Monday, August 15, 2022

Booting Linux on a Game Box

I have some good news, I bought a USB stick with WiFi utility with a Microsoft supported CD long time ago but could not mount it on my old BIOS Linux PC.

I stuck that USB on my new game box and it connects automatically with the Huawei Mobile Unit.

Another long black code is removed from my clutter free table. 

Additionally, my cellphone with no voice data is switched off.

I was expecting a call from a young guy whom I tried to convert to Linux.

He interestingly only trusts bogus astrologer Manio!

He is ruined for life.

But this Visual BIOS does not mount external SATA mounted on a case, not even to retrieve DATA.

I decided to ditch the functional PC to a tiny game box to save power and noise.

PC is very slow with the plasma desktop.

It is running only on BIOS and UEFI gone defunct for good.
I did not change the BIOS but UEFI was inactivated.

The game box's characteristic are;

1. It is little bigger than a large cellphone.

2. Unlike the cellphone it has 8GB RAM.

3. Boots fast with UEFI.

4. Two New (HDMI) VIDEO outputs for two monitors. I had to buy a converter for VGA monitor.

5. No audio outputs.

6. No fan.

7. 3 USB 3 ports.

8.1 USB 3 with power and data.

9. Silent in operation.

10. Boots all my Linux distributions on USBs.

11. Won't boot from the external SATA disks but reads data and films.

12. Mobile or portable and cleared the clutter on my table.
That is the very reason for changing. Portability is not a issue with cellphones doing that job.

13. Stuck a SSD inside and in five minutes I was running Knoppix and Linux compatible.

14. Removed Knoppix only ,120 GB. Removing SSD safely secured in was difficult. I had to remove 4 nuts and took a long time due to cramped up space and very small nuts

15. Installed Emmanantus in a 320 GB SSD and saved 180 GB for NTFS partition for data.

16. Jack one terabyte external disk with steam games and saved films.

17. It has side ports for standard  SD card to load photos from the cellphone. In other words compatible with cellphone data.

18. No heating after 3 hours run.

19. Bit expensive but overall a good buy. But it is a fraction of what one pays for Apple and not  bulky.

20. So look for audio ports and  for fan if you go for a bigger and expensive Game Box.

22. WiFi instant with a dialog dongle for Internet connectivity.

Connect to internet fast with WiFi.

It has a Ethernet port for wired connection.

21. I   am going to use it for office jobs and not for games, so audio is not a problem.
I have a USB digital speaker with my favorite songs in  MicroSD card.


Mint Cinnamon Desktop Experience

First of all let me thanks those Linux guys who have embraced Linux and posting some short and some, detailed instructions in YouTube.

I just tested keyboard (all forgotten) ctl and h and got dot files appearing in the home folder.

I used to edit fstab boot configuration file in the early days.

Mind you, I rarely use keyboard shortcuts since one hasty touch of a shortcut would spoil a day's work.

The cinnamon is sleek similar to Ubuntu but  with extras.

Like Steam, Skype, Telegram and few more,  I have never used.

I have no hesitation to recommend it to new users.

Idea was to test the bootloader and it worked well but it took a long time to recognize various distributions already installed.

I have used the old rotating disk with master boot record and I do not know how it fares on  SSD.

My belief is it will not dual boot another distribution on SSD.

I begin to love the cinnamon desktop and old days of Linux with up to 8 work places.

In summary, Ubuntu is my personal recommendation but it has limited but essential utilities.

Mint has lot but installation is painfully slow and customization is impossible since installation is OEM.

It took ages to find already installed distributions.
But it was worth the waiting since , I wanted the old kernel 14.5.
In other words if you want cutting edge and kernel 15 add on do not try Mint.

One thing good was it only used English and there was no time wasting deleting unwanted languages at the end of the installation.