Well, I guess I spoke to soon, I have been running the system for about an hour and slowly it is slipping back to the way it was yesterday. The gremlin in my OS seems to be more powerfull then any update/upgrade offered so far. I think I will have to say farewell to Linux, it has been a rough ride.
Ray
Security update? Never heard of them but of course update manager updates every few days but that's mainly because it looks after all the packages/apps/libs etc, the whole kit and caboodle, and every so often there is a kernel update but all these just run happily in the background and quietly update programs that are open etc. But when I do have a slow down with my system it's usually because I have Firefox sucking up many Gigabytes of memory because I have hundreds of tabs open (all contained with tab mix plus and tab group manager) as well as dozens of Google docs. In all the years I have used Linux kernels that is about the only thing that has caused a slowdown because it starts using the swap file too much and I do have 9 workspaces open including WINXP on VirtualBox. In fact this is my system monitor window here:
I don't know what to tell you Ray, it sounds like there must be something minor that should be easy to fix but when you go back to Windows you there won't be anything easy to fix.
I just did an apt-get update/upgrade and it showed 0 items, so I thought that I would do an apt-get autoremove and it showed 238 items to be removed. After doing that, it still did not resolve the issue. Maybe my system picked up a virus, but isn't Linux supposed to be immune to that kind of stuff? I do not even know where to start with that, but I do know that there is something wrong with my Linux, and I am not sure what should be done next. I never had that kind of problem with my Windows 7 install.
Ray
I would like to ask a question, where permissible. What distribution are your using? Linux is very good to use, and is usually virus resistant. I can try
to find out some current bugs with your distribution, if possible.
Just a quick update, yes I removed the Linux box from my desktop and I am in the process of re-installing my Windows 7 box. Getting a fresh Windows 7 setup, will be setting it up so I can get my BeMicroCV board up and running.
My Linux box still contains the crippled Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit Linux install, when I get a chance to get to it, I will do a top function and report the details here, maybe this will help somebody else in the future. Have to get back to finalizing my Windows 7 install.
Just a quick update, yes I removed the Linux box from my desktop and I am in the process of re-installing my Windows 7 box. Getting a fresh Windows 7 setup, will be setting it up so I can get my BeMicroCV board up and running.
My Linux box still contains the crippled Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit Linux install, when I get a chance to get to it, I will do a top function and report the details here, maybe this will help somebody else in the future. Have to get back to finalizing my Windows 7 install.
Ray
After you reinstall Windows 7, you can install VirtualBox there and then install some Linux version for testing. I suggested this before. ;-)
I finally decided that Debian 7 was good enough. So I installed that over that old Fedora 9 junk on an old Pentium PC. Why didn't I choose Ubuntu? Well I did once and it eventually crashed and burned in a laptop that had years of work on it (my only computer at the time). I use more recent Ubuntu 32/64 bit on VirtualBox and have never liked it with that yuck new interface.
As it happens my coworker was confronted with some upgrade dialogue box this afternoon. It said someting about upgrading his Ubuntu to some new 14 point whatever LTS release and offered a very tempting "upgrade" button to hit.
Wisely he did not hit the button. Which was lucky as we were a bit busy today. He decided to hit the same button on another machine here instead. After the upgrade everything was screwed. The screen was a rainbow mess of colors and unusable.
When I left the office he was on his second hour of trying to fix the damage.
Honestly, having suffered a succession of failures with Ubuntu in the office over the last few years I can only suggest that Ubuntu should be avoided at all costs.
Debian 7 is not just "good enough" it's great. I love it with the KDE Plasma desktop. Debian always used to look a bit primitive visually which is why the shiny modern looking Ubuntu became so popular. Now a days it can hold it's own in the fashion parade.
Ubuntu's upgrader has only ever worked once for me, on a fresh install of an older version. Upgrades are a headache. I don't use Ubuntu anymore for that and many other reasons..
