The Linux geek thread - The Bear and Badger

hunk

Quick ddg
https://www.sd-memory-cards.net/format-sd-card-linux/

Blue Swirl

Hmm, right-clicking in Dolphin doesn't come up with the Format option.

Looks like I'll have to have a play with the command line options in that article. Cheers much, hunk.

Hodge360

Welcome to Linux, it's always the command line.

Blue Swirl

I miss the command line. It was a blessing during my time in academia, mass renaming thousands of files. It'll be good to have an excuse to get back into it.

acemuzzy

Well sed

Ed_Flanders

GParted is the easiest choice if the command line fails you.

Blue Swirl

acemuzzy wrote:

Well sed

Chuckle.

Ed_Flanders wrote:

GParted is the easiest choice if the command line fails you.

A few search results suggested GParted. It's not on KDE neon by default, but it should be easy to install via Discover/Flatpak.

Blue Swirl

Turns out GParted isn't in Discover, KDE neon's "app store". So I decided to try the command line.

Well, as the tree said to the lumber jack, my brain hurts.

I might just take the SD card home and do it on my Windows 10 laptop.

acemuzzy

I used to know how to do all this shizzle but it's been a while I'm afraid!

hunk

https://gparted.org/download.php

Gui version of gparted. Doing it in command line is tricky and not recommended. Unless you really love command line.

Blue Swirl

If I can't format it on my Windows machine, I'll download GParted directly.

TheBoyRoberts

acemuzzy wrote:

Well sed

Brilliant!!

Blue Swirl

I'm really digging KDE Neon on my work laptop. I have tons of fun entertaining the kids with wobbly, translucent windows.

Three problems I've noticed so far:

Sometimes the trackpad/trackpoint (I'm using an old Thinkpad) stops working. I pretty much always use a USB mouse, so it's no major issue, but a smidgen annoying.

The downloads folder in the Dolphin file browser doesn't update automatically. I have to close and open the window to get downloaded files to show up. Weirdly, every other folder doesn't have this problem.

The KDE back up app, Kup, doesn't work. Full stop. Occasionally it'll say my back up plan hasn't been run yet, and ask if I want to back up for the first time; if I say yes or no, nothing happens. If I go into options and hit the 'run now' button... nothing happens. Currently, I just copy and paste my important folders to an SD card, but it'd be nice if this was automated. Is there another app badgers would recommend?

Ed_Flanders

Regarding the backups, I only have a small bash script for my /home folder:

#!/bin/bash
rsync -r -t -v --exclude={'.*'} --progress -s /home/myusername /media/myusername/backup &&
echo
umount /media/myusername/backup
echo
echo ---BACKUP DONE---
echo
exec $SHELL

It assumes that my external drive is already mounted. I explicitly leave out hidden folders because if I need to restore a backup, I'd prefer to regenerate all my settings.
For a more intuitive process, you can always use grsync. I'm sure there are easier ways to backup your files, but my little script does what I need.

Blue Swirl

Oh, neat. Cheers fella.

Blue Swirl

Started up my work laptop to be informed that KDE neon needs an upgrade. It's going from version 5.26 to 22.04. Why the big jump? Because the latest version in based on Ubuntu.

I'm not sure why they've done this. We already have a version of Ubuntu using KDE plasma. It's called Kubuntu. It's been around for a while. Why have two distros that are basically Ubuntu + KDE stuff?

davyK

Have an older but decent PC. Ran windows 10 OK but it wasn't handling some games well - so I was going to just bin it after getting a new machine.

Rescued it and have put an Ubuntu build on it. Went for the build for the office suite included. This is very much for just messing about with and seeing what the basic user experience is like - want to see what the compatibility with Office files is like etc.

It's working fine but sadly it doesn't detect the wifi card. It is a very old card - I put this in myself from the previous machine I had which died. The card worked fine with Windows up until a certain update which reduced it to a crawl.

I suspect the age is an issue. I see some error messages appearing on boot up and I suspect it's to do with the detection of the card. It's a PCI slot. So I'm going to get a new card for it. Has anyone had any issues with modern PCI cards and Linux?

Ed_Flanders

I don't know much about desktop cards on Linux, sorry. However, based on my experience with laptop wifi cards, I'd say anything Intel or to a lesser extent Atheros should work fine.

davyK

So ordered a new wifi card and it works.

It's an Ashata card (whoever they are !! )

Ubuntu promptly updated itself. I downloaded a file from office 365 via the browser , opened it in LibreOffice, made some changes and uploaded it into office 365 again.

Just a simple document but it looks OK on my Windows10 laptop opening the doc in WORD.

Interesting

Even without LibreOffice, it's a viable way of working with MS365 just using the browser without having to use Windows 10.

Nice version of Solitaire too.

MAME next.

Will be interested in what dev tools I can get my mitts on too.

The card also has bluetooth so haven't tried that yet.

Before the Ubuntu update I couldn't get it to work with my USB hub - had to connect mouse and keyboard directly which is a pain - will try again tonight to see if it works post-update. Will mean I will have camera and mic etc accessible too.

davyK

This post created from Firefox running Ubuntu.

davyK

Have installed MAME.

installing things on Linux is interesting. Used something called sudo at the command line. sophisticated stuff though - just seems to handle everything for you with a few instructions. The MAME dev site makes it easy with its instructions.

Going to try a few shmup ROMS for the craic.

davyK

Runs a decent handful of the ROMs I have. Nice.

Can't get the USB hub to work though. Not the end of the world. Might look in the bios - it won't even boot with no keyboard directly plugged in.

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

This post created from Firefox running Ubuntu.

The future.

Ed_Flanders

A bios issue would be my first guess too. You also can use "sudo dmesg -w" to check if the computer is at least trying to do something with the hub. Or try a more cutting-edge live distro than Ubuntu to rule out a hardware problem.

Blue Swirl

Finally got (with a modicum of tinkering) Ubuntu and the WSL installed on my Windows 10 desktop.

It's been a while since I last used the command line. Can anyone recommend tutorials?

Ed_Flanders

I have this guide bookmarked, but I can't say I have used it much https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide
For info about specific commands, you can use the man pages, or tldr for a brief summary: https://tldr.sh/

Blue Swirl

Ooh, cheers much.

Yeah, I remember the man command. Endless giggles running man man. (I'm that kind of sad.) Last night I managed to do stuff like 'ls -al | tee testfile; cat testfile; echo DONE', so I remembered more than I thought I would.

Blue Swirl

I think the next thing to do is re-remember apropos.

Blue Swirl

Oh, and relearning grep.

Blue Swirl

Latest command that made me giggle: whatis man.

What indeed.

In other news, I've decided, rather than getting rid of my Surface Go 2 and buying a new machine, I'll try and get Linux running on it. Currently thinking about Zorin, with it's Education Lite variant.

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