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  • #76
    I downloaded it and put it on a older machine in the other room that my GF uses sometimes when not using her laptop. It would not complete because the video adapter was unsupported, the latest that will run is 12.04 which is has on it. It is really only used to collect photos and for her Skype calls to family in Ukraine so I am not going to upgrade the machine.
    In my office that is running 28 desktops on 13.04 and one server on 10.04 we have three additional machines with Windows 7, two laptops and the accountant's machine which is required to be Windows by our local bank. If there is any complaint, it is from two staff who get documents from agencies occasionally that come in .docx or xlsx format. About twice a month I am sent the files and I open them in my Office 2003 and save as doc or xls or ODT/ODS. No big deal.
    Last week the company of which I am a minority owner, was taken over by a mysterious Russian "investor" who refuses to identify himself, who put two layers of managers between the company and himself. The original founder retired and sold his majority share. The new manager 32 year old woman who just came from a position in a large corporation and has no experience in either the field or in small or medium sized business needs every question or comment put into a report to go up the chain to unknown persons. She noticed that a girl in the office complained that some one sent an unreadable proprietary format xlsx. The new manager was shocked to to find out we were using a OS she never heard of and Office that was not MS Office and that started a round of high level but clueless discussions with people up the chain of command. She told me to prepare a report listing all the reasons for this breach of normalcy and how much time it would take and how much money was needed to correct this problem. I spend 2 days talking to vendors, comparing options, testing current computers to see if they were compatible with Windows 8.1....they are not since it requires NX and a few processor add ons. So the best price I was able to get was bare bone computers for 8000 rubles, office 2013 for 9000 rubles, Windows 8.1 for 9000 rubles for 28 desktop machines that have been flawless on Ubuntu for 3 and 1/2 years. This is less than 7 days before the start of our by far busiest part of the season preparing for 30,000 cruise passengers, their visas, scheduling, tickets for 24,000 museum and palace entrances all on specific appointment times, 60,000 lunches in restaurants etc.

    I just finished the report and included a chart of time spent maintaining and repairing problems in the last 12 years....most of it made up since this is a relatively small business and small business does not have time for that type of bullshit reports....fix it before it breaks or immediately after but the fix it and not worry about because there are 15 different hats I wear. I went to Linux and problems with hardware, drivers(the bain of all windows users) and up time concerns just disappeared. Even if windows and office were free, they are still too expensive for a small organization with less than 50 employees. During the summer we have 150, mostly guides and drivers.
    I added into the report that they would also have to add in a 60,000/mon computer specialist because I am not going to have the time to take care of all Russian language OS and Office since my Russian is not good enough to do it efficiently and it was never on my list of supervision duties in the first place, I did that, and the programming, repair and web sites and wrote the shopping cart only because no one else could, as typical in a small business.
    So with 7 days left of relative calm I will be asked to set up 28 machines, figure out why each has a problem with some hardware driver, hire a specialist and suffer from dramatically higher problems overall with uptime, all because some oligarch with tons of money and no sense, who has never even seen a small business or office work decides Windows is better.
    I think it is about time to dump this and go to repair full time and hire an additional tech. I have a great trainee now, a babe, 24 with a MSEE and eager to learn but I will need another body with some practical experience in mechanical systems, tools etc.
    The problem is I never have and never will work FOR someone, even though I am an owner, my say, as the only person who knows everything about how the business works, is being ignored. We grew it from a start with 4 people(two employees and two owners) so obviously we knew something of how to grow a business to be dominate in a highly competitive field.
    I concluded the report with a strong defense of not messing with what works very well by replacing it with something that costs an extra $100,000 the first year and and $30,000-to 60,000 each year after and ending up with a less reliable system. Plus added strong hints that I will likely start taking a lot of time off this season. I am not big into wasting my time writing reports that are ignored or even bothered with in the first place.

    I just tried 14.04 as a ram drive boot on my laptop. Man, it loaded fast, desktop appeared in 18 seconds....from a slow USB2 port. Unity is more polished, it even found and loaded drivers for my 4g LTE modem without asking any questions, just popped with internet connection at 50mbs within that 18 seconds. This was not in the report but if anything 14.04 being an LTS is the sure way to go. I'll test more thoroughly....when I have time between "reports"

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    • #77
      New LibreOffice supports both the .xlsx, and .docx file types.
      Looks like a linux upgrade would solve all your problems, and for a lot less Rubles!
      T
      "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
      Terry

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      • #78
        Thanks a lot, I guess I was thinking of the versions that I have used prior to V4. I just tried a fancy formatted XLSX file and it displayed the formatted shading and function results that would not work with my installed version.
        I noticed another difference in the latest, copying tables to Word or Write now conforms to the Word style that had been a complaint by one staff member.
        That will definitely go into my report. I will load 14.04 on one of the work positions as soon as I get to the office in the morning and let people play with it.

