What Linux Distro do the Linux users of GH use?

[suicidal_orange]

why don't Mint forums give out such concise information?

I think the problem is multi layered.  First many of those who know Linux probably use it and are not aware how the Windows renamer works in the latest version to know what you're trying to emulate (I'm 100% sure this didn't work in XP...) and of those who are aware (as well as those who aren't) many are not native English speakers so there is always going to be some misunderstanding there.  Then you have a very specific scenario which you are searching for an answer to while the real answer of to how to add a custom command is more vague - you need the same answer as someone looking to rename their music collection based on the tags, though in that case the recommended command is probably going to be easytag.  What are the chances you'd find that thread?  Also every newbie thinks that whatever distribution they're running is really important but once you're in a graphical interface it really isn't - your question is about Nemo, a file manager, and the way to add the command is exactly the same in your Mint install as my Arch one so you'd may as well search on your search engine of choice as the Mint forum then maybe you find someone using another distro trying to renaming their pictures and you find exact answer.

[iri]

every newbie thinks that whatever distribution they're running is really important but once you're in a graphical interface it really isn't

Once you're in TUI, it matters even less.

[fohat.digs]

I'm 100% sure this didn't work in XP

how to add a custom command

I am very surprised to hear that this is not how I have been doing it for as long as I have used Windows, that is since 98, but I do not doubt you. At any rate I have been doing it as described regularly for many many years.

The other thing that surprises me is that this is a "custom command" ....

It seems like it is part of the most basic level of file management, along with - OPEN SELECT SAVE CUT COPY DELETE - RENAME

You can select a group of files to copy or delete, why not rename?

[yui]

You can select a group of files to copy or delete, why not rename?

i may play devils advocate, but i never knew it worked that way in windows because i do not expect renaming to work on multiple files, to me changing what identify a file is inherently an action that act on that one file, so i never thought of selecting 10 files and try to rename them.
on krusader if you do select multiple files and press rename it only renames the last file you selected, which is more along the lines of what i expected to happen, well i expected nothing to happen at all tbh.
And i did not know it would do that even after searching for mass renaming on windows and ending up creating a VBA macro to do it (well it the end it needed to do more than mass renaming, also it needed to find clues about the name it should use in the files, but that was not in the project at the start).
Another explanation comes from the Unix philosophy, a program should do one thing and do it well, there are already a few linux programs that do mass renaming very well, why then take the risk of making it worse by adding it to your program instead of using those? (yeah integration and user experience, but that was not talked about when unix was created )

also if you want to have a little insight, renaming is not that basic, you do not have rename in CLI or in most computer languages, it is either move, or even copy and delete depending on the level. the real basics are open, write and delete.

[suicidal_orange]

I'm 100% sure this didn't work in XP

I am very surprised to hear that this is not how I have been doing it for as long as I have used Windows, that is since 98, but I do not doubt you. At any rate I have been doing it as described regularly for many many years.

i never knew it worked that way in windows because i do not expect renaming to work on multiple files, to me changing what identify a file is inherently an action that act on that one file, so i never thought of selecting 10 files and try to rename them.

I'm now thinking fohat may well be right and like yui I didn't expect it to work so never tried.  If I want to rename a group of files I wouldn't want them all to have a predefined suffix, especially one containing special characters (was more important in Win98/DOS)  Most of my mass renaming through the years is of music files, either using tags or adding/removing spaces or making capitalisation consistent so the built in Windows function is useless to me.

The joy of living - people think differently and do different things.  A well paid programmer at Microsoft assumes they know best and codes one set action while (probably) an unpaid student writes a really flexible renamer that can do many things.  Fohat doesn't want Thunar so wouldn't it have been better if the renamer was standalone, in the old Unix way?  To me it would.

Once you're in TUI, it matters even less.

TUI = Text User Interface?  If I'm in text mode either I'm still installing things to get to graphical so I don't want to translate every apt-get command to RPM while hoping the package has the same name when reading a guide, or I'm on a server in which case I'm more interested in finding config and log files for services and configuring what starts at boot which are (or at least used to be when I last messed with stuff) less standardised.

If you're happily using text mode on a daily basis then I agree - it's whatever program you're using that you need to know about, not what it's running under

[fohat.digs]

Fohat doesn't want Thunar

Oh no, not true. Now that I know it exists and see its possibilities I will enjoy using it.
The opposite of what you guys said, I never thought that it would require a "custom command" so I did not know to look for it.
And yes, getting song names the way you want them is the most fussy and convoluted renaming.

the Unix philosophy, a program should do one thing and do it well

I like that thinking very much, but am accustomed to Windows with all of its barnacles.

