2025 the year of Linux

[moonbat]

Off-topic:
What's horribly annoying is their sheeple fanbase who continue to act as though they're some kind of scrappy underdog and will continue to defend their antics. Every once in a while one of them announces that they've had it with Firefox and I have to smirk and wonder what the hell took them so long.

[artenaki]

I encountered a few different customers with non-Windows machines that had issues like this. That was when I came to the conclusion that for a lot of non-technical people Linux isn't going to cut it if they don't have someone to hold their hand through the process.

There are many inexperienced users on the French forum dedicated to Mageia Linux. Including 80 year olds. Their hand is the support forum.

[Basilisk-Dev]

There are many inexperienced users on the French forum dedicated to Mageia Linux. Including 80 year olds. Their hand is the support forum.

Good luck getting someone who calls ink cartridges “ink cartilages” and who doesn’t know the difference between Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows to use a support forum.

Things might be better in France but the average 80 year old I’ve dealt with in the US can barely use a computer at all, and wouldn’t even know what Linux is.

[Moonchild]

Things might be better in France but the average 80 year old I’ve dealt with in the US can barely use a computer at all, and wouldn’t even know what Linux is.

I just have to look at my mother. It took her close to 10 years to get the hang of occasionally using a smartphone to send me a message on Telegram. And that's only because I spent a lot of time before trying to set her up with a simple PC so she wasn't completely green, as well as her taking a few local courses to deal with computers. She's 81 now, and certainly not dumb. Her generation was simply not brought up with computing equipment at all, and I couldn't even imagine her dealing with even just one of the quirks of Linux and having to type in commands or even editing a config file -- hopping on a forum to get help might be second nature to us but it's quite alien to her, and knowing what I do of her peers in the same age group, I'd say that is the rule. She's in the Netherlands, by the way; a country with a very high degree of market penetration for computers and phones, but nevertheless the situation is exactly as said: she can barely use a computer at all, and I'm pretty sure she has no clue what Linux even is. And she has no reason at all to try and learn more of it at her age. She doesn't need it.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Things might be better in France but the average 80 year old I’ve dealt with in the US can barely use a computer at all, and wouldn’t even know what Linux is.

I just have to look at my mother. [...] She's 81 now, and certainly not dumb. Her generation was simply not brought up with computing equipment at all, [...] And she has no reason at all to try and learn more of it at her age. She doesn't need it.

Off-topic:
Don't under-rate 80-year-old people. They are just 10 year older than me. Would be different for previous generations, but as Keynes says "In the long run we are all dead".
I guess it depends much on past life experiences and education. My senior colleagues which are now 80 were never afraid of computers. My mother (died 93, would be 100 this year) was certainly not dumb, and although she had to quit school early as customary in her time in the country, was more interested in culture and wiser than most young people of the present day. Maybe she would have used a computer if I'd brought one at home (despite the fact I spent 10 hours in my institute in front of a terminal, workstation or PC, I never had one at home until after the COVID and I retired). Our former institute secretary, more or less the same age, learned using desktop text processing better than some of the younger administrative staff.
Of course my working environment (with an exposure to mainframes and programming languages) was a niche one. And surely we weren't and aren't afraid of command line and config files.
While what I agree for myself I have no reason to learn anf I do not need is having a smartphone.

Curiosity. On a national Linux forum one guy asked if he could recycle an old laptop with Windows with some Ubuntu to give it to his 10-year-old child to play with.

[Night Wing]

The three Windows operating systems I have ever used were Windows 98 SE, Windows XP and Windows 7. I am a non-technical person so I was never a power user using those three operating systems.

Windows 8 was released in October of 2012. I absolutely hated it. That was when I decided to check out and experiment with linux distros. I was 62 years old in 2012 and after playing around with some distros, I finally settled on Mint 13 in January of 2013.

I am still a non-technical person in linux as well and I am sure I will never be a power user in linux since the linux distros I experiment with use gui windows which I prefer over the command line Terminal. In fact, I do not use the command line Terminal in linux much. Only when I have to or want to.

For me, it was a case of "wanting" to learn Linux because I hated Windows 8 so Linux was my escape from Windows.

[Pentium4User]

There are now old people who have a huge technical experience, as they started long time ago and constructed technology we still use today, but the vast majority doesn't. Most people don't want to learn how the machines work in the inside they use, this even applies to young people. The vast majority doesn't want to deal with technical stuff at all, they want to use it and that's it. That means there won't be the years of $foo unless $foo is available by default and easy to handle by people who do not want to type commands or read technical documentation.

[Night Wing]

At the shop where I volunteer at, an older gentleman came in and wanted to see if he could sell his 14" HP Probook 440 G8 Notebook. It had a 500Gb NVME SSD in it, 16 GB of memory and a 11th generation Intel i7 processor with a processor speed of (2.80). It was loaded with 64 bit Windows 11 Pro.

