Click here to Skip to main content
15,913,179 members

Welcome to the Lounge

   

For discussing anything related to a software developer's life but is not for programming questions. Got a programming question?

The Lounge is rated Safe For Work. If you're about to post something inappropriate for a shared office environment, then don't post it. No ads, no abuse, and no programming questions. Trolling, (political, climate, religious or whatever) will result in your account being removed.

 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
lopatir18-Nov-17 20:44
lopatir18-Nov-17 20:44 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
OriginalGriff18-Nov-17 20:54
mveOriginalGriff18-Nov-17 20:54 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
lopatir18-Nov-17 21:23
lopatir18-Nov-17 21:23 
RantRe: Why now? Pin
lopatir18-Nov-17 20:34
lopatir18-Nov-17 20:34 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
A_Griffin18-Nov-17 23:47
A_Griffin18-Nov-17 23:47 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
Slacker00719-Nov-17 0:44
professionalSlacker00719-Nov-17 0:44 
GeneralRe: Why now? Pin
OriginalGriff19-Nov-17 1:42
mveOriginalGriff19-Nov-17 1:42 
GeneralSomething we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. PinPopular
dandy7218-Nov-17 7:47
dandy7218-Nov-17 7:47 
I mentioned in a recent thread that I have a Windows 10 machine that failed to install this month's set of patches. It has very little reason to fail - Windows 10 1709, which came out in October, was clean installed barely a month ago, and I haven't installed any software on it other than the Nvidia ION driver it needs and VLC--it's in a very clean state. The machine is hooked up to a projector and is used only for watching videos - whether it's streaming from across my LAN (nothing is stored locally) or streaming from YouTube.

Why it fails to install an update when it's still in such a clean state, I don't know. However, this machine never managed to upgrade itself to Windows 10 1703, so it had been running 1607 since it came out. A few months ago, that started failing to install monthly updates, and knowing that it wasn't able to update to 1703 (without starting over), I waited patiently for 1709 to come out to do a clean install. The fact that it's now running into problems so soon after it's been wiped/reinstalled was the last straw for me. To be fair, I have Windows 10 running on at least half a dozen other machines, both physical and virtual, and none of those have tested my patience as much as this one has.

Last night I've had enough and installed Lubuntu 17.10 on it - it's rated as one of the better low-overhead distributions of Linux (that also has a decent desktop environment). The machine is old - it's an Acer Revo R3610, with some Atom CPU and 4GB of RAM. While it's good enough for its purpose (playing video), it did take Windows 10 some time to get going, especially after a cold boot, so I felt it was important to install a distribution that's not so resource-hungry. It performed better when it had Windows 7.

Long story short: I was impressed with how everything "just worked". I copied the ISO to a USB stick with Rufus (which makes it bootable), and was up and running within 20 minutes. It picked up both video and audio on its own, the NIC, and even the wireless adapter (which I don't really need). Out of the box, it sees the network share that contains my media library. There's some built-in app that plays AVI, MP4 and MKV files without a hitch, so I haven't even bothered installing VLC. There's a version of Kodi for Linux (which I hadn't reinstalled on Windows while it was running 1709), and it's indistinguishable from the Windows version - bonus, it performs much better than the Windows version ever did. The task manager (or whatever the equivalent is called) hasn't shown the OS using more than about 700MB of the 4GB of RAM.

If regular updates for this distribution are as problem-free on this physical machine as they are on the virtual machines I had been tinkering with, I think I'm going to manage to squeeze out more mileage from this machine than Windows was going to provide.

I guess my point, if I have one at all to make, is this: Microsoft, get your act together.
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
CodeWraith18-Nov-17 8:04
CodeWraith18-Nov-17 8:04 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
lopatir18-Nov-17 8:35
lopatir18-Nov-17 8:35 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
raddevus18-Nov-17 9:01
mvaraddevus18-Nov-17 9:01 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
Brisingr Aerowing18-Nov-17 9:45
professionalBrisingr Aerowing18-Nov-17 9:45 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
JustWatchLittle 18-Nov-17 12:30
professionalJustWatchLittle 18-Nov-17 12:30 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
Daniel Pfeffer18-Nov-17 19:18
professionalDaniel Pfeffer18-Nov-17 19:18 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
Munchies_Matt18-Nov-17 22:46
Munchies_Matt18-Nov-17 22:46 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
jschell20-Nov-17 7:15
jschell20-Nov-17 7:15 
GeneralRe: Something we don't read a lot of around here - some Linux praise. Pin
dandy7220-Nov-17 10:57
dandy7220-Nov-17 10:57 
GeneralRIP Malcolm Pin
Jörgen Andersson18-Nov-17 3:41
professionalJörgen Andersson18-Nov-17 3:41 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
V.18-Nov-17 4:10
professionalV.18-Nov-17 4:10 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
OriginalGriff18-Nov-17 4:19
mveOriginalGriff18-Nov-17 4:19 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
OriginalGriff18-Nov-17 4:18
mveOriginalGriff18-Nov-17 4:18 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
Munchies_Matt18-Nov-17 5:38
Munchies_Matt18-Nov-17 5:38 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
JustWatchLittle 18-Nov-17 6:48
professionalJustWatchLittle 18-Nov-17 6:48 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
jeron119-Nov-17 5:34
jeron119-Nov-17 5:34 
GeneralRe: RIP Malcolm Pin
JustWatchLittle 19-Nov-17 6:04
professionalJustWatchLittle 19-Nov-17 6:04 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.