[fohat.digs]

Back again with a question that makes me look like an idiot.
I need to install a driver for my printer, which I have downloaded from the Brother site.

It is in Downloads but I can't get to it.
cd /home allows me into the home directory, but /home/harry/Downloads will not let me into the Downloads directory

I am the owner and sole user of this computer and would prefer to just "give myself" permission to do anything that I want, but I understand that Linux can't handle that concept.
su and sudo don't seem to help

Where do I go from here? I don't think that I am articulating my question properly on the forums.
Thank you again for your patience.

[suicidal_orange]

What is the error when you cd /home/harry/Downloads?  It would be very strange if you can't get into that folder as it's part of the installation...

You can give yourself permission to do everything you want (including filling the whole drive you're booting from with zeros...) by logging in as root, but it's highly not recommended.

[fohat.digs]

Well, I shut down and went out for a while. When I came back and rebooted I was able to go straight into Downloads without drama and follow the instructions from the Brother web site. There were some suggestions on settings and I did that as well.

Things were going well until I got this.

[Darthbaggins]

Looks like it's not happy with your printer driver. . .




Just moved from a Ubuntu build on that old Acer I'm trying to repurpose, the 20.03 build of Mint is nice - so far the improvements/performance is much better than when I was running Ubuntu/Lbuntu.

[suicidal_orange]

I see a printer and it has a tick on it, does it work?  I doubt you have lots of printers at home to struggle to find the right one so failing to give it a nice name is not really a problem, though it would be nice.

[fohat.digs]

Thank you for you comments. I only have 1 printer and it works fine, I recently replaced the cartridge. I suppose that I could rename it "east window" or something but it doesn't matter.

I got the driver from the Brother support web site and it appears to be the most recent one. I don't know what else to do.

What is CUPS? I have Googled it but I am having trouble understanding what it is and what it does. And how do I install it in/on/under/around the printer driver?

Thanks for your patience.

[suicidal_orange]

CUPS stands for Common Unix Printer S(ervice?), I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly what it does but I guess it translates settings and commands from programs into specific ones for different printer drivers.  It runs on the computer not the printer and is almost certainly installed by default on a desktop distro, unlike everything else in Linux land I don't know of any alternative to CUPS which means it must be really good at what it does.

The Driver Install Tool says it includes a wrapper which may mean it uses the Windows driver and the wrapper translates Linux to Windows but you shouldn't need to worry about that.  Is this what you used?

Not for the first time I feel we're talking different languages so I'll try again

In your screenshot it looks like you have a printer installed and from searching it is a Brother model number so I'm assuming it's the printer you're trying to install.  Does it disappear when you close the window that's causing the error?  If not try printing something as it looks like it should work.

[fohat.digs]

So, I am sitting here 34 minutes after my earlier attempts at printing, and suddenly the printer wakes up and prints 1 test page.

But I still can't get it to print an actual document. Or scan the test page ("No PC Found"), so I took a picture and attached it in case that is a help.

It all seems so close yet just out of reach. For another example, Audacity is clearly registering the music that I am playing because I can see the meter pulsing along, but it will not record no matter what settings I change. This is a hardware setup that is unchanged from what has worked under Windows for many months.

I can't help but think that it is frustrations like these that are the greatest stumbling block to people wanting to migrate to Linux from Windows and Apple.

[suicidal_orange]

I guess when you press scan in Windows a Brother program starts?  There is no such program for Linux.  To see if the scanner works open Writer and in the top menus Insert -> Media -> Scan -> select source and it should show your scanner.  There are surely better options depending what you want to scan into what format but I'm not aware of them as I don't scan.

Audacity is another fun one as it has so many options, in addition to general system ones.  So many ifs buts and maybes here I'll ask some questions instead and hopefully we can come up with some settings that will work

What sound device(s) do you have? (onboard soundcard, actual soundcard, USB soundcard, webcam with mic in...)
What are you trying to record? (Line in socket, Microphone socket, whatever's playing on the computer...)
Do you want to use that input for other things (external microphone also used with webcam, perhaps?)

I can't help but think that it is frustrations like these that are the greatest stumbling block to people wanting to migrate to Linux from Windows and Apple.

