Comments by "" (@dingokidneys) on "Ask Leo!" channel.

  1. It would be interesting to know what your use case is - what software do you need to use and what systems you need to access. I used to access all my work Windows systems from my home Debian Linux system over Citrix remote sessions. I presently run the one Windows app I need through a Windows VM in VirtualBox on my Linux host. There are also loads of free and open source software packages that can do what you pay through the nose to do with proprietary packages on Windows.
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  2. @ It looks like Unreal supports Linux just fine and AI shouldn't be a problem either as Linux will be where most development is happening these days. NVidia support is 'available' in Linux but gradually getting better. Virtualisation on Linux is great with support for different architectures via QEmu as well as for different OS's. Cross platform development skills could be a big item on your CV.
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  3. Not wise to trust anyone with a financial motive to truly act in your best interest and not their own. US companies can and do sell client data to data brokers who then on-sell it to whoever is happy to pay be that marketers, law enforcement, the US State or federal governments and even foreign (e.g. China) governments. Why go the trouble of putting a back door in consumer electronics sold to random people when you can just buy the data legitimately?
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  4. Just open your heart, channel your inner monster, and let him speak in tongues. Just keep the children away.
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  5. My brother (67yr old) was doubtful of switching to Linux but was constantly bothering me for Windows support. I built out a Linux Mint system on a spare SSD with all the software he needed to use (Chrome, Thunderbird, etc.), pulled his data into it then grabbed his machine and switched his old HDD for the new SSD. One or two tweaks since and he's totally happy with his new system. I have the old HDD still sitting to one side in case he needed anything but all has been good and the service demands are way down.
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  6. Linux Mint is a good system, not just for noobies but for anyone. Easy to learn but as powerful as you want to make it. I switched my 67 year old brother over from two systems - Win10 and Win11 - to one Linux Mint system and he is perfectly happy. I get many fewer support calls from him now than I did when he was on Windows. I was careful of course to make sure that all the things he wanted to do were sorted out before I switched him over. You can't just do a clean install and run. I couldn't have done that with a Windows system either.
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  7. I switched my 67 year old brother to Linux Mint without problems. He's not a tech-type person but has been very happy with it, and the number of service calls I get from him is way down.
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  8. The installation is a bit of a hurdle for people who've never done such a thing before. It's become much, much easier in recent years but there are still one or two things where it may be good to have someone with a bit of computing knowledge to make the optimal decision for the specific hardware. However, once over the installation hurdle, I'd say that most people would get on with a Linux system at least as well as with a new version of Windows. A little bit of uncertainty at first but things quickly become familiar.
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  9. If the old machine is only a backup and is likely to end up in landfill in any case, why not try installing Linux. It's not as hard as some people make out and you don't even need to install it to try it out. Just create a live Linux boot disk, stick it into the machine and boot from the removable media. Then see if it supports all your hardware and futz about as much as you like. Then power down, pull the USB stick and reboot into the old system. No harm, no foul. Honestly, it's no where near as intimidating as some people might make out.
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  10. Not knowing your real needs, it's a bit hard to make suggestions but LibreOffice Calc has come a long way towards compatibility with Excel recently. I was a professional accountant until I retired and I used Excel in some very complex ways. Unless you need macros and some of the most recently added tools, Calc might be worth another look. As for Visio, there is a tool called Dia which is similar through maybe doesn't have all the features of Visio. It may be worth a look. I don't know anything about Directory Opus but if it is a file manager, there are lots of file managers available to Linux with many varied functions. There's almost certainly something that you'd be happy to work with. Then there's always the option of converting your existing system to a Virtual Machine to run under Linux which gives you more control and protection for your old Windows install. It's also easy to back up and migrate to new hardware. Just throwing a few ideas out there in case you hadn't heard or thought about them. šŸ˜
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  11. Ā @GarretThomasĀ  If you run a Windows VM on a Linux host, Windows sees only the disk allocated to that VM so it looks like a normal C: drive. You could test this out on Windows by installing VirtualBox and running up a Windows VM on that. You may have to learn to pass through your hardware (I'd guess it's USB) to the VM but in VBox that's pretty easy. If it doesn't work, no problem as you've not actually changed anything on your existing system. If it does work, then options open up for you.
