Learning about Linux : Ask/Answer A Quick Question thread

mkdir /path/to/dir

Hmm those temps are OK, what about after using it for 30 min or so?

What's your CPU usage showing?

 

I watched that YT link, and another one on the filesystem, and with power set to 'conservative' these are my temps




not at all horrible now ... I dont know, maybe i'll connect to my big monitor again. Its usb-c for video and power, maybe that has something to do with it ??
the temps before were with battery at 100%, but the taskbar (task panel??) said charging ... again not sure on a lot of stuff just yet

OK. so the file system isnt scary, what else should a complete linux newbie to looking at ?
to date, i've been a copy/paste user in rasperry pi land, so a lot of words are familiar, but my knowledge is thin

edit - got touch scroll working !! thanks moose.
gedit is now xed in Mint in case anyone else stumbles over this problem

Code:

Default .desktop resides in /usr/share/applications but we'll copy it over to our home folder so that the changes we make are immune to be overriden by the package manager on update.

cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
gedit ~/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

find the Exec line in the [Desktop Entry] section and change it to

Exec=env MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %u

Change the other exec lines too, if you feel like it. Those affect the options in the right-click menu.

all is well in the world again

 

Is it a high res display? It could be the GPU heating up under the extra load, although the GPUs in the Ryzen mobile chips are pretty good

Could be some sort of weird power management issue? Not sure how Mint deals with batteries - does "charging" in this case just mean "plugged in"?

You could also try Googling your specific laptop and Ubuntu or Linux Mint to see if anyone else has similar issues.

That channel has a few other intro type videos which you may find helpful. For the terminal, I've found the best way to learn is often to just follow tutorials and you'll pick up the basics pretty quickly. It's a bit dumb but I used to type commands rather than copy-pasting to force myself to actually think about what the commands are doing, rather than just robotically following instructions.

 

Is it a high res display? It could be the GPU heating up under the extra load, although the GPUs in the Ryzen mobile chips are pretty good

3840x1600 , gpu was sitting at 65C. ​

Could be some sort of weird power management issue? Not sure how Mint deals with batteries - does "charging" in this case just mean "plugged in"?

"Fully Charged" when using the barrel jack to supply power. Seems Mint isnt very up to date with USB-C PD ??
or its just this bloody HP laptop ​

You could also try Googling your specific laptop and Ubuntu or Linux Mint to see if anyone else has similar issues.

Yep. On it. ​

That channel has a few other intro type videos which you may find helpful. For the terminal, I've found the best way to learn is often to just follow tutorials and you'll pick up the basics pretty quickly. It's a bit dumb but I used to type commands rather than copy-pasting to force myself to actually think about what the commands are doing, rather than just robotically following instructions.

I agree on the typing stuff out, it does make me stop and think about what's going on​

I think I'll try Ubuntu or ??? (feel free to suggest something that noob friendly and multimedia ready and see if the weirdness goes away.
If not than back to win10 for this box

 

they're all as noob friendly as the effort you're willing to put in. make no mistake there will be effort required (and frustration at times) researching ways of doing things and sometimes having to figure out the differences between the help you get for one ditro vs. what you need to do for whatever you're using. Also unlearning the Windows way of doing things will take some time.

Ubuntu has a massive community so there's always lots of unbuntu specific help. as there is for Arch.

I've used Fedora as my daily driver for over a decade now, no Windows at my place at all.

 

thanks.
it cant be any more frustrating than win10.
the way it shoves "updates" in is just unacceptable to me.

 

There's probably not much point trying Ubuntu, as it's pretty similar to Mint (Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu).

You could give Arch a spin - I'd recommend Manjaro as a great beginner friendly distro that has more up-to-date packages than the Ubuntu derivatives. Who knows, there might be a fix for your issues in there somewhere.

May as well try a different desktop environment while you're at it. There are a heap of different DEs supported on Manjaro.

 

In this specific case, I respectfully disagree.

Citing MUTMAN 's issue with the touch controls, Ubuntu's Unity desktop is a little further ahead than Mint's default.

And as much as Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu, I find Ubuntu's community far better, and issues around desktop things have a little more effort put into them. Other things (drivers, kernel, etc) are all fairly similar though I'll admit.

I think if it's early days and you haven't invested a lot of time to date, I would attempt Ubuntu, despite my usual "don't distro-hop" advice, in this specific case.

