Why Linux?

[Infrasonic]

https://www.techradar.com/news/this-is- ... windows-10

Want a Linux laptop with an AMD Ryzen processor? Then you might be interested in the latest creation from a German PC maker, which is claiming a ‘world first’ with its Tuxedo Book BA15 having an AMD chip and Linux pre-installed.

[Infrasonic]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/zfs-versus-raid-eight-ironwolf-disks-two-filesystems-one-winner/

ZFS versus RAID: Eight Ironwolf disks, two filesystems, one winner...

Cont.

A follow up article...https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05 ... f-edition/

In earlier coverage pitting ZFS against Linux kernel RAID, some readers had some concerns that we had missed some tricks for mdraid tuning. In particular, Louwrentius wanted us to retest mdadm with bitmaps disabled, and targetnovember thought that perhaps XFS might outperform ext4.

Cont.

[GeoffF100]

I have an old Acer Aspire V5-122P laptop. It has an AMD A4-1250 APU (1GHz, 2 cores, embedded radeon GPU) and 4Gb RAM. I bought it a long time ago in a hurry. It was very cheap and ran like a dog with Windows 8. When Windows 10 came along I upgraded and it was not really much better. It has been on the shelf for a few years, but as I had a small SSD from a broken laptop I thought I would try it again. Put the SSD in, installed latest W10 (1905) and after a few hours of updates, I rebooted and found the laptop as bad as ever.

Nothing to lose now, so I thought I would try Linux on it. I went for the latest Lubuntu 20.04 LTS. I didn't have a USB drive to hand, so I used the drive I took out as a boot disk, connected via a USB 3 SATA cable. Installed the Lubuntu ISO on it using Rufus, as recommended by Ububtu, and booted it. There was no install option which was a bit strange, instead it booted straight into Lubuntu. I found the install option from inside Lubuntu. Installed onto the internal SSD and rebooted.

What an amazing transformation! The laptop absolutely flies along. It boots in about 50 seconds, which is fine, and Lubuntu has vastly exceeded my expectations in terms of speed, functionality and ease of use. Everything just seemed to work. Touchscreen, video and sound, the WiFi network, it even spotted my network printer. From the file browser I was easily able to connect to my local network and drag across a DVD ISO image, without having to mess around on the command line mounting the remote shares. The DVD image played flawlessly in VLC. Much smoother than my Huawei tablet and far better than it ever managed with Windows 8 and 10. There is a power setting tool so I can define what happens when I close the lid, etc.

Despite being a lightweight distribution, it comes with Libre Office and Firefox. The touchscreen worked without me having to fiddle with any settings, so I installed Chromium as I prefer using it with the touchscreen. Scrolling up and down BBC news is very quick, youtube videos play just fine. Had a quick go with Libre Office and it seems fine. No problem loading a simple Excel worksheet I have been using to sort out someone's tax.

Would like to get OneDrive working. There appears to be a package available, recommendation is to build directly from source on github rather than use the package manager. Anyone tried OneDrive on Linux? For the moment, I could just mount a network share from my Synology NAS that contains my OneDrive sync and rsync across if/when I am away from my local network.

Battery life seems to be about 2 hours, due to the age of the battery. There seem to be a few people advertising new compatible batteries on ebay for under £30. Might be worth a try if I get on with the laptop.

Anyway, I am definitely a Linux convert!

That is great to hear. The Intel Core i3-3220 in my £49 HP 4300 SFF desktop is over five times faster than your processor, according to the Passmark scores. We had a Windozer who claimed that was too slow.

I have not yet had the courage to try Lubuntu 20.04 (with the new LXQt desktop), but was a Lubuntu 18.04 (LXDE desktop) user. I am glad to hear that Lubuntu 20.04 is stable. I am currently using Xubuntu 18.04 with the venerable Xfce desktop. Very attractive appearance. No real problems.

I have used OneDrive with both Lubuntu 18.04 and Xubunt 18.04. I just log in via a browser and upload or download files. Then I logout of OneDrive and everything else.