Sadly, you're right

[fohat.digs]

I always use the "Scan" button on the scanner (since I am standing there anyway after loading the paper) and it asks me whether I want to send it to the PC (I always do) or fax it or email it or whatever that I never do. Now under Linux I get "No PC Found" on the printer's screen although it is all there. Within Writer as you described I find "Device Used" as escl:http//192.168.1.100:80 which should be correct.

As for Audacity (which I have used a lot for probably 20 years under Windows) the recommendations I found online for Linux suggested using "pulse" for recording and playback, and here are my other choices:

Audio Host – ALSA
   there are no other choices

Recording Device – pulse
   HD-Audio Generic: ALC1220 Analog (hw:1,0)
   HD-Audio Generic: ALC1220 Alt Analog (hw:1,2)
   pulse
   default

Recording Channels – 2

Playback Device – pulse
   HDA ATI HDMI: 5 (hw:0,11)
   HD-Audio Generic: ALC1220 Digital (hw:1,1)
   HDMI
   pulse
   default

What I have read also told me to clear all the selections under "Transport Options"

Under Windows I had many choices such as Line-in (my primary one) and others that are all gone under Linux.

To your question:
sound devices : onboard soundcard, webcam with mic in
What are you trying to record : Line in socket, Microphone socket, webcam, whatever's playing on the computer
Do you want to use that input for other things? not sure what you mean, but I would very much like to record what is playing on the computer

I have a very nice but old Creative X-Fi Elite sound card gathering dust because Windows 10 refused to play properly with it. I dread the thought of dismantling my box to install it, but if Linux Mint will accept it I would consider trying it.

[suicidal_orange]

Scanner - yes.  If the button doesn't work it doesn't work, you may have to get used to pressing "scan" with your mouse.  Not enough people use Linux so manufacturers don't support it as well, where if they did more people would use it.  Nothing's changed in the 20 years I've been around.

For Audacity to record what is playing you need to record the monitor of the output which probably doesn't exist by default.  More "newbie friendly" stuff I'm afraid...

In the terminal run

Code: [Select]

pactl list | grep monitorand copy the text after name: (cool Linux trick - if you highlight text it is automatically copied to a separate clipboard and you can paste it by pressing the middle mouse button)

Fire up your basic text editor (pluma?) and paste in the below, changing the device lines to what you copied if it's different.  Save the file as /home/harry/.asoundrc then logout and back in so it notices.

Code: [Select]

pcm.pulse_monitor {
  type pulse
  device alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor
}

ctl.pulse_monitor {
  type pulse
  device alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor
}
This will add some pulse_monitor devices to the bottom of the device list in Audacity and choosing line:0 or line:1 as the recording device works with my onboard soundcard.  It's strange that you don't have more devices - what motherboard are you using?  Your nice X-Fi should work nicely if you want to go that route.

[fohat.digs]

pressing "scan" with your mouse

This will add some pulse_monitor devices to the bottom of the device list in Audacity

Where would I press "scan" with a mouse? "Administration" shows a printer but not a scanner. And that would be problematic when doing something like scanning pages from a book where I need to be holding it open and positioning it on the platen as I press "scan" ....

Your Audacity process added "pulse_monitor" to the recording and playback lists, but nothing else. And they still seem dead as far as actually recording anyway.

The one I most want is "Line-in" because most of the time I am working off "Record Out" from my stereo system, but I also want to record what is playing on the computer itself.

I can't get my mind around why this stuff is not on by default. There is a program named "Audacity" installed on the hard drive that will play music but not record, even though all the pieces are attached directly to the motherboard. Presumably we are just trying to say "Hey, Dude, look for the signal HERE" but Audacity isn't listening.

Just complaining because I don't know all the tricks (hardly any of the tricks, actually) that give my computer the ability to do real-world things.

Although I feel guilty for temporarily hijacking this thread, I feel certain that there are many other potential users that might have the same questions/problems.

[suicidal_orange]

I don't understand what you are seeing - I have so many options I had to add a second screenshot to show them all!  As you can see the line and mic options you expect to see are among them.

Maybe you just got unlucky with your choice of motherboard, please post the output of the below so I can look into it.

Code: [Select]

lsmod | grep snd
As to the scanner further down the page is Scan-key-tool 64bit (deb package) "With this tool, you can start a scan by the button on the machine." - did you scroll that far?  Try running brscan-skey as it may be included in the package, if not download and install it.

Once installed you will need to add brscan-skey to your startup applications, there should be something in the admin section of the menu to do that.