The laptop was in very good condition and everything worked on it (charger, fan, camera, audio, graphics, wifi, ethernet, backlit keyboard, the SSD had 52 hours of use on it, etc).

I went over to one of the shop's three desktop tower computers and brought up the Crucial website to see how much memory this laptop could be upgraded to. The answer was 64 GB and the cost was $80.

Even though I prefer a desktop tower computer to a laptop, this laptop "really" piqued my interest BIG time. I knew my two 14" HP laptops (dv4-5113cl & dv4-5213cl) were "long in the tooth" age wise (13 years).

I asked the gentleman why was he selling it. He told me he preferred his 15" HP laptop which he had at this home over a 14" laptop. The 15" laptop was easier to "see" for him. And the 15" laptop at this home was installed with 64 bit linux Ubuntu. He also said, he was not a fan of Windows 11.

I told him he might be able to get anywhere between $250 and $350 (US dollars) on eBay. But at our shop, the "shop" would offer him $200 "COTBH" (cash on the barrel head) and then the shop would turn around and resale the laptop for $300 as a "used" computer.

But (and there is always a "but"), I told him I would personally buy the 14" laptop for myself for $250 (cash) which I had in my wallet. I also told him if we make this transaction, the shop would have to make a photo copy of his driver's license (with his photo on it) to make sure the laptop is not stolen just in case the local city and/or the county sheriff's department "visit us".

So the deal was struck and I am the new owner for this HP laptop. After he left, I got my credit card, went back to the Crucial site and bought the 64 GB sticks (32 GB & 32 GB) for $80 which showed up two days later.

Once I had the 64 GB of memory, I formatted the drive and installed 64 bit linux Debian 12.10 (Bookworm) Xfce on it. I chose Debian since it does not get as many updates as MX Linux and Linux Mint.

After the reboot, the Time was off by 5 hours. That was when I realized this was not local time since I had stipulated Central Time Zone. I checked in the BIOS and the time was set for the Central Time Zone. I knew then the system clock was incorrect. Bummer!

So I had to get on Google and after a little searching I found the answer. But I had to use the CLI Terminal to get the laptop on local time and I am not a fan of the Terminal. But I "bit the bullet" so all is well now. Anyhow, I am typing this post using this HP 14" Probook and below is this laptop's specifications.

Code: Select all

System:
  Host: joe-hpprobook440g8notebookpc Kernel: 6.1.0-34-amd64 arch: x86_64
    bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP ProBook 440 G8 Notebook PC v: SBKPF
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: HP model: 8A76 v: KBC Version 54.26.00 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: HP v: T88 Ver. 01.19.00 date: 11/18/2024
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    cache: L2: 5 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 400 min/max: 400/4700 cores: 1: 400 2: 400 3: 400 4: 400
    5: 400 6: 400 7: 400 8: 400
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: Quanta HP HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio
    driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
  API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-34-amd64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-V driver: e1000e
  IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: a8:b1:3b:7d:dc:fc
  Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi
  IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: 94:e6:f7:22:87:e2
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 state: up address: 94:E6:F7:22:87:E6 bt-v: 3.0
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 10.31 GiB (2.2%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 980 500GB size: 465.76 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 389.43 GiB used: 10.3 GiB (2.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 5.8 MiB (2.0%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 68.74 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 207 Uptime: 1h 25m Memory: 62.49 GiB used: 2.21 GiB (3.5%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.26

[frostknight]

After the reboot, the Time was off by 5 hours. That was when I realized this was not local time since I had stipulated Central Time Zone. I checked in the BIOS and the time was set for the Central Time Zone. I knew then the system clock was incorrect. Bummer!

If your clock for your system is wrong, I have fixed this problem with openntp or ntp.

Off-topic:
ntp as you may know is network time protocol. Supposedly it picks what utc is as the default. It worked for my stuff, once, although your mileage may vary.

In any case, its amazing what palemoon can run on. Also firefox too despite its bloated additions.

Even as it grows ever more bloated in size and possibly also cpu usage.

Still you can run firefox on a 2008 computer and older. I bet palemoon though could go further back to early 32 bit days. If you using SSE2 I mean. I looked up what standards SSE existed, apparently it stopped at SSE5 before switching. Try doing that on a chromium based web browser and I doubt it would work as well.

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
@ frostnight

It loopks like this 14" ProBook was manufactured in 2020 and the UEFI was upgraded in late November of 2024 so it might have come originally in 2020 with Windows 10 and then upgraded to Windows 11.

I should have checked the Registry in Windows 11 "before" I formatted the SSD and installed Debian to see if it was using UTC or Local time and I suspect now (after the fact) it was using UTC.

I could have changed the system clock in Windows 11's registry to use Local Time instead of UTC and then "formatted" the drive and installed Debian. If I did that first, then when Debian 12.10 was installed, it would have been using Local time for my Central Time Zone.

