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[Young Magus]

So I booted up my arch laptop the other day and the internet/wifi icon was not showing on my screen. Thinking that it could be a distro error, I downloaded ubuntu MATE on another computer and made a USB. Long story short that doesn't work. My laptop still works tho.

Without any internet access on my laptop, is there a way to figure out what the hell is wrong with my.....internet access on my laptop?

Edit: Still on arch btw. Couldnt switch to Ubuntu.

So like after messing around a bit I found what exactly are the problems.....kinda:

1.) syslinux is not working with the boot usbs but works fine with cd's. How do I make it work with usbs as well?
2.) My wireless/wired connection has been disabled within linux but in fact is still picked up by the system (listed in the terminal). How do I make the connection......work for lack of a better term.

 

[komplanen]

Anyone here running Linux on a MacBook Pro Retina? Any cons?

 

[Slavik81]

Anyone here running Linux on a MacBook Pro Retina? Any cons?

I have a Late-2013 MBP. It's ok. The WiFi drivers are proprietary, but are mostly ok. They're clearly not as good as the OSX drivers, because I lose my connection more frequently. Especially on certain networks.

The machine occasionally wakes itself from sleep with the lid closed.

You can't switch between the NVIDIA card and the Intel card on the high-end one (at least, not last time I checked). You're stuck with NVIDIA while under Linux.

Support for retina displays is worse on Linux than OSX, so you'll need to adjust some default settings in programs that you use, and some things might just be small.

Aside from those things, it works beautifully. I'm happy with it, despite those nags.

 

[Komo]

I've been using Linux Mint on my laptop for quite sometime and I do enjoy it. It's a fantastic OS, but I want to take a much larger step and have my PC dual-boot Windows 7 and a Linux distro.

I wouldn't consider myself a 'beginner' but certainly a novice of sorts when it comes to Linux. I'm looking to make a jump to Debian on my desktop to try that for a while and familiarize myself with Linux as a whole. I expect to be fooling around with the terminal a lot (very intrigued by terminal based applications), and I'd love to try some Window Manager applications such as i3, since they look like they could boost my productivity significantly.

I guess my question is, Would Debian be too much of a jump for someone who's only really used Mint? If it is, what distro should I go for?

 

[archnemesis]

Debian is similar to Mint and there are plenty of desktop environments to choose from. I can't imagine that you would find it difficult to work with. If you want to work more with the terminal you can do so from Mint too. You can also use a shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+F1) to switch to a terminal window from your current desktop environment.

 

[phoenixyz]

Why exactly do you want to use Debian? It's not really the distribution I think of when someone says "I want to experiment and get to know Linux as a whole". Although, as a rock solid OS for long-term-use on a Desktop PC it's well suited imo.

 

[Prez]

What should I consider when choosing a Chromebook to run Ubuntu on? Will it run well on any recent Chromebook?

 

[Nostremitus]

So, my windows 10 HTPC isn't letting my Linux boot disk load... When I tell the PC to boot to the USB, the screen goes gray and it either stalls, or it boots into Windows anyway. I never had this issue on W8.1, so I can only assume this is W10 related.

Could this be related to the W10 secureboot or whatever it's called?

 

[Vanillalite]

What should I consider when choosing a Chromebook to run Ubuntu on? Will it run well on any recent Chromebook?

It's easier if it's intel vs arm. Not that there aren't arm distros available now, but shit is just easier if it's intel.

 

[Mr.Mike]

Fedora is nice. I dare say it has greater "ease of use" than Ubuntu. But I might think that mainly because Ubuntu has weird graphics card driver issues every time I try to install it.

Fedora also has a thing where if you try to use something you don't have installed it'll ask you if you want to install it, which is super convenient. (So like, if I'm on a new PC without git installed and I try to use git it'll ask if I want to install git and then install git and run the command I just tried). It's also one command for updating too, which is nice (sudo dnf upgrade).

 

[injurai]

Fedora is nice. I dare say it has greater "ease of use" than Ubuntu. But I might think that mainly because Ubuntu has weird graphics card driver issues every time I try to install it.

Fedora also has a thing where if you try to use something you don't have installed it'll ask you if you want to install it, which is super convenient. (So like, if I'm on a new PC without git installed and I try to use git it'll ask if I want to install git and then install git and run the command I just tried).