[fohat.digs]

Audacity had several sources in Windows, the 2 that I usually used were Line-in and What-U-Hear but I would have like a cleaner choice for the 2nd one that would filter out the random bleeps and blurts that are sometimes generated when things open and close, etc. And I know that there were multiple options under Audio Host in Windows.

The scanner seemed to install, foolish of me not to go to the bottom of the list on the Brother site. But I usually stay near the top of the list to get latest drivers, and, again, I would never have dreamed that I had to install a driver for a physical button on the machine itself !

That said, I still get the error message on the little screen of the Brother that says "No PC Found"

I really appreciate your holding my hand through this.

[suicidal_orange]

Did you run brscan-skey to enable the button?  If there's a module you might need to restart the computer to make it load first (a driver for a button does seem very extreme but what can you do!

Your soundcard uses the same drivers mine does, standard Intel onboard.  Do you have anything sound related for the whole system in the main menu?

Also I haven't checked what it actually does when you press record.  In my messing about today I've had it silently crash and in the past I've had the button become disabled but no soundwave appeared and nothing was saved.  The stop button worked to reset it.

Edit: New screenshot.  Did the button open the "scan" window?  That's not particularly useful...

[fohat.digs]

The screen button in the dialog box does nothing. The physical button responds with "No PC Found". I rebooted to see if that helped but it didn't.

The "Sound" section in the main menu shows both playback and recording to be active. Audacity plays music files as it should.

When I press the "Record" button in Audacity whatever you call the vertical "moving line" opens and moves from left to right but the sound wave is a flat line.

Am I understanding that Audacity is failing to find the record portion of the sound card even though it uses the play portion properly?

[fohat.digs]

Veering back towards "on-topic" what is the consensus on Mint 20.3? I am using 20.2 but it looks like there are some improvements.

If I decided to take the plunge, is it similar enough to be a mere "upgrade" or should I "nuke and pave" for a completely clean install?

[Leslieann]

Scanning software absolutely sucks.
We have standards for it, many companies agree to it, and yet it never works. Even on Windows.
Nothing I work on in IT annoys me more than scanners.

As for Audacity...
They were recently acquired by a company and first thing they announced was adding telemetry/spyware, while they reversed course, beware.



Slowly switching all my system over to Endeavour, Arco works great but getting tired of pgp key issues every 6-12 months.
While their tutorials on fixing it are good, I HAAATE having to watch a 20 minute video, much less three 20 minute videos to get an answer I could get in 30 seconds had it been written.

[suicidal_orange]

20.2 -> 20.3 should be painless, 20.x -> 21 might not be.  Nothing groundbreaking in the changelog (unless 20.2 has an older kernel) but it is a LTS release so you could ignore the effort of major updates until 2025, if you want to.

Given what Leslieann said about audacity I've had a look and I'm running 2.4.1 while the bad stuff happened in 3.0.2.  I can't find what version Mint uses...

If you get the line moving across recording silence it's just using the wrong source to record from.  Mint being friendly I thought it had a sound dialog like this

which is from Mint 18, but that doesn't seem to be anything like what you found with recording and output being "active" (I'm seeing a tickbox when you say that)  Everything says to use pavucontrol which may work for you but I can't get anything to appear on the recording tab whatever I record from, and nothing I change in there changes anything in Audacity so I can't suggest anything.  Sorry

[Leslieann]

20.2 -> 20.3 should be painless, 20.x -> 21 might not be.

It won't.

I know several Linux users all of whom started on Mint, not a one remains, in fact all of them left the entire Ubuntu ecosystem over the upgrade experience. I love Mint, but they have got to fix that and forcing updates is not the answer.


Audacity claims to have reverted the changes to privacy, the fear is them re-reverting. The version included will depend on the version of Mint, each having it's own software repo. This was another issue, if you stayed on LTS and didn't upgrade, you could start getting stuck with some rather old software about midway through it's life. They held VLC at v.2 for quite a while.

[yui]

Scanning software absolutely sucks.
We have standards for it, many companies agree to it, and yet it never works. Even on Windows.
Nothing I work on in IT annoys me more than scanners.

As for Audacity...
They were recently acquired by a company and first thing they announced was adding telemetry/spyware, while they reversed course, beware.



