In the past, I dual booted my econo PCs, but I rarely use Linux, mostly Ubuntu. In those days, you could put an Ubuntu ISO on a DVD, not anymore. Which is just as well because the Linux boot from DVD was painful with constant re-seeking bit by bit. A thumb drive is both large enough (>4.7G) and quicker. And new machines no longer have a DVD drive. I wasted a bit of money on Blue-ray drives in the past.
And today you can use https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html for the thumb drive. It has a couple important advantages:
1. You can just add or remove multiple ISO images as you like and ventoy will list them for selection on boot. There is no need for special ~burn software.
2. Being an ~exfat thumb drive, there is no threat that windose will reformat it by accident.
But new hardware keeps getting better. For a $30 SSD, booting from a HD is no longer smart. I bought a new HP laptop for the wife on black Friday for about $350, and by Passmark scores https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ while its "only" an i3, being newer it's faster than this i5 I'm using. Yes it came with W11, which is a pain to set up, ie get rid of one drive and McAfee, and a bunch of other bloatware. In the past I used MS office a lot, but now they want to sell you a temporary subscription so f that. Thunderbird and Libre Office are good enough.
I have a couple W10 desktops, and I may dual-boot them next year, but maybe MS "support" is irrelevant. They were "referbs" that I mostly bought because they came with windose, but later I discovered that inexpensive new machines were probably a better deal. Unless you are a gamer, it's like driving a V8. I just don't need the kind of power that comes from a K$ computer, and very soon they look pathetic compared to cheaper newer machines.
And today you can use https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html for the thumb drive. It has a couple important advantages:
1. You can just add or remove multiple ISO images as you like and ventoy will list them for selection on boot. There is no need for special ~burn software.
2. Being an ~exfat thumb drive, there is no threat that windose will reformat it by accident.
But new hardware keeps getting better. For a $30 SSD, booting from a HD is no longer smart. I bought a new HP laptop for the wife on black Friday for about $350, and by Passmark scores https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ while its "only" an i3, being newer it's faster than this i5 I'm using. Yes it came with W11, which is a pain to set up, ie get rid of one drive and McAfee, and a bunch of other bloatware. In the past I used MS office a lot, but now they want to sell you a temporary subscription so f that. Thunderbird and Libre Office are good enough.
I have a couple W10 desktops, and I may dual-boot them next year, but maybe MS "support" is irrelevant. They were "referbs" that I mostly bought because they came with windose, but later I discovered that inexpensive new machines were probably a better deal. Unless you are a gamer, it's like driving a V8. I just don't need the kind of power that comes from a K$ computer, and very soon they look pathetic compared to cheaper newer machines.
I've had the results of an 8-hour test be gone forever because Windoze decided to update overnight and reboot. Kind of a big deal when you're trying to release a product and the test occupies one of the very, very few Agilent E5052 phase noise analyzers and requires liquid CO2 to run.
MacOS will update overnight too. But it's smart enough to save the current state of the computer and get you back to exactly where you were after the update. Aside from requiring a password to log in rather than a fingerprint it's completely transparent.
Tom
That's the thing. The Windoze 10 PC that runs my APx555 is a 7th or 8th generation Intel i9. Pretty sure it's 7th gen. So 2017 release date. That was another eWaste Recycler find. The APx500 software (and Windoze generally) runs just as well on it as it did on the 2014 machine it replaced. Computers are just silly fast these days so unless you're a heavy gamer or video editor I just don't see a reason to have a modern PC.
Tom
Ah yes, the old overnight update. That's got to be frustrating. My work machine does that, but it sometimes doesn't restart after the update.
Oddly, that's what I ended up with, even thou I'm not a gamer. 🙂
jeff
DiyAudio still loads at whatever speed it desires. Doesn't seem to matter if I use a gaming PC or an older one. 🙂
My main machine is pretty recent. It's a 2022 MacBook Pro. It runs just as well today as it did the day I bought it. I'll probably update it some 3-4 years from now or once the battery life has degraded enough to be annoying.
Tom
My main machine is pretty recent. It's a 2022 MacBook Pro. It runs just as well today as it did the day I bought it. I'll probably update it some 3-4 years from now or once the battery life has degraded enough to be annoying.
Tom
THIS is what makes me wonder about M$; are they stoned on "office" 8-5 word, PP and spreadsheet work or just stupid? As a former Labview jock, one would think there's more to the industry, where people are in labs running tests via windows machines all over the world. That kind of activity cant be in the single digit percentage, can it? Perhaps they feel justified to make that behavior consistent for all customers.Ah yes, the old overnight update. That's got to be frustrating. My work machine does that, but it sometimes doesn't restart after the update.
It is to wonder if you added up all the lost productivity costs across all industry across all the world, due to this one specific aspect, what that would be. I suppose they'd say "you can simply adjust that to occur when your test isnt running". I've had reliability tests run for weeks at a stretch.
Labview, last I recall is so dialed into the Windows operating environment (all the Windows feature license agreements you have to accept when installing) that they cant even make an equivalent Linux version, though to their credit they've tried. I havent even looked at that software in the last 5 years...
I don't know if it has a slot. It's a little L310, about the size of a thick book. The wireless is built in, but I haven't found a driver that works with Linux yet.
