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Linux IT Day


raymac46

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After two days of butting heads with Windows 10, it was a pleasure to do some Linux IT today,

I started out by blowing Windows away on my old but still useful Acer Veriton desktop. I then installed Linux Mint as the grandkids are getting it. They should love it - although useless for Windows, it is much better than the Linux desktop they have now. It has more and faster memory, quad core processor, SSD and HDD, a good power supply, and a really good graphics card. They should be able to play Steam LInux games if they want.

Next I did some updates on my old 2008 junkroom desktop. It is also running Linux Mint, but Xfce. It is painful - no SSD and a dual core Athlon X2. Somehow I managed to screw up my video so I had to purge Nvidia and then reinstall the driver. All is well now.

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48 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

After two days of butting heads with Windows 10, it was a pleasure to do some Linux IT today

 

I don't miss Windows one bit.

Edited by saturnian
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My wife likes Windows, the rest of the family uses it, I mantain it for a few friends in the hood, and I still need it for a few things I do.

So I tolerate it. Windows 10 Pro isn't too bad if you have an SSD and lots of RAM.

I banish Cortana, dump the Search Box, and install Open Shell so it looks a lot like Windows 7. I don't use the apps and tiles. Whenever possible I use the open source programs like Libre Office and Firefox. If I pretend I'm using Linux Mint it's all good. :w00tx100:

It was really annoying when I couldn't use my perfectly good desktop any longer, though.

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securitybreach

One of my work machines runs windows 10 v20 enterprise and while its functional most of the time, it is very buggy and has goofy quirks that you wouldn't see in Linux. Not to mention windows fonts are absolutely horrid, you have to switch between applications to tell if a lowercase L is a capital i or not. Pain in the arse with my daily admin and server passwords as they lock for 30m after 3 failed attempts. 

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I find that if you run Windows 10 as it's configured out of the box, plus use Edge and the various MS programs - you seem to be out of control somehow. You get popups, notifications, flashing tiles in the Start menu, etc.etc.

It's only after I turn off, tune out, and turn on extensions and FOSS programs that I feel normalcy return. It is not as bad as it was with Windows 8, but even Windows 10 requires some tweaking. I'm glad I don't have to use it at work where the desktop would be severely locked down. At least it was in Unilever.

 

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securitybreach

Yeah and at work, we are full on microsoft shop...Active Directory, Edge, Azure, SSO (single-sign on), entire O365 suit along with other microsoft utilities like PowerApps, PowerBi, To Do Lists, Whiteboard, OneNote, OneDrive, etc etc. Luckily we run a lot of linux servers and blades (servers from the data centers) so I get to play with those. A lot of cisco equipment as well.

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Do you lock down your users? At Unilever I was a "power user." That meant I could select what printer on the network I wanted to use.

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securitybreach

They are locked down by group policy and other things. This is a very large multi-national network spanning the globe. I work for Royal Dutch Shell and we operate in over 80 countries. (I have full admin and server rights to every machine globally B) ).

 

 As far as printers, any one can choose what printer to print at any location in the world. For instance, a user can initiate the print here in New Orleans and go to the Netherlands and scan their smartcard to pick up the print.

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I desperately need a Linux IT day myself to load the current version of OpenSuse. I have been having some health challenges and it seems like a daunting project, but I know it won't be as bad as I anticipate (I rarely have any issues) and that I really need to get it done.

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securitybreach
1 minute ago, ebrke said:

I desperately need a Linux IT day myself to load the current version of OpenSuse. I have been having some health challenges and it seems like a daunting project, but I know it won't be as bad as I anticipate (I rarely have any issues) and that I really need to get it done.

 

Hope you get better soon my friend.

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The hardest part about setting up Linux on the old Acer desktop was to set up fstab so that the HDD was mounted correctly along with the SSD. I always run mount -a after I edit the file to make sure it is working corrrectly. I don't want to bork the system at boot.

Installing Linux on my very old 2008 AMD desktop is always an adventure, because it will not boot off a thumbdrive so I have to burn a DVD.

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1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

The hardest part about setting up Linux on the old Acer desktop was to set up fstab so that the HDD was mounted correctly along with the SSD. I always run mount -a after I edit the file to make sure it is working corrrectly.

 

What is hard about it? Adding a line in /etc/fstab should be to automatically mount a drive/partition. I have 7 drives that automatically mount on my desktop for instance:

 

UUID=2c023e23-ef4c-4170-8fa7-422c478b5903       /boot     ext4  noatime,discard 0 2
/dev/mapper/root        			/         ext4  noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=2d6187af-c3b1-4354-ab84-a724966e78af	/home1/comhack/	  ext4  noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=cb0d6b0f-1c2a-46c8-99eb-bbe4e1bcb1b5 	/MEDIA    ext4	noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=e4f7701f-5367-4324-b674-a15db4bbf41a	/Backup	  ext4	noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=a5e0ad3f-1699-423c-a15f-97edfa7338bc	/Backup1  ext4	noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=14396c65-d9a0-4830-b2cf-990a2c13b7f2	/Backup2  ext4	noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=66e9c1f2-f2f8-438b-9bdf-7a71c9273d79 	/Various  ext4 	noatime,discard 0 1	
 

 

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Well obviously you type better and more accurately than I do. I either get the UUID wrong or miss some comma somewhere in the line. I have had some situations in the past where the boot was completely messed up. Fortunately if I use sudo mount -a I get some diagnostics so I can correct things before rebooting.

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securitybreach

Well I do not know if I have every actually typed one out before. I just run sudo blkid and copy the correct one. For instance, here is one entry from blkid:

 

/dev/sda1: LABEL="backup2" UUID="14396c65-d9a0-4830-b2cf-990a2c13b7f2" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="2203f7db-01"

 

The only part of the above that matters is UUID="14396c65-d9a0-4830-b2cf-990a2c13b7f2". You would remove the quotes around "14396c65-d9a0-4830-b2cf-990a2c13b7f2" and the entry in /etc/fstab would simply be:

 

UUID=14396c65-d9a0-4830-b2cf-990a2c13b7f2    /Backup2  ext4    noatime,discard 0 1

 

The first part is the universal ID of the drive/partition, the next part is where I want it mounted, then the filesystem of the drive/partition and lastly the mount options. A much more in-depth explanation here: 

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/38125/htg-explains-what-is-the-linux-fstab-and-how-does-it-work/

 

Now if you only had a couple of drives, it would be ok to use the old syntax instead of UUID. For instance in /etc/fstab, the same entry would be:

 

/dev/sda2    /Backup2  ext4    noatime,discard 0 1

 

UUIDs are useful because their values never change. Unlike the old syntax that could change or be out of order so your computer will try to boot or mount the wrong drive/partition. For instance, /dev/sdb could show up as /dev/sdc if you had three drives.  If you want to dabble deeper into UUID, start reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier

 

Really I do not know much about UUID itself, besides the values are constant and never change. I just know to run blkid as root to get the values and copy/paste them in /etc/fstab.

 

If you need any help, I can help make or edit your /etc/fstab given the blkid values and where you want each drive mounted to.

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