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Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

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ajkula66
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#31 Post by ajkula66 » Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:49 pm

zod wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:38 pm
I'm running Mac OSX 10.8.5 Mountain Lion on my T61p, I have a second hdd in a tray. Had to change wifi card for Broadcom 4311 (Dell 1490) because of compatibility, everything else is working (almost) out of the box, including nVidia hardware acceleration. Better and more usable than Linux, much faster than Win7. If you insist on Linux, try Zorin, it's Ubuntu based distribution, good polished one.
Thanks for the suggestion. Not a fan of OSX outside of the Mac platform itself.

Tried Zorin, it was OK, but not really my cup of tea.

How do you feel about our local Debian fork as in Serbian ? I may end up going with that in the end, all jokes aside.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#32 Post by zod » Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:33 pm

ajkula66 wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:49 pm
How do you feel about our local Debian fork as in Serbian ? I may end up going with that in the end, all jokes aside.
Never tried Debian, just Zorin, Ubuntu and Kali, and I would never use any OS in Serbian language. My first experience with Win and Office in Serbian was awful, wasn't able to find anything. Not to mention that some of translations were really ridiculous. I like OSX very much, but I can't say the same for the Mac hardware platform, at least when we are talking about laptops - they are nothing but trouble. Geekbench shows very interesting results on my ThinkPad, Mountain Lion is almost 20% faster than Win 7 Ultimate x64 on the same hw platform. I had similar results on my desktop Hackintosh, you can feel the difference.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#33 Post by ajkula66 » Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:47 pm

zod wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:33 pm
ajkula66 wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:49 pm
How do you feel about our local Debian fork as in Serbian ? I may end up going with that in the end, all jokes aside.
Never tried Debian, just Zorin, Ubuntu and Kali, and I would never use OS in Serbian language. My first experience with Win and Office in Serbian was awful, wasn't able to find anything. Not to mention that some of translations were really ridiculous.
LOL. That's what you get with the brain-drain of the 90s, when just about every skilled translator fled the country. On the other hand, basic common sense is still more present than in other parts of the Europe IMO/IME. But that's a different subject matter altogether...

Back to the subject at hand, Debian - and related distros - are much more to my liking than anything from the Ubuntu family. While I have no problem believing that OSX runs well on *61 platform, it's just not my cup of tea.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#34 Post by zod » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:05 pm

ajkula66 wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:47 pm
On the other hand, basic common sense is still more present than in other parts of the Europe IMO/IME.
Well I wouldn't count too much on that basic common sense if I were you; if you don't believe me, just read some domestic newspapers, or try to remember who is on power here right now. Brain drain you mentioned still exists and it's similar to that in nineties, if not worse. I'm 46 years old and this is a first time that I'm thinking of leaving with my family for good. Enough is enough.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#35 Post by Dekks » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:11 pm

ajkula66 wrote:
Sat Aug 18, 2018 8:11 pm
@Dekks:

Many thanks for a well-positioned reply. Here's where I am at the moment:

1) I don't do any PC gaming. A conventional, real-world pinball machine is much more of my cup of tea.

2) Having used various *nix distros on recreational basis over the past decade, I have a decent understanding - at least I believe so - of what's out there, broadly speaking. Getting my hands dirty is something that I'll probably be doing only if I hit a major roadblock somewhere along the way.

3) My software requirements nowadays are extremely basic. For the stuff that is not there in Linux - or I haven't discovered the alternative yet, which is quite possible - there will always be a backup system running some flavour of Windows, but as I've stated in the OP, that's exactly one program nowadays.

4) My days of being an early adopter in *any* area of life are long gone. I'm reasonably certain than if and when a piece of new hardware that I'm interested in hits the market, *nix developers will be playing with it long before I actually decide to purchase it.

5) Haven't touched BSD in many years...have about zero recollection what the entire environment feels like. Not on my "to do" list anytime soon.
Re: 2) the thing you need to learn is the packaging system of your distro de jour, how to update, how to roll back, how to block a package being updated. 99% of the time it's best done via terminal. Other key subjects, understanding man pages, modding .conf files, basic systemd knowledge on starting/stopping services & how to access log files via dmesg or journalctl.

