Linux "Q4OS"

[76dave]

Regarding your slow computer it is sometimes a symptom of a failing hard drive. This is quite possible as you appear to be using a very old machine (nothing wrong with that. I do the same myself), but every Hard drive WILL fail eventually, being an electro-mechanical device. Even though you don't like spending money (who does?) it might be worth buying a new hard drive. That is assuming your motherboard is able to use a new SATA drive. If you are still using the 40 pin IDE system to connect the hard drive, there are interface devices which convert IDE to SATA. Hard drives are relatively cheap now, so a clean install of the operating system(s) is worth a try.

 

[J Harp]

To open a terminal, do ctrl-alt-T, That gives you a screen where you can type the commands which someone has suggested. It's better to copy and paste commands, that way you don't get typos. To copy a command, highlight it and do ctrl C. to paste it into the terminal you have to do ctrl-shift-V. I'm posting this because I had a devil of a time learning what people meant when they said open a terminal!

 

[stanstocker]

If the hard drive is getting replaced, solid state drives are much faster. As you are using a 40GB drive, 120 or 240/256 GB SSDs are available very inexpensively.

To some extent, an older machine with additional memory and an SSD can perform well enough to feel like a much more modern machine. This is assuming the motherboard is recent enough to support SATA. If the motherboard doesn't have SATA it's time to look for a refurbished or hand me down machine as it also won't have the architecture to perform very well with any modern OS.

In many cases, an older machine may have comparable single threaded CPU performance to many recent machines. For most stuff single thread performance is more important than having 11 or 15 cpu cores sitting around waiting for something to happen. The only time I see all my cores crank up is doing video renders or photogrammetry, and with both of those the nvidia video card GPUs tend to do a lot of the heavy lifting while the CPU cores try to keep up. Two or more threads / cores is nice as the OS and an app can coexist without getting in each others way, but most daily applications won't feel much if any faster on a ryzen 7 than on an older i3 or ryzen 5 second or third generation chip set.

Cheers,
Stan

 

[Richard Hed]

Hi Dave, being in my world of an old limited size of PC.....
Windows XP took 27Gb of the 37Gb of the hard drive. So to load 8Gb of Ubuntu seemed like it would be too much.... (even Windows XP struggled and was slow and unstable when my 8Gb of data files filled the space after XP!...).
So I pressed 1. Yesterday, it seemed like a sensible thing to do, as the trial Ubuntu working in Windows worked fine, and looked like something I could use.
Hindsight is always clearer than foresight though....
I now have Ubuntu on 4.5 with the rest of the hard-drive Empty. No Windows. And a very slow Ubuntu.
So I am wondering what has gone wrong....
K2

Windoz xp should not take that much space, maybe with all your files, yes. Can you get another hard drive? That would help

 

[Richard Hed]

If the hard drive is getting replaced, solid state drives are much faster. As you are using a 40GB drive, 120 or 240/256 GB SSDs are available very inexpensively.

To some extent, an older machine with additional memory and an SSD can perform well enough to feel like a much more modern machine. This is assuming the motherboard is recent enough to support SATA. If the motherboard doesn't have SATA it's time to look for a refurbished or hand me down machine as it also won't have the architecture to perform very well with any modern OS.

In many cases, an older machine may have comparable single threaded CPU performance to many recent machines. For most stuff single thread performance is more important than having 11 or 15 cpu cores sitting around waiting for something to happen. The only time I see all my cores crank up is doing video renders or photogrammetry, and with both of those the nvidia video card GPUs tend to do a lot of the heavy lifting while the CPU cores try to keep up. Two or more threads / cores is nice as the OS and an app can coexist without getting in each others way, but most daily applications won't feel much if any faster on a ryzen 7 than on an older i3 or ryzen 5 second or third generation chip set.

Cheers,
Stan

My Lenovo had ONLY 256GB SSD so I bought a camera or phone SSD with 256 GB and use it for my immediate second drive. Works great. Even so, I consider half a TB to be too small.

 

[Richard Hed]

Regarding your slow computer it is sometimes a symptom of a failing hard drive. This is quite possible as you appear to be using a very old machine (nothing wrong with that. I do the same myself), but every Hard drive WILL fail eventually, being an electro-mechanical device. Even though you don't like spending money (who does?) it might be worth buying a new hard drive. That is assuming your motherboard is able to use a new SATA drive. If you are still using the 40 pin IDE system to connect the hard drive, there are interface devices which convert IDE to SATA. Hard drives are relatively cheap now, so a clean install of the operating system(s) is worth a try.

