Linux alternative help&support

users
#1

Hi :slight_smile:
I think this mailing list is often quite helpful about wider issues than it
is meant for.

This mailing list has been quite supportive of people with questions about
various versions of Linux. I really like it when someone who has been a
huge help to others about technical issues in LibreOffice is then supported
by others in return.

My history with Linux ...
It took me a few goes before i found which version of Linux suited me
most. I'm very much a point&click user so i went with "Gateway" (or
user-friendly) distros to start with. Mostly they are all good and so just
settling with anything is good but sometimes trying a different flavour
makes things feel more comfortable.

Mageia (formerly Mandriva in the same way that LibreOffice was formerly
OpenOffice) felt magical to me, fresh from Windows, but i didn't like the
blues in the default theme at the time. Wolvix was a really friendly and
tiny team. I could imagine meeting them at certain types of gigs and
enjoying beers and moshing. But Slackware is not hugely easy for
point&click users so i tried a few others and settled on Ubuntu as being my
main distro while still doing a bit more distro-hopping.

Something i really liked was that during that stumbling around
distro-hopping stage nothing i learned was wasted. Even just using Wolvix
and it's excellent installer helped me learn how to use Mageia and others
better. The biggest step was from Windows but moving around between
different distros felt like everything stayed the same except the wallpaper
and other fairly trivial bits&bobs.

Over the last 7-8 years i have accidentally learned a few command-line
things so i would have to remember to use different names for a few things
but the basic grammar of the commands remains the same and most of the
commands are identical in all versions of linux.

I have also accidentally learned how to ssh into remote machines (at least
ones i've been given passwords for!) to do a bit of systems administration
on multiple machines at once and i can rsync or scp to rapidly upload stuff
to the company's web-hosters or between desktops or between servers - all
with the same commands regardless of which version/flavour of linux they
use.

I've also learned how to create virtual machines to use Windows inside
Linux gaining the advantage of Linux solid foundations and minimal use of
resources to abstract-away some of the typical problems of installing
Windows.

Plus i would have never learned about powerful tools to clone drives and
many other things that i would probably never have learned, or that having
learned once would have to keep relearning new tools in order to keep doing
the same thing.

Wine and "Play on Linux" and Crossover and others are all great ways of
running Windows programs within Linux without needing an extra layer(s) for
emulators or virtual machines.

Some versions/flavours of Linux can be installed within Windows, such as
Ubuntu's "Wubi" and Puppy-Linux but that seems to be an odd way of doing
it.

Using Windows as the base and then having another OS within that either as
the Wubi or the Puppy-Linux way or inside a virtual machine seems a bit
weird to me. Windows is not really a good stable foundation plus it tends
to be quite heavy in it's use of resources and doesn't have a reputation of
"playing well with others". Linux is much stronger on bare-metal so you'd
be missing some of the key advantages of Linux and really kinda combining
the worst aspects of both types of OSes. However, many people have a lot
of success with it and it might be a good way-in.

So, anyway, i hope that people do ask more questions about how to use Linux
on this mailing list and that we are able to help signpost people to the
best places to ask questions or even just quickly help directly solve the
problem.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#2

​Tom, you might want to take a look at Linux Mint (current version 17.2) ;
if you're using a desktop as your main box, I think you will find the GUI -
I personally prefer Cinnamon - far superior to Ubuntu's Unity (Cinnamon
can, of course, be installed on Ubuntu to replace Unity) and the OS is a
dream to use. On my triple-boot machine, it boots (from GRUB), for example,
much more quickly than Windows 8.1 Pro, which I keep around solely in order
to be able to help retirees with their Windows problems. It doesn't
require, as does Windows, that the machine be rebooted just about every
time a minor update is installed, and things like the BSOD simply don't
appear....

So I agree with Jack Wallen - Linux *is* the answer to the question of
alternatives to Windows. I'd disagree with him just a bit when it comes to
«good» and «bad» Windows OSs - the problem with Vista (Windows 6.0) wasn't
the OS itself, which was, in fact, a great improvement over XP (Windows
5.1) - try defragging the same files on the two systems and you'll see what
I mean - but rather that it was released before the manufacturers of
peripherals like, e g, printers, had gotten around to creating drivers that
worked with it, which was a real bummer for consumers. Two years later,
when Windows 7 (i e, Windows 6.1), which amounted to a Vista SP with a
better GUI, was released, those drivers were in place, and everybody, i e,
Windows users, breathed a sigh of relief, Then came Windows 8 (Windows
6.2), a relatively minor upgrade from Windows 7, where the MS leadership
made the disastrous mistake of forcing the Metro GUI on all users. However,
all that had to be done to make the new OS work in a way familiar to
Windows users was to install the lovely little shell program from *Classic
Shell* <http://classicshell.net> , which gave users a GUI almost
indistinguishable from that of Windows 7. I don't know how many retirees we
have saved from throwing their computers out the window by this simple
expedient. In Windows 8.1 (Windows 6.3), Microsoft started a slow retreat
back to the familiar start button, but even here the installation of
Classic Shell was needed to bring relief to users who communicated with
their computers mainly via a mouse/touchpad and a keyboard, rather than
sweeping their fingers over a touch screen. I suspect the same thing will
be true of Windows 10....

