Hello Mick
Thanks for the contact. I was hoping to eventually meet up with 'real people' as email is brilliant for info transfer but, to me, human contact is much more preferable.
I do find that my friends have confidence in what I tell them and when I say Linux is the way forward they seem to accept it. I start them off with a dual boot system making them select Windows if they really want it otherwise it's auto boot taking them straight into Mint. I have converted 4 so far and I'm expecting a few more in the near future.
I take your point on the Skype problem and will just have to stay with MS for that......unless anyone knows different. Is there another video platform that I don't know about?
Unable to decode/read your attachment (signature.asc) pls advise program/software for that.
One other problem I have a red cross in the update manager list in the system tray advising 'could not refresh list of packages'. So presumably I'm not totally up to date. Any advice would be appreciated.
If I have contravened any protocol in my response please let me know.
Thanks bfn Bob
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013, Bob wrote:
taking them straight into Mint. I have converted 4 so far and I'm expecting a few more in the near future.
I take your point on the Skype problem and will just have to stay with MS for that......unless anyone knows different.
What's the problem with Skype? I use it ok but that's not to say there isn't a problem somewhere. Can't think I know different! But I use Xubuntu rather than Mint (which I didn't have a happy experience of).
james
Hello James
Nice to meet you. You must be a night owl like me.
As other projects have come to the fore front I have not worried about this particular problem for several months now but my main issue was with the audio. As it has not been my current problem it has been put on the back burner. Eventually I will have to open that box again and see if I can sort it out with your help. As you have seen I dumped Ubuntu after the Unity scandal. I did make the assumption that all Ubuntu releases would have the awful Unity installed. (Must confess I didn't check them all out) I must confess that I do like Mint but I have previously had problems with sound on other distros that I tried.
Thanks Bob
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 01:18:33 +0100, James Freer jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013, Bob wrote:
taking them straight into Mint. I have converted 4 so far and I'm expecting a few more in the near future.
I take your point on the Skype problem and will just have to stay with MS for that......unless anyone knows different.
What's the problem with Skype? I use it ok but that's not to say there isn't a problem somewhere. Can't think I know different! But I use Xubuntu rather than Mint (which I didn't have a happy experience of).
james
On 15/09/13 01:42, Bob wrote:
As you have seen I dumped Ubuntu after the Unity scandal. I did make the assumption that all Ubuntu releases would have the awful Unity installed. (Must confess I didn't check them all out)
Not liking the default desktop manager is a strange reason to dump a whole distro IMO, particularly when there are sub branches of that distro offering different defaults. But even without that everything else is just an apt-get away.
I run native Debian on my two laptops now. I was happily running Ubuntu but with Gnome Shell rather than Unity, the only reason I moved from that was I decided I preferred the rolling release model rather than the big upgrade every 6 months.
I must confess that I do like Mint but I have previously had problems with sound on other distros that I tried.
I had pretty good experiences with the Debian edition of mint. Never tried the stock editions. I still don't fully understand the reason why they run both but LMDE is a nice step towards running "proper" Debian. They should concentrate all their efforts there rather than the "Yet Another Ubuntu Derivative"
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 09:02:45 +0100 Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Not liking the default desktop manager is a strange reason to dump a whole distro IMO, particularly when there are sub branches of that distro offering different defaults. But even without that everything else is just an apt-get away.
Wayne
Take a look at the discssion about "trust" in ubuntu and its derivatives at https://github.com/nylira/prism-break/issues/334 The question addressed is whether (for example) xubuntu should be trusted because it does not contain the unity lens and/or other privacy infringing software. It is not just about the desktop manager, more the philosophy of the distro builder.
Some people take the view that Canonical is not working in the best interests of the FOSS community. Ironically I am now (albeit temporarily) back to using xubuntu (from Mint) following my exchange with James back in July (he gave Bev a long list of distros he'd tried). Longer term I want to move away from ubuntu and any derivative permanently. I am currently playing with Arch and its derivative Manjaro because, like you. I am attracted to the rolling distro model. I looked at Gentoo, but life is just too short to build everything from source - even I am not that zealous. I am a great fan of debian (I use it on all my servers) but I want something a little more bleeding edge for my desktop.
I had pretty good experiences with the Debian edition of mint. Never tried the stock editions. I still don't fully understand the reason why they run both but LMDE is a nice step towards running "proper" Debian. They should concentrate all their efforts there rather than the "Yet Another Ubuntu Derivative"
I found the Mint LMDE version worryingly out of date (for security updates) quite quickly. At least ubuntu released patches quickly.
Cheers
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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On 15/09/13 12:38, mick wrote:
Wayne
Take a look at the discssion about "trust" in ubuntu and its derivatives athttps://github.com/nylira/prism-break/issues/334 The question addressed is whether (for example) xubuntu should be trusted because it does not contain the unity lens and/or other privacy infringing software. It is not just about the desktop manager, more the philosophy of the distro builder.
The OP didn't make it clear that this was the specific reason he disliked Unity (there are plenty of other valid reasons)
If you dislike Ubuntu's practices and want to avoid the software on philosophical grounds then I'd say Mint (other than LMDE) isn't a practical alternative any more than xubuntu etc are. From that I (rightly or wrongly) ascertained that Bob just hates Unity :-)
I found the Mint LMDE version worryingly out of date (for security updates) quite quickly. At least ubuntu released patches quickly.
You do know it is 100% compatible with the Debian repo's ? so you can have your security updates the same time Debian release them, in fact up until fairly recently this was the default.
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 13:10:55 +0100 Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk allegedly wrote:
The OP didn't make it clear that this was the specific reason he disliked Unity (there are plenty of other valid reasons)
Agreed.
If you dislike Ubuntu's practices and want to avoid the software on philosophical grounds then I'd say Mint (other than LMDE) isn't a practical alternative any more than xubuntu etc are. From that I (rightly or wrongly) ascertained that Bob just hates Unity :-)
Also agreed. I'm fairly sure that Bob will say that he hates Unity for plenty of (good) reasons other than the philosophical/political objection.
I wasn't intending to suggest that Bob's reasons /were/ philosophical I was simply pointing out that ditching a distro because you don't like the desktop manager (rather than switching to a derivative) /could/ be a valid decision.
I found the Mint LMDE version worryingly out of date (for security updates) quite quickly. At least ubuntu released patches quickly.
You do know it is 100% compatible with the Debian repo's ? so you can have your security updates the same time Debian release them, in fact up until fairly recently this was the default.
Yes I do. And I think that LMDE had "security.debian.org" in its apt sources file. But I am pretty sure that I wasn't seeing the expected updates in LMDE on time. I'm also pretty sure that I wasn't seeing any (non-security related) updates (e.g. firefox which seems to be updated every other day at the moment) on time.
I could be wrong of course, or my memory could be faulty (both highly plausible) but I wasn't happy enough with LMDE to persevere and investigate and I switched to the 'buntu based XFCE mint, then back to Xubuntu Like James did a while ago, I am going through a "distro hopping" phase at the moment.
Cheers
Mick
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Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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I could be wrong of course, or my memory could be faulty (both highly plausible) but I wasn't happy enough with LMDE to persevere and investigate and I switched to the 'buntu based XFCE mint, then back to Xubuntu Like James did a while ago, I am going through a "distro hopping" phase at the moment.
Cheers
Mick
Distro hopping isn't a bad idea.... just that everytime I have done it I find I have gone round in a circle! But that is confirmation that it still suits. Mint doesn't have to staff to keep up with maintenance. *buntu family seems to constantly extending the family - maybe you'd like ubuntu-gnome. Glad my distro hop was of interest. Looking at the *buntu family I think the last year has seen Xubuntu get better and better - 13.04 was very much better than 12.04 which I think was one of their worst (and that's LTS).
I was surprised to see the talk on the Shuttleworth blog of considering a rolling release - he mentioned he was finding the names hard to keep producing. Be a good idea to drop them altogether! The numbering of each release I think is good whereas just a version number like F18 you don't know when it was released unless you look it up (mind you you would definitely want to forget that one - came out two months late and was so bad it was unusable). You mentioned trying Arch, which I found very dodgy to set up - Aptosid was well put together but my issue with rolling release is stability. To me point release is the way to go.
For Xubuntu 13.10 they are incorporating a core meta package. For *buntu I can't see why they don't just have one install iso to which you add your DM and own choice of apps. They could then concentrate on development and in depth testing and produce a really good annual version. When one looks at each release *buntu seems to alternate from good and then not so good - April being better than October's release. 13.04 I think is one of their best releases and yet still low down the distrowatch list at #27 (i think). Mageia #2 (I found it ugh) and poor Ubuntu at #3. I think Unity was the right step forward (aka phone look) but user's weren't ready for it.
james
On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 1:42 AM, Bob bob@beriwold.plus.com wrote:
Hello James
Nice to meet you. You must be a night owl like me.
As other projects have come to the fore front I have not worried about this particular problem for several months now but my main issue was with the audio. As it has not been my current problem it has been put on the back burner. Eventually I will have to open that box again and see if I can sort it out with your help. As you have seen I dumped Ubuntu after the Unity scandal. I did make the assumption that all Ubuntu releases would have the awful Unity installed. (Must confess I didn't check them all out) I must confess that I do like Mint but I have previously had problems with sound on other distros that I tried.
Thanks Bob
I've been trying Skype today and I can't find any problems with sound - this PC was on 12.04 (just busy clearing the hard drive ready for 13.10). There were one or two emails and I have always thought Skype was overrated. Most folk use it as an IM that I've spoken too. Brother's work use it for conferences.
Sound is supposed to be better than AOL or yahoo IM - I've talked with folk across the world on all three and find Skype is 'hype'. I haven't tried Ekiga which is the FOSS one I believe but one has to pay for an account I think.
james
On 09/16/13 01:23, James Freer wrote:
I haven't tried Ekiga which is the FOSS one I believe but one has to pay for an account I think.
I'm pretty sure Ekiga will work with any good SIP/RTP (Session Initiation Protocol / Real Time Protocol - I think) account provider, some of which are free. Most of them charge you to call to/from outside phone numbers, but so does Skype.
I actually use Linphone, but I got that working more than 5 years ago so I'm not sure it's state of the art.
Regards,
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:22:16 +0100 Bob bob@beriwold.plus.com allegedly wrote:
I do find that my friends have confidence in what I tell them and when I say Linux is the way forward they seem to accept it. I start them off with a dual boot system making them select Windows if they really want it otherwise it's auto boot taking them straight into Mint. I have converted 4 so far and I'm expecting a few more in the near future.
Well done (seriously). I have been a linux user since the mid to late 90s. Apart from my immediate family (who have no choice) I don't think I have /ever/ successfully converted anyone. Most of my non linux using friends won't let me anywhere near their PCs. Scaredy cats I call 'em.
I take your point on the Skype problem and will just have to stay with MS for that......unless anyone knows different. Is there another video platform that I don't know about?
My objection to skype is political, not technical. Skype is owned by Microsoft, the technology is proprietary (as is the crypto, which is known to be broken and accessible to national Governments).
There are perfectly good free, open, alternatives to Skype (and other voice or instant messaging systems). Take a look at https://prism-break.org/
Unable to decode/read your attachment (signature.asc) pls advise program/software for that.
As David has already said, that attachment is my openPGP signature (see http://gnupg.org/ ). GPG is available in the Mint repos but I don't think operamail supports it natively. Both claws (which I use) and thunderbird do provide such support and if you want to integrate GPG signing/encryption into email I'd recommend using one of those. Tbird in particular is quite good at this (through the enigmail plugin).
I routinely sign all my emails so that people know they came from me. Any non-signed email should be treated as suspect, unless it comes from my mobile where it will say something like, "this is an interim reply, I am away from my keys and will answer later." I don't trust my keys to a device which is easily lost or stolen. Though, as a result of a conversation with a friend who uses one, I am looking at using a GPG smartcard in future and I hope I can find some way of tying the two together.
One other problem I have a red cross in the update manager list in the system tray advising 'could not refresh list of packages'. So presumably I'm not totally up to date. Any advice would be appreciated.
Try another update - "apt-get update" on the command line and watch the output. You may find that the Mint repository was down/slow or otherwise temporarily unavailable.
If I have contravened any protocol in my response please let me know.
Not with me. I take the view that the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask. In my experience, someone on this list will know the answer to practically any question you may have (I ask loads). So questions are best directed to the list and not to individuals.
Cheers
Mick
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Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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Wayne Stallwood