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        • #79
          I'm running the Xubuntu on a couple of laptops.
          I drag the panel from the top to the bottom.
          You can get all the latest Ubuntu's here.
          Index of /
          "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
          Terry

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by km6xz View Post
            Thanks a lot, I guess I was thinking of the versions that I have used prior to V4. I just tried a fancy formatted XLSX file and it displayed the formatted shading and function results that would not work with my installed version.
            I noticed another difference in the latest, copying tables to Word or Write now conforms to the Word style that had been a complaint by one staff member.
            That will definitely go into my report. I will load 14.04 on one of the work positions as soon as I get to the office in the morning and let people play with it.
            Another selling point for your report, is the 14.04 5 year LTS support.
            5 years for Software is a long time.
            "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
            Terry

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            • #81
              Going to Install Ubuntu 14 or Mint 16

              It looks like I will be installing either Ubuntu 14 or Mint 16. on the hard drive of the computer. I currently have an established partition structure on the hard drive as well as files that have a current ownership associated with them. I can afford to wipe the HDA.

              Currently the operating system is running on a flash drive. If I install Mint or Ubuntu 14. on the hard drive will those files of previous ownership become my files up Mint installed?

              Suggestions?

              Silverfox.

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              • #82
                Originally posted by silverfox View Post
                It looks like I will be installing either Ubuntu 14 or Mint 16. on the hard drive of the computer. I currently have an established partition structure on the hard drive as well as files that have a current ownership associated with them. I can afford to wipe the HDA.

                Currently the operating system is running on a flash drive. If I install Mint or Ubuntu 14. on the hard drive will those files of previous ownership become my files up Mint installed?

                Suggestions?

                Silverfox.
                When you say HDA?
                Are You talking about being able to use the whole hard drive or just the first partition, windows partion A?
                Will this be a dual boot computer, or just dedicated to Linux?
                It will all depend on the computer, and the Partition Layout.
                Did your computer come with Widows 8?
                Does your computer use MBR for Master Boot Record, which is a Dos Boot record Partition Table.
                Or, does your computer Use GPT Partition Table layout.
                You can look at your partitions, with GPARTED Partition program.
                If you don't have gparted loaded, you can install it on your linux system with the command:
                sudo apt-get install gparted
                Just be careful, You can add or delete partitions with this powerful partition tool.
                Computers that come with Win 8 use the GPT partition structure, for the UEFI secure boot.
                Feel free to ask questions, if none of this makes sense.
                Here is some good reading on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), MBR vs GPT
                Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
                Here are some examples of what you might see in Gpated, with gpt partitions.
                https://www.google.com/search?q=show...w=1366&bih=572
                Mint 16 does not currently support UEFI, so it will not work on a Windows 8 computer, when mint 17 comes out the end of May 2014, it will support UEFI.
                The new 14.04 Ubuntus do support UEFI, and will work on win8 boxes.
                So please gather all your info and come back.
                GL,
                T
                Last edited by big_teee; 05-03-2014, 07:09 PM.
                "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
                Terry

                Comment


                • #83
                  This will be a Clean Install

                  I have moved completely away from anything Windows. What I really need to end up with is some sort of multimedia editing system for a backing tracks project.

                  The laptop in question had Windows on it in the past but the drive has been wiped.

                  gparted is one of the programs I have installed.

                  Under Ubuntu, If I pick upgrade from the "software update aplet" will the upgrade option allow me to move the operating system from the Flash drive to the hardrive or is it going to want to upgrade the Flash only? Select the level of upgrade, 13? 14?

                  Aside from that I've been running Ubuntu 12- LTS and have a number of already installed programs in the Flash Drive. I could just dump all that and reinstall.

                  What will happen to the file ownership with the new installation. Will I be able to open files created with the current user, which the new operating system may know nothing about, or will the new operating system see that files that are copied to the hard drive are associated with a Linux user somewhere else in the IP Universe and refuse to open some of the .pdf files that seem to be directory location specific in order to open?- Ongoing ownership problem I'm hoping will go away with a fresh install.

                  So the hard drive is open. No special partition needs but security is much prefered. Probably a boot partition, swap partition and data partition is what I'll end up with.

                  Format types: Whatever makes sense for security.

                  Basically I'm just biting the bullet on this and have for the past 6 months. No Windows of any type and with the increased vulnarability even more so repulsed by Mr. Gate's multi billion dollar fraud.

                  Really need the multimedia editing capabilities and want imporved file security- If there is anything like that with the ptb.

                  Thanks for the suggestions,
                  Silverfox.