FWIW, I'm more into photography these days than audio. I use Affinity Photo because it supports focus stacking, HDR and several other things seamlessly in one application. Have tried GIMP in the past and found it seriously wanting. I also do some programming in a long-dead language that only runs under Windows. I've used VirtualBox and found it a PITA compared to just running a legit modern Windows OS on a machine that properly supports it. That said, I do think it was a gift to China from Microsoft when they decided so many perfectly good systems wouldn't be able to run Windows 11.
That is looking at existing problems. Computing problems come in all sizes. Some of my programs are waiting for computers to become fast enough.
Ed
You may or may not find a driver, but the lazy/easy way is to stick a $10 USB wifi adapter in one of the USB ports and be done with it.
The other side is some really old WIFI adaptor may not run at any reasonable speed or handle the amount of WIFI traffic in the area today.
I installed XUbuntu on an old Lenovo laptop recently, mostly went smoothly, except for issues with the backlight controller. The only other hassle I have had is attempting to change desktop environments is potentially a huge pain. I initially installed xfce, then tried fluxbox (I had liked it's predecessor blackbox years ago), but then it was a huge hassle to come up with a comfortable font/color/menu theme combination, and I mostly got it back to stock with uninstalling/reinstalling, but not completely (the login screen is wrong.) To my mind, this is the biggest hassle in the linux world: the plethora of desktop environments/window managers/greeters/ x.org vs. wayland. Is there a distribution that is friendly to trying out desktop environments etc, but still being able to switch between them? It seems from what I read that wayland is the future, and is also considered more secure, but not all the distros support it.
Another option that I just remembered; create different users for each DE that you want to test. This can help avoid possible issues. Not practical as a permanent solution, but good enough (and convenient) to explore various DEs.
Regarding “spins”, they are also called “flavours” or other terms. Basically just versions of a distro with different DEs.
For example, you can try Debian Stable in almost any “flavour” you want.
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
FWIW Debian has been my daily driver for a little over a year now and I really, really like it. Oddly (for me) I am running the Gnome version. Oddly, because for years I was a diehard MATE user who really disliked where Gnome had taken things. I experienced some discomfort for a bit while I transitioned to Gnome but I am surprised to say I love Gnome now. Gnome + Wayland is super smooth, stable and efficient for me.
For example, you can try Debian Stable in almost any “flavour” you want.
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
FWIW Debian has been my daily driver for a little over a year now and I really, really like it. Oddly (for me) I am running the Gnome version. Oddly, because for years I was a diehard MATE user who really disliked where Gnome had taken things. I experienced some discomfort for a bit while I transitioned to Gnome but I am surprised to say I love Gnome now. Gnome + Wayland is super smooth, stable and efficient for me.
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I'm looking for a more long-term testing solution than just a live CD, in other words, I want to try different setups while doing real work. I didn't think to try different logins, I assumed installed packages would apply to all users. Maybe starting whatever desktop system from a command line login will give me more options, but I haven't explored that yet. Some distros make that a difficult option.
Yeah, I've had a small Debian headless box for a dedade or so just for CD ripping/burning, because my mac never wants to play nice with any (non-apple) external burners I've tried. Debian was the first of 3 distros I tried at the time that just installed headless without any hassle. Generally they seem to make good choices, the only annoying ones being they are sometimes overly "GNU correct", and provide a broken cdrdao (and I read a similar thing happened with ffmpeg). I decided to just accept systemd after being forced to learn how to tweak it for something at work, so I don't put that in the annoyance category.
Yeah, I've had a small Debian headless box for a dedade or so just for CD ripping/burning, because my mac never wants to play nice with any (non-apple) external burners I've tried. Debian was the first of 3 distros I tried at the time that just installed headless without any hassle. Generally they seem to make good choices, the only annoying ones being they are sometimes overly "GNU correct", and provide a broken cdrdao (and I read a similar thing happened with ffmpeg). I decided to just accept systemd after being forced to learn how to tweak it for something at work, so I don't put that in the annoyance category.
Yes, but for example some distributions will do things like auto mount extraneous partitions, like a windows install. Some might see that as a red flag. Not that this kind of strictness is wanted in all situations.
On the other hand a relative newbie might face something like trying to mount a partition as a challenge.
On the other hand a relative newbie might face something like trying to mount a partition as a challenge.
Well yes it is a modular system with an infinity of configurations but if you just need a linux application platform go to https://distrowatch.com/ and pick one from the page hit ranking like Mint, Manjaro, Fedora... Avoid any described as new.
The hit count indicates that people are curious. It does not imply ease of use.
Distrowatch is a terrible resource, IMO. It does not accurately reflect actual popularity or ratings of Linux distros.
Regarding the “overly GNU correct” nature of Debian, they’ve relaxed that stance recently and it has made a significant difference. Enough that I don’t notice it at all. However, I’ve been a Linux user since mid 1999.
Regarding the “overly GNU correct” nature of Debian, they’ve relaxed that stance recently and it has made a significant difference. Enough that I don’t notice it at all. However, I’ve been a Linux user since mid 1999.
A simpler solution might be to simply run various DEs in different VMs. It won’t take long to figure out which one feels most productive, intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing. Dispose of the VMs and carry on with the one you like on bare metal. Works for different distros, too. Curious about immutable distros (SilverBlue, etc.)? 10 minutes to install in a VM and play for a while….