For beginners Ubuntu is really the way to go unless your looking at a pre core duo machine where 32bit CPUs begin to get restrictive wrt distro choice. Ubuntu is oft criticised but it works out the box 99% of the time, has a decent choice of software plus being based on debian documentation on poking under the hood is available in spades. From there it's looking at others in the debian family, fedora and the arch derivatives bearing mind most distros carry the same DE/WM in their repos.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#36 Post by ajkula66 » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:57 pm

Dekks wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:11 pm

Re: 2) the thing you need to learn is the packaging system of your distro de jour, how to update, how to roll back, how to block a package being updated. 99% of the time it's best done via terminal. Other key subjects, understanding man pages, modding .conf files, basic systemd knowledge on starting/stopping services & how to access log files via dmesg or journalctl.
I treat learning Linux as if I were learning another language, or an instrument. It's the matter of connecting the fundamentals of knowledge that exists in the back of my brain with the reality of putting it to daily use. While I'm an old guy whose time is is definitely on the shorter end of the equation, I'm in no rush.
For beginners Ubuntu is really the way to go unless your looking at a pre core duo machine where 32bit CPUs begin to get restrictive wrt distro choice. Ubuntu is oft criticised but it works out the box 99% of the time, has a decent choice of software plus being based on debian documentation on poking under the hood is available in spades. From there it's looking at others in the debian family, fedora and the arch derivatives bearing mind most distros carry the same DE/WM in their repos.
Fedora and (very early) Mint were my distros of choice when I first started toying with Linux years ago. No clue on where I'm going to end this time around. As a fellow forum member - and a dear friend of mine - states in his signature: "Life is a journey...enjoy the ride"
zod wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:05 pm

Well I wouldn't count too much on that basic common sense if I were you; if you don't believe me, just read some domestic newspapers, or try to remember who is on power here right now. Brain drain you mentioned still exists and it's similar to that in nineties, if not worse. I'm 46 years old and this is a first time that I'm thinking of leaving with my family for good. Enough is enough.
I never lost contact with the realities of the environment over there. Not crazy about the people in power myself, but am far less in favour of the current Western world - with a few notable exceptions - than I was 30 years ago. I was in Belgrade for two weeks in May. It's still my town. The hoards have failed to destroy it - yet again - although the damage has been done on many levels.

Wishing you and your family the best of luck with whichever road you decide to take. If you're still in BG next spring, I might just shoot you a PM and we'll meet for coffee/drinks/lunch/whatever if you're up for it. Maybe an OSX-on-a-ThinkPad-tutorial as well... :D
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#37 Post by zod » Wed Aug 22, 2018 4:49 am

ajkula66 wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:57 pm
If you're still in BG next spring, I might just shoot you a PM and we'll meet for coffee/drinks/lunch/whatever if you're up for it. Maybe an OSX-on-a-ThinkPad-tutorial as well... :D
Of course, I'll be glad to meet you! Regarding OSX, It's not complicated at all to transform your ThinkPad into powerful Hackintosh machine. Just a teaser for you:

Image

https://i.imgur.com/abUXDEO.png

I remember when I just made this setup and gone to work with my laptop, everybody was like "hey, it's a really good and realistic OSX shell for Windows, where did you get it?". I just rebooted the machine and after TP splash, grey apple appeared on the white screen, loading the system. Reactions and facial expressions looking at black IBM box loading OSX - priceless :)

Newer versions of OSX works good as well, but for me changing Mountain Lion to Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan would be just like changing good old Win7 to Win10. Newer is not (always) better. That's about the reason why I'm still using T61p in 2018.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#38 Post by Omineca » Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:14 pm

ajkula66 wrote:
Sat Aug 18, 2018 9:40 am
Update: just booted the "live" Debian DVD and am typing this post using it. Thank you, Tasurinchi and Omineca, will keep everyone posted...
If you decide to install to your hard drive, you may be interested in using the installation media with non-free drivers, which helps a lot with hardware compatibility: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unof ... -firmware/
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#39 Post by Tasurinchi » Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:40 pm

I forgot to add that I always use the net install, it's a tiny image that downloads all packages from the net, so once the install is ready you have up to date system and don't need to run any additional package... :wink:
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#40 Post by Dekks » Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:30 pm

Omineca wrote:
Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:14 pm
ajkula66 wrote:
Sat Aug 18, 2018 9:40 am
Update: just booted the "live" Debian DVD and am typing this post using it. Thank you, Tasurinchi and Omineca, will keep everyone posted...
If you decide to install to your hard drive, you may be interested in using the installation media with non-free drivers, which helps a lot with hardware compatibility: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unof ... -firmware/
Well done Ajkula66 - i usually do a standard net install then change the sources.list adding contrib non-free to each entry at the end, then updating and loading the linux-firware packages.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#41 Post by decaba » Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:20 pm