[GeoffF100]

Here is a good run through of the official Ubuntu flavours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lso0AoiszrA

There are certainly some interesting choices there,

Xubuntu is the Steve Davis of operating systems. Boring but superb. Stylistically it is like a Saville Row Suit. Smart and elegant, but conservative. The other distros mostly aim to be like something flashy from Carnaby Street (I am showing my age there). If you want an operating system that does the job efficiently without any nonsense, it is worth a closer look.

Lubuntu 20.04 looks good. It has come along way from Lubuntu 18.04. Lubuntu has been described as the Lamborghini of operating systems. It is the one to go for if you have limited hardware resources. Lubuntu is more than just an operating system for use in the loo. I am tempted to give Lubuntu 20.04 a try.

KDE looks interesting too. I am spoilt for choice.

Budgie looks flash, but it is at the very top end of flash. But call me old fashioned, I think the desktop should be a background, rather than the show. Nonetheless, I have to admit that Budgie looks good.

I used Ubuntu, back in the days of the Unity desktop. Ubuntu is no doubt a solid choice. I am not sure about the Gnome desktop. Lord Gnome has a lot to answer for.

I do not know about Mate. The video presenter said it was the most popular of the Ubuntu flavours, apart from Ubuntu itself. I do not see why.

[ReformedCharacter]

A tale of 3 Linux distros....

I've been using Debian with VirtualBox for a Win 7 VM for a few years and was very happy with the combination. Sometimes I use Visual Studio which is why I have hung on to Windows, also my finances are on Excel and I've never bothered to adapt to the Libre Office equivalent.

Anyway, time for a new PC and the Ryzen 5 3400G which I ordered some time ago eventually arrived and since the rest of the components were already assembled all I had to do was fit the CPU and press the start button.

But nothing happened, no fans spun or any other signs of life. I've screwed up when fitting the front panel connectors (power, reset, hdd activity light etc.) before, so I always take extra care and double-check them when I fit them. Thinking that I may have connected them incorrectly I pulled them all out, turned on the PSU and placed a screwdriver across the pins opposite the positions where I had originally placed them - and then everything started working. Most aspects of PC assembly are much improved compared to the first I assembled more than 25 years ago but not so much the front panel connectors, I swear the motherboard has the number '1' printed on the wrong end of the row of connectors.

I planned on dual booting Windows 10 and a Linux distribution of my choice. The advice is to install Windows 10 first because if Linux is installed first Windows will then overwrite the bootloader. I installed Windows and gave it about half the disk space. All good so far.

Ubuntu seems popular and well supported so I thought I'd try that instead of Debian. That installed fine and seemed good until I tried browsing with Firefox when I got so much screen 'tearing' with Youtube and similar that it was unusable. I tried various Firefox tweaks but nothing made any difference. I then installed Chrome but that was just the same. I then made various tweaks to driver 'conf' files but again no change. So I gave up and thought I would try an updated Debian instead. From Windows I removed the partitions generated by the Ubuntu installation so that I had unallocated space again.

Debian installed but then hung when booting. I removed that and tried installing from another copy of the installation media. Again no boot. I could have spent ages trying to fix it but thought I'd give Mint a try since I've read good things about it. I chose the Mate desktop. All good and I proceeded to set up the system including the addition of VirtualBox. No screen tearing was apparent I was glad to see.

The next day I started my new PC and was taken aback to see screen tearing again although it had been completely fine the day before. I was feeling a bit fed up at this point.

I then looked at the Grub 2 boot menu and noticed that under the Advanced Settings there were now 2 kernels to boot from and realised that the previous day whilst updating the VirtualBox installation (the packaged version is rather old) I had also inadvertently updated the kernel, which surprised me given that I had (I think) originally installed the latest stable version. The earlier kernel was fine with no screen tearing but the later version no good at all. I then found out how to remove the later kernel and remove it from the boot menu. Happiness restored.

So I now have a working Windows 10 and Linux Mint dual boot system and I'm very pleased with it. I like Mint with Mate, it's interface is simple and works well. I've not had much experience with Windows 10 having previously given it a wide berth due to an excess of stuff that I don't need or want. But, I have to say that I'm impressed, it all works well and I've been more or less able to remove stuff that I don't want.

I am a bit surprised by my difficulties with Linux though, I've installed it a few times before and each time it just worked, but not this time unfortunately. I'd love to know what the problem was with the Debian installation although I will probably never find out.