The nice thing about LibreOffice, is that it works like a charm with just
about any OS. Kudos to the developers, and to the people at the Foundation
who make their work possible !...

Henri

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Something i really appreciate most about Linux is that it's so easy to
change the gui - or more importantly that if you don't like the crazy new
things that have been done to the gui then you can fairly easily go back to
the old one or on to something else entirely. The under-laying system
remains the same.

I actually really like Unity but i also quite like the Win8 metro thing now
that i've found how to move things around and pin/unpin things from it.
The Windows key is good for getting to a classic desktop or back to the
menu/Metro-thingy on 8.1. I've also been getting into KDE recently too,
despite the blue.

Regards form
Tom :slight_smile:

#4

Tom, you might want to take a look at Linux Mint (current version 17.2) ;
if you're using a desktop as your main box, I think you will find the GUI -
I personally prefer Cinnamon - far superior to Ubuntu's Unity (Cinnamon
can, of course, be installed on Ubuntu to replace Unity) and the OS is a
dream to use. On my triple-boot machine, it boots (from GRUB), for example,
much more quickly than Windows 8.1 Pro, which I keep around solely in order
to be able to help retirees with their Windows problems. It doesn't
require, as does Windows, that the machine be rebooted just about every
time a minor update is installed, and things like the BSOD simply don't
appear....

You guys who use Mint with Cinnamon (from now on I will only say
”Mint”, but I mean Mint with the Cinnamon desktop every time), I would
like to know a little more about a few details, if you don't mind:
I currently use Ubuntu 14.04 and I have used Ubuntu since 7.04. I was
very impressed by the first version I installed, then even more
impressed for every new version up to 10.10. After that it seems like
the Ubuntu team spied on my. ”Now, let's see what features Johnny
Rosenberg like to use… aha… aha… I see… yes, that one too, ok, let's
remove them!”

So basically everything that I like with Ubuntu is gone now or doesn't
work. Let's asume that I want to give Mint with Cinnamon a go, what
about the following?
In old Ubuntu version, let's say a wrote a Bash script that I intended
to use with FLAC files. That's not too crazy, because I actually wrote
quite a few such scripts…
Now, I want to run these scripts with on FLAC files without too much
effort. I just want to right click a FLAC file, then ”Open with” and
finally just select my script.

To make this happen, in old Ubuntu I could just right click a FLAC
file → Properties → Open with, and from there just enter a command
line manually to reach my script.
This is of course impossible in Ubuntu 14.04. There are methods, but
none of them works. I have edited text files, been fiddling around
with Ubuntu Tweak and other tools, but no success. Nautilus Actions
doesn't seem to work properly anymore and so on. It's possible to use
the Script folder (~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts) but then my script
will be available for ALL kinds of files. Not good.
What about Mint in this case?

I use icons on my desktop. Maybe I shouldn't, but I find it
convenient. I try to have just a few of them, though. Anyway, I want
my icons on certain places and in certain sizes. I size up important
icons, for instance. This works in Ubuntu, but when I logout and then
login again, or restart the computer, all of my desktop icons are the
same size again and placed from up to down, left to right in
alphabetic order…
Does this work properly in Mint?

My Android phone always appear on different places. If I write a
script that will move files to and from my phone, I need to write
special routines to determine where the phone is located. At the
moment it's at ”/run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp:host=%5Busb%3A001%2C006%5D/”,
for instance. I find that annoying and it reminds me about Windows’
silly drive letters, which I also find annoying and… well, silly…
What about Mint in this case? Connecting Android devices that is, I
already know that Mint doesn't use drive letters… :stuck_out_tongue:

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
If Win8 started up at the normal desktop (as it can be set to do now) and
then the Metro stuff is used just as the old;

"Start" button - "All Programs"

Then it's kinda ok - err after adding in new tiles for Kodi, LibreOffice,
Chrome/Firefox etc, removing quite a lot of the default useless ones and
moving around all the tiles into something that makes some kind of sense
and makes useful programs/documents/things easier to get to. Then using
the "Windows key" brings up that programs menu.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Both Cinnamon and Mate (pronounced similarly to Latte) are both supposedly
"drop in replacements" for the "Gnome" DE that Ubuntu used to use.

They both started with the same code-base that everyone using a Gnome DE on
any distro was familiar with and then just upgraded it. VERY similar to
the way LibreOffice has evolved from OpenOffice.

