[Chester LUG] OT - Linux Mint (or rather dual booting with Linux)

Roger Gibson rcgibson at talktalk.net
Mon Feb 25 22:59:14 UTC 2013


Thanks for all comments.

Re MS Support comment to reinstall the system annually, this came from a 
quite senior MS chap.  I assist a charity with IT, and in spite of many 
efforts by me, they stick to MS. However, I can't blame them, as Gates 
Foundation sells MS products to charities for peanuts.  I bought several 
desks of XP Pro and Full Office 2003 for about £3/£4 each.  Then when W7 
came out they sent me 50 licences free.  I was having trouble 
authorising a couple of these (authentication failed after about three 
months), and the problem got escalated up the chain.  Eventually it was 
fixed, but while talking to the chap, who rang me from Bangalore several 
times to check it was working still, I mentioned some other problems.  
When he learned that I had installed the systems a couple of years 
previously, he said, try reinstalling. Registers get muddled etc, 
especially if applications are aborted and not closed properly etc. It 
worked, and quicker for a time. Must be the same reason you hear of all 
the system clean up programs etc.

And re Thunderbird/Gmail synchronously IMAPed from Ubuntu/W7, I don't 
use calendar, but having looked, yes address book entries have 
multiplied, up to 30+ copies in some cases.I've got over 1000 separate 
entries.  The Gmail 'remove duplicate addresses' soon removed the 
duplicates, and I'll keep a watch on this now.  I had not noticed this, 
but maybe access to addresses was slowing.

Living miles from the exchange, and with a telephone line little better 
than damp string, downloading is less than 1Mbps, so I'm used to things 
being slow, which is why I minimise the amount of live IMAPing, keeping 
hard copies of 'history' locally.

So yes, it all works, but now I know of a couple of problems behind the 
scenes.

Are we on for Thursday Les - Roger.

On 24/02/2013 10:50, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
> Sorry for the stuff below. Slightly OT I'm afraid.
>
> On 22/02/13 17:57, Roger Gibson wrote:
>> I dual boot Windoze 7 with Ubuntu (updated through many versions)and
>> have no problems with rwx access to Windoze partitions (same on my
>> desktop, laptop and notebook).
>>
>> Although I use a separate ntfs partition for my 'data' files, so as  to
>> facilitate reloading/changing loaded OS, (MS software support
>> recommended to me reloading Windoze every 12 months to remove
>> 'inevitable ongoing corruptions')
>
> That's an interesting turn of phrase. Was that really one of the MS 
> support people - or a third party supporting MS products? Just 
> curious, as I might not like MS stuff myself - but even I don't have 
> such a low opinion of their software.
>
>
> I can access Windoze partitions
>> directly with no problems.
>>
>> Using Thunderbird, even IMAPed to gmail, both Ubuntu and Windoze 7
>> happily work with the same profile sub-directory on my ntfs 'data'
>> partition, ensuring these are up to date (and they run to about 10GB)
>> whatever OS I am currently using, and can be used on or off line.  I
>> also found SUSE triple booted in worked fine too.  The gmail IMAPing
>> ensures I have transparent up to date total access to several years
>> email history, address books etc on my NEXUS.
>
> What are you using to keep the TB contacts in sync with Google's end? 
> Is it the "Google Contacts" add-on? If yes, how reliable do you find 
> it? I've been trying various contacts and calendar sync options over 
> the years with various back-ends - and I find it on larger number of 
> items (300-400 contacts, or over 2000 appointments) pretty much every 
> system starts to do weird things after few months - either breaking 
> the sync or randomly duplicating items.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sebastian
>
>>
>> Roger.
>>
>> On 22/02/13 16:35, J Aguado wrote:
>>> I will been testing Mint tonight actually as I am in the process of
>>> finding the right distro to Dual boot my Window$8 desktop.
>>> At the moment only Fedora18 was able to recognise the (windows)
>>> partitions on my SSD drive and not complain about it.
>>> I did not find many issues with it, albeit having read all the reviews.
>>> Unfortunately, the fact that installing NVIDIA drivers on Fedora is a
>>> MAJOR pain is making me try Mint.
>>>
>>> Ubuntu's installer was not able recognise the partitions on my disk,
>>> so I do not have high hopes and see myself tweaking Fedora.
>>> If it works and recognises my hardware I'll let you know if I find
>>> other issues, but I know that there is a huge community behind Mint
>>> ever since Ubuntu started to move to Unity, so I have high hopes  ;)
>>>
>>> J.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2013/2/22 Stuart Burns <stuart.james.burns at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:stuart.james.burns at gmail.com>>
>>>
>>>     You could always install it in Virtualbox and see how you like it,
>>>     nothing lost if you don't. Just delete it!
>>>
>>>
>>>     On 22 February 2013 16:23, Roger Gibson <rcgibson at talktalk.net
>>>     <mailto:rcgibson at talktalk.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         And I was just going to give Mint a try.  I'll wait for an
>>>         'All Clear'before I go down that path.  Have to say that now
>>>         I've got used to it, the latest Ubuntu desk top 'straight out
>>>         of the box'  seems as good as any, but then I don't push it
>>>         hard.  Roger.
>>>
>>>         On 22/02/2013 15:54, Les Pritchard wrote:
>>>>         Hi all,
>>>>
>>>>         Last night I decided to give Mint a go on one of my primary
>>>>         desktop systems. I've used the Debian edition and previous
>>>>         Gnome versions in the past, but with all the the Gnome
>>>>         changes I have found myself using KDE more.
>>>>
>>>>         So I grabbed the KDE version of the latest Mint and installed
>>>>         it with no problems. All worked really well and I was pleased
>>>>         with hardware support etc. The problem came when I tried to
>>>>         run an update. Apt-get returned a whole load of 404s when
>>>>         trying to update, saying the servers could not be found.
>>>>
>>>>         A quick look into the sources file showed me that the repos
>>>>         they had for the Ubuntu servers all referenced the code name
>>>>         for the Mint distro and not the matched Ubuntu edition! (All
>>>>         these code names are just annoying in my opinion). So a quick
>>>>         change of the name to the correct Ubuntu code name and all
>>>>         the updates worked perfectly.
>>>>
>>>>         A quick Google suggests that others have seen this problem
>>>>         too. I find it very hard to believe that a distro could be
>>>>         rolled with such a simple error. Also being such a trivial
>>>>         error, that it hasn't been quickly fixed amazed me. The
>>>>         experience didn't fill me with confidence about the distro at
>>>>         all.
>>>>
>>>>         Has anyone else found any other issues with it? Should I be
>>>>         going back to Ubuntu after all this time?! Or over to
>>>>         something like Fedora / Mageia / Fuduntu...
>>>>
>>>>         Les
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         _______________________________________________
>>>>         Chester mailing list
>>>>         Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>>>         https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         No virus found in this message.
>>>>         Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
>>>>         Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6118 - Release
>>>>         Date: 02/20/13
>>>>
>>>
>>>         --
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>         No virus found in this message.
>>>         Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
>>>         Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6118 - Release
>>>         Date: 02/20/13
>>>
>>>
>>>         _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     --
>>>     Stuart Burns
>>>     E: stuart.james.burns at gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:stuart.james.burns at gmail.com>
>>>     M: [redacted]
>>>
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     Chester mailing list
>>>     Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:Chester at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>>     https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>> No virus found in this message.
>>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
>>> Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6118 - Release Date: 
>>> 02/20/13
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>


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No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2899 / Virus Database: 2639/6122 - Release Date: 02/21/13





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