I'm running Kubuntu 16.04 on a T430s. I'm happy with everything, but wish I could go longer on the battery. I've tried a bunch of things with tlp and powertop and, although battery life's improved some, I gather that it's still not nearly as good as what can be gotten with the Lenovo Power Management Driver under Windows 7/8/10. I'm not going to move to Windows just for that, but I am thankful to have a desktop running Windows 10 for games.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#42 Post by Utwig » Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:59 pm

I bought T420s to be my Linux machine because I administer a few servers and teach entry level Linux course here and there. I decided to go with openSUSE because I prefer KDE over Gnome and Suse is one of, if not the best KDE distro. Another advantage is that under the hood stuff in Suse Leap comes from stable enterprise distribution while the apps such as web browsers and KDE Plasma apps are very current. Suse is also newbie friendly as you can do most admin tasks from GUI or text-menu Yast and there are online how-tos for most stuff basic user needs.

I almost never turn on my Windows machine at home and I took T420s to a few trips where I was able to do everything (ping friends, quick edits of photos, email, web-browsing). If you prefer KDE over gnome then other distro candidates are Fedora KDE spin, KDE Neon (latest KDE on Ubuntu LTS).
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#43 Post by ajkula66 » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:12 pm

Utwig wrote:
Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:59 pm
I bought T420s to be my Linux machine because I administer a few servers and teach entry level Linux course here and there. I decided to go with openSuse because I prefer KDE over Gnome and Suse is one of if not the best KDE distro.
I'm reasonably certain that I still have a box with (non-open) SUSE 9.something somewhere...toyed with it many, many moons ago. Can't even recall what it looked like once booted.

My preferences were once very strongly biased towards Gnome and I would pretty much refuse to touch anything else. That aspect has changed and nowadays I'm simply looking for a smooth overall experience, regardless of the actual desktop flavour.

I still like CentOS a lot, but Debian - and the related builds - have given me more of that smoothness that I'm currently looking for...

Lot of distros I've played with over the course of years, it would be interesting to see what the current versions look and feel like...PCLOS, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva...and that's just off the top of my head. I might decide to re-visit one or more of them at some point in the game if there's time to spare, which doesn't seem too likely.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


PMs requesting personal tech support will be ignored.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#44 Post by Utwig » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:17 pm

It was probably Suse 9.3. It was pay version and I remember online friend setting me up with ftp so I could download it in 2005. Suse 9.3 was my first Linux which I was then dual-booting on my desktop. I always tried Linux on my Thinkpads but in time of 60-100GB HDDs dual booting was not realistic. On the servers I like Centos and even on desktop it's very good if you don't mind a bit older apps. KDE works very nice in Centos but it uses older version 4 which over time became stable.

There is Trinity desktop, which is a fork of KDE 3. So current SUSE with Trinity desktop would probably look a bit like 9.3.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#45 Post by zerotetration » Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:14 am

Personally I have not used Linux or Windows on a daily basis in years. I suppose it depends on what kind of software you need to run on your PC for work or recreation. I use OpenBSD. It is amazingly stable and well supported on older Thinkpads. The reason is because the developers used Thinkpads themselves. When I have used Linux I have found a lot of work is spent in getting things to work right whereas OpenBSD just works out of the box on older Thinkpads. Speakers work, volume works, sleep, hibernate flawless, Thinklight works, SD card slot supported, etc. Once you get the hang of OpenBSD it is a great, clean system. I find BSD is more organized and coherent as a unified product than Linux, which seems to take more of an bleeding edge, kitchen sink approach. I can run my laptop for weeks at a time without a crash or reboot, just closing the lid to suspend when I am not working on it. The one thing to consider when chosing Linux or OpenBSD over Windows is software support. Windows may support particular software you need. I know programs like Mathematica or Matlab don't run on OpenBSD while they do run on Linux and Windows for example. Skype also wont run on OpenBSD.

For me OpenBSD has all the functionality I need. My customized, minimalistic window manager is lightning quick on my 2ghz 10 year old dual core machine. There is ONE menu and no Gnome or KDE bs. Web browser, unix utilities, ssh, printing functions (CUPS), editors (vi), word processing (Lyx or LibreOffice), image manipulation (ImageMagic for automation / CLI or mtPaint for gui). If you are paying attention to this list many / most of these programs are not mainstream GNU/Linux stuff...my personal opinion is that popular GNU programs are often buggy, bloated, messes like (GIMP, for example, or Gnome desktop). I can view PDFs, watch HTML-5 / mpeg4 videos, etc. Every single thing that I need to do in daily computer use is possible, flawlessly, securely, and efficiently on OpenBSD on my X61 or T61.

