Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "Veronica Explains" channel.

@markgreen2170 Because there seems to be a frightening amount of it still out there. And the cool kids don't learn COBOL these days. Even in the late 1990s (remember Y2K?) old retired programmers were being called back to fix legacy code, because there weren't enough younglings around.
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That's a great video. What was particularly heartening was seeing Veronica struggling with some of the set-up. I'm a very non-technical user, and I get frustrated at installation/set-up instructions which probably make sense if you know all about the software, but which are totally opaque to the newb. I realise that when I'm trying out Linux distros, the installer is pretty much make or break (like, I kind of know about partitioning and mount points, but I'd like the installer to offer sensible defaults for a first try). And the video made me interested in GrapheneOS. Oh, small phones. You, me, and my wife too, Veronica. But it seems there ain't a market for rationally sized devices, because Apple has stopped the Mini, and I don't think there's anything reasonably powerful with a screen smaller than 5.8".
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Linux Mint persuaded me I could use Linux on my main computer. I'm just trying a few other distros to make sure before the Big Switch, and a lot of them are failing the First Half Hour test: a bug, or some basic set-up item that is too hard to work out, in the first encounter. Mint doesn't do that. The language of "for beginners" or "first distro" obscures the fact that you point out: most regular folks don't want to think about their computer, they just want to use it to do stuff. Windows 2000 (and XP) was like that, and Mac OS X for quite a while while the company was run by an obsessive perfectionist. Now, it seems like it's Linux Mint. BTW, thanks for the mention of KDE Connect (or is it Konnekt?)--I must check it out.
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@budgetkeyboardist They say with office programs that most people only use 10% of the features, but different people use a different 10%. I looked at Office on the web, and there's like one or two features that matter to me that aren't in the web version. I assume MS will never port Office to Linux, because that would damage their OS monopoly; what I don't know is why Wine has trouble with Office, but they don't even promise a good experience with it. Libre Office works well most of the time, but there's just enough uncertainty about whether it will be fully compatible with latest update to Office that you would be brave to specify it for a corporation. This is not accidental.
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Yes. I got into a terrible mess trying to transfer a large (and old) collection of mp4 files to my iPhone using the new Apple Music app, which messed up all my metadata.
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I just sold an old Sansa Clip that I'd put Rockbox on. Was glad there were still people who wanted it.
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@JohnGMeadows That's a great typo, and suggests a name for a site for trying out different varieties of Linux: The Distro Bistro. I hereby release the title into the public domain.
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Yes, it would be nice if LibreOffice at least got to 7.x.x.
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6:10 I used to believe that manufacturers used customer-hostile packaging out of perversity; now I understand that it's to reduce the incidence of shoplifting--which is another example of why we can't have nice things. I agree with your preferences (though I didn't know about the Pi option). I find Ventoy useful, but the website is a bit baffling (especially for Linux), and it hasn't always worked for me, on odd and ancient machinery. Speaking of baffling websites, Debian's mess puts me off, and although I'm no expert, my first attempts with Linux did indeed start with mail ordering (yes, snail mail orders) of CD-ROM. And now the e-waste recyclers charge to accept them, and there are only so many bird scarers you can make.
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I feel I may be going back to the command line, thanks to this sort of thing. Also, at 1:30 I liked the undertaking to treat comments with all the patience of a substitute 8th grad maths teacher. That should be an ANSI standard.
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I've come back to this excellent video after having installed LInus Mint 22.0 (Wilma) on a mid-2011 MacBook Pro. The video remains awesome. What I find this time round is that Mint now seems to include the Broadcom drivers, so I didn't need to futz around with cables or a USB wifi adapter. OTOH, the Mac's Bluetooth adapter seems unable to connect with Bluetooth mice. But what I think is really distinctive about Linux Mint is the attention to the installation and set-up packages. They have really thought about someone who just wants to use their computer to do real life stuff, and does NOT want to learn about an OS.
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11:40 Explaining the options in your poll. Now I see why you sometimes go by Linux Mom: skills learned explaining stuff to toddlers. (BTW, did it work?)
