The fun of Saturday morning science is over, so it's on to the business of the day #EndOf10 and the opportunity to convert the teenager's laptop to linux mint.
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The fun of Saturday morning science is over, so it's on to the business of the day #EndOf10 and the opportunity to convert the teenager's laptop to linux mint. Follow along with my no doubt enraging journey through the #Windows10 minefield here. (or mute if you don't want to hear it).
First task is to find a flash drive with enough space and or disposable files on it...The first irritant persistent message from Microsoft to log in to family functions. cannot log in, cannot remove it from desktop. It keeps popping up.
Ominous. 2/n -
The first irritant persistent message from Microsoft to log in to family functions. cannot log in, cannot remove it from desktop. It keeps popping up.
Ominous. 2/nOK this may be my first encounter with the enshittification of OneDrive - I know it only from the online cloud storage that you have to actually acitively save stuff too.
Appears that microsoft has it as default storgae so everything saved on hard drive of laptop is also backed up to their cloud.And this onedrive storage is "full" after we downloaded full google photos* backup yesterday. So I can't do anything here even though the laptop itslef has a goood 150 Gb free on the hard drive.
Swearing is starting to happen. 3/n
*another world of pain I won't go into here.
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OK this may be my first encounter with the enshittification of OneDrive - I know it only from the online cloud storage that you have to actually acitively save stuff too.
Appears that microsoft has it as default storgae so everything saved on hard drive of laptop is also backed up to their cloud.And this onedrive storage is "full" after we downloaded full google photos* backup yesterday. So I can't do anything here even though the laptop itslef has a goood 150 Gb free on the hard drive.
Swearing is starting to happen. 3/n
*another world of pain I won't go into here.
Also slightly annoyed with both myself and husband for 1) allowing this situation to occur in first place 2) not being fully aware of the implications of the hasty decision to buy a windows based laptop in first place.
OTOH, we're reasonably knowledgeable on IT issues. What chance does average member of public stand?
4/n
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Also slightly annoyed with both myself and husband for 1) allowing this situation to occur in first place 2) not being fully aware of the implications of the hasty decision to buy a windows based laptop in first place.
OTOH, we're reasonably knowledgeable on IT issues. What chance does average member of public stand?
4/n
Windows laptop is so gummed up it's taking minutes to react to simple search in the directories. And I can only conclude onedrive is the issue here, possibly also #EndOf10? I have disconnected the wifi while I try to run the backup.
So far the linux mint download to USB drive from danish hosted mirror site has been the easy part! 5/n
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Also slightly annoyed with both myself and husband for 1) allowing this situation to occur in first place 2) not being fully aware of the implications of the hasty decision to buy a windows based laptop in first place.
OTOH, we're reasonably knowledgeable on IT issues. What chance does average member of public stand?
4/n
@Ruth_Mottram I find that it is unhelpful to blame 'the public' for any of this. It is the system that needs changing. Individually we can make all the right choices, and then our employers, governments & schools continue to make the wrong ones at a far larger scale. So don't sweat it too much personally!
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Windows laptop is so gummed up it's taking minutes to react to simple search in the directories. And I can only conclude onedrive is the issue here, possibly also #EndOf10? I have disconnected the wifi while I try to run the backup.
So far the linux mint download to USB drive from danish hosted mirror site has been the easy part! 5/n
Update, disconnecting wifi connection has not made windows laptop run faster. The "Fast access" part of windows filefinder is now running even slower...
I only want to check my backup to an external hard drive has worked!
6/n
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@Ruth_Mottram I find that it is unhelpful to blame 'the public' for any of this. It is the system that needs changing. Individually we can make all the right choices, and then our employers, governments & schools continue to make the wrong ones at a far larger scale. So don't sweat it too much personally!
@bert_hubert Yes I'm very much feeling this today! I'm switching kid's laptop over to linux. School does everythign in Teams, so I'm hoping it will all still work. But when I asked teacher before holiday I got a very blank look.
Kid is also worried about being only linux user in class. I'm hoping there will come a day when they see it as a cool thing. I'm also resigned to being sysadmin for the rest of my life...
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Update, disconnecting wifi connection has not made windows laptop run faster. The "Fast access" part of windows filefinder is now running even slower...
I only want to check my backup to an external hard drive has worked!
6/n
Proper backup finally seems to be running. Will report back in half an hour if it has succeeded...
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Proper backup finally seems to be running. Will report back in half an hour if it has succeeded...
Well backup went faster than expected but looks like mint download did not. Trying that again now...
AT least I'm being productive in between times...8/n
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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Well backup went faster than expected but looks like mint download did not. Trying that again now...
AT least I'm being productive in between times...8/n
Ok the second time worked - and the file has been verified. Thank heavens I have my own linux machine. Would be a nightmare to do this on Windows I suspect...
Now to make the bootable drive.It's at least 6 years since I did this last time. Crumbs.
9/n
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@bert_hubert Yes I'm very much feeling this today! I'm switching kid's laptop over to linux. School does everythign in Teams, so I'm hoping it will all still work. But when I asked teacher before holiday I got a very blank look.
Kid is also worried about being only linux user in class. I'm hoping there will come a day when they see it as a cool thing. I'm also resigned to being sysadmin for the rest of my life...
@Ruth_Mottram
There is an Unofficial Microsoft Teams client for Linux on both Snap and Flatpak, which I find works surprisingly well (much better than the Official Microsoft version)
Also I agree with @bert_hubert that public bodies are far too willing to pay the Microsoft tax when procuring IT...