When I have to boot Widows 7 for the iTunes software to back up or reset an iphone for example, it is amazing what a resource hog it is, just to run simple software...

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#46 Post by Arc » Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:18 am

zerotetration wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:14 am
Web browser, unix utilities, ssh, printing functions (CUPS), editors (vi), word processing (Lyx or LibreOffice), image manipulation (ImageMagic for automation / CLI or mtPaint for gui). If you are paying attention to this list many / most of these programs are not mainstream GNU/Linux stuff...my personal opinion is that popular GNU programs are often buggy, bloated, messes like (GIMP, for example, or Gnome desktop). I can view PDFs, watch HTML-5 / mpeg4 videos, etc. Every single thing that I need to do in daily computer use is possible, flawlessly, securely, and efficiently on OpenBSD on my X61 or T61.
All of those programs are available on GNU/Linux and many are often installed by default in most distros. I don't know what universe CUPS, vi, ImageMagick, OpenSSH (which of course we have the fine people at OpenBSD to thank for) and most of those wouldn't be considered "mainstream" programs to have on a Linux system. But we can both agree that GNOME is trash, though. 8) But, I can't really argue with your stance on OpenBSD's greatness considering I have never used a BSD fork, but OpenBSD does look pretty awesome, especially with the focus on security.

Personally I've been using Devuan, Debian, and on systems I just need to make sure work Ubuntu. Pleased with all of them and they are all well maintained. But, I guess the devils advocate parts, huh.

1) TrackPoint is messed up on most distros I have used. Middle-click always randomly pastes things. It's very annoying but I've been too lazy to actually see if there was a fix.
2) Like other people have said, power management. It can get good with tinkering, but by default it's not as nice or as effective as the IBM or Lenovo-provided battery manager utility on Windows.
3) In general, most hardware works out of the box - but with Debian (and the fork Devuan) they do not ship proprietary firmware, so Intel WiFi cards won't work. The firmware is on the non-free repo though. So just an extra step and you have to use wired internet until the, of course.
4) Tearing in my preferred desktop environment, Xfce. This can usually fixed by making sure the built-in compositor is on and vertical sync is enabled, but on older systems (X60 and earlier it looks like) this doesn't seem to work, requiring me to download, configure, and use another compositor like Compton to get a tear-free experience.
5) Spectre vulnerability isn't patched on 32-bit kernel yet, I believe, because it's just not as high of a priority.

And last, it's just general "tinkery" stuff until my entire system is the way I want it. But if you aren't too discriminating, a base install of Debian with whatever desktop environment you want (except GNOME because it's badaroni) will be pleasant and fresh.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#47 Post by Utwig » Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:18 am

ajkula66 wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:47 pm
zod wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:33 pm


Never tried Debian, just Zorin, Ubuntu and Kali, and I would never use OS in Serbian language. My first experience with Win and Office in Serbian was awful, wasn't able to find anything. Not to mention that some of translations were really ridiculous.
LOL. That's what you get with the brain-drain of the 90s, when just about every skilled translator fled the country. On the other hand, basic common sense is still more present than in other parts of the Europe IMO/IME. But that's a different subject matter altogether...
We didn't have much brain drain in 90s and 00s in Slovenia and still the Slovenian OS and software translations are poor. For example during install of Office 2010 there is a typo in the splash screen. The main problem is googling results from 1bn people vs results from 2M people so I stick to English for all my operating systems.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#48 Post by Utwig » Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:20 am

Arc wrote:
Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:18 am

1) TrackPoint is messed up on most distros I have used. Middle-click always randomly pastes things. It's very annoying but I've been too lazy to actually see if there was a fix.
If it happens in Firefox go in about:config (URL bar) and find middlemouse.paste, set it to false.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#49 Post by MikalE » Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:03 am

I've toyed with Linux in the past just to see what it was all about. Mint and Zorin were the two distros I tried on two different machines.

For me it came down to the OS working for me instead of me working on the OS, and several communications programs are incompatible with those two distros or Wine.

I want to turn on the system and get done what I need to do, not try and figure out how I'm going to do it.

The only way I would run Linux is if I had a T500 with Libreboot as the BIOS.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#50 Post by decaba » Fri Aug 24, 2018 7:46 am

Arc wrote:
Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:18 am
zerotetration wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:14 am
(except GNOME because it's badaroni) will be pleasant and fresh.
:lol: :D My mission for today is to use the word badaroni at least once in normal conversation.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#51 Post by Dekks » Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:40 am

zerotetration wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:14 am
Personally I have not used Linux or Windows on a daily basis in years. I suppose it depends on what kind of software you need to run on your PC for work or recreation. I use OpenBSD.