RC

[GeoffF100]

I always get screen tearing after installing Linux.

Here is a fix for Intel graphics:

https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/scre ... hics.html#

Here is a fix for AMD graphics:

https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/scre ... phics.html

The problem is most obvious in browsers. That can be fixed by turning off smooth scrolling. I do not like smooth scrolling anyway. I have, however, needed the fixes above to fix screen tearing in video playback.

[Infrasonic]

...Anyway, time for a new PC and the Ryzen 5 3400G which I ordered some time ago eventually arrived and since the rest of the components were already assembled all I had to do was fit the CPU and press the start button....

...I am a bit surprised by my difficulties with Linux though, I've installed it a few times before and each time it just worked, but not this time unfortunately. I'd love to know what the problem was with the Debian installation although I will probably never find out.

RC

Have you checked out any of the online Linux boards around Ryzen 5 compatibility issues?
That would be my hunch.
Phoronix is good for that sort of stuff...https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home

(Although I note Mr Torvalds has recently built himself a thread ripper workstation...https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... readripper)

[ReformedCharacter]

I always get screen tearing after installing Linux.

Here is a fix for Intel graphics:

https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/scre ... hics.html#

Here is a fix for AMD graphics:

https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/scre ... phics.html

The problem is most obvious in browsers. That can be fixed by turning off smooth scrolling. I do not like smooth scrolling anyway. I have, however, needed the fixes above to fix screen tearing in video playback.

Thanks. I consulted that very page - amongst others - and tried all the fixes suggested. Turning off Smooth Scrolling did not fix the issue (on either browser).

RC

[ReformedCharacter]

Have you checked out any of the online Linux boards around Ryzen 5 compatibility issues?
That would be my hunch.

I think you're right. There do seem to be quite a lot of reports of Ryzen 5 compatibility problems. My guess is that the latest Ubuntu Focal Fossa is problematic for the Ryzen 5 and that Mint (which I believe adopts the same kernel after Ubuntu have released it) suffers the same problems as a consequence. A case of the later kernel introducing problems which did not exist in the earlier version.

RC

[Infrasonic]

Have you checked out any of the online Linux boards around Ryzen 5 compatibility issues?
That would be my hunch.

I think you're right. There do seem to be quite a lot of reports of Ryzen 5 compatibility problems. My guess is that the latest Ubuntu Focal Fossa is problematic for the Ryzen 5 and that Mint (which I believe adopts the same kernel after Ubuntu have released it) suffers the same problems as a consequence. A case of the later kernel introducing problems which did not exist in the earlier version.

RC

Yes going backwards may introduce progress...
I recently upgraded my Crostini Debian container from 9 to 10, not through choice but because it got bricked by an app install and the 9 backups didn't restore, so I had to nuke it and start again which upgraded me to 10.
10 is a right lottery in terms of will apps work or not. Rebuilt it several times, currently it all works but I've got a load of command line backtracking to do to get out of an unsuccessful Thunderbird 68.8.1 install. A good CL learning process but I'd prefer it if it all just worked...

So the takeaway is remain cautious and avoid the temptation to be on the 'latest' of anything whether that's the kernel/OS or apps. (A hard one for me to resist with my Magpie instincts).

[GeoffF100]

So the takeaway is remain cautious and avoid the temptation to be on the 'latest' of anything whether that's the kernel/OS or apps. (A hard one for me to resist with my Magpie instincts).

That is absolutely right. I am pleased with Xubuntu 18.04. It is very tempting to upgrade to 20.04. My only little niggle is that I sometimes get two network icons on the Panel after booting. Purely cosmetic, and I can fix it with:

xfce4-panel -r

<Ctrl Alt T><Up Arrow><CR> usually does the job. It is best to wait to jump until I am pushed. Lubuntu 20.04 looks interesting, but I was too much of a coward to try it with the new desktop. Nonetheless, 20.04 is the fourth release with LXQt. Now that the fearless hiriskpaul has reported success, I am tempted to give it a try on a live DVD at least.

