• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Rollback RX vs GRUB

Your good suggestion will make me have to uninstall Rollback, delete partitions, cleanse the mbr, install kde and reinstall Rollback... again. No problem, I have more time than money these days.
 
jefboyardee said:
Your good suggestion will make me have to uninstall Rollback, delete partitions, cleanse the mbr, install kde and reinstall Rollback... again. No problem, I have more time than money these days.
Click to expand...

If you like Mint KDE or the KDE desktop in general, consider trying Kubuntu as well. They're pretty much identical from the UI standpoint but it adds to the table the Ubuntu software repository (you do have to add it but that's no big deal) and you can find solutions to just about any problem you might come across with a quick Google search. There's so much Q&A out there pertaining to Ubuntu, it's crazy.

I like standard Ubuntu and always have it at the ready although I don't use it much anymore. It's very clean and smooth but something about Gnome just doesn't do it for me. Personal preference thing I guess.
 
Sheesh... I did all that, tried both of them, subjectively preferred Cinnamon, got caught in an mbr mess that involved one of those distros or Rollback... eventually got back to exactly where I was last night. Now I've got a stack of distro DVDs but am plumb tuckered out on playing with them.

So, I'll stick with the leader... if something passes Mint on Distro Watch, I'll break down and start over.
 
I asked this over at the Mint forum:

...I need Linux apps that do some of these the simple things I'm already dependent on in Win7:

ATnotes is a FREE program which creates notes on the desktop.

CutePDF Writer Convert to PDF documents on the fly — for Free!

Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard.

SSSleeper is a tool that enables you to activate hot-corners on your screen

TClockEx Enhance the standard Windows taskbar adding information you need.

tinySpell can watch your typing on the fly and alert you whenever it detects a misspelled word.

Texter saves you countless keystrokes by replacing abbreviations with commonly used phrases you define.

X-Mouse Button Control is a Windows application to remap your mouse buttons and expand the capabilities of your mouse!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn't really get any sure-fire Linux equivalents there, so I figure I might as well try here...
 
For instance, at the Mint site's Software packages, I find a few entries to replace Ditto up there. But then -- getting to be the final nail in the Linux coffin -- there's several packages for several versions of several distros, none of them being Mint, but some of them Ubuntu, which I guess should work. But most of them went to sleep a few years ago. This is getting to be a fetid swamp. You'd at least think that Gods of Linux would have insisted that all distros must be able to use the same third-party packages.

The more I learn about Lunux, the more convinced I am of its hopelessness.
 
jefboyardee said:
For instance, at the Mint site's Software packages, I find a few entries to replace Ditto up there. But then -- getting to be the final nail in the Linux coffin
Click to expand...

Think it depends where you are. From here seems to be very much alive and well, especially if the government is really committed and I'm seeing Ubuntu machines in stores and they're selling. And of course Android is anything but dead. :D That's everywhere.
 
Yes, I understand it looks very different from your perspective. I'm just dismayed that it never really got in the fight with MS, even with MS holding the door wide open with its travesty of Win 8.
 
jefboyardee said:
Yes, I understand it looks very different from your perspective. I'm just dismayed that it never really got in the fight with MS, even with MS holding the door wide open with its travesty of Win 8.
Click to expand...

It seems that the tech press has done us all a great disservice by rating things as either epic wins or dismal failures. The reality is that everything is relative and in between epic and dismal.

Windows 8 and 8.1 isn't a travesty. Neither was Vista. Windows ME was probably the worst release from MS, but even then it still kinda worked. Similarly Desktop Linux has never really gotten much traction simply because of the distribution and development paradigm behind it. We are just starting to see the average person even know what Linux is, let alone use it. Linux doesn't have to be an MS killer or an Apple killer or a killer of any kind. As long as there is a use/need for it, it will hang around.
 
Linux doesn't have to be an MS killer or an Apple killer or a killer of any kind.
Click to expand...

True, but it could and should have been. Ten years ago, Linux loomed as a threat to MS. Now it's nothing more than a cute little science project, several hundred of them, actually.
 
I would hardly call Android, Red Hat and Canonical "cute little science projects", it's just that Linux isn't tearing it up on the desktop, which is what 98.3% of the population thinks about when you say "computer".

Linux is used in cars, TV's and every sort of smart appliance without the end user knowing (or really caring for that matter) what is behind the magical menu.
 
jefboyardee said:
True, but it could and should have been. Ten years ago, Linux loomed as a threat to MS. Now it's nothing more than a cute little science project, several hundred of them, actually.
Click to expand...

Maybe on the office desktop PC Microsoft is still king, for the moment. But from what I see just about everywhere else Linux is a very serious threat to MS. ...it's called Android. ...you might of heard of it. ;) I believe that Chromebooks are selling quite nicely now, they're Linux as well. And here we have the Ubuntu OS initiative, backed by Canonical Ltd. and the Communist Party of China. Hardly cute little science projects I don't think.