Since you Linux guys are 1%, I decided to be a less than %1 user group, I installed FreeBSD on a spare Dell desktop box. Now I will build a very secure system, of my own design and when I can figure it out I will install KDE4. I know you will say that Linux is a secure system, but from what I have read, not as secure as BSD, so there. I just got through adding myself as a user and testing out my first C program using cc. I also noticed that during the install Python and Perl were added, so I must be in heaven. If and when I get KDE installed I might add Qt and see if I can get the PropellerIDE and SimpleIDE source, try to compile it, and see if I can get it work correctly, that should keep me out of trouble for awhile.
So if we stop hearing from you or start getting strange undecryptable message, then we know you've reached your goal of securing yourself away someplace safe??
Best of luck! I looked at FreeBSD but it looked like it was going to take up too much of my time to get it running back then (a couple years ago). They were right on the verge of making it easy to install and configure.
I've always been fascinated to try out BSD. Guys I worked with had it running very well years ago. Sadly every time I have tried to install a BSD on a spare PC it has either failed to install or won't start once it's there.
Generally it's much harder to find any support anywhere, basically because the user base is 1% of 1%, so shame on me a gave up and went back to Debian.
I'm all in favor of getting propgcc, SimpleIDE, PropellerIDE, the open source spin compiler and any other Propeller tools running on as many platforms as possible so all the best of luck with that.
I never like to say Linux is secure. That is too much like tempting fate to me. As a practical matter most security issues are in applications rather than the kernels. The web servers, the browsers, the java run times and so on. I would imagine all these vulnerabilities are totally portable from Linux to BSD
How do you make a GUI like KDE, which can run on Windows by the way, replace the underlying OS?
You don't.
There are kernels, there are operating systems. there are desktop interfaces, there are applications.
Linux is not an operating system it's kernel. KDE is not an operating system its a window manager, or "desktop environment" whatever that is supposed to mean.
I have pretty much given up trying to explain all this. After the 1 millionth person says they are running "Linux version 14" or some such nonsense you start to want to suck your own brain out with a straw.
KDE on Windows sounds like a really sick or at least pointless idea by the way.
Since you Linux guys are 1%, I decided to be a less than %1 user group, I installed FreeBSD on a spare Dell desktop box. Now I will build a very secure system, of my own design and when I can figure it out I will install KDE4. I know you will say that Linux is a secure system, but from what I have read, not as secure as BSD, so there. I just got through adding myself as a user and testing out my first C program using cc. I also noticed that during the install Python and Perl were added, so I must be in heaven. If and when I get KDE installed I might add Qt and see if I can get the PropellerIDE and SimpleIDE source, try to compile it, and see if I can get it work correctly, that should keep me out of trouble for awhile.
Ray
I have a FreeBSD VirtualBox VM. I've never figured out how to install the Qt libraries or any other software on it. If you figure that out, let me know.
The thread title and OP would have you think otherwise.
There are kernels, there are operating systems. there are desktop interfaces, there are applications.
And in kind, Windows is kernel, operating system and interface, and each can be divorced from the others.
'Windows' can boot to a pure, text-based shell, if you want that.
Linux is not an operating system it's kernel.
Don't tell that to the Linux users... or the Distro's
KDE is not an operating system its a window manager, or "desktop environment" whatever that is supposed to mean.
KDE is the Linux equivalent to "explorer.exe" as set in the appropriate Windows' "shell" registry key, no?
I have pretty much given up trying to explain all this. After the 1 millionth person says they are running "Linux version 14" or some such nonsense you start to want to suck your own brain out with a straw.
Yeah, it appears there's no way to explain with clear, concise language that Linux evangelists don't know diddly about what they are preaching.
KDE on Windows sounds like a really sick or at least pointless idea by the way.
'Windows' can boot to a pure, text-based shell, if you want that.
But just in case you are not a troll do you have any links to any instructions as to how I can do that with the XP or Win 7 I have here. I have never seen it done before.
Ah, "safe mode". Am I supposed to be running my nginx, node.js and other services in safe mode? Can I log in from the net to this safe mode box via ssh?
This might all be possible, I don't know, never seen anyone do that.
Ah, "safe mode". Am I supposed to be running my nginx, node.js and other services in safe mode? Can I log in from the net to this safe mode box via ssh?
This might all be possible, I don't know, never seen anyone do that.
Ah, but you changed the requirement ;-)
I have no idea if safe mode command shell is of any value.