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Google, pioneering AI and using Captcha to help its self-driving car project, could easily reduce the number of these scams. It doesn't. Therefore, the scamming must be in some way to the advantage of YouTube/Google/Alphabet. Here's a conspiracy theory: are we really sure that all these predatory scammers are actually third-party actors? Just asking the question.
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@VeronicaExplains Well, flatpak (or dare I say, Snap) makes that a lot easier these days. But that won't happen unless somebody who can afford even nastier and sharkier lawyers than Microsoft wants it to happen.
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I know what you mean about Linux getting better, but I mostly do text stuff and I look at Warty and think "Hmm, looks like Windows 2000: I could use that." It's the automated set up of hardware that has made the difference to me. My first attempt to use Linux was with a Knoppix CD-ROM, and I want to say it was last century. I failed, because the laptop I was trying to put it on had a funny Yamaha sound chip that was not supported and it was beyond me to do a work around, and I wanted sound. Tried a few more times, but always ran into some problem that defeated me, until I tried Mint about ten years ago, and for the first time it went the way it's described in the instructions. But I'm sure that if I could have got the system up and running earlier, it would have been easier to live with than Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which was what we had at work. And I must say that when I do a bit of distro sampling now, I still find that with some I get a hang up on some detail or another, or an instruction I don't understand. But now I know it doesn't have to be that way, and I just say "Ain't nobody got time for that." So nice to see Veronica's delight as she rediscovers her youth.
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I guess one reason for saying it's ok for 5G on the box is that it's a question a lot of people might ask in a store (given all the uncertainty that is being generated about 5G), so it's nice to have the answer out there. And, to my surprise, you point out that it's not a dumb question. Plus, of course, it's a marketing gimmick.
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I've only used Clonezilla once, but I followed the on-screen advice to use Beginer mode and accept the defaults unless you really know what you're doing, and it proceeded to completion in an orderly fashion.
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It's not just that for-profits with shareholders put their shareholders' interests ahead of everything: they are legally required to do so, at least in the USA. More power to the Debian, but I do wish they would tidy up their website--it baffled me twenty years ago, and it baffles me now.
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No mention of Testing in the video. Is it, for an admin's needs, neither one thing nor the other?
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GNU: a much-loved British act, Flanders and Swann, have a song, titled "I'm a gnu." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j53z6RfFb7U
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This is awesome. And .... Howsomever, I have two questions (or comments). As a noob, I can see myself following your lead and then getting to the installation in a VM, and not knowing what to do--like, look all over the screen for an icon or a menu or something. Please and pretty please, sometime just show that on the screen? I'm sure it's simple, once you know how to do it, but .... Also, will KVM run an instance of Windows? I don't think I will be able to complete exorcise Windows from my life, and it could be a neat way of having it around.
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The problem with Windows these days is not polish, but that it's always nagging you about something that will give money to Microsoft. Mint just quietly lets you do stuff. And I just had a really bad experience with OneDrive: it would be over-dramatic to call it ransomeware, but that's what I was thinking, and it took me a long time to get my data back.
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That's a bossy video. I want something like this, and you made me feel Clonezilla can do what I want, easily. Thank you. Also, you seem to be in good spirits in this video, which makes me happy.
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I tried Clonezilla: thanks for making me feel I could. It bears its history proudly. When it had finished and was doing a power off, I was delighted to see a message that it had found no drives that needed parking. I mean, when was the last time you had to manually park the heads on a hard drive? I rather think that all HDDs had self-parking heads before you were walking, so you've probably never done it.
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Is there a switch to send EOU?
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So I was just thinking that Flatpak got round the infrequent update issue, when you said it. I can see it's a further step away from the Unix philosophy, but we do have a lot more storage these days. And there's always *BSD. LInux Mint finally let me free myself from nagging commercial systems, so I like it a lot. Partly it's good because it is rather cautious about changes, which is, I guess, why LMDE is still an "alternative." No one really thinks Ubuntu is going away, but it's not paranoid to think that Canonical might do stuff that makes Ubuntu less attractive as a base. Mint slowly prepares to change, just in case; and it's an alternative because, presumably, they're not yet confident it's as polished as the traditional form.
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People have pointed out that nVMEs are designed for a limited number of insertions: can I ask why not use a dual boot setup? I play with dual booting myself, but I'm no expert, and I'd like to know what you think about it.
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