[GeoffF100]

I downloaded Lubuntu 20.04 and gave it a try on a live DVD. It has come a long way since the previous Long Term Support release (18.04). They have successfully pioneered the new LXQt desktop, and changed the application load. I was able to get rid of the Desktop Switcher much more easily than before. Previously, I had to change a key binding in Open Box to get rid of it completely. I was also impressed with the documentation. The only real fault that I encountered was the system hung when I selected Shut Down from the menu. I had to hold the power button down to reset my PC.

The default wallpaper was naff to my eyes. I changed it for one of the old Lubuntu wallpapers, which was an improvement. Finding a good wallpaper should not be a serious problem. I also do not care for the white on black menu. The laid back styling of Xubuntu is much more to my taste. (The Linux Mint Xfce styling is not as brash as Lubuntu has become, but it still is not as laid back as Xubuntu.)

It is good to see this much effort going into a distro. Xubuntu does not change much, which is good, but that seems to be mostly because the project does not have much development effort available, which is not good.

[GeoffF100]

I have downloaded Xubuntu 20.04 LTS and booted it from a live DVD. I encountered a nasty problem that turned out to be known issue:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1870641

Typing xfsettingsd in a terminal fixed the problem. I tried to post here, but the connection seemed to be lost, despite the Internet light on my router continuously shining bright. I booted into Xubuntu 18.04 LTS from the SSD. No problems.

Xubuntu 20.04 looks almost unchanged from the previous LTS version, except perhaps for the introduction of some new bugs. I am not greatly encouraged. Perhaps Lubuntu 20.04 LTS is a better bet after all.

[GeoffF100]

I have had a further pay with Lubuntu 20.04 on a live DVD. It appears to be a very solid product, and in a different league to Xubuntu 20.04. Xubuntu 20.04 is not fit for release, let alone as an LTS release.

I tried various wallpapers Lubuntu 20.04, and have made a decision. I downloaded the default Lubuntu 16.10 wallpaper from here:

https://oswallpapers.com/lubuntu-16-10- ... allpapers/

I imported the file into LibreOffice Draw, flipped it horizontally, so that the purple is on the right, and exported it as a .png file. It looks good on my desktop. I have also been able to fix all the other little things that I do not like.

I particularly like the way LXImage handled the images on my mobile phone. I am immediately able to view images without downloading them, and thumbnails gradually appear as the files are downloaded. The default viewer on Xubuntu insisted on downloading all the images on my phone before showing me anything when I clicked on one of them!

It will be interesting to see whether Snorvey upgrades to the next version of Linux Mint Xfce when it arrives (possibly later this month), and hear his verdict if he does.

[hiriskpaul]

I used Zoom on my Lubuntu 20.04 LTS laptop yesterday and it installed and worked perfectly first time.

Editing a Onedrive spreadsheet online in Chromium was noticeably slower than on my Windows 10 desktop, so I downloaded and used in Libre Office and it was fine, with instantaneous updates to formulae, etc. It was a very simple spreadsheet though.

I tried out the Arduino software today. The only minor issue was in serial port permissions, but a quick Google, addition of my login to a particular group , followed by logging out and in again sorted that out. I was very impressed by compilation speed in Arduino. This was around twice as long as my i3-4330 desktop (3.5GHz, dual core, 4 threads), which is equipped with much more memory and a faster SSD. I was expecting much worse performance and it makes me wonder about my Windows performance.

[GeoffF100]

I used Zoom on my Lubuntu 20.04 LTS laptop yesterday and it installed and worked perfectly first time.

Editing a Onedrive spreadsheet online in Chromium was noticeably slower than on my Windows 10 desktop, so I downloaded and used in Libre Office and it was fine, with instantaneous updates to formulae, etc. It was a very simple spreadsheet though.

I tried out the Arduino software today. The only minor issue was in serial port permissions, but a quick Google, addition of my login to a particular group , followed by logging out and in again sorted that out. I was very impressed by compilation speed in Arduino. This was around twice as long as my i3-4330 desktop (3.5GHz, dual core, 4 threads), which is equipped with much more memory and a faster SSD. I was expecting much worse performance and it makes me wonder about my Windows performance.