Ubuntu has that too.

 

[Komo]

Debian was a bit too much for me, so I tried Ubuntu today. That didn't go well either. The Unity UI really put me off. So now, finally I'm at Kubuntu, and it seems alright. Although, I have one big problem ...

I installed EasyBCD in hopes it would be a better boot loader than GRUB, but whenever I select 'Kubuntu' in EasyBCD, it goes to the GRUB menu, which then overwrites EasyBCD, meaning that I can only ever use GRUB. This is a problem, because Windows never boots from GRUB for no apparent reason. I click 'Windows 7', the screen flashes black, and then it brings me back to the GRUB menu again

TL;DR - GRUB won't let me boot W7, so I use EasyBCD. EasyBCD gets overwritten when I use GRUB, meaning I can't boot W7 after restarting.

Does anybody have a possible solution? I know I'm doing something wrong with the 'MBR', but I don't know what exactly.

 

[Dominican Power]

What's a good Linux distro for my Dell E510 with a Pentium D 805 processor, 2GB of ram, and windows XP?

 

[Dominican Power]

My Pentium D is a piece of shit. Even with using the Linux live boot from USB, firefox runs worse than it does with windows xp.

 

[Prez]

My Pentium D is a piece of shit. Even with using the Linux live boot from USB, firefox runs worse than it does with windows xp.

Live boot runs quite a bit worse than a full installation. You could also try lubuntu which is more lightweight.

 

[Dominican Power]

Live boot runs quite a bit worse than a full installation. You could also try lubuntu which is more lightweight.

Someone told me the same thing.

 

[Massa]

My Pentium D is a piece of shit. Even with using the Linux live boot from USB, firefox runs worse than it does with windows xp.

Firefox is slower on Linux than on Windows. Chrome/Chromium is the opposite.

 

[cntr]

I switched to Arch recently.

Most hellish install ever, but everything after that has been really great!

boots in seconds, btw, counting the time it takes to type "startx" on the boot-up terminal

 

[Persona7]

Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint XFCE are good for older computers.

 

[Mr.Mike]

Ubuntu has that too.

Ubuntu will tell you the package is missing and what it's called and all, but on Fedora instead it'll present you with a y/n option, where pressing y will automatically download and install everything and then run the command you wanted to run originally.

I am back on Ubuntu now though, for the Spotify client, and (I think) nicer text rendering.

Also, I was about to post this in that recent thread about Windows 10 being automatically downloaded, but I didn't because it would be inflammatory/trolling. But, I think at this point Linux is just straight up a better user experience than Windows, in just about every way except for perhaps a lack of apps/games which some people might want. But if you don't need photoshop or games or whatever, then Linux is the way to go. That said, I still don't think that I would "push" laypeople towards Linux, if only for lack of familiarity.

Lastly, GNOME is really nice. Mostly I access apps through Winkey+typing out the name, and that something that's works smoothly in GNOME (unlike Windows and KDE from what I've tried of it). And really 99% of the time I'm just opening up either Firefox or Terminal this way

 

[phoenixyz]

Also, I was about to post this in that recent thread about Windows 10 being automatically downloaded, but I didn't because it would be inflammatory/trolling. But, I think at this point Linux is just straight up a better user experience than Windows, in just about every way except for perhaps a lack of apps/games which some people might want. But if you don't need photoshop or games or whatever that Linux is the way to go. That said, I still don't think that I would "push" laypeople towards Linux, if only for lack of familiarity.

Windows 10 is a trainwreck. So in general I agree. But for non-tech-savvy people I think Windows is still a bit easier.

 

[Shock]

I haven't played with Linux in many many years. Is it now simple to install Ubuntu along side Windows 10?

I guess my question is do you just get a "dual boot" sort of option during install?

 

[jvm]

I haven't played with Linux in many many years. Is it now simple to install Ubuntu along side Windows 10?

I guess my question is do you just get a "dual boot" sort of option during install?

Did a standard Fedora install on my Dell laptop (newish model) and had no problems. Super-smooth.

 

[Nostremitus]

Ubuntu will tell you the package is missing and what it's called and all, but on Fedora instead it'll present you with a y/n option, where pressing y will automatically download and install everything and then run the command you wanted to run originally.