So I was working with FreeBSD, which is basically a command line environment, but I also discovered PC-BSD 10, which has a default KDE desktop. It feels a little quirky to me, almost like the kind of experience that I had with Debian KDE version. I did find in their version of available software, QT4 Creator, but I am not ready to go that way, just yet. It seems if you want something to work you have turn something on, like in the firewall section, or add something to it. Yes, now that I think about it, it is a lot like KDE Debian.
What is "quirky" about KDE on Debian? It has a start button, and icons and a panel thing. All very Windows like. It may not behave like Windows exactly but who cares? I only use it long enough to fire up the apps I use.
I know nothing of KDE on BSD but what have firewalls got to do with anything? And how is that like KDE on Debian? I have never had to mess with firewall rules on desktop machines. "apt-get install qtcreator" and there it is working.
I have never had to mess with firewall rules on desktop machines.
Brief description of my computer(s) layout. My LAN has two network printers, two NAS, two Raspberry Pi, ..., etc., so access to the LAN is vital. The KDE Debian that I was testing, may of been KDE 3.0, not sure, in order to get access to Network you had to goto the firewall and allow Samba client, NFS, and a couple of other things. It also seemed that even some of the most minor programs, you had fiddle with the firewall to allow two way access. Now it seems that you have to do the same thing with the PC-BSD. That is what I mean by "quirky", I will not even get into the install of a network printer.
The other "quirky" thing about BSD is the fact that you have to do a restart with almost every update. That must be something that got carried along from the days of UNIX SysV, I remember every time a new piece of software was added you had to do a cc kernel, and then restart the machine. Debian was not as bad, but I do remember a lot of restarts.
You also mention that you just do an 'apt-get xxxx' and you are set, well what if you do not know the correct name, or even if it is in the repository, then what? Oh yes, that is why we now have internet search capabilities.
I remember back some forty years ago I told somebody I was going to get a home computer, and was asked "What are you going to do with it?". Now I am starting to ask myself, "Why do I need a home computer?".
Less and less do I understand what is going on with your setup.
Your LAN is of course vital. It also sounds very typical. I have, on this LAN here:
1) A Cannon network printer.
2) A few PC's, Some Linux some Windows, some Mac laptops.
3) A variable number of Rasperry Pi at any given time.
4) A bunch of ISEE IGEP ARM boards
5) A growing assortment of MIPs based WIFI routers being adapted as networked Prop Plugs.
For sure things like NFS and TFTP have been working between my PC and the Pi's and other devices. Admittedly I have not set up SAMBA shares from my Debian box for a long time. Never need it.
I have never had to fiddle with any firewall setting to get any of this working. Coincidentally I was messing with firewall rules for the first time in years on one of those MIPS routers today so as to allow ssh access from the internet. I have only ever had to mess with firewall rules on routers and servers.
Certainly KDE is nothing to do with any of this. These are all networking issues you are describing. KDE is a desktop environment. KDE may be "quirky" but it's nothing to do with setting up your network.
I'm also curious about all this "restarting" business. My Debian, and other distro, machines almost never get rebooted from the very first install. I hardly ever turn them off. They have many updates along the way. Sometimes I will restart them when a kernel gets upgraded, which is not very often and not usually essential.
As for the "apt-get install bla-bla". I guess no matter what OS you use if you don't know the names of the apps available for it you have the same problem. In this case you know about QT so you probably know about qtcreator. You know that QT is cross-platform so you might guess there is a package for it for your OS. A quick "apt-cache search qtcreator" would find it for you. Or there is always google "Debian wheezy qtcreator".
Now I am starting to ask myself, "Why do I need a home computer?".
That would be so that you can chat with people like me about the problems with setting up home computers
I will not even get into the install of a network printer.
It took me a whole working day to figure out how to get that Cannon network printer to work from my Debian box. How on earth they could make a printer so hard to use is beyond me. My coworker spent most of a day trying to get any of his Windows machines to print on that printer and gave up (He did get it working subsequently though).
