Computer Log

Installed Linux Mint 17 Mate on an acquaintance Toshiba NB 205 netbook because Windows XP is no longer supported.. Installed ~400MB of updates. Installed Google Chrome which they were using under XP.

Replace my fallback distro SolydXK with OpenSuse 13.1 AGAIN! Because SolydXK has changed their vision. Doing away with their home edition. Many things I had trouble with in OpenSuse, work better now.

Installed tomb encryption software. Required ‘zsh’ and ‘pinentry-curses’ in Linux Mint 17. Because of the ‘Truecrypt’ circus, I have been looking at other on-the-fly Linux encryption alternatives. Tried and used ‘Gnome Encfs Manager’ for encfs stashes, a month or 2 ago. It’s advantage is it is grows as needed but the file’s and filenames are obviously encrypted. Tomb is more like Truecrypt in the sense that you create a single file of a predetermined size.

Looked for, found and installed old Kindle Fire HDX file xfer program, GMTP. Plugged in Kindle Fire HDX and Linux Mint 17 recognized it and mounted it as a android device! GMTP [required in Mint 13] not needed.

Found/installed OPENCOBOL. Wrote some simple programs.

Linux Mint 17 backups take around 20 minutes as opposed to 5-6 min in Linux Mint 13 with GnomeBaker. So I thought I’d simply compile it like I did in Mint 13. However the 1st step, ./configure gave me “configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables”. A compiler can’t create executables? WTH? Short term solution is to use K3B in SolydX.

Installed Gnome Encfs Manager. Also does on the fly encryption. Looking into alternatives to Truecrypt because of brew-ha-ha [developers bailing out]!

Applied 4/15 update pack to my SolydK and Terry’s SolydX. It took maybe 4 hours or more. Because it’s one of the big quarterly updates which updated the Kernel also

My sister Terry sent down her laptop PC because it was running Windows XP which is no longer supported…support ended 4/6. I wanted to install Linux Mint but the current LTS is just ending and the new isn’t out yet. Wiped off XP after backing up data. Laptop is an older Dell Dimension. So I installed SolydX which seems to run very peppy on it. It’s a rolling release so theoretically it can stay updated forever…however the very first thing I had to do was update sources.list so it could update! Updates a little confusing, because the one in the menu updated much more than the one on the main screen. Time was wrong and very hard to fix on the command line. Got wireless working. Got her wireless router setup and working. Put buttons under address bar in Firefox for Facebook, Yahoo [for her email] and Youtube. Installed Google chrome also and installed the “LastPass” browser plug-in so she can easily manage her passwords. Trying to make Linux as easy as I can for a not very tech savy person.

Found out when I got the Networking “waiting for authorization” problem in Solydk that I can simply log off then back on to fix the problem rather than reboot. Then reenter the Kwallet password. Much quicker. SolydK seems pretty nice!

Replace my fall back Linux Distro [see 11/19/2013] from Suse to solydK 64 bit.

SolydK uses Debian as their base. Solydk is their KDE version. It’s a rolling release.

It comes with a Steam installer.

Comes with all codecs installed.

Major updates:

Gimp from v2.6 to v2.8 [single window mode]

LibreOffice from v3.5 to v4.0

Suse is just not sitting right with me. What’s with the continuous gstreamer updates? Like everytime!

And Some updates fail with dependency issues. And Virtualbox was hard to install.

I installed the latest version of Virtualbox on SolydK with the 64 bit version of Debian wheezy and it works great.

I may try Suse again someday because its run by a large community.

The one problem I’m having with SolydK is Networking/KDEwallet. One time Networking comes up…the next it’s “waiting for authorization”. Rebooting seemed like the only option [see above]. I guess I could disable the KDEwallet, but I read somewhere the Network password is stored as plaintext.