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Ok the second time worked - and the file has been verified. Thank heavens I have my own linux machine. Would be a nightmare to do this on Windows I suspect...
Now to make the bootable drive.It's at least 6 years since I did this last time. Crumbs.
9/n
Ok, resolved some etcher problems - ubuntu is fast with this stuff - seems to be flashing the bootable driver now..
Also found some very cool photos from a trip 10 years ago and some ideas for new projects, also about 7 yeasr old on the USB stick - so that's a win.
10/n -
Ok, resolved some etcher problems - ubuntu is fast with this stuff - seems to be flashing the bootable driver now..
Also found some very cool photos from a trip 10 years ago and some ideas for new projects, also about 7 yeasr old on the USB stick - so that's a win.
10/nMoment of truth time - I have a bootable usb stick. Etcher was veyr fast I'm pretty sure the backup of the laptop worked. But teenager may be about to hate me forever.
Let's see...
11/n
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Moment of truth time - I have a bootable usb stick. Etcher was veyr fast I'm pretty sure the backup of the laptop worked. But teenager may be about to hate me forever.
Let's see...
11/n
Well I'm in the BIOS finally. Man I'd almost forgotten this existed...
An LM logo has appeared, but now it's all gone dark...
Oh wait I do believe we are live...
It's time to Install linux mint
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Well I'm in the BIOS finally. Man I'd almost forgotten this existed...
An LM logo has appeared, but now it's all gone dark...
Oh wait I do believe we are live...
It's time to Install linux mint
Teenager has just suggested some of the programs, which I was under the impression were via the browser, may need to be on desktop.
This might mean Wine I guess?
And probably some kind of microsoft office install? I was hoping to get away with libreoffice..Anybody have any experience with wine?
I will in any case have to contact the IT support at the school I think. I hope I am not the only parent doing so with the #EndOf10 .Meanwhile, over on the laptop, the Linux Mint is installed (in danish even) and seems to be restarting without the USB
holding breath here... 13/n
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Teenager has just suggested some of the programs, which I was under the impression were via the browser, may need to be on desktop.
This might mean Wine I guess?
And probably some kind of microsoft office install? I was hoping to get away with libreoffice..Anybody have any experience with wine?
I will in any case have to contact the IT support at the school I think. I hope I am not the only parent doing so with the #EndOf10 .Meanwhile, over on the laptop, the Linux Mint is installed (in danish even) and seems to be restarting without the USB
holding breath here... 13/n
Right tea break time - then we can start optimising the desktop and all the programs as well as moving over the files.
I guess that is where we will start to run into different problems.
This linux install is taking a lot longer than I'd hoped (which was probably unrealistic to be fair), but has been pretty smooth so far (once we left microsoft world at least)14/n
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A alf149@social.data.coop shared this topic
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Teenager has just suggested some of the programs, which I was under the impression were via the browser, may need to be on desktop.
This might mean Wine I guess?
And probably some kind of microsoft office install? I was hoping to get away with libreoffice..Anybody have any experience with wine?
I will in any case have to contact the IT support at the school I think. I hope I am not the only parent doing so with the #EndOf10 .Meanwhile, over on the laptop, the Linux Mint is installed (in danish even) and seems to be restarting without the USB
holding breath here... 13/n
@Ruth_Mottram I'm just now starting to try out some Linuxes in virtual machines & part of it was looking into Wine - I found something called Bottles, which is apparently a frontend for Wine, and have managed to install my first Windows app with it
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@Ruth_Mottram
There is an Unofficial Microsoft Teams client for Linux on both Snap and Flatpak, which I find works surprisingly well (much better than the Official Microsoft version) Also I agree with @bert_hubert that public bodies are far too willing to pay the Microsoft tax when procuring IT...
@kim_harding @bert_hubert so here's a thing neither snap not flatpak are standard with mint - I have no idea why - any preference as to which? I use snap on my ubuntu machine so will probably just go with that but I'm surprised to read there is a file called nosnap.pref on mint which blocks it? Any clues why?
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@kim_harding @bert_hubert so here's a thing neither snap not flatpak are standard with mint - I have no idea why - any preference as to which? I use snap on my ubuntu machine so will probably just go with that but I'm surprised to read there is a file called nosnap.pref on mint which blocks it? Any clues why?
@Ruth_Mottram @kim_harding @bert_hubert
"This is a store we can’t audit, which contains software nobody can patch. If we can’t fix or modify software, open-source or not, it provides the same limitations as proprietary software"
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html
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Right tea break time - then we can start optimising the desktop and all the programs as well as moving over the files.
I guess that is where we will start to run into different problems.
This linux install is taking a lot longer than I'd hoped (which was probably unrealistic to be fair), but has been pretty smooth so far (once we left microsoft world at least)14/n
WELL.
We have a newly installed @linuxmint version on an old #EndoOf10 laptop.All user files have been moved across (will require some organisation still, and that alone will be a shock to a GenZ used to just dumping stuff on the cloud - honestly the desktop looked like my parents...
). Most important programs are there (I had to explain difference between program and app along the way too).
And overall it's been a pretty positive learning experience for both of us. I have had to compromise on a few things and teenager has a few programs installed that I'd rather not - but let's see this as a gateway out of #BigTech if at all possible...
There will be a few more follow up points I suspect but thanks all for your friendly encouragement and helpful hints so far
15/n