But I did not which was my error. As they say; "Hindsight is always 20/20".

[frostknight]

I should have checked the Registry in Windows 11 "before" I formatted the SSD and installed Debian to see if it was using UTC or Local time and I suspect now (after the fact) it was using UTC.

Off-topic:
Well in any case, there is bound to be a way to fix it without windows I am sure.

Given the computer you have is so new, I don't think its impossible to fix this without windows. I could be wrong, but I think its still possible.

I don't actually know the different network times linux uses, so I could be wrong about UTC being what ntp and openntp uses to fix it I recommend trying ntp and openntp after you install it via dpkg -i

See if it works. Although i don't know how to start a service with systemd so... you are on your own there. Unless you use openrc.

[Thad E G]

On a single machine, I don't think it matters what the hardware system clock is set to. If the time and date shown by Debian is correct, no need to worry it. For accuracy, best to use ntp to set that at startup

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
@ Thad E G

I suspect my problem was the laptop was installed with Windows 10 and then upgraded to 11. When I used to dual boot Windows 7 and Mint, I always went into the Windows registry and changed the setting to match Mint's time.

Since I formatted the SSD and deleted Windows 11, I never went into Windows 11's registry. My error of course. So I had to fiddle around with the Terminal in Debian 12.10 for the fix.

When I installed Debian 12.10, since I live in America, I made sure I was using the city of Chicago which is in the Central Time Zone and where I live in southeast Texas is also in the Central Time Zone. Using the Terminal I typed these commands below to see if the laptop was set for America/Chicago.

Code: Select all

cat /etc/timezone

Tapped my Enter key and the prompt came back as: America/Chicago

I "guessed" it had something to do with either Windows 11 or there was a glitch in Debian 12.10 time zone wise. Since the time was still off by 5 hours, I guessed Debian didn't know what my time zone was.

After a little searching, I tried this command below:

Code: Select all

sudo timedatectl set-timezone US/Central

Then I tapped my Enter key. Then at the prompt I again typed:

Code: Select all

cat /etc/timezone

Tapped my Enter key and the prompt came back as: US/Central

At the prompt I typed in:

Code: Select all

sudo apt update

Tapped my Enter key and the prompt said everything was up to date. When I looked at the clock in the bottom right corner of my Panel, the time (and date) was correct.

[BloxDeGroteUnsklled]

I love Linux, as it is optimised to be faster on a PC than Windows is (may be referring to Zorin or Ubuntu here, and not complaining about macOS as it is fast for Macs in its own special way). But it sometimes gets difficult to use. Indeed, sometimes I do sit at the terminal on my Mac, and a lot of commands are the same (especially deleting the Trash folder, something I obviously didn't do). The problem with this is I may need to use the terminal command to install almost any app (may be wrong here, feel free to correct me). But compromises have to be made to prioritise control over convenience, right? I use Linux on a VM though, as it is easier to go back to Windows on my secondary machine.

[Night Wing]

@ BloxDeGroteUnsklled

It does not bother me Linux does not have a large market share like Windows does. Linux is not known for playing lots of Windows games and that is a turn off for many Windows users. But that may be changing.

There is a relatively new linux distro which is Arch based and along with the usual stuff one finds in linux distros, it is geared to playing games too. The distro is CachyOS. Below is a very short video of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntGGT_yl-qY

I have not tried CachyOS since I am not a gamer. Also, I am not a fan of Arch based distros.

[BloxDeGroteUnsklled]

At the moment we always have Minecraft Java providing we own it. And that would probably be a breeze on Linux.

[Mæstro]

he problem with this is I may need to use the terminal command to install almost any app (may be wrong here, feel free to correct me).

GUI package managers have long existed, and distributions intended for laymen, like Linux Mint, receive them by default. Synaptic is likely the best known.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

As a former OpenSuse user and now Xubuntu user I think Synaptic and Yast are more or less equivalent with a slight preference for Yast as look-and-feel. But what matters is not the look-and-feel but the richness of the repository behind, and Ubuntu/Synaptic has a larger choice of packages (this was the main reason we moved).
Synaptic is good for searching a package "by subject". Using apt from terminal is also OK. BTW if one uses bash as shell (which I don't, I'm an oldtimer brought up with (t)csh), if you type the name of a command which is not installed, it will suggest you the apt commands to install it !

[Thad E G]

Synaptic is a powerful tool, albeit it simpler than a bare command line. So much so that there are simplified, more graphic, software installation tools such as Mint's Software Manager (mintinstall).

[Moonchild]

It's pretty simple. A command-line tool will usually give you more options but is like a swiss army knife/multi-tool. More than you'd need. If all you need is a knife, a "simplified" knife will do just fine, instead. Most users just need a knife: install/uninstall/reinstall.