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  2. crp

    Mechanical keyboards

    Learning new physical traits helps keep brain young.
  3. Today
  4. V.T. Eric Layton

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    Nah.. that 810 is definitely 32 bit. I upgraded it as far as it could go (2Gig, I think) with RAM when I first set it up for her four or five years ago. The Ubuntu 18.04 is just very, very slow these days. It all still works, you just have to let your beard grow a bit while waiting.
  5. Via PCWorld: See the referenced article for additional information.
  6. Cynthia Weil passed away on June 1. She and her co-writer Barry Mann had close to 100 hit songs. This one was one of their most famous.
  7. From what I can gather about the Dell D810 it'll have an old Intel wifi solution so antiX should work fine. The big problem will be lack of memory. A low end browser like Midori or Falkon can be a lifesaver on something that old. I believe HJ's suggestion of ChromeOS Flex might be a solid option as well - but you'll probably need a 64 bit CPU for that as he mentioned.
  8. V.T. Eric Layton

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    These folks have no options for anything requiring $$$. If it weren't for his mom (my aunt), my cousin and his two daughters would be living in their car. So, I'll fudge up something that will work with these laptops they already own... or, they're screwed. They'll ALL have to share my aunt's old Dell.
  9. Hedon James

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    if those old lappies are 32 bit, your options will be quite limited. But I agree with Ray that AntiX would be a solid choice for any 32 bit machines. And Bunsen Lab....they have a 32-bit option also. IF the machines are 64 bit, and IF they're light on RAM (4GB or less), they might be solid candidates for ChromeOS Flex?! Google maintains a list of "supported" machines, but it's not comprehensive...it's only what they support. It's entirely possible Chrome will run just fine on those old machines. So if your folks are already invested in the Android/Google ecosystem with their phones, perhaps ChromeOS will be a very seamless, painless, and trouble-free transition for them? For you to decide...and maybe their hardware won't allow it...but perhaps an option to consider? As an exercise of curiousity, I put ChromeOS Flex on a thumb drive and booted into a Live Session of Chrome to test compatibility of an old Toshiba Satellite and 2 Gateway NVS laptops. The Toshiba is circa 2005ish, while the Gateways were bought as like-new refurbs circa 2009. All 3 came with Win7 OEM, but ChromeOS Flex ran perfectly fine, with no issues whatsoever....everything worked OOTB. In fact, ChromeOS ran better on those machines than Windows EVER did. And since they all had 250GB-500GB+ HDDs (no ssds, just old school platter disks), they resolved one of the things I don't like about Chromebooks...."cloud storage". The large disks made them local storage, with google services available as a backup! I do like redundancy in my setups! If your folks are already using google services, it might actually be the BEST choice for them? If they are not, it still may make sense. I was able to install Linux VMs on the Toshiba and 1 of the Gateways with no issues. The 2nd Gateway wouldn't allow it, and I don't know why, as the 2 Gateways were IDENTICAL. Maybe a virtual setting in the BIOS? ChromeOS uses Crostini as a "sandbox" VM, with Debian Bullseye as the base repo. I installed LibreOffice Writer, Calc, Draw, Firefox, PCManFM, and some utilities like "top", "inxi", etc... Once installed from the terminal, icons are placed in the "app drawer", just like Chrome or Android apps, for selection; or even dragged into the launch bar as a "frequent" software choice. I was BLOWN AWAY by how well those old decrepit machines ran ChromeOS, and with a LinuxVM enabled, I was able to install my PREFERRED Linux apps for use, in place of Google's default offerings. Google's offerings are there, and available for those who actually prefer them; but Linux apps allowed me to eliminate the 2nd thing I don't like about the Google ecosystem. Another bonus, IMO, is that ChromeOS automatically updates itself when updates are available. No more users causing their own issues by refusing to update when notified....ChromeOS does it in the background, then notifies an update was installed and suggests a reboot to finalize. That reboot takes about 10 seconds or less.....no reason NOT to do it. I just donated these machines to a charitable organization last week, or I would've gladly sent them to you! But for a fellow who can install, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot Slackware, ChromeOS Flex on a LiveUSB should be a walk in the park. If you determine that ChromeOS Flex is a viable option you want to pursue, I'll be available to answer questions or help resolve any issues. But like I said, probably a very simple task for a bona-fide Slacker! FWIW...
  10. securitybreach

