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The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread

You know that old adage, "work expands to fill the time allotted for it"? Well, one of its offspring sayings, "data expands to fill the space allotted for it," has taken hold on my HP laptop. I was stunned yesterday when a random df -v showed that my /data partition was at 82% usage. That's 82% of a 317GB partition. :eek:

My nasty habit of taking thousands of photos--and then not getting around to deleting the crappy ones--has caught up with me. I've got some serious housecleaning to do!
 
nickdalzell said:
So nice to have Vector back. got the latest Firefox in there, flash player, Mad Mike's Radio in VLC, everything WORKS. had some fun in the terminal and got Mutt to sync with my Gmail account. i dunno, i just love the more 'traditional' approach to Linux than Ubuntu's noob approach.

HOWEVER, still got the overheat bug. it appears to be distro non-specific. even the Dell gets VERY hot running YouTube. CPU usage skyrockets. it seems when RAM dips below 65MB remaining this happens. only, it hasn't officially overheated as it continued playing and didn't freeze, but Linux's application of Flash Player appears to be buggy in the latest builds. not sure why though.
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Could be whether it's using proper hardware video acceleration, or is just using software. I'm sure if Flash is using software rendering it can be quite inefficient and CPU intensive. Which is probably down to video drivers. There is an option in Flash to use hardware acceleration or not, but if the driver is not supporting it, it won't make any difference. If the Linux builds of Flash are buggy, nobody can fix it, apart from Adobe. A major disadvantage of proprietary software.

I find Flash video on my older Macbook to be inefficient and does heat things up, but not enough to cause real problems, just the fans run flat out. If I'm playing video with VLC or QuickTime on the Mac, things stay cool. Sure it's Adobe, they just don't seem to be able to produce efficient software sometimes....ahem... Adobe Reader. :rolleyes:

TBH I hate Flash, a nasty proprietary thing. It's pretty much dead on mobile, soon as is goes away from the desktop OS the better IMO. I don't particularly trust Adobe either...http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57605962-83/adobe-hacked-3-million-accounts-compromised/#!

BTW Mutt? Last week you were objecting and protesting about using the terminal in Ubuntu and saying it's much quicker in Windows to get things done. And now you're hacking in the terminal "fun" to get Mutt to work with Gmail, and don't seem to mind? I know what Mutt is, I'm not that hardcore myself. Don't have that much spare time.
 
BTW Mutt? Last week you were objecting and protesting about using the terminal in Ubuntu and saying it's much quicker in Windows to get things done. And now you're hacking in the terminal "fun" to get Mutt to work with Gmail, and don't seem to mind? I know what Mutt is, I'm not that hardcore myself. Don't have that much spare time.
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I'm with you Mike, I didn't know you could hack Mutt to work with Gmail. I may give it shot when I have some extra time. I have enough projects I'm working, including setting up my own mail server to send/receive mail from the internet.
 
mikedt said:
BTW Mutt? Last week you were objecting and protesting about using the terminal in Ubuntu and saying it's much quicker in Windows to get things done. And now you're hacking in the terminal "fun" to get Mutt to work with Gmail, and don't seem to mind? I know what Mutt is, I'm not that hardcore myself. Don't have that much spare time.
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I hadn't even THOUGHT about mutt in ages. SeaMonkey's e-mail client does everything I need, plus tons of stuff I want, so that's what I use.
 
MikeDT, i actually like Vector's terminal. i said before, i don't hate the terminal at all. i hate being forced to use the terminal to fix a GUI app that shouldn't be malfunctioning.

Remember, i've had experience with Vector since that used to be my go-to distro a year or so back. i know all its tricks, all its bugs, and know how to work around every single one of them. Mutt might come off complicated to some noob these days, but i easily got Gmail to sync with it. i'm a VectorMan

Vector has a pretty damn powerful terminal with tons of useful apps that can either be installed or are preinstalled. Midnight Commander makes an excellent file explorer and Mutt is a pretty neat email program if you've come from the old days of DOS internet. nostalgia more than anything. it's on a D610, which isn't very up to spec so terminal is preferable over slow X Windows and KDE 3.5. VLC actually works on this machine.

