(no subject)

[melannen]

Today I:

-tidied the living room
-got my new laptop all set up including the programs I wanted and all the changes to windows settings and all the peripherals working
-went on a walk to test pokego with data (And also tried iNaturalist now that I can!)
-cooked dinner
-folded a little bit of laundry
-crocheted on afghan

Here is the list of programs I deemed worthy:
Vivaldi
Firefox
Thunderbird
LibreOffice
Scrivener
VLCplayer
audacity
Gimp
Notepad++
Slack
Filezilla
f.lux
avast
calibre
spotify

Tomorrow we are going on a family visit, so that is probably all I will get done. I still haven't tackled the data files part of the computer project or the installed linux on old machine part but I am also very sick of it all, so we'll see.

p.s. Google thinks I walked 3 km. Pokemon thinks I walked 2.8 KM, but the egg I was carrying only travelled 1.5 km, and my buddy who was walking with me only went 1.6 km, but it earned 2 km of candy. (Also AR now sort of works, but apparently not well enough for the "play" function to work.) Here I though all the buggy stuff was just because of my underpowered old phone!

Comments

[wrabbit]

Cool! I transitioned from laptop to desktop a year ago, and I still haven't moved over my music library and some program data.

[melannen]

I never did do it properly on my old one, which is why I have that whole pile of drives and stuff to deal with now...

[highlander_ii]

re: pokego -- lol it's niantic... everything is buggy. (i play ingress more often than pokego, but i don't really even play that all that much right now)

[melannen]

yep, I am learning that...

[ex_inklessej388]

What desktop version of linux are you planning on installing, if you don't mind me asking...

[melannen]

it's going on an old eee PC running xp, so something tiny and 32-bit. I've used puppy before so I was going to start there but advice welcome!

[ex_inklessej388]

I am an Ubuntu LTS user myself but that is too beefy for that older laptop. It would work, just not well which is probably not what you are going for. I'd recommend staying within the Ubuntu family however simply because judging by your apps, it would be the best option with their Software Centre. With that in mind I would recommend a 32 bit version of Ubuntu Mate which I am hearing great things about around the linux community. Also, Linux Mint is another option.

Did you know that dual booting your Windows machine with a linux desktop is very, very easy? You could also partition part of the harddrive from your new computer and have linux and Windows on both. That is how my HP Omen is currently set-up and I spend most of my time on Ubuntu and only really go over to Windows to game. Just a thought if your a linux person. It is one of those things that once you've tried it and used it is hard to go back.

[melannen]

I'm not planning to install most of the apps on it - I plan to use it mostly as an ultraportable web terminal/word processor, so I'll probably stick with the prebundled apps, unless I decide to mess with scrivener for linux or using it for file recovery. But I think puppy is currently ubuntu-adjacent anyway. It's also super out of the box easy, which is what I like at this point in my life!

I was all-linux for a good while but then I went back to windows and haven't really been tempted except as a solution for old hardware, tbh! Windows is annoying but omg so is Linux in its own way. My new laptop has a fairly small hard drive (I went ssd) so between the windows partition, the data partition and the recovery partition I don't really have a lot to spare (unless I used another tiny Linux, and I'll make a bootable USB if I just want that.)

[ex_inklessej388]

I would try out Ubuntu Mate, you shouldn't have any issues getting it on your machine and there is a really good online community if you do (simple Google search usually brings up the help you need).

It is so funny how computers are going with small disk sizes for the SSDs, its like how cell phones went really small and then back to really big. My laptop has an SSD for Windows (because otherwise it won't run probably) and a large HD for games, etc. I put my Ubuntu partition on that, it has many gigs to itself. Haha

[ex_inklessej388]

Relevant: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-distro-space/

[thenewbuzwuzz]

*head tilt* Does Vivaldi do something cool that Firefox doesn't?

[melannen]

It does various things a little bit differently? Mostly I've been loyal to the Opera line since c. 2001, when what it did different was that it had *tabs*. :D It's fairly privacy-friendly and relatively memory efficuent but Chromium based, and sometimes I want Chromium based (especially for extensions.)

Mainly lately I have them both because I've been using Vivaldi super stripped down (blocking most JavaScript and plugins and cookies, blocking Facebook ips entirely) which vastly improves my browsing experience, but I keep Firefox around and standard for when I need a website with all that cruft active.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Neat, thank you for explaining!

As informative as browsing someone's bookshelves

[jesse_the_k]

...is learning what they install on a new computer!

Would you describe yourself as a "Scrivener user with LibreOffice for backup"? I've pondered Scrivener as I love Markdown, and would welcome a nudge if you think it's a great tool.

Mozilla has cooked up the Facebook Container extension to enact the firewall you're creating with two browsers -- I bet your approach is more secure.

Re: As informative as browsing someone's bookshelves

[melannen]

I actually mostly use Google Docs with Scrivener as backup and notepad++ if I need something more powerful. I'd rather not rely on gdocs as much as I do but it's really my only option for work. I never really got in the habit of using a full word processor instead of a basic text editor (I still compose in html). I use libreoffice mainly for the spreadsheets, honestly.

I like Scrivener because it's good at organizing multiple files and it saves as rtf which is a very compatible and durable format, but I've never really used most of the fancier features, or markdown. I know a lot of people really like it, though.

I still don't have a Facebook account, so I'm not sure what that extension would do. I had it ip-level blocked on the old one, mostly because it blocked all the FB widgets and share buttons and things that slow everything down and track you even without an account. Not sure if it's worth it now that I'm blocking JavaScript in general.