Altho hard drives are not really that expensive, the price has gone up (covid being the bulls**t excuse). You can get an "exterior " hard drive, break off the cover and put it INSIDE your computer

 

[Steamchick]

Curiously, my more modern Dell has grown the hard drive so I have hundreds of Gb now that I didn't have with earlier windows.
Wonder if there is a new way the OS makes the drive into memory so it seems huge compared to the original?
On the old Dell 280 with Ubuntu that has updated to 16.04.
Away now. So will continue when I get back home.
Thanks all!
K2

 

[Richard Hed]

Curiously, my more modern Dell has grown the hard drive so I have hundreds of Gb now that I didn't have with earlier windows.
Wonder if there is a new way the OS makes the drive into memory so it seems huge compared to the original?
On the old Dell 280 with Ubuntu that has updated to 16.04.
Away now. So will continue when I get back home.
Thanks all!
K2

Usually, Linux takes a fraction of the space msux does. but that is JUST the OS. Programs, of course, take more space

 

[Steamchick]

Well, a bit more confusion: When I returned from vacation, I tried the Ubuntu... which didn't work, but after a bit of puzzling I got Ubuntu version 18... which works!
EXCEPT: On the old Dell 280 with Ubuntu that has updated to version 18. it is so slow that regularly Foxpro just drops out, or I fall asleep and the security wants me to sign-in and start again, or something, so basically, this computer is SO SLOW - Far worse than with Windows XP) that I am seriously considering binning it. All I wanted was a back-up PC as the more modern Dell I am using with Windows 10 is already too old to upgrade to Windows 11, so eventually will fall over and die... prompted I am sure by MS Death upgrade or whatever they do to stop old Windows from working.
Time to invest in a new PC I think?
Suggestions will be studied and considered...
Thanks,
K2

 

[RM-MN]

Check how much memory your Dell 280 has. Newer operating systems like lots of memory. It may not be very expensive to add memory to it. Changing my Dell 7010 from 4 GB to 16 GB made a big difference.

 

[Steamchick]

Linux only occupies 6 Gb of the 30 Gb disc.... unless there is something that is occupying space secretly! - I.E. something the Linux software "disc properties" doesn't have the ability to say exists....
Windows perhaps?
K2

 

[kf2qd]

O lot of Linux has been done by non-professionals, in the sense that no big corporation was behind the distro. As such it does not have some of the polish that MS users are used to. There is some great software out there but users are very much at the mercy of the creators and maintainers, Any time an OS has instructions on compiling software to be able to use it, it is not quite user friendly.
But then, I have the same problem with GRBL and some other stuff out there in the hobby field. Those who have done the creation have left enough information that they (hopefully) can figure out what they did when they choose to make changes, but others will have to do a lot of reverse engineering to get to the same point.
I used to have a version of Linux on one of my older MS machines that would dual-boot without needing to partition and reformat my HDD. Then versions os MS changed and no one was creating a new Linux version that would do the same. And one time a MS update went bad and for a couple weeks all I had was a Linux boot that would work.
And as far as viruses - There are Linux viruses, and there are MS viruses. Linux might have a bit less of a problem just because the installed user base is bigger for MS and thus there are more places to fish with MS so that is where the fishing is done.

 

[76dave]

I have a dual boot machine using windowsXP and ubuntu. Initially, this was very slow until I installed drivers (in windows) for the GF6600 video card. Windows XP is now OK. I now need to find and install drivers for Ubuntu.
Don't know if yours is a similar problem?

 

[Steamchick]

Thanks Dave. Not having Windows XP anymore, I don't know how that should affect Ubuntu.
I guessed it was because it is a 32-bit processor. Simply too out-dated for today's data heavy stuff?
K2

 

[willray]

There are Linux viruses, and there are MS viruses. Linux might have a bit less of a problem just because the installed user base is bigger for MS...

Not even close. MS owns the lions' share of the desktop market, but it's getting to the point where pretty much every other electronic device on the planet runs Linux under the hood. TVs, phones, your WIFI router -- chances are if your coffee maker has more than an on-and-off switch, it's running Linux to control the interface.

MS systems get viruses because MS thinks their users are too stupid to deal with computer security. What Linux viruses there are, exist because someone made a mistake. It's a lot harder to write a virus for an operating system that does not reflexively leave the barn door wide open.

 

[skyline1]

pretty much every other electronic device on the planet runs Linux under the hood. TVs, phones, your WIFI router -- chances are if your coffee maker has more than an on-and-off switch, it's running Linux to control the interface.

Yes indeed embedded Linux is simply everywhere, although in the case of the coffee maker it probably doesn't need an O.S. as such just a standalone microcontroller which are getting more and more powerful.

It may well have been programmed using Linux though. Linux is ideal for programming as it has many of the tools built in.

Indeed in the Linux world compiling programs from their source code is quite common and fairly easy. I have done it a few times and I'm no programmer.

MS systems get viruses because MS thinks their users are too stupid to deal with computer security. What Linux viruses there are, exist because someone made a mistake. It's a lot harder to write a virus for an operating system that does not reflexively leave the barn door wide open.

"Too many eyes on the code" is an expression often used in the Linux world and it is true, Linux leaves less room for these malicious virus writers to operate.
When MS talks about Security what they really mean is Secrecy, They don't want people stealing their "secret sauce" and reducing their vast profits.

Such is the vast "money gobbling machine" that MS has become, even Bill Gates himself doesn't want to know anymore.

Best Regards Mark

 

[trlvn]

Linux has security issues. See the following list, for example:

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerab...&sha=2f79d8daa05f3cbce8cd668c2f5513fece73c35b
Open source software is NOT all reviewed by "too many eyes". Take the recent episode where an NPM module was changed to randomly delete data. Much as the classic XKCD cartoon illustrates rather well:

https://xkcd.com/2347/
A decent overview article on Linux and security is at:

https://www.techradar.com/news/why-linuxs-biggest-strength-is-also-its-biggest-weakness
Craig