motherboard will take), so now I'm wondering whether to stick W7 with XBMC on that or go for XBMCbuntu. It's a toss-up, because that one needs to be fit and forget, unlike the desktop here, where I can meander away at it to my heart's content.

OpenElec is a better embedded version of XBMC, can potentially take some tinkering but it works nice none of the less, i have it running on a raspberry pi as a media centre.

with regards to your TV card, what card is it? All the different distro's may have different functionality out the box but at the end of the day they're all based on linux and things which work on one, can be made to work on another with some commands.

[boyofford]

Jan 1, 2014 16:33:26 GMT farzooks said:

One of the trials I put in was a slightly old Mint - I rather liked it, but it wouldn't play nicely with the graphics card, although that may have been sorted in the current release.
I'm also in the process of building a HTPC out of an old HP Pavilion box with an Intel Duo 5700 (and might upgrade that to the most the motherboard will take), so now I'm wondering whether to stick W7 with XBMC on that or go for XBMCbuntu. It's a toss-up, because that one needs to be fit and forget, unlike the desktop here, where I can meander away at it to my heart's content.

Take a look at openelec bud, if all its going to be is media pc, lighter footprint with very fast startup. Doubt you'll need a better spec than you've got. I've always use nvidia graphics cards as traditionally better supported.

[boyofford]

To slow typing lol.

[farzooks]

I was looking at Openelec but it didn't suit me for some reason. To complicate matters, I want to use the HTPC as a file server and will fit a couple of large disks in the next year. Back-ups are important now, as I have so much painstakingly downloaded video and music stuff I'd hate to lose through a crash of one disk. At the moment it's backed-up once, but twice would be nicer.

[boyofford]

Jan 2, 2014 1:37:23 GMT farzooks said:

I was looking at Openelec but it didn't suit me for some reason. To complicate matters, I want to use the HTPC as a file server and will fit a couple of large disks in the next year. Back-ups are important now, as I have so much painstakingly downloaded video and music stuff I'd hate to lose through a crash of one disk. At the moment it's backed-up once, but twice would be nicer.

Your right, openelec ain't anygood for that.
I've got a nas storing most stuff granted not with two hard drives mirroring though, just so stuff is central as got 3 instances in total of xbmc and just leave nas on as low power usage.