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  12. @ Many people say "Linux is not suitable for simple use cases" but clearly it is. Linux is also great for developers, AI and other high end uses. It is those constantly diminishing middle or corner cases that it is "not suitable" for. If you really assess people's needs and the alternative solutions available to them, there are fewer and fewer instances where Linux is not a viable option.
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  13. THAT is really reprehensible. I hope you reported it and got that wretch fired. I guess that people now have to take OS snapshots, create restore points or what-not before taking exams these days to protect their systems but it also calls into question the reliability of the exam results. What if the proctor doesn't like you and changes answers you've given that haven't yet been transmitted?
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  14. Ā @er...Ā  So I guess your only viable options are to either fresh install after each exam, dual boot so you have a work system and an exam system that you can select between (with the nuke and pave on the exam system), or use a university computer for exams. My old uni seems to allow students to borrow a suitable laptop to do exams if they don't have one of their own (or don't want to expose theirs to malware) or book a booth on campus set up with an approved system. This sucks.
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  15. Ā @er...Ā  Glad to hear that it's not so prevalent now. As if students didn't have enough to contend with!
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  16. Very true. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
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  17. Ugh! I hated it! I'd drop out of the GUI shell to the DOS prompt and work from there. No wonder I'm such a big Linux nerd these days. I love me some terminal prompt. # rm -rf /*
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  18. Agreed. It is one of the main reasons people quote as not being able to move to another platform. If they have someone to show them how to move to another mail client such as Thunderbird or even web-mail (god help us) they might have more confidence. I gradually weaned my brother off Outlook in his late 50's then just last year moved him to Linux Mint and he's totally happy with it. I get many fewer support calls too - bonus.
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  19. From what I can tell, FlexOS is an obsolete Real Time OS so I suspect this is not what you mean. If you mean ChromeOS Flex, that sounds like a good option for a browser based system. Otherwise, I switched my non-tech 67 year old brother to Linux Mint and he's doing fine. I run the one Windows app that I need on a VM in VirtualBox on my Debian Linux system. This arrangement may be an option for your other son. He could try it out by installing VirtualBox on his Windows system, then run up a Windows VM and install his software on that to see if it works OK. If it does, he could then export the VM, install Linux on his system, install VirtualBox and import the VM with his essential software. Depending on the specifics of your situation, there may be several options available to you that should be evaluated to determine the optimal solution.
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  20. @ Even if he does move to a new machine, he should consider what he would do if that machine died on him as his business is dependant on having a functional machine. If he has a new machine, he could try experimenting with the old one as a backup solution. Not everyone likes to futz about with computers as I do but if his business is dependant on being available on-line maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to try out alternative solutions.
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  21. Do the easy start with Linux. Burn Linux Mint to a USB stick and boot one of your old machines with that. It makes no changes to the installed system. You can then poke around and try things out to see that all your hardware is supported and then so see what you like and what you don't about the actual Linux system. It will be slower running from USB than from a built in SSD but allow for that. If you then want to give it a real try, take the storage media (HDD, SSD, NVMe) out of the machine and replace it with a blank one and install to that. If you don't like it, you have the old system on the old storage that you can just drop back in. I swapped my 67 year old brother over from Win11 to Linux Mint and he loves it. I get far fewer service requests now too.
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  22. Good for you. I've been exclusively Linux since 2013 though I've used it since the mid 1990's. I will never use, nor will I let anyone I support use, Microsoft products in the future. Take control of your life. Use a free - as in freedom - operating system.
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  23. More and more these days doing significant things on Windows requires a Command or Powershell prompt. It just the best way to communicate something complex but easily repeatable. On the other hand, as others have said, there is less and less need to break out the terminal in a modern Linux distro as most functions have a GUI interface.
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  24. Use what gets the job done. These days however my default position is Linux. Then if I need anything else I run up a VM.
