raymac46 Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 My daughter and SIL are taking a cruise right now, so my wife is in Ottawa babysitting the grandkids. She wanted to take a laptop with her, and didn't like the ancient Toshiba netbook I suggested (too slow) so I let her have my Thinkpad 430. This one runs Debian with a sorta unfriendly GNOME GUI so I had my reservations. GNOME makes it tough to turn the dam thing off if you don't know how, but I showed her. When she got there my wife and daughter tried unsuccessfully to log in to my SIL's network. Finally they figured out that they had the wrong password, and the caps lock was on. After that they were OK. Things are looking up (or are they?) though. Last night my wife informed me she had been doing Facebook video chat with my SIL - on his ship, with Debian. Oh well. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Very cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted September 28, 2019 Author Share Posted September 28, 2019 The Thinkpad is my go-to laptop for travel. It's built like a tank, I never worry about theft, it has plenty of storage room to back up photos. I also love how the ship's IT staff choke on their coffee when I tell them I am connecting to the network with Debian Linux. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 I've taken my 7" eeepc netbook,which runs a hybrid of Debian and Xandros, on past cruises. I figured if it got lost or stolen I wouldn't be heartbroken. It was small and easy to travel with. It's now too old and slow to go on a trip. I could run a newer distro from a USB stick but that would make it even slower and since satellite internet on a ship is slow to start, doing anything would be painfully slow. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Well nowadays you can simply buy used business class laptops on ebay for under $200. Companies have to dump them after 3 years due to warranty reasons. They will have "No OS" as they were wiped but other than that, they will be higher end machines and most never left their docking station. For instance, I bought a HP 9470 with an i7 and 8gb ram for $160 bucks. I got another 8gb stick to max it out and dropped in an extra ssd that I had lying around. I had a fast and thin laptop for under $200 that looked new. I still use it daily at work as my personal laptop connected to the guest network and running PIA. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 1 hour ago, securitybreach said: Well nowadays you can simply buy used business class laptops on ebay for under $200. Companies have to dump them after 3 years due to warranty reasons. They will have "No OS" as they were wiped but other than that, they will be higher end machines and most never left their docking station. For instance, I bought a HP 9470 with an i7 and 8gb ram for $160 bucks. I got another 8gb stick to max it out and dropped in an extra ssd that I had lying around. I had a fast and thin laptop for under $200 that looked new. I still use it daily at work as my personal laptop connected to the guest network and running PIA. I do stuff like this, too, and I've gotten some great deals. All of the computers I own now (all of them are laptops/notebooks) were either used or discontinued ones. Got one that was a display model, picked it up for $50 bucks, turned out to be perfectly fine, all I had to do was wipe Windows and install Linux. Got another one that was given to me for free, and that one's still working fine as well. I probably wouldn't even consider anything over $200 bucks at this point. I generally try to avoid taking a laptop with me on trips. I kinda enjoy getting away from all that for a spell. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 Well I have a newer model as my main laptop (HP Elitebook 830 g5) but I have the one mentioned as my personal laptop at work and then I have a mobile workstation in the corner (too heavy to carry but very powerful with an i7 and 32gb ram). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wa4chq Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 (edited) You say they have a hard time turning it off.... I just use an alias for halt and issue that command from xterm and it saves me from having to click on tons of BS just to turn things off...alias halt="sudo shutdown -h now" I use zsh instead of bash, so in my alias I have something in there for "halt". So, keeping an xterm open I just type "halt"....no clicking on tons of stuff just to shut things down. Edited September 29, 2019 by wa4chq 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 shutdown -h now telinit 0 halt Anyone of the above will shut any Linux machine down from the command line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 16 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: shutdown -h now telinit 0 halt Anyone of the above will shut any Linux machine down from the command line. Well I do not think that telinit 0 will work on most linux distros now due to systemd. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 It'll still work, evidently, but it's not recommended... https://systemd.network/telinit.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 6 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: It'll still work, evidently, but it's not recommended... https://systemd.network/telinit.html Ah ok, I didn't realize that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted October 2, 2019 Author Share Posted October 2, 2019 Oh I just use poweroff after I update the Thinkpad in the Terminal. But I'm not about to get my wife using sudo and all that. Once she figures out to click on a down arrow and then the power button she's fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 2, 2019 Share Posted October 2, 2019 I always liked the sudo message when you first use it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted June 17, 2020 Author Share Posted June 17, 2020 (edited) With the easing (a bit) of COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario, my wife was able to go down to Kingston and visit her mother for the first time in 3 months. She wanted to take a computer along so I gave her the Thinkpad T430. She's doing OK so far with Debian and GNOME3. Mind you I have modified GNOME to include a dock where she can click on a Firefox icon. She was able to connect to her mother's wifi LAN. My MIL is 90, doesn't have a clue about technology but she has a LAN. My brother in law put it in for his kids to use when they visit. A couple of old(er) ladies rocking Linux. Who'd a thunk it? Edited June 17, 2020 by raymac46 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 17, 2020 Share Posted June 17, 2020 Very cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.