<snip>
Off topic but as someonfe mentioned OpenBSD - OpenBSD is probably the most secure distro out there, i agree it's great on older Thinkpads but it struggles with newer hardware but the community comes across as more extreme than arch users. It isn't very friendly to new users and IMO takes enjoyment out of being for hardcore techies only.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#52 Post by zerotetration » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:57 am

Dekks wrote:
Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:40 am
zerotetration wrote:
Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:14 am
Personally I have not used Linux or Windows on a daily basis in years. I suppose it depends on what kind of software you need to run on your PC for work or recreation. I use OpenBSD.

<snip>
Off topic but as someonfe mentioned OpenBSD - OpenBSD is probably the most secure distro out there, i agree it's great on older Thinkpads but it struggles with newer hardware but the community comes across as more extreme than arch users. It isn't very friendly to new users and IMO takes enjoyment out of being for hardcore techies only.
I will agree that the community can be a little unfriendly to new comers sometimes, but the OS is by no means impenetrable to anyone who is willing to sit and read the manuals. It is actually, I find, much more straight forward and consistent than Linux. It works great on older laptops. I find I can do everything I need to do on a 10 year old X61 / T61 / T60 with upgraded RAM. I can even watch HD streaming videos with no issues at all...mean while a modern machine struggles to get out of its own way with half a dozen cores and Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM or whatever...

There are community mailing lists found at openbsd.org. But be warned these are pretty hardcore to new comers / non technical people.

There is also a community subreddit at old.reddit.com/r/openbsd which is actually quite friendly to all sorts of questions and would be a great resource for a new comer who does not have patience to read manual pages to solve whatever problem they are trying to solve.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#53 Post by dr_st » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:57 am

zerotetration wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:57 am
I find I can do everything I need to do on a 10 year old X61 / T61 / T60 with upgraded RAM. I can even watch HD streaming videos with no issues at all...mean while a modern machine struggles to get out of its own way with half a dozen cores and Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM or whatever...
Every time I see claims like this I want to call "bull". Not the part about "half a dozen cores and Windows 10 with 16GB of RAM" - because that's an obvious exaggeration (such a system easily crunches through anything), but the part about streaming video working smoothly on an old PC when using some BSD/Unix/Linux derivative, but not on Windows. On most old systems, when the PC is struggling decoding a video, you'll see the CPU (or a core) 100% taxed with the decoding process all the time, without any other OS component being involved. I can believe (with a degree of skepticism) that somehow the decoders used in Linux, or in this case, OpenBSD, are somewhat more efficient than those used in Windows, which may save you in a few corner cases, but not in general, and surely not across multiple hardware generations.

If I'm wrong, I'd like to be demonstrated that, preferably with a verifiable process, e.g., some video(s) on a specific website which stream flawlessly in a specific OS on a specific system, but stutter consistently on another OS.
Thinkpad 25 (20K7), T490 (20N3), Yoga 14 (20FY), T430s (IPS FHD + Classic Keyboard), X220 4291-4BG
X61 7673-V2V, T60 2007-QPG, T42 2373-F7G, X32 (IPS Screen), A31p w/ Ultrabay Numpad

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#54 Post by Dekks » Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:13 pm

My X32 plays 720p files fine thru mpv but flash or 1080p from a webpage and your pegging the CPU, that's on debian but it's true for any distro from my experiences with my T43 and X32.
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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#55 Post by zerotetration » Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:51 pm

dr_st wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:57 am
zerotetration wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:57 am
I find I can do everything I need to do on a 10 year old X61 / T61 / T60 with upgraded RAM. I can even watch HD streaming videos with no issues at all...mean while a modern machine struggles to get out of its own way with half a dozen cores and Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM or whatever...
Every time I see claims like this I want to call "bull". Not the part about "half a dozen cores and Windows 10 with 16GB of RAM" - because that's an obvious exaggeration (such a system easily crunches through anything), but the part about streaming video working smoothly on an old PC when using some BSD/Unix/Linux derivative, but not on Windows. On most old systems, when the PC is struggling decoding a video, you'll see the CPU (or a core) 100% taxed with the decoding process all the time, without any other OS component being involved. I can believe (with a degree of skepticism) that somehow the decoders used in Linux, or in this case, OpenBSD, are somewhat more efficient than those used in Windows, which may save you in a few corner cases, but not in general, and surely not across multiple hardware generations.

