Going Chrome OS - Abandoning Windows 8 and the PC

[Homercidal]

Windows Update can have issues. The best work around sometimes is to select a couple at a time and see if they will install. I've foung machines that will not install the entire list in one shot, but after installing 6 or so at a time it ends up installing them.

Seems this had been a problem on HP laptops and desktops IIRC.

Today is not good either. Company Xmas party at noon and then my wife also has a half day so who knows what is going to happen after the party.

Went to a friend's house the other day and he asked me to look at his leaking toilet. Probably needs the floor under it replaced.

Yup. The drain pipe had COMPELTELY separated from the toilet flange and the floor had rotted out all around the flange. So I need to get over there as soon as possible and cut that piece out and replace it and secure the pipe again. He's got a board jammed under the pipe for now to catch the goodies... I need to find my purell now.

 

[ColoHox]

Homercidal, you're a jack of all trades...I have some lingering projects around my house...

 

[unionrdr]

You do seem to be busy between Christmas & giving of yourself in general. So go om & enjoy yourself while you may. I'm sure we all understand.

 

[atoughram]

YVW, spread the news!

Ads have become a large annoyance. Once you notice them you can't un-notice them, they're like mosquitos. A friend of mine actually led me to that plugin a few years ago. Comes for most browsers. Life is good again.

I get cute pictures like this now on HBT...

 

[IslandLizard]

I get cute pictures like this now on HBT...

That's cheeky, and a very disturbing image. Way worse than an ad for brew equipment. I saw that same image too when I wasn't logged in, but disappeared after login.

Hmm, has anyone tried to suppress that? Aside from becoming a paying member, that is, which is not a bad cure.

 

[atoughram]

That's cheeky, and a very disturbing image. Way worse than an ad for brew equipment. I saw that same image too when I wasn't logged in, but disappeared after login.

Hmm, has anyone tried to suppress that? Aside from becoming a paying member, that is, which is not a bad cure.

I think I'll ignore it.

EDIT - Looks like adp will let me block it!

Here is it's url - which is kinda surprising cdn.homebrewtalk.com/images/oldlady2.jpg

 

[IslandLizard]

I think I'll ignore it.

EDIT - Looks like adp will let me block it!

Here is it's url - which is kinda surprising cdn.homebrewtalk.com/images/oldlady2.jpg

Perhaps you can block that URL in AdBlock Plus...

 

[atoughram]

Perhaps you can block that URL in AdBlock Plus...

That works!

 

[watermelon83]

So does NoScript if you roll Mozilla. I should point out that HBT makes money every time those ads are displayed, oddly enough it costs money to run this site. So disabling them as a non-supporter is kinda like taking the candy and the bottle.

 

[IslandLizard]

So does NoScript if you roll Mozilla. I should point out that HBT makes money every time those ads are displayed, oddly enough it costs money to run this site. So disabling them as a non-supporter is kinda like taking the candy and the bottle.

You got a point there, and the old lady default placeholder isn't generating revenue.
In AdBlock you can whitelist the sites you want ads being displayed for to support ad revenue for those.

But frankly, I'm sick of seeing, hearing, and watching ads. I'm not referring to HBT, at least they are on topic, but many other sites I frequent are just too intrusive. There's all that garbage tabloid "news" around too. The YouTube prefixes are also a slap in the face. AdBlock takes care of all of them in an appropriate way. Browsing has again become a joy.

 

[Hugh_Jass]

New to this thread, but thought I'd throw a plug in for ghostery.
https://www.ghostery.com/en/

It makes browsing sites littered with ads and old pathetic grannies much more bearable.

 

[unionrdr]

Add Block Plus is working out real well for me as a chrome extension. Had to take out Reimage, as Spyhunter 4 treats it like a PUP ( Probably Unwanted Program). But it does seem likely it's allowing adware & malware in. We'll see how true that is. But with only 2GB of RAM to work with, I needed to cut down processor load anyway...

 

[atoughram]

I just added another hard drive to my Dell XPS and now dual boot to Mint 17.1

 

[unionrdr]

I might do something like that with my external 2TB hard drive. Ran spyhunter this morning to test system. No adware, malware, etc of any kind. So I guess Reimage & Super Anti Spyware pro were the culprits somehow? Like they maybe created a window for them to get in, or brought them in so I'd have to buy their program to remove them?

 

[sboyajian]

AdPlus lets you select content blocks to suppress. I'm sure you can get rid of the Ol' Lady.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah, ABP seems to be a great chrome extension. Doing a fine job so far. It even popped in a little window showing some adware it blocked yesterday. Good suggestion by homercidal.

 

[sboyajian]

Just a tip (tehe) .. If you block the old lady, do another "Block Content" and go back to where she was. There is an underlying div layer you'll want to also remove. This will remove the giant voided space that was left, and bring the Newest Threads box up to the top.

 

[Homercidal]

I'm glad it's workign better for you. I need to make some more time to get on and see if we can move the data files to where they belong or get the shortcuts pointed to the files. I've never seen a Windows 7 install get mislinked like that. It looks like you added or moved login accounts at some point. Maybe a previous recovery attempt got them confused.

I'm not liking Zorin so far. I'm having issues with video. I can get it to run in basic mode, but it's very slow, graphically. Of course I'm testing it on a 12 yo Workstation with a Dual Core Xeon and RAMBUS memory and 36GM SCSI hard drive and Nvidia Quadro graphics card...