Windows NT 3.5.1 and earlier had the windowing system separate for the OS kernel. It ran in a separate process with an architecture that was similar to X Windows. In Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft integrated the windowing system with the kernel. They did this to reduce process context switches which allowed games to run on NT and generally improved performance. While it is probably possible to boot Windows NT 4.0 and later without the windowing system, I've never seen it done.
Note that this architecture change was made during the era of single core machines. Now that we have multi-core machines with hyper-threading, process context switches aren't the bottleneck they used to be. I imagine they could unbundle their Window manager from the kernel if they wanted to, but MS probably doesn't because their user base isn't asking for command line Windows machines.
Except having the window system separate from the kernel in the first NT versions did not help much at all.
The first ever program I ran on an NT system, my old Mandlebrot program, crashed out the machine immediately. It may have only black screened the graphics subsystem whilst everything else was still running but there was no way to regain control short of a reboot.
Of course my Mandlebot program was a bit weird. It was written in assembler for good old 16 bit MSDOS. It used some instruction prefixes to get the the arithmetic instructions to do their work on 32 bit wide data. Still, that's no excuse.
I could never understand why anyone went on to use such junk.
After fiddling around with the firewall and other things I got the network working where it finds all my network attached devices. I also finally figured how to get my network printer installed and working. The PC-BSD finally stopped prompting me for updates are available, so now this is starting to grow on me. I also was able to install QT4, I may try to get PropellerIDE source and try to build it, not sure yet. One confusing thing left to do is figure out how the BSD handles attached USB devices, like an QuickStart board, I plugged in a similar device, but I did not see a /dev/ttyUSB0 or equivalent. Once I figure that out then I may try downloading the PropellerIDE source and compiling it. Like I said, this new toy(PC-BSD) is starting to grow on me.
Unfortunately I did not make a log of what I did. :-( What you could do is go ahead and do an installation, because you have more experience at this stuff, things may go easier for you. And if you run into a problem, post it here and I might be able to check it out.
Now I have to try and figure out the ttyUSB0 equivalent for BSD, if I do figure that out, I wonder what kind of difficulties will show up with how the ports will be listed in PropellerIDE or SimpleIDE?
That may well be a little issue. SimpleIDE at least does not even look for real serial ports, you know those old fashioned UARTs that PC's used to have. They show up as /dev/ttyS0 etc under Linux but SimpleIDE is blind to them.
When you move to other machines there are other real UARTs it cannot see like /dev/ttyAMA0 on the Raspberry Pi.
How do serial ports show up on a Mac? That's a BSD underneath is it not?
How do serial ports show up on a Mac? That's a BSD underneath is it not?
The few times I opened a command shell on a Mac it was pretty Unix like. I also believe you are correct that it is a BSD variant because of its more permissive license than the GNU license.
As far as why people use Windows. Yes it's c#@p, everyone knows that. But you can plug almost any device into a Windows machine, and find a driver to support it getting installed automatically. To many users that alone makes Windows worth the license fee and frustration. If I told my Dad to open a command shell and use modprobe, it would be a nonstarter. Ditto for X Windows configuration.
I left the PC-BSD box on all night, and this morning it did not have any update prompts available, displayed, so I guess the OS is up to date. So far the OS seems to be very stable, I might keep running this for a couple of weeks to see if any gremlins show up. After that I am not sure what I will do with it, I am starting to settle in with a fresh install of Windows 7 and I will have to figure out what machine will be doing what. For instance programming the BeMicro, I feel more comfortable doing it with the Windows 7 box. More stuff to figure out.
Comments
Security update? Never heard of them but of course update manager updates every few days but that's mainly because it looks after all the packages/apps/libs etc, the whole kit and caboodle, and every so often there is a kernel update but all these just run happily in the background and quietly update programs that are open etc. But when I do have a slow down with my system it's usually because I have Firefox sucking up many Gigabytes of memory because I have hundreds of tabs open (all contained with tab mix plus and tab group manager) as well as dozens of Google docs. In all the years I have used Linux kernels that is about the only thing that has caused a slowdown because it starts using the swap file too much and I do have 9 workspaces open including WINXP on VirtualBox. In fact this is my system monitor window here:
I don't know what to tell you Ray, it sounds like there must be something minor that should be easy to fix but when you go back to Windows you there won't be anything easy to fix.
to find out some current bugs with your distribution, if possible.