BTW what happened ten years ago? I know I was using XP as my main OS, and was I think trying out Mandrake at the time on a separate hard drive, as I didn't want to mess around with my Windows drive. Mandrake went through a few mergers and is called Xandros now I believe.
 
mikedt said:
If you want Mint to look and work more like Windows, KDE is a better choice for that IMO.
Click to expand...

I decided that KDE deserves another shot, being that a renowned full-timer recommends it. Works better than last time so far, but I still reboot to Windows to say stuff like this...
 
jefboyardee said:
I decided that KDE deserves another shot, being that a renowned full-timer recommends it. Works better than last time so far, but I still reboot to Windows to say stuff like this...
Click to expand...

I never have to reboot or go to a Windows PC to post on AF. I'm actually posting this from my Android phone( Linux :D ). Give KDE a try, and let us know what happens and how you get on with it. :)

BTW I teach elementary and middle school English using Linux Mint KDE on my laptop. That's my day job. I also know a few other expats doing the same in Beijing and Guangzhou, either using Mint or Ubuntu.
 
I could definitely email from KDE; already ditched Kmail and installed Tbird because I'm a creature of habit. But it just don't feel right doing real stuff in Linuxland (yet), like I'm sitting in someone else's office. I am, however, starting to think you're right about KDE vs Cinnamon.
 
mikedt said:
But from what I see just about everywhere else Linux is a very serious threat to MS. ...it's called Android. ...
Click to expand...

Cannot argue with that, saw two-four hundred dollar Chromebooks taking up half the computer shelf at Walmart today. Everything above that price was Monkeysnot, with 8 point something in fine print. I think Google is poised to knock everyone down by finally lowering the cost of ownership, with a little help from the cloud.

That includes Linux as we know it, but I keep hearing that they don't care.
 
Linux will always be around. MS is king in the corp. world and most people do not like change. This is one reason linux hasn't taken off like alot of people think or want.

Unless you really need some Windows programs, I would dump it and start using Linux only. At the beginning that is what I ended up doing when (Mikedt's Mandrake) wiped it off the dual boot setup.

That way you won't have it as a crutch to keep you from learning linux better.

@Mikedt, it is now called Mageia, but there is another version of Mandriva still around.
 
lunatic59 said:
I would hardly call Android, Red Hat and Canonical "cute little science projects" ... Linux is used in cars, TV's and every sort of smart appliance
Click to expand...

True enough, glad you said that. But yes, I was referring to the Linux desktop OS smorgasbord, where it seems to me that they're working very hard to create something that nobody wants, except that it's free.
 
Allow me to say that everyone contributing to this thread knows more about Linux, and computers in general, than I ever did. I appreciate all the tidbits I'm accumulating from y'all.
 
jefboyardee said:
True enough, glad you said that. But yes, I was referring to the Linux desktop OS smorgasbord, where it seems to me that they're working very hard to create something that nobody wants, except that it's free.
Click to expand...
One reason there are so many versions of linux is because the source code is free, heck, even you could make your own version if you wanted to. And yes, alot of them come & go, so it can be confusing.

After all my time with Linux, which I used to distro hop, trying as many as I could, I came to realize there are only a few that is worth using.

Slackware
Fedora/Redhat
Debian
Mageia
Opensuse

Every now & then I may try a completely different one, if it looks promising to me.

Just my opinion.
 
jefboyardee said:
Please pick one of those classics for my next meandering trial.
Click to expand...
Out of the bunch, I have used Debian & Mageia, the most. It was Mandrake, then Mandriva before Mageia, which is my current distro that I've settled on.

Debian is a little tricky. It have 3 versions, Stable, which may have older software, then Testing which have current SW, and Sid (Unstable) but it can be stable and include bleeding edge SW.

So I would pick Debian to start, with it's 37,500 software packages.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#cite_note-16
 
What got me into using a Linux OS on my laptop full-time was really Microsoft's DRM geo-restricted product activation crap. You can't activate the regular versions of Win 7 and 8 in the PRC, Microsoft forces you to use a "special" version that only works in Chinese. I don't believe in software piracy. I wanted to be able to trust my PC that it wasn't sending all the things that I do to either Microsoft's and/or government servers somewhere.

I've investigated into using an Android device for my classroom work, however all the school DLP projectors have VGA connectors, which means I really do have to use a PC laptop or desktop for my work.
 
In order to not have to repeatedly repartition my hard drive, I've got eight USB2 ports on the way, and about to get a bunch of 8GB sticks, so I can flash-install a bunch of these.

Don't have to do this and don't know why I'm doing it, but six bucks for eight ports reignited my curiosity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom