Hullo

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CutieMc
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Hullo

Post by CutieMc »

Hullo. :)

My Win7 machine is getting a bit wobbly, so I thought I'd try and get an old broken Vista era machine (HP Pavilion desktop) working again, and try out Mint. It's all going very well so far. Pretty much installs itself, doesn't it.

I'm a complete noob with Linux, so I'm absolutely MADE of questions right now. I did manage to get all my work stuff going, so that's the important stuff done.

I've made this wee thing so I can search for TLAs on here (probably reinventing the wheel, but at least it's not a square one)...

Code: Select all

<html>
 <center>
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <p><b>Search Linux Mint Forums</b></p>
  <form action="https://duckduckgo.com/" method="get">
   <input type="hidden" name="t" value="lm">
   <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="forums.linuxmint.com">
   <input type="search" name="q" size=60>
   <input type="submit" value="Go ->">
  </form>
 </center>
</html>
Save it somewhere and drag it onto your browser bookmarks, if you need it too.
(I think that T=LM stuff is how the Mint people get some magical internet money, so leave that bit in if you're going to modify it)

And I'll see yous all later (with all my derpy noob questions) :roll:
Cutie
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kc1di
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Location: Maine USA

Re: Hullo

Post by kc1di »

Hello CutieMc,
Welcome to the Linux Mint Forum. Enjoy the journey! :)
Easy tips : https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/ Pjotr's Great Linux projects page.
Linux Mint Installation Guide: http://linuxmint-installation-guide.rea ... en/latest/
Registered Linux User #462608
deepakdeshp
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Re: Hullo

Post by deepakdeshp »

Welcome to the Linux Mint Forum
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
CutieMc
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Re: Hullo

Post by CutieMc »

Hi. Thanks for the welcome :D
Off to post my first question...
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NM64
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Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2017 11:34 pm

Re: Hullo

Post by NM64 »

CutieMc wrote: Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:32 pmI thought I'd try and get an old broken Vista era machine (HP Pavilion desktop) working again, and try out Mint. It's all going very well so far.
Assuming it's not one of those unfortunate early Vista-era PCs with only a single core CPU (hyper-threaded Pentium 4 doesn't count as multi-core :P), consider installing zram-config from the package manager since there's a very good chance that PC is going to be light on RAM by modern standards (8GB max for DDR2 or 4GB max for DDR1).

What zram will do is, if/when your RAM starts getting full, it'll first try to compress it. Once your RAM gets filled up even when compressed, then it will overflow by writing to your hard drive.

(if you want to go down a major rabbit hole, there are a slew of various settings for zram "optimizations" that specifically tune various ways the OS handles memory, but they're certainly not required and even running stock settings with zram can be a substantial improvement in a RAM-constrained environment unless you have a really weak CPU... like the aforementioned Pentium 4 :P)
CPU: Xeon E3-1246 v3 (4c/8t Haswell/Intel 4th gen) — core & cache @ 3.9GHz via multicore enhancement
GPU: Intel integrated HD Graphics P4600
RAM: 4x8GB Corsair Vengence @ DDR3-1600
OS: Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce + [VM] Win7 SP1 x64 
CutieMc
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Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:44 pm

Re: Hullo

Post by CutieMc »

Oh, it's a weird old thing. Model# a6660a: Core2 Quad, SATA HDD, no USB boot, PS/2 mouse & keyboard. I think they made it just to get rid of old left over parts. Their Ministry of Information has erased all record of its existence from the interweb.

Only 4GB RAM, but I think that'll be fine. I mostly want it for work stuff and to get my eye in with Mint & Linux. Minecraft will be the gruntiest thing I'm going to try squeezing out of it, but I won't be doing that for a while.
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NM64
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Re: Hullo

Post by NM64 »

CutieMc wrote: Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:27 pmno USB boot
One fun trick I know of is to install Ventoy onto a different internal hard drive and then put your various Linux ISOs and stuff onto that, and then boot from that in order to install your OS onto the primary hard drive.
CutieMc wrote: Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:27 pmOnly 4GB RAM, but I think that'll be fine.
Honestly, with a Core 2 Quad combined with 4GB of RAM, that's almost the perfect use-case for installing the zram-config package.

For reference, there's really nothing one needs to do to install it—even when super-breaking down the process, it's nothing more than open Mint's equivalent of the start menu, start typing package manager, click on "package manager" and then, in the package manager, search for zram-config, double-click on the listed "zram-config", and click the "Apply" button.

And, once it's installed, you can check up on zram's memory status by running the zramctl command in the terminal.
CPU: Xeon E3-1246 v3 (4c/8t Haswell/Intel 4th gen) — core & cache @ 3.9GHz via multicore enhancement
GPU: Intel integrated HD Graphics P4600
RAM: 4x8GB Corsair Vengence @ DDR3-1600
OS: Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce + [VM] Win7 SP1 x64 
CutieMc
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Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:44 pm

Re: Hullo

Post by CutieMc »

Hmm. Sounds like I might need it sooner or later. But I'll leave it until I do.

I'm a firm follower of Tony, the Saint of Hammers - "perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away" :wink:

Thanks for letting me know about it, though. I still haven't found any nice way of knowing what might be useful in those repos. (slogging through the whole list, one by one!? :shock: )

Boot & install from DVD worked ok on this machine, btw. Only made the one coaster, sorting that out.
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NM64
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Re: Hullo

Post by NM64 »

CutieMc wrote: Thu Feb 29, 2024 6:55 pm Hmm. Sounds like I might need it sooner or later. But I'll leave it until I do.

I'm a firm follower of Tony, the Saint of Hammers - "perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away" :wink:
If it's worth anything, some distros are beginning to have it installed by default (I think Fedora and Pop_OS! are two of them?).
CutieMc wrote: Thu Feb 29, 2024 6:55 pmBoot & install from DVD worked ok on this machine, btw. Only made the one coaster, sorting that out.
You mean you ain't got any re-writable DVDs laying around gathering dust? :P
CPU: Xeon E3-1246 v3 (4c/8t Haswell/Intel 4th gen) — core & cache @ 3.9GHz via multicore enhancement
GPU: Intel integrated HD Graphics P4600
RAM: 4x8GB Corsair Vengence @ DDR3-1600
OS: Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce + [VM] Win7 SP1 x64 
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