Computer operating systems

[doctle]

You can now download Raspbian the Debian distro for Raspberry pi devices and use it on a desktop. I am currently trying to get wireless dongle working but on the old XP desktop it's very fast. Comes with the usual software like office and VLC that you expect with Linux. I may have to get a different dongle to watch youtube stuff but so far so not bad. XP is painfully slow when you use it now.

[Paul-R]

XP is painfully slow when you use it now.

Is it XP or is it the hardware you're running it on?

[doctle]

Possibly the hardware. The computer is 15 years old it started off 40 gig hard drive and 512 meg ram. I now have 1.5 ram ans 250 gig hard drive but same old chip. It came with XP from the seller I assume he made it out of other bits and pieces because there's no brand name on it. The computer wont boot from USB but I managed to install a HDMI board which does picture only. The sound comes from a USB transmitter to the stereo so I have good sounds. It's only used for watching mp4s or listening to music. It's 32 bit

[myglaren]

New hard drive delivered.
Installed and Linux Mint installed, up and running (online) in less that half an hour

[GiveMeABreak]

Did you plump for an SSD Steve? Makes a huge difference and the price is becoming more affordable now.

[Hell Razor5543]

If you do get an SSD you need to check that either the motherboard can handle the 'maintenance' tasks (such as TRIM, whatever that is!), or the SSD can do them itself. One of our clients has gone for SSDs (but let the accountants get involved in the choice), and the ones selected rely on the motherboard managing the background tasks. Unfortunately the tills are very old (IBM 743 units) that have no concept of what an SSD is. As a result we are having to replace SSDs that are under a year old and worn out. They may have learned from their mistake, as they are now evaluating the better SSDs at a few stores.

[GiveMeABreak]

Not really relevant for PCs James. The decent SSDs have their own firmware and integrate flawlessly into most modern PCs.

They are fine but it is recommended defragging maintenance and caching is turned off as they are not needed on SSDs.

The TRIM function is part of the SATA command set that the OS uses to notify the SDD which blocks of storage are not being used and so can be deleted. I did a bit about it here on why SSD upgrades for in car HDD telematics systems are no good for some nav systems that use some versions of QNX as they don’t support the TRIM command. The result is quick blockage as new data is written to complete new blocks. Without TRIM, it doesn’t know which blocks to erase and the whole thing slows to a crawl.

[doctle]

I was looking at a Panasonic toughbook on eBay it doesnt come with a hard drive. I saw an SSD for small money and I thought mmm faster and reliable. Would the toughbook recognise the SSD? heres the link https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PANASONIC-TO ... 1438.l2649

[myglaren]

Did you plump for an SSD Steve? Makes a huge difference and the price is becoming more affordable now.

No, just a standard tin disk Seagate 1Tb, far more than it needs as it isn't my main computer, just one that kicks around the house so I have access almost anywhere, like it's sister laptop.

I don't need speed, it boots fast enough anyway, I don't play games (hate 'em), mostly this and a couple of other forums, email, news, eBay, Amazon, Screwfix and more than anything YouTube.

I had an email from BT increasing my free gigglebits for the phone, more a month than I use a year
Had to phone them for it and wouldn't have bothered but my son has moved out and I had to phone to cancel the BT TV, Sport (can't abide sport and nothing on TV I ever want that iPlayer can't take care of) and some other crap that came with it and they increased my broadband speed to something astronomical, not that I need that either but it was free so why not

[GiveMeABreak]

I was looking at a Panasonic toughbook on eBay it doesnt come with a hard drive. I saw an SSD for small money and I thought mmm faster and reliable. Would the toughbook recognise the SSD? heres the link https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PANASONIC-TO ... 1438.l2649

That’s positively ancient. Avoid like the plague unless you have a specific application for it. It’s not standard System.

[doctle]

Thanks Marc appreciate the quick reply and info

[GiveMeABreak]

This might be ok for you. I use a Lenovo as my diagnostic laptop without issue. A different model to this, but this seems like a reasonable price.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-L512- ... cpIdx#rwid

[moizeau]

Seconded on that Marc. Just make sure it's 32 bit.

[myglaren]

Had my first Linux disaster

Downloaded the latest Ubuntu and it would fail to boot. Running the repair option would fix it but then it would fail again, got a bit tiresome.

Re-downloaded and began to install and it failed miserably, no boot at all (Grub corrupt) which was annoying as the machine is (was) dual boot with Mint 19, so that was out too.

Wrote the download to a different USB dongle and twenty minutes later all fixed - the dongle I used first was bad

[myglaren]

Seems it was the hard drive beginning to fail can't access it at all boot sector buggered.
New one due Sunday.
Just had to replace one in one of the laptops a couple of weeks ago and the one in this laptop keeps thrashing, another one dying - they say it comes in threes.