On 11/11/21 11:38 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 11/11/21 17:22, 166p1 wrote:
>> On 11/10/21 9:42 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>>>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>>>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>>>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>>>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>>>>> maybe not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>>>>> engines or on Forums.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>>>>    *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>>>>    you through to an answer very well either.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>>>>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>>>>> at least peripherally.
>>>>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>>>>
>>>>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>>>>
>>>>    Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>>>    problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>>>    it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>>>    hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>>>    and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>>>    if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>>>    there ...).
>>>>
>>>>    I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>>>    with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>>>    would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>>>    of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>>>    kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>>>    lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>>>    replacing the defective default being set
>>>>    *somewhere*.
>>>>
>>>>    The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>>>    the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>>>    interactions.
>>>
>>>      Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
>>> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
>>> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
>>> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.
>>
>>
>>    I'm not going to take away your GUI ... indeed I've
>>    been putting them on servers for a long time now
>>    because they're so handy. Decent GUI tools can
>>    accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do
>>    in tweaking dozens of config files with a text
>>    editor (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).
>>
>>    But, if I need to edit one or two files, I'm as
>>    likely to use 'nano' on the commmand line as
>>    'leafpad' or whatever in a GUI.
>>
>>    My point here is that GUIs are *complicated*
>>    collections of software - I doubt there's ANY
>>    ONE PERSON now that totally understands
>>    something like KDE, or maybe even LXDE, much
>>    less the 'X' or Wayland underneath. Too complex,
>>    too many contantly-moving sub-apps. People become
>>    specialists. Maybe they talk to each other,
>>    maybe they don't.
>>
>>    I always put 'X' and LXDE on servers ... 'X' is
>>    old and somebody knows how to fix it and LXDE
>>    is the minimum "nice" GUI. Still hate LxQt ...
>>    the supposed replacement ....
>>
>>>      My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting.  Sunday
>>> at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
>>> he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
>>> non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
>>> how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
>>> to spend working on that.  We are in San Francisco by the
>>> way and he was coming in from B.C, CA.  Another of our
>>> experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
>>> family presently.  That time of year.
>>>
>>>      Personally being totally inexpert and barely
>>> capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
>>> of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
>>> Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
>>> to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
>>> Team Amiga mailing list.
>>>
>>>         I am very good at asking for help as long as
>>> I can keep the Latitude E7450 online.  It comes from
>>> having an overly large vocabulary, i think.
>>>
>>>      Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
>>> Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
>>> Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
>>> learn or help others learn about the simplicity
>>> underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the  workers
>>> who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
>>> Desktop Environments.
>>>
>>>      And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
>>> to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.
>
>     At 5.15.1 now.

Avoid point.zero distros :-)

>>
>>    As I said, "help pages" can be great - IF you have
>>    a common sort of problem. If it's something WEIRD,
>>    something requiring explainations in both directions,
>>    then forums, including usenet, are the only good way.
>>    You can get half a dozen specialists/semi-specialists
>>    in on the issue.
>>
>>    As for PCLinuxOS ... it's a pretty good distro for
>>    people who mostly used Winders.
>
>     Well I mostly used AmigaOS 1.3-3.9 while the A2000
> continued to work.  I tried out XP on a laptop and swiched
> to Mandriva Linux before I could be seriously damaged.
>
>     But KDE helps me make it look like the Amiga Workbench.

Bought and Amiga-1000 ... had to give 'em TWO checks
from different accounts to cover the price. DUMPED
the thing a few months later because of all the
damned "Guru Meditation" errors.

>     Now a great many Linux distribution start out looking
> line XP which some Windows users remember fondly.  It only
> makes a load of sense to have a familiar interface in
> front of the new user.  Not nearly so scary as my multiple
> menu--multiple task bar Amiga imitation.
>
>>
>>    However, if you're doing banking-type stuff, you
>>    are far safer using Linux than Winders. Winders
>>    is just TOO easy to break into, and its huge
>>    market share (and spite against MS) make it
>>    the biggest target for hackers by a wide margin.
>>
>>    I just loved the MS fix for security issues - it
>>    was called Vista. It was basically a poost Win-7
>>    beta system, but the big security improvement was
>>    to MAKE IT YOUR FAULT when you got hacked. It was
>>    unusable UNLESS you turned off almost all the security
>>    stuff.
>
>     Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>

"Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
actions.

Now IE ... that's WAY out of date and you shouldn't
use it under any circumstances - indeed you shouldn't
have used it under any circumstances even when it
was current ....

>     I had that on one of the few new machines I bought
> in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
> qualities of XP.  I should have erased it but I wanted to
> learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
> but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,

I preferred Win-2K actually. Still have it on a VM.
XP was too "busy" for my likes :-)

The more 'eye candy' the less I like it.

>>
>>    Even SE-Linux is more civil than Vista (though not
>>    by all THAT much  :-)
>
>      I settle for Linux with built-in firewall.

Good choice. Works fine for anything but a net-facing
router or web server.

>  It
> seems to work.  I mean I get about 5 phishing calls per day on
> my landline.  If they could hack in they would not waste time
> on calling.

Every so often I get fake "MS Tech" calls - saying
my Winders has a horrible flaw they need to fix.
I like to go along with them for a little while ...
keep 'em tied up ....

Because I *have no* Winders box :-)

"Uh ... tell me ... where DO you find this product
number thing you're talking about ... "

>  bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.”
>     After all here I am...
>