Flash player has this same overheating bug regardless of whether hardware acceleration is on or off. Vector appears to perform better however with it off rather than on. with it on, i occasionally get audio without video, or video with skippy audio. Again, this is a D610 we're talking about. a computer that still has a dial-up modem and PCMCIA slots.

Ubuntu appears to prefer the GUI over anything else. it doesn't allow root logins out of the box the way Vector does, and takes hacking to make it work. it also has a very annoying form of User Account Control that is not easy to disable. it's noob-ified. Vector takes a more traditional linux approach and isn't all about protecting the user from him/herself. it lets you install anything. VLC was deemed non-compatible ironically but i was able to easily make it work. just add the --nodep flag and away i went. works fine. Ubuntu would abort probably saying something stupid like 'architecture not supported' or 'you held broken packages'. Ubuntu's package manager terminal or GUI refuses to ignore dependencies.

The trick is getting Vector 6 to run on the Chromebook. it's not at its best on the D610. Vector 7 and SOHO are all noobified like Ubuntu has been. i prefer 6. apparently the last 'traditional' linux currently available but i have not tried SuSE yet.

Challenge: get Mutt to sync with Gmail. it's not hard really, you just find some pre-written .muttrc file online somewhere set up for Gmail's IMAP support and just enter your user name and passwords where it is in all caps in the file, save it in the folder and done!

Whether or not i'm using the terminal or the GUI, in Vector i can get things done in half the time it takes to do it on *buntu. Moody has her *buntu love, my love is VectorLinux.
 
nickdalzell said:
MikeDT, i actually like Vector's terminal. i said before, i don't hate the terminal at all. i hate being forced to use the terminal to fix a GUI app that shouldn't be malfunctioning.
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It will continue to baffle me that your experience with *buntu is so diametrically opposed to mine. :confused:

Ubuntu appears to prefer the GUI over anything else.
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That's entirely up to the user. For example, Synaptic [or some other graphical package manager] vs apt.

it doesn't allow root logins out of the box the way Vector does, and takes hacking to make it work.
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Changing "false" to "true" in one file doesn't a hack make, at least in my opinion. *shrug*

it also has a very annoying form of User Account Control that is not easy to disable. it's noob-ified.
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I'm no noob, and it's definitely not noob-ified for me! :) As I've said before, it's as easy or geeky as the user wants it to be. Also, keep in mind that many window$ converts start with *buntu, and *buntu knows this. They wanted to make it accessible and uncomplicated enough so that a typical clueless window$ user could install it and be up and running in minutes. Hence its variety of choices, such as automatic vs manual decision making on disk usage during installation. Someone like me always chooses to do it manually--because I know what I'm doing, I understand *nix partitioning schemes, I want my hard drive partitioned a specific way, etc. But a new user, coming over from window$, doesn't NEED to know any of that. They can simply choose to let the installation proceed automatically with those decisions.

Vector takes a more traditional linux approach and isn't all about protecting the user from him/herself.
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There are many great things about Linux, but certainly at the top of the list must go: CHOICE. We have the ability to choose the distribution(s) we like best. Vector seems to do the trick for you, and that's great.

Whether or not i'm using the terminal or the GUI, in Vector i can get things done in half the time it takes to do it on *buntu. Moody has her *buntu love, my love is VectorLinux.
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Honestly, if I had as much trouble with *buntu as you do, it probably WOULDN'T be my favorite.
 
nickdalzell said:
Challenge: get Mutt to sync with Gmail. it's not hard really, you just find some pre-written .muttrc file online somewhere set up for Gmail's IMAP support and just enter your user name and passwords where it is in all caps in the file, save it in the folder and done!
Click to expand...