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    BTW I have mentioned it before but you can get a 3 year old laptop without an OS on ebay for less than $300. Corporations have to dump their laptops every three years due to warranty reasons. So if you search for "used business class laptops" on ebay, they are plentiful. The nice part is that most never even left the docking station with minimal wear and business class laptops are higher spec'd and have tons of accessories you can also purchase new or used from ebay. The only reason I know this is because years ago when I was filling up a pallet with laptops I wondered to myself, what would I do with 500 laptops? Sure enough they are all on ebay, I even seen a listing with boxes with our asset tags on them. Oddly enough, they were being sold via Finland. Who knows what these disposal companies do? Must be nice to get paid to take away hundreds of laptops and other IT equipment. Also, the last 3 laptops that I have bought were via this method. Current one is an HP Elitebook 830 G7 with an i7, 1tb nvme ssd and 32gb of ram. I bought it for $250 and bought another 16gb of ram for like $50 or so, installed Arch and it was good to go. Actually no, I didn't even install arch. I cloned the previous laptop's harddrive using clonezilla and restored it to the new machine. Gotta love linux.
  11. My collection of junker laptops are ones I've had quite a while (aging gracefully) or I got from my neighbor when he upgraded his systems. With the exception of the Netbook all work just fine - no gaming but they'll do anything else I need. I keep them around to experiment with various distros on the rails. They are not daily drivers, but I don't need to dual boot anything or run VMs to test things out. The oldest useful one is a tank-like Thinkpad T430 that I take on holidays and never worry about theft or breakage. If on a cruise, I like to take it to the ship's Internet support lounge and when the attendant asks me what OS I'm running I say "Debian" and watch him choke on his Dr. Pepper.
  12. abarbarian

    Click to latest

    An there it was all this time right in front of me face. I have been puzzling over how to get to the last post ever since the site changed. Good tip.
  13. abarbarian

    Mechanical keyboards

    My Z15 arrived in the post today. So far I can tell you that it is noisier than my old Logitech Multi media. The keys are a lot closer too which is going to take some getting used to. All those fancy colours are pretty but a tad annoying. Looks like I have some research to do to set the colours to suit me, I really only want a quiet colour scheme for daily use and some profiles for highlighting keys for some games. As I tend to use the same buttons not be too hard. As I am typing this I notice that I am hitting the right button but also ones in close proximity at the same time. I'll have to retrain my hands somewhat as I have just been one finger typing. That could be either very difficult or good for me as I have a bit of the old arthritis and stiffness in me pudgy digits. Seems that the typing lessons I did thirty years ago, got up to 50 words a minute, have taken root and laid dormant as all my fingers are being employed albeit slowly and a tad clumsily even in this short time.
  14. First causality of imgur change?
  15. crp

    Mechanical keyboards

    What do you use during the day time?
  16. if older than 8 years, i would just go find a clunker on eBay or a thrift shop.
  17. crp

    Click to latest

    I just click on the filled circle if no circle, no new posts since i last entered that thread. Sometimes it is a star.
  18. Yesterday
  19. You might try antiX on that old 32 bit machine. Probably a better solution than Ubuntu 18.04.
  20. V.T. Eric Layton

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    I have a sneaking suspicion that these two laptops that I'm going to look at are substantially older than 2015. My aunt's laptop that I fixed up for her is an old Dell D810 w/ Pentium M (32 bit). It's running Ubuntu, but the last upgrade was to 18.04. It will upgrade no more because Ubuntu is no longer supporting that version. Also, there's not much I can do to change things on that machine because of the 32 bit limit... not many Linuxes out there still offering 32 bit support. I don't think the two laptops that belong to my cousin's girlfriend are as old as the above mentioned Dell, but they're probably not to "young" either. We'll see... And yes, FUGLY broadcom... had issues with that running Slackware on all my previous laptops. There is a simple fix to get it working, though. Fortunately, I don't have any laptops these days.
  21. Here is another example of what you could see: HP Pavilion 14 inch from 2015. Runs Linux Mint Xfce. Wifi. Broadcom BCM43142. Fugly. This one ain't gonna work unless you install with a wire or USB wifi dongle, then use Mint's Driver Manager to resolve matters. Memory. 8 GB DDR3 - lots of capacity with a light distro. Runs anything. CPU. Core i5 Broadwell. 2 Cores, 4 threads. Decent Intel graphics. SSD. Patriot Elite Burst 1 TB. Rock and Roll. I had to tear the whole laptop down to replace the HDD with an SSD. But this one is a keeper. Perfect for the grandkids to use. It's well within the 10 year window of useful hardware for Linux. I think a new Linux user might be frustrated with no wifi though.
  22. V.T. Eric Layton

    Click to latest

    To be honest, I didn't even notice this before. When we first started using this newer version of the board software a few years back, I set up the "Custom Unread" link to show me all the sub-forums that I follow. I just click on that and all the subs with new posts show up. There is a "click to see latest post" when that happens in the Custom Unread area. Also, much of the time, I just click on the Notifications icon when I first get here and it shows ALL the posts that have happened since my last visit. When I click on one of those notifications, it automatically takes me to the first "new" reply in the thread. Be patient, @Will Watts is currently working on possibly converting this place to an entirely different (and better) board software... Xenforo.
  23. V.T. Eric Layton

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    Well... another delay in getting over there, so won't have the chance to see what I'm dealing with until Monday.
  24. securitybreach

    Light Weight GNU/Linux for Old Laptops -> Suggestions?

    Yeah, I have an old HP netbook with similar specs. It works fine until you open a browser and the javascript heavy internet bogs it down to a crawl. Its the ram that is the major issue.
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