The new Gnome was heading in a direction that almost no-one liked -
apparently they were moving away from touch and away from accessibility.
Hence so many forks appearing and also distros moving to other DEs. Ubuntu
found that an almost unheard-of DE was aiming for greater accessibility and
opening up greater flexibility for touch gestures and stuff. Also being
such a tiny team would give Ubuntu more opportunity to steer them if
needed. The Gnome people dug their heels in and wouldn't budge from their
plans to return to a by-gone era.

Cinnamon and Mate are now well-established, just as LibreOffice is.
Doubtless there are many people working in and sharing code and/or ideas
between many such projects.

It is very possible to install Mate or Cinnamon into most distros now. At
the login screen you might see a logo for the default DE, or a drop-down
menu, where you can switch from one to another. So you can kinda
test-drive different DEs in a single working install of whichever distro.
Much of the "under the bonnet" stuff you ask about tends to go with
whichever DE was the most recently installed but some stuff remains the
same. So it's not a perfect test-drive but might help give you an idea.

It's probably best to create a new partition and test-drive some of these
things yourself. A virtual machine might be quite good too but a
bare-metal install has to deal with the quirkiness of real hardware and
might give a better idea of how things really work.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
Err, i tend to stick with Unity for myself.

Some of my work-colleagues couldn't cope with the simplicity and the way it
doesn't look like Xp or Win7. So i had a quick look at KDE again and was
surprised at how fast it's become. It even out-performed Cinnamon and Mate
and even LXDE on many of our ancient machines AND it looked quite similar
to Xp/Win7. Quite a few people found it much easier to use.

So i've been using it myself quite a bit and found how to fix some of the
inevitable teething problems in any 'new' system. Any system needs a bit
of tweaking in order to get it working the way anyone would be happy with
so i've been finding a few of those out for myself. However i really like
Unity now [shrugs]. For me the big advantage of KDE is that now i can do
more distro-hopping and try out many different distros while keeping a
fairly familiar Gui/DE/Window-manager.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
Err, i tend to stick with Unity for myself.

Some of my work-colleagues couldn't cope with the simplicity and the way it
doesn't look like Xp or Win7. So i had a quick look at KDE again and was
surprised at how fast it's become. It even out-performed Cinnamon and Mate
and even LXDE on many of our ancient machines AND it looked quite similar
to Xp/Win7. Quite a few people found it much easier to use.

people who liked kde3 might try an active development of it called Trinity Desktop <https://www.trinitydesktop.org/>; I favor a branch called exegnu <http://exegnulinux.net>; I think both make a livecd/usb.

it is debian-based and you may have to do a couple of things to get the wifi drivers for your system.

my only association with these projects is as a contented user. "mileage may vary."

f.

#9

Hi :slight_smile:
If Win8 started up at the normal desktop (as it can be set to do now)
and then the Metro stuff is used just as the old;

"Start" button - "All Programs"

Then it's kinda ok - err after adding in new tiles for Kodi,
LibreOffice, Chrome/Firefox etc, removing quite a lot of the default
useless ones and moving around all the tiles into something that makes
some kind of sense and makes useful programs/documents/things easier
to get to. Then using the "Windows key" brings up that programs menu.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

You know, you raise another point about Windows 8.1 that irks me. Many,
if not most, think one of the main problems with Windows 8 is/was the
missing "Start" menu. I truly don't miss the "Start" menu and don't
like any window managers or desktop environments that try to retain that
look/behavior. I think GNOME shell got it right by having the
"Applications" menu, where one would find the applications they wanted
to run. But I digress... anyway, I don't miss the "Start" menu at all.
I don't like how Metro has its tiles laid out. Look at ANY new desktop
or laptop system with Windows 8 pre-installed. After the initial setup
process, you see the Metro desktop and its tiles. Where is the MS
Office tile? Off to the far right somewhere, requiring you to scroll to
see it. I'm on a *desktop* system and using a Word processor is
something I'm probably going to want to do so why not put the tile for
MS Office in the same set of tiles where you can EASILY access the
online stuff? Stupid strike #1.

When I'm on the desktop "side", I can double-click a photo to see it.
If I'm not careful, I can get flipped to the Metro "side" and view the
photo. Cool. When I'm done looking at the photo, I have no clue what
to do because the "X" to close the "window" isn't in view (I have to
know to move the mouse to the top of the screen to get it to appear).
Stupid strike #2 (the flip from the desktop to Metro).

Now, these aren't things I've personally struggled with but things I've
personally witnessed many others struggle with as they get new computers
I setup for them.

To be fair, I have no issue with Windows 8's underpinnings and security
changes. It's mostly the UI behavior I have issue with. Of course, if
one wants to take the time to learn how to use Windows 8 effectively and
efficiently, more power to them. I would also state, if they could take
the time to learn how to use Windows 8, they could (and should) take the
time to learn how to use LibreOffice effectively and efficiently instead
of slamming it for not looking or behaving exactly like MS Office. :slight_smile:

Peace...

"The other" Tom