18 Feb
2020
18 Feb
'20
1:56 a.m.
On 2/17/20 5:41 AM, Dave Phillips wrote:
Greetings !
After many (too many ?) years using Fedora 23 I decided/admitted a
system upgrade was long overdue. I chose Ubuntu 18.04 simply because I
recently installed it on a Toshiba Satellite laptop - a fun story itself
- and am satisfied with the results, especially after installing some
Ubuntu Studio components. Anyway, that machine is now a smooth-running
gun, so I figured, "Why not put Ubuntu on the desktop iron ?". And so
begins the tale...
I recently replaced my dying System76 laptop with a Dell XPS-15 7590,
with Dell's external Thunderbolt dock because the laptop has no Ethernet
port and not enough USB ports.
Ubuntu fired up from a USB stick (created with unetbootin, btw) but had
problems with the dock. I tried Ubuntu 19 because Ubuntu 18 doesn't work
with the dock or the laptop's wifi hardware. Ubuntu 19 claimed to
support the dock, that's why I chose it.
Debian Buster Live started from a USB stick, worked with the dock just
fine, and installed fine. Everything just works.
My DVD drive is broken,
The DVD drive in my desktop machine works - but there's no connector
available on the current motherboard for it.
The old System76 laptop still works (sort of) and has a working DVD
drive. So I boot it from a Debian Buster USB stick and plug a network
cable in when I need to get something from a CD or DVD.
so I planned to use the same bootable USB stick
I used for the laptop. That was the first problem. I tested the stick on
the desktop and discovered that my mobo wouldn't boot from it,
regardless of BIOS settings for boot selection and order. At last I
thought that the stick wasn't recognized because of the file system
type, so I created another bootable stick. This one was recognized, but
only long enough to inform me that there was no operating system on it.
Okay, a little more googling helped me out, I tried a different stick
preparation software because unetbootin has problems with some mobos.
This time the stick booted properly and at last I had an Ubuntu display.
Hurrah! Although I hate the Ubuntu desktop environment. Very clumsy!
From that point the installation was trouble-free -
including the
addition of the Ubuntu Studio stuff - until reaching the part where I
installed the nVidia drivers. I had added a new graphics card, so I had
to jump through a few more hoops before I finally had a working video
setup.
My laptop has Nvidia hardware, too. I've not installed the Nvidia
drivers. No need for them, in my opinion. I'm not a gamer and the Nvidia
hardware in the laptop isn't anywhere near powerful enough to drive a
game at the laptop's 4K HDR resolution.
The Windows 10 installation that came on the machine has an option to
install Nvidia drivers. I haven't done that because it seems to require
either a viable Microsoft login or a separate NVvidia login - neither of
which I have.
Software installation was a breeze and I soon had a
complete development
environment. Again, no significant problems building and installing my
most-used software.
I didn't have to build any software outside of an attempt to build the
wifi drivers under Ubuntu, trying to get the wifi to work.
Email proved to be the final bug-bear. I was able to
configure for
incoming mail without trouble but my outgoing server simply was not
functioning. I called my ISP, had a long chat with a helpful fellow, and
still had no outgoing mail capability. At long last I found an on-line
report regarding the same problem and discovered that a single setting
should be changed. I made the change and finally have outgoing mail again.
Hmm. I just backed up my home partition and restored it on the new
machine. Email worked exactly as it did before. Didn't need to change
anything. You don't sound like a "normal" email user.
Two days configuring this machine. Why I still
don't usually recommend
Linux to normal users.
It doesn't sound to me like you have much in common with so-called
normal users. My wife's a normal user, completely non-technical.
Installing Linux for her has always been easy. The only difficulty we've
had to deal with has been the same on both Linux and Windows sides. Both
OSes seem to think that because it finds an HDMI monitor, it also needs
to send all sound output to HDMI. Kind of useless since her monitor has
no sound capability!
I have a friend who's been trying to make a career in songwriting and
singing. He's been a Windows user from the beginning. He's never
installed a Windows system from scratch, either. He uses pre-built and
configured systems from Musicians Friend. Even with their experienced
technical support, they've had to jump through hoops to make Windows
work for his pro audio needs.
--
David W. Jones
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com