My Linux box still contains the crippled Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit Linux install, when I get a chance to get to it, I will do a top function and report the details here, maybe this will help somebody else in the future. Have to get back to finalizing my Windows 7 install.
Ray
After you reinstall Windows 7, you can install VirtualBox there and then install some Linux version for testing. I suggested this before. ;-)
I finally decided that Debian 7 was good enough. So I installed that over that old Fedora 9 junk on an old Pentium PC. Why didn't I choose Ubuntu? Well I did once and it eventually crashed and burned in a laptop that had years of work on it (my only computer at the time). I use more recent Ubuntu 32/64 bit on VirtualBox and have never liked it with that yuck new interface.
Wisely he did not hit the button. Which was lucky as we were a bit busy today. He decided to hit the same button on another machine here instead. After the upgrade everything was screwed. The screen was a rainbow mess of colors and unusable.
When I left the office he was on his second hour of trying to fix the damage.
Honestly, having suffered a succession of failures with Ubuntu in the office over the last few years I can only suggest that Ubuntu should be avoided at all costs.
Debian 7 is not just "good enough" it's great. I love it with the KDE Plasma desktop. Debian always used to look a bit primitive visually which is why the shiny modern looking Ubuntu became so popular. Now a days it can hold it's own in the fashion parade.
Ray
Best of luck! I looked at FreeBSD but it looked like it was going to take up too much of my time to get it running back then (a couple years ago). They were right on the verge of making it easy to install and configure.
1% of 1% good on you.
I've always been fascinated to try out BSD. Guys I worked with had it running very well years ago. Sadly every time I have tried to install a BSD on a spare PC it has either failed to install or won't start once it's there.
Generally it's much harder to find any support anywhere, basically because the user base is 1% of 1%, so shame on me a gave up and went back to Debian.
I'm all in favor of getting propgcc, SimpleIDE, PropellerIDE, the open source spin compiler and any other Propeller tools running on as many platforms as possible so all the best of luck with that.
I never like to say Linux is secure. That is too much like tempting fate to me. As a practical matter most security issues are in applications rather than the kernels. The web servers, the browsers, the java run times and so on. I would imagine all these vulnerabilities are totally portable from Linux to BSD
How do you make a GUI like KDE, which can run on Windows by the way, replace the underlying OS?
There are kernels, there are operating systems. there are desktop interfaces, there are applications.
Linux is not an operating system it's kernel. KDE is not an operating system its a window manager, or "desktop environment" whatever that is supposed to mean.
I have pretty much given up trying to explain all this. After the 1 millionth person says they are running "Linux version 14" or some such nonsense you start to want to suck your own brain out with a straw.
KDE on Windows sounds like a really sick or at least pointless idea by the way.
I have a FreeBSD VirtualBox VM. I've never figured out how to install the Qt libraries or any other software on it. If you figure that out, let me know.
And in kind, Windows is kernel, operating system and interface, and each can be divorced from the others.
'Windows' can boot to a pure, text-based shell, if you want that.
Don't tell that to the Linux users... or the Distro's
KDE is the Linux equivalent to "explorer.exe" as set in the appropriate Windows' "shell" registry key, no?
Yeah, it appears there's no way to explain with clear, concise language that Linux evangelists don't know diddly about what they are preaching.
Yeah, but they think it's worth pursuing.
Silly Linux-heads.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm
There may be other ways, but that came to mind immediately.
This might all be possible, I don't know, never seen anyone do that.
Ah, but you changed the requirement ;-)
I have no idea if safe mode command shell is of any value.
Ray
I have to ask:
What is "quirky" about KDE on Debian? It has a start button, and icons and a panel thing. All very Windows like. It may not behave like Windows exactly but who cares? I only use it long enough to fire up the apps I use.
I know nothing of KDE on BSD but what have firewalls got to do with anything? And how is that like KDE on Debian? I have never had to mess with firewall rules on desktop machines. "apt-get install qtcreator" and there it is working.