Slowly switching all my system over to Endeavour, Arco works great but getting tired of pgp key issues every 6-12 months.
While their tutorials on fixing it are good, I HAAATE having to watch a 20 minute video, much less three 20 minute videos to get an answer I could get in 30 seconds had it been written.

for scanners the best are the ones that scans to a SMB share, it is always compatible with all OS as long as it does have some SMB support, although it seems that only pro and semi-pro models do have that feature, and it is not even a guarantee.
as for Audacity, i thought it was open source, if they try that they are going to have the same problem as Oracle with OpenOffice, the community will fork and the original will be abandoned, well it is my guess.
and if you do not want to ever upgrade look for a rolling release, like opensuse tumbleweed or even arch, for a long time tumbleweed was rather unstable but nowadays it is a painless existence, if you do not plan to use FreeCAD that is...

[Leslieann]

for scanners the best are the ones that scans to a SMB share, it is always compatible with all OS as long as it does have some SMB support, although it seems that only pro and semi-pro models do have that feature, and it is not even a guarantee.

as for Audacity, i thought it was open source, if they try that they are going to have the same problem as Oracle with OpenOffice, the community will fork and the original will be abandoned, well it is my guess.

Audacity is open source, didn't take long for them to figure out it was a bad idea to do this.



The Brother B&W laser fax/scanner supports scan to SMB, which is what I'm using on mine.
This is pretty much best printer you can buy, cheap to buy, cheap to operate, can sit for years without use and never dry up, supports ethernet and wifi. Yeah, it lacks color, but color home printing is rarely economical and should only be done if you do lots of it. Take it to Walmart or something if you need color.  If you only use a printer on occasion get the Brother, so many techs are using these it's almost comical.

[fohat.digs]

Brother B&W laser fax/scanner supports scan to SMB

Pardon my ignorance, but what is SMB and how do I set a printer/scanner to it? I don't see any setting like that in Administrator.

When I try to scan the tiny screen on the printer says "No PC Found"

[Leslieann]

SMB or SAMBA is basically just the traditional Windows shared drive or shared folder.
It can also be called CIFS or SMB/CIFS (details below for those curious).

On Brother scanners it's labelled "scan to network" at least in the manual.
No PC found is using scan to computer (or drive), for that to work the computer requires the factory software to receive the file. I have seen this mess up so darn much. You install it to one, then a second and that messes up the settings on the first. Install on a third and it messes up the second... And then it just seems to stop working. In every office I've worked in that absolutely HAD to have a working scanner we ended up installing a server with a shared folder if only to receive scans. These days that can just be a Raspberry Pi but even when it meant a full dedicated desktop acting as a file sever it paid for itself in uptime. It has been the only reliable way to keep scanning from getting screwed by firewalls, AV, OS changes, etc... 

Tech details...
SMB = Server Message Block
Samba = open source version of the above.
CIFS = Common Interface File System

[Kevin-3992]

Ubuntu is my favorite. I hope it can do better.

[yui]

for scanners the best are the ones that scans to a SMB share, it is always compatible with all OS as long as it does have some SMB support, although it seems that only pro and semi-pro models do have that feature, and it is not even a guarantee.

as for Audacity, i thought it was open source, if they try that they are going to have the same problem as Oracle with OpenOffice, the community will fork and the original will be abandoned, well it is my guess.

Audacity is open source, didn't take long for them to figure out it was a bad idea to do this.



The Brother B&W laser fax/scanner supports scan to SMB, which is what I'm using on mine.
This is pretty much best printer you can buy, cheap to buy, cheap to operate, can sit for years without use and never dry up, supports ethernet and wifi. Yeah, it lacks color, but color home printing is rarely economical and should only be done if you do lots of it. Take it to Walmart or something if you need color.  If you only use a printer on occasion get the Brother, so many techs are using these it's almost comical.

i actually managed to score an HP 4200N that came from a school with its original cartridge for 10 euros from Emmaüs. it lacks scan but it does have very good Linux support, and as far i as read is rock solid, cheap very large cartridge and prints really fast. and looking at used Ricoh pro copiers with their universal postscript drivers

[Leslieann]

Nice!
Older HP corporate/box (shaped) laser stuff is almost always great with some being near legendary in tech circles.

If you can find one, (not too hard really), great, just beware that they aren't always practical for other everyone. They're often power hungry, no wifi and as you said, no scanning so for most people a Brother is a better deal, but those are fantastic, universal printers if all you need is a simple B&W printer.

[fohat.digs]

20.2 -> 20.3 should be painless, 20.x -> 21 might not be.

It won't.

It seems that it would make sense for me to wipe my T440p laptop and move up to Mint 20.3 (currently it has Win10 and Mint 19.x in various partitions on a new-ish SSD).