I am back on Ubuntu now though, for the Spotify client, and (I think) nicer text rendering.

Also, I was about to post this in that recent thread about Windows 10 being automatically downloaded, but I didn't because it would be inflammatory/trolling. But, I think at this point Linux is just straight up a better user experience than Windows, in just about every way except for perhaps a lack of apps/games which some people might want. But if you don't need photoshop or games or whatever, then Linux is the way to go. That said, I still don't think that I would "push" laypeople towards Linux, if only for lack of familiarity.

Lastly, GNOME is really nice. Mostly I access apps through Winkey+typing out the name, and that something that's works smoothly in GNOME (unlike Windows and KDE from what I've tried of it). And really 99% of the time I'm just opening up either Firefox or Terminal this way

Ubuntu also gives the yes/no option. I'm not sure if it does it for everything, but I've gotten the prompt when trying to launch a program from terminal that I didn't have installed.

Edit: maybe I tried to open a file for which I didn't have the program, Ubuntu told me what program I needed and asked if I wanted to install.

 

[this_guy]

I haven't played with Linux in many many years. Is it now simple to install Ubuntu along side Windows 10?

I guess my question is do you just get a "dual boot" sort of option during install?

Yeah it's simple. Have Windows installed first, then you can install Ubuntu or Fedora and either will recognize that Windows is already there.

 

[injurai]

Ubuntu will tell you the package is missing and what it's called and all, but on Fedora instead it'll present you with a y/n option, where pressing y will automatically download and install everything and then run the command you wanted to run originally.

I am back on Ubuntu now though, for the Spotify client, and (I think) nicer text rendering.

Also, I was about to post this in that recent thread about Windows 10 being automatically downloaded, but I didn't because it would be inflammatory/trolling. But, I think at this point Linux is just straight up a better user experience than Windows, in just about every way except for perhaps a lack of apps/games which some people might want. But if you don't need photoshop or games or whatever, then Linux is the way to go. That said, I still don't think that I would "push" laypeople towards Linux, if only for lack of familiarity.

Lastly, GNOME is really nice. Mostly I access apps through Winkey+typing out the name, and that something that's works smoothly in GNOME (unlike Windows and KDE from what I've tried of it). And really 99% of the time I'm just opening up either Firefox or Terminal this way

Yeah, I've been really leaning towards linux these days. I still prefer Windows 7 as my daily driver. I've never been too keen on the linux windows managers. The experience isn't always consistent, and text rendering always annoys me. I like that linux let's me change this, but I can never get it setup just right. Just my luck...

But seeing as I mostly just use Chrome + CLI stuff, gui annoyances aren't usually a big deal on linux.

I haven't tried Windows 10, but it sounds like the antithesis of what I want an operating system to be.

As a consumer I think I'd recommend people go with Apple, as a scientist/engineer I'd recommend linux. I only think I can recommend Windows to "PC Gamers" these days. What Windows does with their hybrid kernel is neat, they have the faculty to support their OS with strong direction, which is sort of lacking on the Linux front sans Canonical. But they have their limitations.

Actually the only thing I really like about microsoft right now is their open sourcing of .Net/C#/F# and first class support of Ximarian as the official Open Source Foundation behind Mono.

Maybe I should give Gnome a try. I've sort of moved onto the lighter wm's for the past couple of years.

 

[tim.mbp]

I took the plunge and wiped W10 off my computer in favor of Ubuntu Gnome 15.04. I tried a few distros and ended up liking Gnome Shell the best and the Ubuntu version was the only one I tried where everything just worked. I really dug Apricity OS, but could not get Bluetooth to work at all.

Now I just need to mess around with Wine. Steam says 92 out of my 161 games have Linux versions, and I know there are a few that have Linux version in my Humble library but for whatever reason aren't on Steam.

 

[sca2511]

TLP and Powertop are amazing if you have Linux on your laptop.

 

[Nostremitus]

Ubuntu wouldn't recognize my Windows 10 install, so I reformatted my SSD and HDD, reinstalled Windows, still nothing when I try to install Ubuntu.

Any ideas? I never had this issue with Windows 7 or 8/8.1.

 

[Persona7]

Ubuntu wouldn't recognize my Windows 10 install, so I reformatted my SSD and HDD, reinstalled Windows, still nothing when I try to install Ubuntu.

