I am a Computer Dinosaur

[lightcrystal]

My computer is 12 years young. That's close to teenage. Soon my computer will be bringing home her first date.

Sniff. 12 years in computer years may be a venerable centurion. She is showing signs of age. My health checks are giving warnings.

What to do?

i5 8 GB of RAM, HDD. Fairly quiet when running. I'd happily have the same computer again just changing to a SDD. [solid disk drive.]
It was made by a friend who doesn't make them anymore and has vanished. He did a good job.
I haven't bought a shopfront computer since about 1997 when I bought a "new" Mac and it had store animation loops on it. Sigh.

I run Linux. No Mac. No Windows. No long end of a leash; I run my computer MY way with Linux: Ubuntu Studio. I also wire up everything so I need lots of usb ports. I am a dinosaur. The world has these wireless mice etc. I don't touch them.
Some people might ask " can I build my own computer?" I never have so I don't want to do that.

Not sure what to do. It also gets hot here in summer so I don't think that any of these mini PC's like NUCs could cope.

The bottom line. It's hard to find anything that meets what I want. Even though what I want is very modest and very simple.

I don't care much about all this UEFI business; this computer has a grub menu bootloader. Yep, when I said it's dinosaur I meant it. I care about good fans or the cooling I suppose. cool = quiet.

Any ideas please post below.

[barbara2]

https://www.linuxnow.com.au/


Best,

Barbara

[GrayHouse]

There's nothing wrong with an i5 and 8Gb of RAM, especially if you're using Linux and it still meets your requirements.

Pay a local computer tech to upgrade your HDD to a SSD and fix any other problems they might find.

[GettingTooOld]

Research laptop brands for a good brand in the price range you want. There is a lot less to do with a laptop as far as building goes. If you are not gaming then a $100 laptop plus a hundred more for a SSD or HD will be just fine for all computing needs under linux.

Make a slow transistion from no ability to build a system to small ability to build a system. start by getting a USB stick and making a "liveCD" on it, or get a blank CD and make a live cd on that. It will not effect your current system, it will work as an install disk on a new system, and you'll get the idea about installing stuff. There is no risk to anything that way.

A live hard drive is even better, although it's not a live hard drive, it's just a full system on a hard drive, it's full speed, full install, and you just plug it in using an external case and can use it to test any new desktop / laptop you consider buying. It's really just the full system on a hard drive that is easy to remove because it's got a USB interface.

If you buy an external USB hard drive, you can usually open the case and the hard drive comes out. This is good because you can put it into a laptop internally or a desktop. You can use your existing system to write a new system to a new drive externally and then test it externally, the bios can be told use my external drive to launch everything, and when it's looking good, install the hard drive inside the computer. There are too many videos on how to do this, especially with laptops, to consider it to be building a system.

Perhaps putting a hard drive in a desktop might be considered building a system, although there are videos and you would start with how to connect everything to a motherboard video, but for a laptop, it cannot be considered building a computer. It's on the level of using floppydisks or cartridges.

When you remove a few screws from the laptop, you can insert and remove the hard drive same as you'd pull a cartridge. there is nothing to know and nothing to go wrong really. There might be a bit of a fiddle with bios boot options, but that's just clicking or typing at most.

If you don't know how to build a system, then in summary.
* research what is a good secondhand laptop
* make a linux live usb using your current computer

[annise]

Not quite a dinosaur A later period. When I first started with computers everything was entered via punch cards and data was stored on tape drives
And storage in the computer was quite limited - all programming had to consider the size of data possible.

Anne

[lightcrystal]

Not quite a dinosaur A later period. When I first started with computers everything was entered via punch cards and data was stored on tape drives
And storage in the computer was quite limited - all programming had to consider the size of data possible.

Anne

Well, the Zardax software that I used at school is now in a Queensland computer museum

[GettingTooOld]

My health checks are giving warnings.
What to do?

most hard drives would last about 4-5 years, after that, they are bound to crash and never return. Along with your data. Ask me how I know. This happens always, over and over. Ask me how I know. It's almost as though someone doing basic business 101 realised there is more money to be made by crashing dying permanently drives than there is in immortal drives which keep your movie collection immortal.

you'd better be backing up all your dataz to a new drive soon. avoid WD. avoid segate. They make more money by doing data recovery than they do by selling their crappy drives in the first place. Have you heard of ransomwear ? do you know how that works ? good. I bring it up for no particular reason.

