Monday, October 13, 2014

Would you change your computer or the Operating system?


 
Question Five 5 an Update

Would you change your computer or the Operating system?

Coming back to question 5 one should not change the computer or the operating system, if it is doing right, the donkey/horse work for you.

It is just a waste of time.

I have almost (probably I will go on till December) finished testing Linux distributions.
The latest releases come from now onwards till January and I have to check them for the sake of completeness and archiving.
In fact I have published my findings in a book at Amazon.

The most important thing is that if you are not changing like me, make sure you have an archived copy of your operating system.

After 5 years one cannot find a copy out there in the web.
There are no archives.

It is going to be so because of the "sea change" happening.
Tablets and Cloud computing.
I have a nice DVD with all the utilities which I downloaded when I was abroad in 2009.
Linpus DVD, which is pretty good and all the utilities and Maya too.
I cannot find an archive to download it/them.
Instead Linpus Light 1.4 is there which is for tablets.
They are changing.
I could not download ALT Linux English Version (from Russia) like the Linpus Linux when abroad.
It supports schools in Russia and I was thinking it would be useful for us too,
in Sri-Lanka.
After some hours of search, I managed to find the English Version and I am trying to download it for the last 10 days but could not finish it.
Once the point to point broke at 1.2 GiB.
Then after another search found the torrent and has only two seeders and one is always in sleep mode.
It is currently 2.5 GiB and need another 3 days to download at the current speed.
The bottom line is keep your CD/DVDs safe.
You do not know when you need them.
When you really need a copy it is no longer available for you in the web.
Mind you unlike Microsoft there is no limit for re-using the Linux CD/DVD for re-installing.
That is another reason I love Linux.
I have huge archive now and may never use them for my work but if a guy/s having searched and was crying that he/she could not find a copy he or she may approach me and kindly ask please could I have a copy.
I will oblige.
But you must not forget to say "Thank You".

Update
I have not changed my operating system, Peppermint for over a year, even though Peppermint 5 is out.
The version I use is 4.
There is a caveat.
I cannot update some utilities which come with Peppermint 5.
There are issues called dependency issues.
Peppermint is a light weight distribution and that is the reason I use it.
So, once you have installed it, one should download all the utilities that come with the version, before the next rolling version is out.
Usually it is about 6 months.
So one has enough time to download the things one needs.
The only difficulty I have found with Peppermint was “its history clog”s up all the deleted files in memory.
This fills up your hard drive, I could not simply use Libre Office.
I thought the problem was with Libre Office initially but it was not.
To overcome this one can do two things.
If you have downloaded a large file say an image Linux of 4 GiB, then cut and paste it into an external drive, instead of deleting it.
That does the trick.
The other option is to go to the “Thrash Can” and delete each file one by one which takes time.
If in case, one finds that the latest utility cannot be installed due to dependency issue, one has to installed the latest version.
Arch Linux has a way of dealing with this but it is not a distribution for a novice or on who is using Linux as a hobby.
It is generally for the experts.
Nice derivatives of Arch Linux (read Linux Magazine) have come up but they cannot keep pace with the changing scenario in Linux.
That is why I say stick with the system which is stable and doing the good work.