Any ideas? I never had this issue with Windows 7 or 8/8.1.

Are you trying to dual boot?

 

[Nostremitus]

Are you trying to dual boot?

Yes. I wound up just removing my Win10 SSD and installing on an HDD partition. I'm on Linux right now. Hopefully, when I reconnect my SSD I can just set it to boot to windows in BIOS and use boot options to select Ubuntu when I want to use it.

 

[Chaos]

Twitch installs Arch Linux starts tomorrow, wonder if they will get out of vim

https://www.twitchinstalls.com/

 

[NotBacon]

Have the new Dell XPS 13 en route to my house. The Linux support on it is fantastic and the PCIe SSD is drool worthy. Can't wait.

Twitch installs Arch Linux starts tomorrow, wonder if they will get out of vim

https://www.twitchinstalls.com/

*grabs popcorn*

 

[Persona7]

oh god nvidia and amd drivers are a absolute nightmare on linux. I tried upgrading my file/VPN server and fucked everything up

 

[ricki42]

Have the new Dell XPS 13 en route to my house. The Linux support on it is fantastic and the PCIe SSD is drool worthy. Can't wait.

Did you get the developer edition with Linux installed? Or is it possible to get any version with Linux instead of Windows? I've been eyeing the XPS 13, but haven't decided which model to get and the selection with Linux seemed limited. Might have to bite the bullet and get a Windows model.

oh god nvidia and amd drivers are a absolute nightmare on linux. I tried upgrading my file/VPN server and fucked everything up

I haven't had issues with nvidia in some time, at least after the initial set-up, which can be a bit of a pain. Until recently I installed the drivers from the geforce website using the install script, worked fine. Since my gaming PC runs Ubuntu, I now use the new Ubuntu ppa with the recent drivers, that worked out of the box when I reinstalled last weekend.

 

[Persona7]

Did you get the developer edition with Linux installed? Or is it possible to get any version with Linux instead of Windows? I've been eyeing the XPS 13, but haven't decided which model to get and the selection with Linux seemed limited. Might have to bite the bullet and get a Windows model.



I haven't had issues with nvidia in some time, at least after the initial set-up, which can be a bit of a pain. Until recently I installed the drivers from the geforce website using the install script, worked fine. Since my gaming PC runs Ubuntu, I now use the new Ubuntu ppa with the recent drivers, that worked out of the box when I reinstalled last weekend.

The initial setup for AMD is pretty simple and Nvidia was kind of annoying but then I remembered why I never bothered with these drivers after I uninstalled both of them and everything was broken on both systems...lol

god damn usb creator and unetbootin are both broken on 15.10...R.I.P

 

[NotBacon]

Did you get the developer edition with Linux installed? Or is it possible to get any version with Linux instead of Windows? I've been eyeing the XPS 13, but haven't decided which model to get and the selection with Linux seemed limited. Might have to bite the bullet and get a Windows model.

As for models: the 9343 is the early 2015 version, and the 9350 is the late 2015 version. 9350 has the new Intel Skylake processors, PCIe storage for versions with 256gb or more (128gb is still SATA), a thunderbolt port, and other tiny changes. Visually identical.

As for Linux: the late 2015 developer edition isn't out yet, so I just got the Windows one. The hardware is identical to my knowledge.

Note: Some come with a Broadcom WiFi chip which suck on Linux, so if mine does I'm swapping it for an Intel chip.

god damn usb creator and unetbootin are both broken on 15.10...R.I.P

Just use dd? If your usb is at /dev/sdb :

sudo dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

 

[Persona7]

As for models: the 9343 is the early 2015 version, and the 9350 is the late 2015 version. 9350 has the new Intel Skylake processors, PCIe storage for versions with 256gb or more (128gb is still SATA), a thunderbolt port, and other tiny changes. Visually identical.

As for Linux: the late 2015 developer edition isn't out yet, so I just got the Windows one. The hardware is identical to my knowledge.

Note: Some come with a Broadcom WiFi chip which suck on Linux, so if mine does I'm swapping it for an Intel chip.



Just use dd? If your usb is at /dev/sdb :

sudo dd if=/path/to/iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

Yeah, I tried that immediately after but my system still did not pick up the drive when I restarted it. I didn't want to mess around anymore after I found a old DVD of 14.10 and I was able to make a bootable drive that way.