Anyhow, get a new drive that is not wd, and not segate, and hook it up and collect what you can while you can.

It would be prudent perhaps to divide up the drive first, into an operating system (OS) partition or partitions, and a swap partition and a storage partition, and then unload onto the storage partition. I do that with mine, and it works very well. You can install or re-install onto just the OS partition without disturbing your backup data. There are not really any decent guides to doing this available on the internet I think.

[GettingTooOld]

https://www.youtube.com/@linuxforseniors

here is a good look at puppylinux, and the variant of fossapup, which is really good, this is actually what I'm using right now! although there is a different wallpaper and all the icons have been cleaned up.

The guy waffles on a bit without sounding like he is waffling, but he is. I like it because it shows really well in your face just how nice the operating system is.

Fossapup is not my favorite puppylinux though, as the firewall is rubbish amongst other shortcomings, you cannot edit it, most distros do not have one these days for bad reasons.

Anyhow, perhaps it will inspire people to install some good, free software and see how easy it is to use.

[lightcrystal]

https://www.youtube.com/@linuxforseniors

here is a good look at puppylinux, and the variant of fossapup, which is really good, this is actually what I'm using right now! although there is a different wallpaper and all the icons have been cleaned up.

The guy waffles on a bit without sounding like he is waffling, but he is. I like it because it shows really well in your face just how nice the operating system is.

Fossapup is not my favorite puppylinux though, as the firewall is rubbish amongst other shortcomings, you cannot edit it, most distros do not have one these days for bad reasons.

Anyhow, perhaps it will inspire people to install some good, free software and see how easy it is to use.

I loved Puppy Linux a long time ago. I don't know what it's like now. I have tried most Linuxes at some point. Even Redhat. I even remember some defunct ones such as Damn Small Linux and Linux Gamers. But these days I have to run something that runs my focusrite audio interface. That's either AV Linux or Ubuntu Studio. I chose Ubuntu Studio when I went all Linux in 2019 and am still running it. I know. People hate Canonical.

I bought a new computer. I got one made designed for audio narration. I am having some problems getting my new monitor to work with it: I get this message on the monitor:

No Signal. Please Check your Connection.
HDMI input connected.
Click OK to auto switch to HDMI input.
No signal.
Entering power saving mode.

Thus the screen just stall there and does not boot up beyond that. I will have to get onto them tomorrow.
[I am using my old computer to write this.]

[GettingTooOld]

I loved Puppy Linux a long time ago. I don't know what it's like now. I have tried most Linuxes at some point. Even Redhat. I even remember some defunct ones such as Damn Small Linux and Linux Gamers. But these days I have to run something that runs my focusrite audio interface. That's either AV Linux or Ubuntu Studio. I chose Ubuntu Studio when I went all Linux in 2019 and am still running it. I know. People hate Canonical.

I think I have used those ones before, I'm familiar with the names, that's for certain. Wow, the things I have done and don't even remember anymore. Once, I remembered memories from a course at college I'd completely forgotten. I remembered a friend I chatted with often, then the place came back to me, then the course came back to me. Maybe I have qualifications I can't even remember. Now if I could remember where I buried my booty, then I'd be rich!!!

Studio is good, and dsl I recall is pretty good too. There are a number of gamers distros out there floating in the netherworld, they never seem to get billing on places like distrowatch.

I bought a new computer. I got one made designed for audio narration. I am having some problems getting my new monitor to work with it: I get this message on the monitor:

No Signal. Please Check your Connection.
HDMI input connected.
Click OK to auto switch to HDMI input.
No signal.
Entering power saving mode.

Thus the screen just stall there and does not boot up beyond that. I will have to get onto them tomorrow.
[I am using my old computer to write this.]

What kind of computer is it ? laptop ? go the bios, when it is starting up you're pressing the F1 F2 F10 F12 and so on keys. External monitor port needs to be enabled. If it is a desktop, open it and reseat all the plugin boards and RAM simms carefully. Re-seating is carefully removing and re-installing in exactly the same place, hopefully without dust in the way this time.

I would avoid HDMI in general and as a rule, because of the risk of de-auth packets, which kill your hardware stone cold dead. I know people personally who have slipped up on their Pay-tv billing and their sets have been destroyed by remotely sent de-auth packets. It's not pretty, and there is nothing to do to get the big screen tv working again. It's destroyed.

just use the 15pin D-sub connector, it's safe and has no trouble carrying the signal.