So it's using traditional IMAP. I do Gmail in the browser, but I've got multi-factor authentication enabled via Google Authenticator on my phone. Or it can send an SMS and can login to Gmail that way. Rather than logging in with just a username and password. Basically for additional security, to avoid the risks of being hacked.


BTW does anyone use Lynx? Which is a web browser that works in the terminal.
 
Links (not Lynx) works best in my experience, i had one setup going with Vector (Pentium III, very slow CPU, couldn't handle X that well) where Links had a graphical mode (lynx is strictly text only) and i had it working with a mouse, graphics everything via the Linux fbdev graphics setup. it could only handle a 256 color palette so either that was a limitation of my graphics card itself or the Linux frame buffer, not sure which is the truth though to be honest. it worked well but some images online did look like crap as this is an era of high and true color these days. for general Facebook and HTML versions of Gmail, it worked well enough.

That particular setup, though disassembled now (although the hard disks are intact and saved in case i chose to rebuild it) had almost everything doable in a terminal. Mutt, Links graphical browsing, MP3 playback, even video playback all through the terminal. (i used to save YouTube videos as a MP4 and play them offline through the terminal as the machine couldn't handle Flash streaming all that well.) X could manage web browsing via Firefox but anything using Flash would slow it down to an almost unusable state. i had a Firefox extension to download YouTube videos though, so i later played them back in terminal mode. often by switching to another via Ctrl-Alt-F2 or Ctrl-Alt-Backspace killing X and then using it. that's another thing i cannot do on the chrome book. not sure if it's a different combo but i cannot Ctrl-Alt-Backspace kill X. it seems that maybe X is not killable.
 
I'm often saving Youtube, Tudou and Youku MP4 and FLV videos for offline viewing, basically because there's no Internet in the classrooms and I might want to show the students, video clips. I use a video downloader plug-in for Firefox. BTW this is for educational purposes in China, so perfectly legal AFAIK, i.e. I'm not stealing copyrighted materials.
 
Recent mentions of Links and Lynx lead me to try a few things out.

Apparently one can do Android Forums in Links:
Code: 
                                     Computers & IT - Android Forums (p3 of 22) 
posts since                        Rating Thread /          Last Post           
your last                          Thread Starter          Reverse Sort   Replie
visit.                                                        Order             
                                                                                
Android                            bash, bash script,                           
Discussion                         bash shell, linux,                           
                                   linux questions,                             
The Lounge                         linux scripting 13                           
                                   Deleted Post(s) 18                           
Android           You have 127     Attachment(s) Sticky   Today 08:32 AM        
Applications      post(s) in       Thread Sticky: The     by mikedt Go     1,616
                  this thread,     "Linux questions (and  to last post          
Android Games     last Today       other stuff)" thread                         
                                   ( Multi-page thread 1                        
Android                            2 3 ... Last Page)                           
Themes                             Thread Rating: 1                             
                                   votes, 5.00 average.                         
Android News                       MoodyBlues                                   
& Talk                                                                          
http://androidforums.com/android-games/
Pig to navigate, not even tried posting. I'm using Firefox for this.

Links doesn't seem to be able to deal with Chinese very well though...
Code: 
******-************************,******************,************,*** (p1 of 100) 
   Youku ******                                                                 
   _____________________ ******                                                 
   ******                                                                       
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
   ******                                                                       
   ******                                                                       
                                                                                
    ****************************************                                    
                                                                                
   *** ****** ***                                                               
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
     * ******************                                                       
     * ************                                                             
     * ************                                                             
http://www.youku.com/
Lynx on the other hand is OK with Chinese characters, and shows them correctly.

This is how AF looks in Links graphic mode....reminds me of using Cello or Mosaic in Windows 3.1, which was almost 20 years ago now. LOL
links.jpg
 
We're rich with Java script. I agree.