If I'm wrong, I'd like to be demonstrated that, preferably with a verifiable process, e.g., some video(s) on a specific website which stream flawlessly in a specific OS on a specific system, but stutter consistently on another OS.
You seriously don't think it is possible to watch an HD quality Youtube video on an X61 or T61 without glitching? Maybe some day I will take a video of my machine in action an upload it and provide you the link. It just goes to show how much hardware horsepower goes to waste on modern machines running bloated operating systems and other bloated software. How do you think a 400 mhz single core Pentium II with 32 MB of RAM was able to play back DVDs in 1998?

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#56 Post by ajkula66 » Sun Aug 26, 2018 2:03 pm

OK a couple of things here...
zerotetration wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:51 pm
How do you think a 400 mhz single core Pentium II with 32 MB of RAM was able to play back DVDs in 1998?[/b]
1) This thread was NOT intended to start an OS flame war which is against the forum rules to begin with.

2) @zerotetration: there's absolutely no need to have an entire post bolded. We hear you. Loud and clear. Having said that, dr_st and yourself are talking about two entirely different aspects of the reality.

I'm going to ask everyone to kindly stick to the topic at hand in order to prevent this thread from getting locked.

Thank you one and all.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


PMs requesting personal tech support will be ignored.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#57 Post by dr_st » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:41 pm

zerotetration wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:51 pm
You seriously don't think it is possible to watch an HD quality Youtube video on an X61 or T61 without glitching?
Not at all. I know it's possible; in fact I used to do this on my T60 and X61, running Windows, all the time. Back when I was still using them as semi-primary machines, that is.
Thinkpad 25 (20K7), T490 (20N3), Yoga 14 (20FY), T430s (IPS FHD + Classic Keyboard), X220 4291-4BG
X61 7673-V2V, T60 2007-QPG, T42 2373-F7G, X32 (IPS Screen), A31p w/ Ultrabay Numpad

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#58 Post by zerotetration » Sun Aug 26, 2018 10:33 pm

Not at all. I know it's possible; in fact I used to do this on my T60 and X61, running Windows, all the time. Back when I was still using them as semi-primary machines, that is.
Yes, probably with Windows XP. Try doing that today with same hardware running Windows 7 or 8 or 10 or whatever. I have a hard drive I use to run Windows 7 on that I put in my X61 / T61 to back up / reset an iPhone with iTunes. Windows 7 is painfully slow and yet the same machine is eminently usable for any task I need under OpenBSD. To the commenter above I bolded my reply because I wanted to make it easily visible below the long quote that preceded it, in case the reader did not want to read the quote and just wanted to skip to the reply. I was not trying to convey emotion or start a 'flame war' by bolding.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#59 Post by ajkula66 » Sun Aug 26, 2018 10:52 pm

zerotetration wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 10:33 pm

Yes, probably with Windows XP. Try doing that today with same hardware running Windows 7 or 8 or 10 or whatever. I have a hard drive I use to run Windows 7 on that I put in my X61 / T61 to back up / reset an iPhone with iTunes. Windows 7 is painfully slow and yet the same machine is eminently usable for any task I need under OpenBSD.
Huh...here we go again. This is, once again turning into an OS flame war. Not in my thread... :BAAAD!:

@zerotetration: I understand that you're new here and may not be all that familiar with the way things are done on this forum. The attitude of "the OS I use is vastly superior to (insert another OS here) because I say so" is not acceptable.

On a different note, if you find W7 to be running slow on a *61 series laptop, there's something very wrong with the way it's been set.

Can we now please go back to the topic at hand, before I run out of patience and get this thread locked ? Those who have nothing constructive to add are welcome to stay out of it altogether.

Thank you one and all.
...Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules...(King Crimson)

Cheers,

George (your grouchy retired FlexView farmer)

One FlexView to rule them all: A31p

Abused daily: T520, X200s


PMs requesting personal tech support will be ignored.

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Re: Looking for a devil's advocate: why SHOULDN'T I move to Linux completely ?

#60 Post by bayou self » Thu Aug 30, 2018 6:56 pm

I just purchased the Kindle edition of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction by William E. Schotts, Jr. I can't get the Kindle reader app to run on Wine. I know you'll say "Just use the Kindle Cloud Reader", but my internet service is spotty. So I'm using W7 to read about the Linux CLI. A bit of irony, wouldn't you say?

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