 

[Orbis]

Anyone know how to remove the text beside the application icons in Gnome 3.10? I'm running SLED 12. By application icons I mean these:

Also I would like to move the taskbar to the top of the screen rather than the bottom.

I've had a play with these files:

/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js
/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/appDisplay.js
and also
/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css

But nothing I change is having any effect. I did manage to make the taskbar a little taller.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Have the new Dell XPS 13 en route to my house. The Linux support on it is fantastic and the PCIe SSD is drool worthy. Can't wait.

I want to buy the new XPS 15, but I need to see some linux impressions first. Also, I'm pretty confident I'm going to need to swap out the wireless card, so a teardown would be nice too...

 

[NotBacon]

I want to buy the new XPS 15, but I need to see some linux impressions first. Also, I'm pretty confident I'm going to need to swap out the wireless card, so a teardown would be nice too...

Is the XPS 15 significantly different than the 13? The 13 has fantastic Linux support for the hardware, and the WiFi swap is common for it.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Is the XPS 15 significantly different than the 13? The 13 has fantastic Linux support for the hardware, and the WiFi swap is common for it.

AFAIK, no, it's not much different.

But I don't like taking chances wrt hardware support.

 

[NotBacon]

AFAIK, no, it's not much different.

But I don't like taking chances wrt hardware support.

I've been using my XPS 13 (9350) with Linux for 2 days now and it's been a dream.

I did have to replace with Wireless with an Intel chip but it wasn't too bad. The service manual is online and simple. I also changed the SATA configuration from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS. Not sure why it was set to RAID, but Linux didn't recognize the disk with it on.

Other than that, everything works out of the box on Ubuntu 15.10 and it's looking like a 10hr battery day.

 

[Nesotenso]

so I have a question about running csh scripts from bash. I defined the environmental variables the csh script uses in my bashrc file by using export instead of setenv. And then I executed the script from bash. It seems to work fine.

I was wondering if there is another efficient way to do this instead.

 

[Massa]

so I have a question about running csh scripts from bash. I defined the environmental variables the csh script uses in my bashrc file by using export instead of setenv. And then I executed the script from bash. It seems to work fine.

I was wondering if there is another efficient way to do this instead.

Well, the more efficient way would be using a csh shell to run the script. If I understood you correctly that solution would break on more elaborate scripts.

Just run 'csh path-to-script' from bash.

 

[Persona7]

god damn it more USB issues with 15.10.

My NTFS formatted USB drive apparently belongs to root now and I can't write any files whatsoever to it on linux unless I log into root and browse to thunar. I can open the drive on windows though so I don;t know.



literally up to here with this operating system

 

[Massa]

Wait, you mean logged in as root? That's disabled in Ubuntu and you shouldn't be doing it.

Anyway, your problem might be that for some reason the drive is listed in /etc/fstab. If that's the case you should comment out its line in that file.

 

[Persona7]

Wait, you mean logged in as root? That's disabled in Ubuntu and you shouldn't be doing it.

Anyway, your problem might be that for some reason the drive is listed in /etc/fstab. If that's the case you should comment out its line in that file.

No, I mean the drive is owned by root and I can only access it if I log into root. Otherwise it tells me permission is denied.

and I did check fstab and didn't see anything. I spent two hours reading through solutions on askubuntu for this problem and nothing seems to work.

 

[Massa]

No, I mean the drive is owned by root and I can only access it if I log into root. Otherwise it tells me permission is denied.

and I did check fstab and didn't see anything. I spent two hours reading through solutions on askubuntu for this problem and nothing seems to work.

Well, when it's mounted by root make sure you eject it. But you shouldn't be logged in as root to begin with.

Mind pasting the contents of fstab here? Also, do other USB sticks (ex: FAT formatted) work fine, and did you use a USB stick to install Ubuntu?

 

[Persona7]

Fstab just lists the ext4 partition the OS is installed on and the swap space. Nothing else. I only have two other NTFS drives and they both work fine without issue. I did install the OS using a USB drive and it still has the live installation on it but it is at a different location so I can't check it right now.


and yeah, I know the risk of logging into root but I was just testing the drive because it listed the owner as root.


(going to sleep now but thanks for the help)