In the past I have gone through the contortions of partitioning drives, and back then there were recommendations to give Linux separate partitions for /home, /boot, swap, etc.

Is that concept obsolete these days? Is it tolerable or preferable to just let Linux wipe the whole disk and let it install itself as it desires?

[Leslieann]

If you have more than 8gigs ram (often even just 4gb), you can almost always ditch the swap, I haven't used one in years.

Separate home, in my experience is more hassle than it's worth.
It's nice to think you can wipe, re-install and not lose that, but I always spend more time trying to work around it than just copying it off to another drive and putting it back. Another downside, and this was the final nail in it for me was several ISO's (at least Arch based) were creating too small of a main partition and I ran out of space while doing updates. After the second time, almost right after install I said enough of that.

[user 18]

20.2 -> 20.3 should be painless, 20.x -> 21 might not be.

It won't.

It seems that it would make sense for me to wipe my T440p laptop and move up to Mint 20.3 (currently it has Win10 and Mint 19.x in various partitions on a new-ish SSD).

Mint 21 is expected this summer. If it were me, I would skip 20.x entirely at this point, rather than committing to the older base or dealing with the upgrade between major versions.

Personally, I always do new clean installs for new major releases, rather than dealing with the headache of upgrades. For the last several years, I've been doing this every second version, since the LTS releases have 5 years of support, and come every 2 years. It does sometimes get a bit tough to be using older software near the end of my 4-year cycle though. I also usually install to a new drive, so I could still boot the old OS or access settings if necessary.

[yui]

If you have more than 8gigs ram (often even just 4gb), you can almost always ditch the swap, I haven't used one in years.

Separate home, in my experience is more hassle than it's worth.
It's nice to think you can wipe, re-install and not lose that, but I always spend more time trying to work around it than just copying it off to another drive and putting it back. Another downside, and this was the final nail in it for me was several ISO's (at least Arch based) were creating too small of a main partition and I ran out of space while doing updates. After the second time, almost right after install I said enough of that.

swap really depends on the distro, when i had debian on my old dual CPU workstation with 32GB of ram it was very unstable without swap, while opensuse on the same hardware did not care in the slightest. and on my laptop with 8GB the system just completely hangs when it runs out of ram because the OOM daemon is still trying to swap to disk...

at one point i liked having separate /tmp to limit the space used by temporary files, and used to have it with /home on the larger hdd while the rest of / was on the ssd.
other than for limiting space, spreading on multiple disks or encryption, i do not really see the point anymore of using partitions anymore, my main rig and laptops both have only one partition, + game hdd on /steam for my main rig, and network drives.

(about the workstation, long story short, got a dual cpu board with 2 cpu and 32G of ECC ram for very cheap back then, the motherboard died 2 months after i started using it...)

[fohat.digs]

my laptop with 8GB the system just completely hangs when it runs out of ram because the OOM daemon is still trying to swap to disk...

I think I have 8GB on my laptop but can't remember for sure. Maybe I am going blind, but it seems that neither System Monitor nor System Reports shows RAM. How can that be?

And was yours an old problem or something that is happening currently?

[suicidal_orange]

I think I have 8GB on my laptop but can't remember for sure.

run "free -h" in the terminal, that will show you how much you have

[fohat.digs]

with 8GB the system just completely hangs when it runs out of ram

Thanks, SO, it is 8GB.

Since I don't game or do video editing, and strive to keep a minimum of operations and tabs open at any given time, what else would consume that amount of RAM?

(thinking back to 1985 when people were envious of my 80286 with 1MB of RAM and a 10MB hard drive .... ) ( .... that cost $3K without a printer or mouse .... )

[yui]

my laptop with 8GB the system just completely hangs when it runs out of ram because the OOM daemon is still trying to swap to disk...

I think I have 8GB on my laptop but can't remember for sure. Maybe I am going blind, but it seems that neither System Monitor nor System Reports shows RAM. How can that be?

And was yours an old problem or something that is happening currently?

well, i am running debian 9, so it is rather old and close to end of support, i do not know about newer version as i only ran them as headless servers, and opensuse on my older laptop did not have any issues running with no swap and 8GB of ram, really seems to be a debian thing, although depending on if you have an hdd you could spare a 1GB swap partition on it to make sure to never run in that problem, swap is rather bad for ssd though so if you are only running on an ssd i would recommend trying without the swap 1st.
and there should be a way to make the oomd on debian behave correctly, i tried a few guides but none worked for me, but then my install is rather borked in other ways too (the freezing because of oomd was from day one, but since then i forced some way too recent/ubuntu ppa packages to install making some programs rather unhappy)

[suicidal_orange]

there should be a way to make the oomd [on debian] behave correctly

This is another of those things where the distro really doesn't matter - oomd is oomd.  If you never use all your memory you surely can't have a problem however badly it's configured though?