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                  • #84
                    What version of windows came on your Laptop?
                    What size of hard drive?
                    How much Ram do you have?
                    When you go into bios, under boot options, do you have secure boot, with enable, and disable capability?
                    T
                    "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
                    Terry

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      An upgrade on the flash drive would do just that and would not install the new version to the HD...but in my personal experience and from what I've read there are usually far less problems in the long run if you install Ubuntu from scratch anyway, in fact Mint forces you to do new versions that way IIRC.
                      Last edited by bluto; 05-04-2014, 06:35 AM.

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                      • #86
                        I agree, I always had better luck with new loads, and upgrades usually take forever.
                        If you have a large enough hard drive, I always have a dual boot linux.
                        On my Lenovo, that came with Win7, I have secure boot disabled, and partitioned with DOS Partition table that uses MBR.
                        On it I have 3 partitions, Part-1 is mint 16, Part-2 is Xubuntu, and Part-3 is a Storage drive with all my files, and such.
                        So I can at anytime, load a new Linux version on Part-1, or Part-2, without disturbing my Documents, on Part. 3.
                        On a new Toshiba Laptop that came with Win 8.1, I had to do it different.
                        It has no enable or disable on the UEFI Secure boot.
                        So I have it setup with a gpt partition table, Part 1 is a Fat32 secure boot part. I have Ubuntu Studio on Part 2,
                        On Part 3 I have Ubuntu with Gnome Desktop , Part 4 & 5 are unequipped, ant Part 6 is Storage.
                        I don't use any Swap Partitions on any of my linux machines, except the old Compaq, because I have plenty of Ram, on the 3 newer laptops.
                        My Wifes New HP Laptop, is setup similar to the Toshiba, but is using Kubuntu as the main OS, I keep it updated for her.
                        On an Older Compaq Laptop, I am running Mint 16 32 Bit, with a MBR Dos Partion table, and On it I do have a Swap file Partition because of less RAM.
                        I will load Mint 17 on all of them when it is available.
                        T
                        Last edited by big_teee; 05-04-2014, 01:45 AM.
                        "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
                        Terry

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by DrGonz78 View Post
                          Yup Terry I finally did my install on a laptop with Linux Mint 15. Well I first thought to go with Mint 14 as it might have more solutions to any problems with hardware. So, I installed and found that Ndiswrapper has a big issue on that version at installation. So I did a bunch of command line problem solving uninstalled Ndiswrapper and reinstalled the latest version. Lots of fun Anyhow Ndiswrapper is a wrapper program to allow the OS to use proprietary hardware. In my case it was an intel wireless card built into the laptop. So, I kept at it but just could not get Ndiswrapper to work. So, I tried just Ubuntu and quickly ran away from that system as fast as I installed it! lol... I thought about and made a install disk for Mint 12 as I had reports from others that Ndiswrapper was working great on that version. I ended up not installing Mint 12...

                          Long story short... Too Late! I ended up just installing Mint 15 and Viola!!! It recognized my wireless card perfectly! So, to all that want to work with Linux or anyone who wants a developers type workstation, then this IS the way to go. Thank you Terry for being the one that turned me on to it!
                          ~Jer
                          I reread this thread.
                          Not sure I had read this post.
                          Most driver problems on Distros built on Ubuntu, or debian. (Mint is built on Ubuntu)
                          Can be fixed with these two command line commands.
                          First open Terminal
                          Then run this.
                          $ sudo apt-get update
                          After that runs then do this one.
                          $ sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree
                          This fixes most wifi issues with old wifi cards that require proprietary drivers.
                          Sorry if you want a GUI way of doing this. I don't know of one.
                          This way is easiest.
                          T
                          "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
                          Terry

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                          • #88
                            Yeah as I recall the laptop was an old Toshiba, but new enough to still be useful. I am pretty sure while troubleshooting that I did those same command line commands too. When I finally installed Mint15 on that machine the wireless still did not work at first. Then it started working and never stopped since. I actually enjoy working in the command line world but at first I have to brush off the rust.
                            When the going gets weird... The weird turn pro!

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                            • #89
                              My wife had a Compaq Presario, IDE Laptop.
                              Ubuntu type linux was the only Linux that would run the wifi.
                              Only then, after running the firmware patch.
                              Luckily the newer laptop wifi's got over that issue.
                              Sometimes nothing works, I've had my share of that too.
                              T
                              "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons." Winston Churchill
                              Terry

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                              • #90
                                From my own experience, what amazed me is how many bizarre hardware configs ran upon first install of Ubuntu or Mint going back to 8.04 Ubuntu, my first real install. Scanners, printers, wireless cards, ,USB modems, tablets, cameras, sound cards, network cards all worked. Sure has been easier than installing drivers in Windows.

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