 

[atoughram]

AdPlus lets you select content blocks to suppress. I'm sure you can get rid of the Ol' Lady.

She's gone - and I hope much happier...

 

[The_Bishop]

Homer, I messed with Zorin a bit when I was setting up an old laptop for my wife. Had some hardware/driver issues. Switched to Mint 17.1, all the driver issues went away, everything works and the wife is happy.

 

[Schlenkerla]

I'm glad it's workign better for you. I need to make some more time to get on and see if we can move the data files to where they belong or get the shortcuts pointed to the files. I've never seen a Windows 7 install get mislinked like that. It looks like you added or moved login accounts at some point. Maybe a previous recovery attempt got them confused.

I'm not liking Zorin so far. I'm having issues with video. I can get it to run in basic mode, but it's very slow, graphically. Of course I'm testing it on a 12 yo Workstation with a Dual Core Xeon and RAMBUS memory and 36GM SCSI hard drive and Nvidia Quadro graphics card...

What browser are you using?

I had videos issues with Chromium on Zorin but no issues with Firefox.

I even tried Linux Mint 17 with Chromium and had issues, but no issues with Firefox. (In the Cinnamon environment)

My son will use Firefox.

I would say that Mint is better looking than Zorin. It's totally different, nothing like w
Win 7.

My original suggestion for Zorin was based on the Windows XP 7 similarity. It also has WINE for running Windows software.

 

[Schlenkerla]

WINE can be added to Linux Mint too.

 

[atoughram]

I initially had video issues with Mint 17.1 - it didnt have a built in driver for the GEForce GT 635 (iirc) video card. A little reading and a download and all is happy. In fact I havent booted Win 8.1 up for at least 48 hours now. I was able to get weewx working for my weather station, everything loaded up so I can print and scan with my HP Officejet, Beersmith is loaded on the linux side but I need to go over to the windows side and export all of my profiles and recipes. Mint is working quite well actually.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Mint is working quite well actually.

I like Mint too. I like Linux in general. Heck, I just like burning USBs and DVDs for free Linux OS. I have three old PC's just to fook around with on Linux.

 

[sboyajian]

I just installed Linux on a PowerEdge T110 for my Plex Media Server. Thing runs like a champ, even if I'm still not totally comfortable on the OS.

 

[Homercidal]

What browser are you using?

I had videos issues with Chromium on Zorin but no issues with Firefox.

I even tried Linux Mint 17 with Chromium and had issues, but no issues with Firefox. (In the Cinnamon environment)

My son will use Firefox.

I would say that Mint is better looking than Zorin. It's totally different, nothing like w
Win 7.

My original suggestion for Zorin was based on the Windows XP 7 similarity. It also has WINE for running Windows software.

Haven't gotten to the browser yet. The video issues are keeping me from actually really using the system. And I don't see where I can update the driver for video from the desktop (when I can get it to boot to the desktop.)

I'm assuming then that the only way to load drivers and configure the settings is to open a config file in a command prompt. That seems like par for course with Linux.

 

[Schlenkerla]

Haven't gotten to the browser yet. The video issues are keeping me from actually really using the system. And I don't see where I can update the driver for video from the desktop (when I can get it to boot to the desktop.)

I'm assuming then that the only way to load drivers and configure the settings is to open a config file in a command prompt. That seems like par for course with Linux.

I haven't had to do anything like that yet in Linux with regard to video. I copied installation instructions with various bash commands and it wasn't very difficult.

You might join the Mint community. Maybe somebody can help you. Somebody probably have had the same issues and had a fix.

http://community.linuxmint.com/#

They might have the driver in the Mint repository. (App store) Installation doesn't always mean doing bash commands.

I assume you have you looked at the preferences or system settings.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah homer, I can't make up my mind how the file associations got fubar'd? Either when Computer Crisis fixed it, when the hacker attacked the start menu, or when I deleted 3 other desktops? Good to know about zorin. I'll hold off on trying it. gotta fix this thing to save stuff externally anyway...

 

[Homercidal]

You might join the Mint community. Maybe somebody can help you.

http://community.linuxmint.com/#

They might have the driver in the Mint repository. (App store)

I'll give Zorin a chance. I can't sit for hours at a time, but maybe a few small victories will get it useable.

It's Ubuntu, actually. I've used ubuntu server a few times and actually have it running my server at home. I'm not used to the desktop version of any Linux. I've never had one yet that felt right. When I've gotten to the desktop this one didn't seem too bad.

I *think* I found an nvidia driver for this old machine in the software page (Had to boot to low graphic recovery mode).

Well, it didn't do any good. I can log in, but then it boots to a background and no desktop. I get a couple of prompts that claim there is a system problem detected and I don't get any information what the problem might be.

Well, I don't mean to hijack this thread. I'll play with it as I get time. It's probably not set up to install on this old and somewhat unusual hardware. I did find out that the video card is an nvidia 5200 though. The quadro must have burned out and gotten replaced at some point.

 

[unionrdr]

From what I'm seeing/experiencing so far, I think having only 2GB of RAM is a bit of a squeeze with these newer programs? I've pared the system down pretty well. But it can't handle too much at once, apparently, without slowing down noticeably? That's the reason I was curious about a new OS.