Since I don't game or do video editing, and strive to keep a minimum of operations and tabs open at any given time, what else would consume that amount of RAM?

I've loaded a light game in wine, a 10 minute stereo wav in Audacity, a big picture in gimp and 20 tabs in Firefox including a 1080p youtube video and that's 5Gi used - I'm surprised as I've been under the impression 16GB has been the sensible choice for years but it's clearly still not required.  As a test you can run "sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=0" which will disable swap until you restart (a crash is a restart), if it doesn't crash you can make it permanent.

Also on partitions I have kept the same /home across many distros - during the install you select manual partitioning/mounting and only chose to format / which means whatever partition sizes you carefully chose on your first install are maintained.  Once I couldn't log in which required logging in as root and chown'ing /home/me/* and /home/me/.* to fix the permissions but you'd probably have to do that if you copied the files elsewhere and back too.

[Leslieann]

Since I don't game or do video editing, and strive to keep a minimum of operations and tabs open at any given time, what else would consume that amount of RAM?

Web browser.
8 gigs in Linux is actually okay, FAR better than it would run with Win10 or 11. My laptop only has 8, it does fine.

Not sure which browser you use but Chrome is by far the WORST browser for eating ram. Brave is okay, add in Ublock Origin and it runs pretty close to Firefox with Ublock Origin but no amount of blocking keeps Chrome from being a hog. There is no fixing Chrome as too much spying is baked in and always running.

but you'd probably have to do that if you copied the files elsewhere and back too.

Depends on what you transferred them to.

If it's a Windows file system it was copied to, no. It doesn't retain any ownership.
If it's a Linux file system, permissions need to be reset. Unless you compressed it, then it would depend on the compression settings used.


It's not a Windows issue, neither OS respects the others file permissions.

[suicidal_orange]

If it's a Linux file system, permissions need to be reset. Unless you compressed it, then it would depend on the compression settings used.

If the copy was done to a folder created on a Linux partition as the user and the UUID in the new distro is the same as the old one permissions should stick? (Unless copying back as root wipes them...) Copying to a Windows partition is just silly, not only do you lose ownership you also lose any read only or executable permissions.  I guess if you're doing it because you keep your music and photos in /home it's fine but the whole point, to me, is config files and scripts.  I hadn't considered filesystem differences aren't obvious to someone coming from Windows.

It's not a Windows issue, neither OS respects the others file permissions.

I don't think Windows gets a pass here, rather both Linux and Windows have an issue built in too deep to fix (or more likely neither is willing to put in the significant effort required when they think theirs is the best way)

[fohat.digs]

permissions need to be reset.

the old one permissions should stick?
you lose ownership you also lose any read only or executable permissions.

considered filesystem differences aren't obvious to someone coming from Windows.

And I had thought that I was making my way out of the woods.

I am committed to transitioning from Windows to Linux, and I have a colossal backlog of "stuff" that I seldom/rarely/never use but don't want to lose. Much of it is in the form of retired hard drives gathering dust on the shelf. (I have various outboard devices that they can be plugged into and output USB) A few years ago I started formatting (most of) my data drives to exFAT but there are many others that are NTFS and pretty much all of them were created and filled via Windows.

My current C:\ drive (created during a Windows 10 install) has a lot of current/recent stuff that I definitely don't want to lose. Am I wrong to think that the safest move would be to copy my important files onto a disk formatted to exFAT? Is it better to do this using Windows or Linux?

Presumably these are core questions that anybody contemplating making the move will want to understand.

[suicidal_orange]

exFAT is probably the worst choice and NTFS is only better because it's been around longer - this is because they are both closed source so only Microsoft knows fully how they work (this is simplified)

You will be able to access your data on either it just wont be fast and may require setting up FUSE (File System in Userspace), writing to those drives will also be slow if it's even possible.  Again, feel free to copy the big thing back to C: to test.

If you're ditching Windows you'd do best to use Ext4 which can be mounted in later versions of Windows 10 (and assumedly still works in 11) if necessary.  If you're still sat on the fence do nothing for now.