@Jazzed, Such is the lot of the software engineer
The other "quirky" thing about BSD is the fact that you have to do a restart with almost every update. That must be something that got carried along from the days of UNIX SysV, I remember every time a new piece of software was added you had to do a cc kernel, and then restart the machine. Debian was not as bad, but I do remember a lot of restarts.
You also mention that you just do an 'apt-get xxxx' and you are set, well what if you do not know the correct name, or even if it is in the repository, then what? Oh yes, that is why we now have internet search capabilities.
I remember back some forty years ago I told somebody I was going to get a home computer, and was asked "What are you going to do with it?". Now I am starting to ask myself, "Why do I need a home computer?".
Ray
Less and less do I understand what is going on with your setup.
Your LAN is of course vital. It also sounds very typical. I have, on this LAN here:
1) A Cannon network printer.
2) A few PC's, Some Linux some Windows, some Mac laptops.
3) A variable number of Rasperry Pi at any given time.
4) A bunch of ISEE IGEP ARM boards
5) A growing assortment of MIPs based WIFI routers being adapted as networked Prop Plugs.
For sure things like NFS and TFTP have been working between my PC and the Pi's and other devices. Admittedly I have not set up SAMBA shares from my Debian box for a long time. Never need it.
I have never had to fiddle with any firewall setting to get any of this working. Coincidentally I was messing with firewall rules for the first time in years on one of those MIPS routers today so as to allow ssh access from the internet. I have only ever had to mess with firewall rules on routers and servers.
Certainly KDE is nothing to do with any of this. These are all networking issues you are describing. KDE is a desktop environment. KDE may be "quirky" but it's nothing to do with setting up your network.
I'm also curious about all this "restarting" business. My Debian, and other distro, machines almost never get rebooted from the very first install. I hardly ever turn them off. They have many updates along the way. Sometimes I will restart them when a kernel gets upgraded, which is not very often and not usually essential.
As for the "apt-get install bla-bla". I guess no matter what OS you use if you don't know the names of the apps available for it you have the same problem. In this case you know about QT so you probably know about qtcreator. You know that QT is cross-platform so you might guess there is a package for it for your OS. A quick "apt-cache search qtcreator" would find it for you. Or there is always google "Debian wheezy qtcreator". That would be so that you can chat with people like me about the problems with setting up home computers
Never ever buy a Cannon printer!
Note that this architecture change was made during the era of single core machines. Now that we have multi-core machines with hyper-threading, process context switches aren't the bottleneck they used to be. I imagine they could unbundle their Window manager from the kernel if they wanted to, but MS probably doesn't because their user base isn't asking for command line Windows machines.
Except having the window system separate from the kernel in the first NT versions did not help much at all.
The first ever program I ran on an NT system, my old Mandlebrot program, crashed out the machine immediately. It may have only black screened the graphics subsystem whilst everything else was still running but there was no way to regain control short of a reboot.
Of course my Mandlebot program was a bit weird. It was written in assembler for good old 16 bit MSDOS. It used some instruction prefixes to get the the arithmetic instructions to do their work on 32 bit wide data. Still, that's no excuse.
I could never understand why anyone went on to use such junk.
Ray
That is cool. Any chance you have anywhere to post a log of what you did to get PC-BSD installed and everything working nicely?
I'd like to give it a go but I don't have much time for any RTFMing, googling around and experimenting. If I can find a machine it boots on of course.
Now I have to try and figure out the ttyUSB0 equivalent for BSD, if I do figure that out, I wonder what kind of difficulties will show up with how the ports will be listed in PropellerIDE or SimpleIDE?
Ray
When you move to other machines there are other real UARTs it cannot see like /dev/ttyAMA0 on the Raspberry Pi.
How do serial ports show up on a Mac? That's a BSD underneath is it not?
The few times I opened a command shell on a Mac it was pretty Unix like. I also believe you are correct that it is a BSD variant because of its more permissive license than the GNU license.
As far as why people use Windows. Yes it's c#@p, everyone knows that. But you can plug almost any device into a Windows machine, and find a driver to support it getting installed automatically. To many users that alone makes Windows worth the license fee and frustration. If I told my Dad to open a command shell and use modprobe, it would be a nonstarter. Ditto for X Windows configuration.
Ray