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  25. The thing with Chromebooks and Android phones is that the OS is built for the specific hardware by the vendor. The same goes for OEM Windows installations which are tuned by the hardware builder to work on whatever they are selling you. The peculiar assemblage of parts that comprise your specific desktop system is not known to the builders of any particular Linux distro and neither are your specific software requirements and user interface peccadilloes. Allowing for all of that, most Linux distros do a damn good job of working as a reasonable person might expect on most random agglomerations of hardware that they find themselves waking up upon. In addition, there are several builders of hardware that provide and support Linux on their machines including Dell, System76, and Tuxedo just off the top of my head and I'm sure there are more. Microsoft will do just as they please with Windows and home/individual users to them are leeches who provide minimal monetization. Hence the bloatware, advertisements, data harvesting and software subscriptions. Don't expect anything to get better.
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  26. True but it is possible to analyse the behaviour of a piece of software. This is done with malware all the time. You see what it does to your system, what resources it uses, where it reaches out to on the local network or the internet. It may often be a breach of term and conditions of use but it is possible to literally reverse engineer what software is doing. I may or may not have done a bit of this myself back in the day. Personally, I trust FOSS way more than I trust anything from a proprietary software manufacturer. Still, it is possible to be reasonably sure that a piece of software isn't doing nefarious things. Interesting: proprietary software has manufacturers which free and open software has developers. I like the idea of developers - people who work on a project because they love it - more than manufacturers - faceless companies driven by the profit motive and marketing.
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  27. I've been a Linux fan since the mid 1990's. I must admit though XP almost lured me to the dark side. It was clean, lean, functional, pretty stable and with my Cygwin Linux utilities loaded on it there was very little for me to gripe about. It has been mostly down-hill from there though Win7 wasn't a huge backward step. For the past 11 years, I've been exclusively on Linux at home (barring the odd Windows VM) and NOTHING could induce me to go back to a MS OS. If you want control over your UI, nothing will give you what Linux can give you. Lots of desktop environments and window managers to choose from, from the glitzyest of glitter to the most austere "nothing but the facts, ma'am". I'm using the Openbox window manager on my Debian system and it stays right out of your way. The whole desktop is yours to command.
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  28. This is a solid plan. Knowledge is power and understanding the options available to you puts you in the best position to make choices rather than have choices imposed upon you.
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  29. Your biggest vulnerability is the web browser and modern web browsers don't like to work on old versions of Windows. If you intend to use a web browser, you need to find a base OS to do that from. If you are just running old software that has no exposure to the web, then do as you like.
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  30. Good choice of OS. I keep telling myself that I ought to buy a new machine but I've been running this machine with Debian Linux for over 11 years now and it still runs just fine. Up to date software, totally secure, snappy and responsive; what more do I need.
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  31. šŸ¤£I agree wholeheartedly.
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  32. The great thing about software is that if you don't like what's on offer, you can easily build something you do like. Backup software can be as simple as a couple of well thought out scripts leveraging well known, reliable copying tools - like 'rsync'. With backups, the most important thing is that you get a valid copy that you can easily restore and that the copy is kept in a safe place. You don't need sophisticated software to do this, just a will to get it done. If what you use is so sophisticated that you don't understand it, I'd suggest that you are better off with a more low tech solution that you do understand.
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  33. Ā @chrissimpson1183Ā  Isn't every windows machine a Walrus? Clumsy, lotsa noise and belligerent.
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  34. To be honest, that sounds like a problem caused by Canon. They don't want to support those cameras any more. That said, you can probably work around it by learning to use virtualisation tech. Install VirtualBox, create a Win7 VM, install the needed drivers and/or pass through the camera USB device and perhaps you have a functional system again. VirtualBox works both on Windows and Linux. You can get Windows installation media (.iso files) from Microsoft itself or if you have an old installation DVD, pass that through to the VM to get the installation running. There are lots of solutions available if you start looking.
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  35. Microsoft has a plan to 'monetize' the home user. They haven't been able to do that effectively in the past because people were happy to ride the OEM install into the ground or put on their eye-patch and tricorn hat to install whatever they wanted by whatever means worked. MS think that they have a way to do it now by cutting the hardware platform out from under the home user's feet; end of Win10 support + hardware requirements for Win11. Now they can force data harvesting and advertising onto the hapless home user along with software subscriptions.