Permissions are only a big issue on config files and scrips rather than actual data like music or pictures and if it the file is on a Windows formatted drive you'll be able to read it without worrying about them.

[Leslieann]

If the copy was done to a folder created on a Linux partition as the user and the UUID in the new distro is the same as the old one permissions should stick? (Unless copying back as root wipes them...) Copying to a Windows partition is just silly, not only do you lose ownership you also lose any read only or executable permissions.  I guess if you're doing it because you keep your music and photos in /home it's fine but the whole point, to me, is config files and scripts.  I hadn't considered filesystem differences aren't obvious to someone coming from Windows.

When you copy back you do so as user into your own home dir, Linux needs to assign ownership so everything gets set to you.

As for UUID, it might work with the same uuid while doing Linux to Linux but I'm not sure the file permissions are that simple. I could be wrong, it's just not something I've looked into enough.

I don't think Windows gets a pass here, rather both Linux and Windows have an issue built in too deep to fix (or more likely neither is willing to put in the significant effort required when they think theirs is the best way)

Linux actually respects Windows permissions same as it's own, it just cannot set them.

If you've only ever accessed Windows files using a live disk you get the impression Linux doesn't respect ownership, but when you use a live disk you're operating as root. If you slave a Windows drive into a Linux system you will not have access, you need to access it as root, same as if it was another user. I've not use Windows Linux subsystem, so I can't speak of the other way.

[Leslieann]

And I had thought that I was making my way out of the woods.

I am committed to transitioning from Windows to Linux, and I have a colossal backlog of "stuff" that I seldom/rarely/never use but don't want to lose. Much of it is in the form of retired hard drives gathering dust on the shelf. (I have various outboard devices that they can be plugged into and output USB) A few years ago I started formatting (most of) my data drives to exFAT but there are many others that are NTFS and pretty much all of them were created and filled via Windows.

My current C:\ drive (created during a Windows 10 install) has a lot of current/recent stuff that I definitely don't want to lose. Am I wrong to think that the safest move would be to copy my important files onto a disk formatted to exFAT? Is it better to do this using Windows or Linux?

Presumably these are core questions that anybody contemplating making the move will want to understand.

As S.O. said, exFAT is probably not the best choice, NTFS is pretty much the easiest most universal.

I think you're over thinking it, just leave the stuff on your old drives as is.
It's pretty hard to get locked out of anything so long as you have physical access to it.

Just leave it, it's not going anywhere and you can always revisit it if you need to.

[yui]

there should be a way to make the oomd [on debian] behave correctly

This is another of those things where the distro really doesn't matter - oomd is oomd.  If you never use all your memory you surely can't have a problem however badly it's configured though?

Since I don't game or do video editing, and strive to keep a minimum of operations and tabs open at any given time, what else would consume that amount of RAM?

I've loaded a light game in wine, a 10 minute stereo wav in Audacity, a big picture in gimp and 20 tabs in Firefox including a 1080p youtube video and that's 5Gi used - I'm surprised as I've been under the impression 16GB has been the sensible choice for years but it's clearly still not required.  As a test you can run "sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=0" which will disable swap until you restart (a crash is a restart), if it doesn't crash you can make it permanent.

Also on partitions I have kept the same /home across many distros - during the install you select manual partitioning/mounting and only chose to format / which means whatever partition sizes you carefully chose on your first install are maintained.  Once I couldn't log in which required logging in as root and chown'ing /home/me/* and /home/me/.* to fix the permissions but you'd probably have to do that if you copied the files elsewhere and back too.

i do have some apps that are huge memory hogs in the long run, like FF with 400+tabs (depending on what is loaded, using from 2 to 6GB), discord (seen it hit 4GB on some versions) and steam (also sometimes hits in the 3GB used if ran for long enough), and i tried vm.swappiness=0, seems to have done nothing, also telling OOMD to start only after memory is completely full, none worked, still hangs the system at 6.5GB used, it is why i say my system may be a bit borked... maybe updating to debian 10 packages without a full system reinstall is not a great idea, what made me think it was a debian thing is that other distroes even on much tighter memory constraints never displayed that kind of bugginess, even suse/kde on a 2GB laptop with no swap do not (the debian installer will not start on it, so can't try, well i could but it is not worth the time).
and i may be a bit too lazy to reinstall that system because it should get replaced in a few months, but then it always was going to be replaced in a few months, 2 years later still on it...

[suicidal_orange]

It may just be depression speaking but everything I "know" seems to be wrong so I'm done here.