That processor is over eight times faster than the processor in the laptop:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 2025vs1970

That is incredible, so incredible in fact, that there must surely be something wrong. Have you got the precise processor numbers? If so, whatever is happening on the Windows PC? That processor should be capable of eating Windows for breakfast. Something must be draining the power. That would take some serious bloatware. Third party virus checker? Have a look in Resource Manager.

[hiriskpaul]

I used Zoom on my Lubuntu 20.04 LTS laptop yesterday and it installed and worked perfectly first time.

Editing a Onedrive spreadsheet online in Chromium was noticeably slower than on my Windows 10 desktop, so I downloaded and used in Libre Office and it was fine, with instantaneous updates to formulae, etc. It was a very simple spreadsheet though.

I tried out the Arduino software today. The only minor issue was in serial port permissions, but a quick Google, addition of my login to a particular group , followed by logging out and in again sorted that out. I was very impressed by compilation speed in Arduino. This was around twice as long as my i3-4330 desktop (3.5GHz, dual core, 4 threads), which is equipped with much more memory and a faster SSD. I was expecting much worse performance and it makes me wonder about my Windows performance.

That processor is over eight times faster than the processor in the laptop:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 2025vs1970

That is incredible, so incredible in fact, that there must surely be something wrong. Have you got the precise processor numbers? If so, whatever is happening on the Windows PC? That processor should be capable of eating Windows for breakfast. Something must be draining the power. That would take some serious bloatware. Third party virus checker? Have a look in Resource Manager.

The Windows PC does not seem sluggish and not much CPU being used elsewhere, so I suspect the problem may be more to do with I/O rather than CPU performance. The Arduino I am compiling for is a new design that is built on the Mbed OS, so every time I compile I have to pull in the whole Mbed OS. It could be that Linux is caching all those C++ files more efficiently than Windows does. I will investigate further when I get the time and do some proper timing. It was really just an experiment, I had no real intention of actually doing Arduino development on the Lubuntu laptop, but it might lead to better compilation performance on Windows if I can figure out what is going on.

[ReformedCharacter]

The Windows PC does not seem sluggish and not much CPU being used elsewhere, so I suspect the problem may be more to do with I/O rather than CPU performance. The Arduino I am compiling for is a new design that is built on the Mbed OS, so every time I compile I have to pull in the whole Mbed OS. It could be that Linux is caching all those C++ files more efficiently than Windows does. I will investigate further when I get the time and do some proper timing. It was really just an experiment, I had no real intention of actually doing Arduino development on the Lubuntu laptop, but it might lead to better compilation performance on Windows if I can figure out what is going on.

Slightly off-topic, but what are you developing the Arduino to do?

RC

[hiriskpaul]

The Windows PC does not seem sluggish and not much CPU being used elsewhere, so I suspect the problem may be more to do with I/O rather than CPU performance. The Arduino I am compiling for is a new design that is built on the Mbed OS, so every time I compile I have to pull in the whole Mbed OS. It could be that Linux is caching all those C++ files more efficiently than Windows does. I will investigate further when I get the time and do some proper timing. It was really just an experiment, I had no real intention of actually doing Arduino development on the Lubuntu laptop, but it might lead to better compilation performance on Windows if I can figure out what is going on.

Slightly off-topic, but what are you developing the Arduino to do?

RC

Remote sensing, mainly measuring heights of rivers to provide early warning of downstream flooding. I have started looking at a new generation of 32 bit ARM micro controllers with Bluetooth Low Energy 5 to see if they might be a better solution to the existing 8 bit controllers connected to ZigBee radios and cellular modems. Doesn't have to be Arduino, but that is a convenient and easy to use open source platform. The alternatives tend to be manufacturer specific, so you end up having to keep switching toolchains, which is a bit of a pain.

[GeoffF100]

I have done the deed. I have installed Lubuntu 20.04 on my SSD. I am gobsmacked:

geoff@HP:~$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.166s (kernel) + 6.747s (userspace) = 8.914s
graphical.target reached after 6.732s in userspace

The system boots in under 9 seconds. Xubuntu 18.04 took over 19 seconds (Windows 10 is about the same.) That is on a £49 computer, with the addition of an SSD.

Everything looks very professional. I have reverted to the hummingbird wallpaper from Lubuntu 18.04. That is hard to beat. The Lubuntu team has certainly done a fantastic job.