[sf-lug] Ubuntu, GPartEd, Bad Luck with Blue Collar Linux-Help! etc.

Wed Feb 20 16:40:18 PST 2019

On 2/20/19 3:18 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):
>> On 2/15/19 11:42 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
>>
>>> Canonical's core value proposition was, 'We're going to leverage
>>> Debian, except...:'
>>>
>>> 1.  We'll release for only 3 CPU platforms, not 14.  (Since then,
>>> PowerPC has been dropped, and i386 is in the middle of joining
>>> it....)
> To underline the above point, Ubuntu has dropped 'i386' (IA32 arch)
> entirely starting with the 18.10 release.  It's _gone_ there, and fading
> fast everywhere.  Tick tock, folks.

     All the little *buntus still have the i386 in mind.   I will only 
get them when I have a user who needs or
rather wants a *buntu for 32 bit machines.  And I have 16.04.4 Ubuntu in 
386 on hand, for folks who
want less than the 18.04.
>
>
> [18.10.2 *buntu release ISOs:]
>
>> Well I now have it but have yet to run checksums on the
>> download.  18.04.2 is now on hand for Ubuntu,
>> