The Linux geek thread - The Bear and Badger

Ed_Flanders

Good to know that it's easy to install Linux on Macs. I thought it was harder, but maybe I was getting confused with installing MacOS on non-macs.

hunk

Ubuntu on that mbair was broken for years due to Apple's proprietary WiFi hw. The WiFi card refused to work properly due to a shitty non functional Apple driver. Seems they've solved that now. There's still issues with sleep and suspend but hopefully that'll be sorted out soon. I tried installing w10 on the thing but the Mac bootloader seems to block it at the firmware level. Not supported apparently. Bootcamp only allows w7 but that's alread eol.

MacOS on non Mac hw is a whole different kettle of fish.

hunk

But yeah, Apple does support Linux but in a half-assed manner. 'We allow you to install Linux but you can't have WiFi'. You will need to upgrade to a new mb if you really really want that feature.

Ed_Flanders

I might get my hands on a relatively old macbook pro soon... hopefully installing Linux won't be too hard.

hunk

No guarantees so fingers crossed.
Linux has come a very very long way tho, especially now with the involvement of Valve. Graphics drivers have improved no end in the past few years.

If the laptop is more than 6 years old be prepared to rip out the battery and search for a replacement. Google and aliexpress are your friend. It's also bizarre how smooth up to date linux runs on the old mb air while the hw was only supported up to snow leopard? Textbook planned obsolecence....

acemuzzy

Ooh, ASCII weather :-D

curl https://wttr.in/London

hunk

Niice.

cockbeard

If Biffo was a weatherman, sweet

Blue Swirl

acemuzzy wrote:
Ooh, ASCII weather
curl https://wttr.in/London

This fills me with far too much joy.

Blue Swirl

Anyone had a play with Zorin OS? Certainly looks the part.

https://zorin.com/

Hodge360

I put it on a repurposed Netbook for my mother-in-law probably around 6 yrs ago. Was a good halfway house from the familiarity of Windows. She only really used it for Facebook anyway and by the time any cracks appeared she was using one of them smartphones.

GooberTheHat

Blue Swirl

Apparently my uncle (a big Linux guy) is using it on his laptop, which is a pretty big recommendation.

That's the video that made me aware of the distro. I haven't watched it yet, but I've got a bootable USB stick with Zorin Core on it. Had a quick go last night. Current plan is to replace my Windows laptop with a desktop and put Zorin on the laptop to get a few more years out of it.

Hodge360

My Linux laptop must be 20yrs old but it's saved me a few times when Windows has fucked up.

Blue Swirl

When my iBook's screen shat itself and had to be sent back for repairs, I survived a week of uni course work and such using an original iMac running Xubuntu. It's amazing how well something cobbled together by enthusiasts can work.

Blue Swirl

Bought a second hand Thinkpad to leave at work, rather than lugging my laptop back and forth everyday.

Wondering whether I should try to install Linux rather than leaving it Windows 10 - perhaps KDE Neon.

GurtTractor

There's usually really good Linux driver support for Thinkpads I think. The X230 with extended battery pack is absolutely my favourite laptop form factor though there's a bunch of modern changes I would make. So practical.

Blue Swirl

That's one reason I went Thinkpad. I've tried getting it to boot from the KDE Neon USB stick I've made, but it doesn't seem to like it so far. I'll have to tinker over the weekend. Worst comes to worst I'll just use Windows 10.

Blue Swirl

Just tried another USB port and KDE neon ran perfectly. And it seems the HDD is already partitioned. I smell a dual boot.

SpaceGazelle

I got a really old laptop during the pandemic - like 12 yrs old, and put Puppy Linux on it and now it's my fave thing. Weighs a ton mind but the build quality is great. I could beat someone to death with it and still use the cd rom drive after, I reckon.

Blue Swirl

My second hand lappy also has an optical drive. Made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

davyK

How well does MAME run on Linux? Have an older but decent PC i could make a dedicated MAME box. When I say decent I mean USB for controllers , graphic cards etc.

Many years ago I built a bootable thumb drive with linux and mame. It worked but the graphics looked a bit out re colour etc. I presume it works a lot better now?

I put a clean install of windows 7 on the PC and took the wifi card out of it. Works well but windows is a fucking nag. Linux will be better?

acemuzzy

If anyone wants to feel warm and muzzy inside, pls DM

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

Linux will be better?

Worth a shot, no? Let us know how it goes.

acemuzzy wrote:

If anyone wants to feel warm and muzzy inside, pls DM

You flirt.

Blue Swirl

Posting this from my fresh install of KDE Neon, which I managed to install alongside Windows 10 without bricking my secondhand ThinkPad.

SOEMONE GIMME GOLD STAR AND COOKIE

Blue Swirl

Doom Linux - an entire Linux distro that just runs Doom.

Hackaday wrote:

The distribution is as simple as possible and loads no bloat other than what’s needed to launch the game. It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs fbDOOM {...} and in just a moment, Doomguy can start slaying demons.

Blue Swirl

So far I'm loving KDE neon. The only issue is that it seems to (sometimes) choose random settings when I plug my laptop into an HDMI TV. Which is a smidgen annoying when that's what I do with it all day at work.

Ed_Flanders

I can make profiles on Xfce, so I guess KDE probably has a much more powerful equivalent.

Blue Swirl

It worked fine yesterday after some updates, but this afternoon someone tripped over the cable and I was back to square one. Hopefully the other sessions work OK, I'm already tearing my hair out.

Blue Swirl

HDMI seems to have settled down, so that's a relief.

In other news, how do I format an SD card for use with Linux? I've done some googling*, but I can't figure it out; most places suggest to just use KDE Partition Manager, but for me that doesn't even see the SD card. (Though it appears in the Dolphin file manager - it won't let me copy files to it, however.) My Linux partition is ~108GB, and a 128GB SD card only cost me a tenner, I thought it'd make a good option for backing up my data.

*Duckduckgoing, technically.

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