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  36. These problems are why I gave up on trying to share files from a Windows system a decade or more ago. Easiest, cheapest and most basic file share is set up with a USB storage device plugged into the USB port of your router. Then configure the router through it's web interface to share that storage device. Voila, available to all machines on the network. Next step up is a dedicated file storage system, like a NAS, preferably with mirrored file storage in case of disk failure. From there it just depends on your specific needs, work flows and budget. Hardly any home user needs more than a basic NAS though.
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  37. Microsoft makes money on the OS in the business environment but the individual and home user markets have always been problematic I think. What MS is doing now is, in my mind, their attempt to 'monetize' the individual/home user in a way they never could in the past; through software subscriptions, advertising, and harvesting user data for on-selling to data brokers. I suspect that in the long term what they want for the individual/home user is for them to access a managed system-as-a-service via an appliance like a Wyse terminal. MS will then own and sell the end user the computing power that they want to deploy be that home office or gaming or whatever. They can then sell access to these systems without the annoying bloatware and ads as a feature, as you pay more for a video streaming service without ads - until they have a critical mass on board and decide to put ads in anyway when you have nowhere else to go.
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  38. That's an awkward work flow. And what if the hardware dies as old hardware is wont to do? At one point when my brother's similarly aged system "passed on", taking with it a copy of Adobe CS he really wanted to keep, I managed to swap the hard drive into his newer system then set up a virtual machine that would boot the old system from the raw HDD. Clunky, but it worked. It would also be possible at that point to copy an image of his HDD to an SSD in case the HDD died. I would be looking at ways to migrate off that hardware because, as much as you may love it, it will not last forever.
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  39. You can run Win10/Win11 as a Virtual Machine under Linux without any problems. You may have to learn to pass some devices through to the VM but that isn't usually too much of a problem: just tick the box. This way you have a fully supported machine that you can browse the web with safely and run your music equipment in its natural environment.
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  40. Honestly, running VM's is pretty easy, especially if you don't need to do it in a highly available production environment. You can run VirtualBox on your Windows system to test things out. VirtualBox also runs on Linux so if you switch over you can export the VMs from the Windows system, import them to the Linux system and you're off and racing. You may need to first check that hardware virtualisation is enabled in your BIOS/UEFI. Different motherboard makers have different names for it so check yours.
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  41. It belongs to Microsoft. They choose who to offer it to and on what terms. If you don't like that there are alternatives. There might be work and some pain involved but you still have a choice.
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  42. Why pay "big bucks" when you can get a perfectly usable operating system for free and gratis? The number of people who cannot use Linux is becoming smaller and smaller as people with simple use cases have no problems and developers mostly use Linux. It's the constantly shrinking people in the middle who play specific games or must run specific software that currently "must" use Windows. Linux is nowhere near as difficult as people like to make out. I switched my 67 year old brother to Linux Mint and he's perfectly happy. He also doesn't bother me for support as much as he did when he was running Windows.
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  43. No. You shall purchase new hardware. So sayeth the software overlords. It is written in the Windows 11 hardware requirements and as it is written, so shall it be.
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  44. On MBR you can only have 4 primary partitions. However there is a mechanism to create extended partitions which are essentially partitions within one of the primary partitions. This has been a thing since the DOS days but as few people need or want multiple partitions on DOS/Windows (beyond what the system sets up by default I mean) it's probably not widely known about.
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  45. That's not how Microsoft want to deliver a system. They want to make as much money out of you as possible and, as it is their software you are using, they have all the say and you have none. There is an alternative.
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  46. I agree, and since laptops have started to come with multiple NVME slots, it's a more practical solution for more people. You can even mount directories from your data drive back over "c:\users\{itsame}\Documents" or whatever else you want which makes using a set-up like this even better.
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  47. Luckily, all the things you need to do can be done via a smartphone. This has become the lowest common denominator so corporations and governments must make their systems standards compliant and OS agnostic to that degree, which then unshackles us from Microsoft. Which means that we now have a choice in PC operating system for day-to-day life.