I've driven a Model T on the weekends but I wouldn't drive one to work.

Legacy support has its place but that place isn't everyplace.
 
if one has a slow enough computer though, Links does a good job of speedily pulling up websites. i should have mentioned that mobile sites look better than attempting to pull up desktop versions that indeed format wrong, with the result often looking like an attempt at pulling the desktop site up in Netscape Navigator 3.x these days.

it did do well when i was already using the terminal, like i was using Dosbox in one terminal, i could easily ctrl-alt-F3 to the next, bring up Links, browse various dos games sites, and download it at the same time. didn't have to bring up slow X or whatever and slow things down. it was just faster.

Mutt ended up being a more successful alternative to Kmail, which, for some reason, tells me it's missing things and trying to set up Gmail causes some odd error to come up (both in Vector as well as Ubuntu) and it won't let me save the account settings, it just goes back to the beginning of setup. not worth fixing. Even if it had worked, it would take a good chunk of the already limited memory of that old D610, so it's more a choice of if i can do the same thing in a terminal that i can in X, but i'm using much less RAM doing so, why not? i'm not missing anything. my answer is the faster method that slows the system down less. keep in mind i can leave Vector running indefinitely and lose nothing. Ubuntu eventually needs a reboot here and there, especially if installing updates, i get 'system restart required'.

Also love Vector's little 'You have mail' alert that Mutt apparently works with when i login.
 
nickdalzell said:
if one has a slow enough computer though, Links does a good job of speedily pulling up websites. i should have mentioned that mobile sites look better than attempting to pull up desktop versions that indeed format wrong, with the result often looking like an attempt at pulling the desktop site up in Netscape Navigator 3.x these days.
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Links can certainly load sites quick enough, but if what you get is actually viewable or usable or not is another matter. I know it can't deal with Chinese.

How slow a computer are we talking about that can't run a modern browser? I'm all for a bit of nostalgic fun and play with the Windows for Workgroups 386SX 25Mhz in the evenings occasionally, but I wouldn't want to use it productively. Thinking of EM's Model T analogy. Links reminded me of using Cello on Win 3.11 circa 1994. Don't think there was any Netscape, it was still NCSA Mosaic.

If want to take nostalgic geekery to real extremes, there's a web browser for the Commodore C64...LOL.
 
no, actually even a PIII 650MHz with Firefox 3 ends up choking on its own RAM when loading any site full of enough Flash content like banner ads sometimes used by Android Forums. others just navigate slowly and pop up those 'slow script' errors and make it harder to use a site if a mobile variant exists that otherwise loads faster in terminal Links. same issue with Android phones, some sites load too slowly to make them usable unless you use a different browser or load up a mobile site.

a 486 or 386 would lag just loading KDE with nothing else running :)

The Dell Latitude D610 gets very laggy just having a tab with Facebook running. and that's a Mobile Centrino Tech laptop with a 1.5GHz Pentium and 2GB RAM.
 
Ok a Pentium III 650MHz sounds quite historic, and I wouldn't really expect something like that to run a modern browser. Can you post on Android Forums with Firefox 3?

Under my office desk there's an ancient Pentium 4, 512RAM school computer, running XP. That can run modern browsers like Firefox 25, just about. However I don't use this computer, thing is too slow, rather use my lightweight, Atom 2GHz dual core, 2GB RAM laptop, which actually runs KDE 4 nicely, along with Firefox and Chrome. This is the laptop I use to teach in the classroom, as well as preparing materials. On the other hand the phone in my pocket can probably view the most challenging of javascript bloated, ad banner laden websites. Although I prefer to view the mobile versions sometimes, mainly because of the screen size and amount of metered mobile data consumed.
 
i was posting with Firefox 3.8 when i first installed Vector on the D610 a few days ago, i don't think forum boards have changed all that much to be honest. i could post here and view the site on Firefox 2 if i wanted, albeit with some font glitching
 
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