 

I'm just grabbing virtual box and I'll try a couple of distro
i have manjaro plasma and i still wanted to give ubuntu a taste test

thanks fellas. just be careful, you'll become my support mechanism

 

reporting back to close the loop
manjaro was a pleasent enough looking and feeling OS, but very much the same issues. wifi was even more flakey, coming and going a lot ...
kubuntu was even worse than mint, lappy was running super hot and i could not for the life of me get any sort of network connectivity
so in the end i've bitten the bullet and returned to you know what. but it works as intended, and i get facial recognition to login too.

anyway i guess the takeaway from all of this is next time i'll look for a laptop with linux drivers availabe (there must be a few around ???)
from my point of view; mint was actually very easy to drive, so aside from the weird power and touchscreen issues, it was a fairly nice experience and worth the time i spent, even if it didnt work out this time.
I think after xmas i might grab a the old ssd and do a dual boot on the desktop rig and go linux mint on that. predicting I'll enjoy that, and hopefully plenty of drivers around for my bits and peices (fingers crossed)

thanks to magicmoose for the help, and others for advice
appreciated

 

If wifi's the problem, just replace the wifi card... it's bloody rare in 2020 for wifi cards to be firmware whitelisted, you can buy a recent intel or atheros card on ebay for comparative pocket change compared to switching laptops

 

i dropped a intel vPro 9260 into this about two days after i bought it. hard to imagine why it wouldnt work under linux ??? no doubt my lack of linux guru skills didnt help
the issue wasnt just wifi, i had that working in Mint, but the lack of drivers for everything else. no biometrics, no control over power and fan, weird touch screen, weird touch pad, the list of 'niggle' was more than i had put up here initially. a few little things i could of seen my way past. but the heat was just a deal breaker.
this isnt an attack on linux, i point the finger at HP. surely they should invest in linux drivers ...
anyway, too late now, W10 back in and this thing is barely above ambient temps to the touch.

 

Apologies for jumping in late on this. One comment, one question:

"Drivers" in Linux are quite different to Windows. The kernel contains modules, which are the equivalent of drivers in Windows. More important to note the kernel version in that case.

Again, apologies for coming in late, but a quick skim didn't help me find the make and model of your laptop. What was that? And does it have any customisations to make it different from the default configuration?

One thing of note: Nvidia don't play nice with open source. It's common for Nvidia GPUs to require the third party binary modules ("drivers") installed to play ball nicely, and do things like power throttle correctly. So if you've got that hardware in there, it could be part of the issue.

If you're still keen to go down this path, I can come visit over the next week or so while I'm on leave, and take a look if you like.

 

very much appreciate the offer mate. but honestly, it's back and running and that's all that matters in the end
i might take up your offer on the desktop rig if i run into troubles though

 

https://explainshell.com/

i'm finding this to be somewhat useful but it of course cantr explain the "why?"
eg. why would i do this --> sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/network/99-default.link
i get i'm removing it, but why ?

oh context. just playing around with OMV on a pi4 ...

 

What's inside the file?

 

ummm
too late to tell now, i've "rm'd" that sucker
i should of added this was on buster-lite for the pi
i did do prior to committing, a bit of a google, and this file is used for

i'm guessing its because OMV uses its own naming scheme ???

also correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm placing a lot of faith on the author when i do something like
wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install | sudo bash
as that's a lengthy script and could be just about installing anything ??

no biggie, just playing for now
i think i'll eventually go ubuntu on this pi and have a few things running on it

 

Yes you are, but the wonderful thing about open source is that you can... just look at the source code before you run it...

Although realistically it's difficult to review every single thing you run before you do it. You can see how impractical that can get. At some level, you have to make a decision on what criteria you're going to use to trust the source of the code, rather than the code itself - is it hosted on a reputable website? has it been downloaded by enough other people? Unless you wish to review each line of code, you have to make that choice. If you trust the source of the code, then by extension, you trust the code.

In the case of bash scripts like that though, you could simply drop the pipe and download the file first to review it, and then run it as a 2nd step. ie:

Code:

$ wget https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install
$ cat install # or vi, or whatever
$ sudo bash install

 

it's worse when you download a pre-compiled closed source executable for windows/mac etc. because you don't have the choice the examine the code.


one way to help mitigate security concerns, is set yourself up either some virtual machines or a docker/k8s environment, then when you run the code it's sand boxed - limiting any possible damage.

 

very new to linux

Just downloaded an app that requires compiling and installing, whats the difference between installing in /usr/local as opposed to $HOME?

EDIT: to be honest still trying to get my head around why/how to compile software to be able to install it. For this particular software the alternative is for me to download it from Snapstore, but I do want to understand this method as well.