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  48. @ What I meant was that developers often can't just write software for Windows exclusively anymore; to get the broadest reach, they must take smartphones into account which means they need to use more open standards. It also means that this software will then run on PCs, Macs, smartphones and Linux. We are not so often stuck in a Windows walled garden. I'm old and my eyesight is not what it used to be so I still use the desktop system even when I could run things on my smartphone.
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  49. You could have that if it was a free and open source operating system, like Linux. Steve Ballmer called Linux and the GPL a cancer so you are unlikely to be getting that from Microsoft any time soon.
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  50. @ You're right that the quote is old. I too am old. My point was more that MS is very unlikely to ever make Windows open source and available to fork. They have to work with Linux to stay relevant in the server space - Azure I believe hosts more Linux instances than Windows instances and Microsoft even has their own distribution of Linux called Clear Linux. However, even after releasing the source code for DOS 4.0, (for "study", not available to fork) they would never make anything available that might compete on any level with their current OS's. Their plan for the home/individual space is to suck as much money out of them as possible through software subscriptions, advertising and selling user data. They'd never give anything usable away for free.
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  51. Since getting rid of my land line in favour of mobile only, the scam phone calls just stopped. I felt so let down. Once I held a scammer on the line for an hour working through his script without even being in front of my computer; I knew the system so well that I could give correct responses to all his "what do you see now?" questions. Event viewer, command prompt, tree command, netstat. It was only when he wanted me to download remote control software that I gave up that I hadn't even started my machine. Cue the hair pulling and name calling.
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  52. Oh God No!! The horror! The horror!
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  53. Gotta be careful. Often the first thing they do is get the mark to set up persistent remote access. Once that's done, they can connect whenever the machine is powered on and logged in. Your bank accounts, social media, etc. is all theirs for the taking then. I agree that they are highly unlikely to actually install a true clandestine RAT software as AnyDesk or TeamViewer is easier for them to manage and less of an investment of their time and resources.
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  54. Bind9 - the original and the best. dnsmasq - if your requirements are not so industrial strength.
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  55. This comes down to the display environment or window manager. There are many of these available though going with one of the mainstream ones like Gnome, KDE, or Cinnamon should give reliable results.
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  56. To MS, anyone other than the enterprise is a leech. This is why they have to covert the leech to a profit centre. Sell your personal data, earn revenue by showing you advertisements, convert your software use to a subscription basis.
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  57. I'd really be concerned about that web server running on your system if you can't apply the latest Windows updates. I'd look to palm that off on a cloud based VPS. The other stuff is not such a great security exposure. I'm sure you know what you're doing but from a brief read of that post, I'd look twice at the web server.
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  58. Given the awful inconsistent mess that Windows has become over recent years, the easiest, most repeatable and simplest means to communicate is often via the CLI. This is why it is used so extensively in Linux - it's just easy to describe accurately and is broadly compatible across many systems. It can also be automated easily.
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  59. People are just desperate to put Win11 behind themselves, much as they did with Win8.
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  60. That sounds awful and I cannot think of an explanation for this behaviour. One thought though: if you have a USB wifi dongle can you access your network with that and have the SSID and password stick? I'm just wondering if your built in wifi module itself is dodgy. There are lots of cheap wifi dongles available if you don't already have one.
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  61. My 67 year old brother is very non-tech but I switched him over to Linux Mint some time back and he's very happy with it. The service calls have dropped off too. His requirements are not extensive; Chrome signed into his Google account with set-up for his banking, Facebook, etc., Thunderbird linked to his e-mail account, configure LibreOffice to use MS fonts and default to .docx and .xlsx, and thats about it. Lots of other useful stuff comes with the basic install. He's even doing his own updates when given a subtle prompt in the system tray. Linux Mint is a very good system, not only for new Linux users, but for Linux gurus too.
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  62. šŸ‘Good for you! People who can't handle Linux on their PCs have their smart phones (which also run Linux.)
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  63. Hey there now! Don't blame us corporate bean counters. We told them it was a dumb idea but the marketing bunnies got in ahead of us and said "Change the look and feel, and reduce the functionality along with it. We can bung it full of advertising and sell all the user data to data brokers. Profit!!"
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  64. Here, have a free, non-optional, down-grade. Oh, you wanted to have an informed choice? Not on MY operating system you don't!
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  65. You mentioned that CHKDSK would check various parts of the file system, including 'folders'. It struck me that when I first used CHKDSK, there was no such thing as 'folders' or directories as they were originally called. Directories were introduced with DOS 2.0 and caused confusion among the people I was working with and to whom I was providing what has come to be known as IT support. Thankfully, gone are the days of manually editing disks to undelete files.
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  66. @ Many CVE's turn up in open source software because it is open to scrutiny and freely admits its' errors rather than trying to push them under the carpet like Oracle is presently doing with a data breach that has been confirmed but that they will not admit to.
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  67. Or if a NAS is not available, maybe use the USB port on your router to share a disk/SSD/etc as central storage. Cheap and easy but not backed up by default. So back this stuff up.
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  68. Ā @zuperdeeĀ  Viewable to anyone - already on the network. If you are behind a correctly configured NAT router, the dangers are all from within your own house so if you trust those in your household, you are fine. Personally, I'd set up a central file storage. Most routers have a USB port that can be used for this purpose. Just plug in a storage device, configure the share in web interface by ticking a box or two and you're on your way.
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  69. You can actually set the My Docs etc to point to spots on the secondary partition/drive. This is what I did for my sister's machine. Now her data is kept on a separate drive from her OS without her having to do or even know anything about it. I mostly left the AppData and other stuff related to installed software on the original drive. This means when backing up the user data, it's just the data she cares about and not a heap of other stuff that is only marginally useful in a system recovery scenario. If you do want to save stuff from those directories, like Thunderbird email profiles, just move the profile to the data drive and map that directory back to where it belongs in the AppData tree.
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  70. Some years ago when there was a bit kerfuffle over Huawei network equipment, Huawei submitted their source code to a full review in Europe. The biggest finding from that was just how poor their code was. No backdoors, no clever spying implants, just crappy code held together with hot glue and pipe cleaners.
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  71. Microsoft sacked their testing staff years ago and now treat end users as Beta testers. Know your place, pleb.
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  72. I would suggest you're best off dealing face to face with a technician that you contact in the first place; some one like Geek Squad perhaps or there are mobile technicians in my area that will come to you. That said, any individual could turn out to be a criminal wretch but you might have more recourse dealing with a local business.
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  73. Microsoft sacked all their testing staff years ago and now uses production users as their Beta testers.
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  74. Sounds like a solid environment.
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  75. I'm a retired Australian accountant and I agree that it's hard to find good accounting software for Linux, unless you are in the big business ERP zone. Banks and tax authorities not working with open standards is just wrong and is essentially collusion with vested interests. We suffer less from this in Aus. The federal government actually provides a tax calculation and lodgement portal that's free to use for personal and small business users. I don't have a Windows box in my house so when I need to use something that is Windows only, I run it on a VM on my Debian system. The VM gives me control over what Windows can see and do both by activating/deactivating the network and by using firewall filters on the host machine. Grant the VM access to only that which it must have to do the job and no more. This can allow me to safely run an out-of-date version of Windows for as long as I need it. There is also the possibility that running Wine (or Bottles or another repackage of wine) will allow you to run your accounting software and/or tax software without resorting to a VM. It's really a lot more convenient that having two machines.
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  76. My brother was having constant issues with his machine that primarily turned out to be the seating of the graphics card. I think he kept kicking his PC as it sat under his desk by his left leg. Periodically his machine would not start or would shut down. I'd re-seat his graphics card and it would come up again. I've set him up with a replacement system and no more problems. Otherwise, I'm totally on board with Leo;
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  77. Ā @flipflopski2951Ā  You can just try a live Linux system out by burning the USB and booting from that. Poke around and see that your hardware all works OK, see what software is available and try some out, then you can just power down, unplug the USB and you're back to your old system. There is no risk in trying it out.
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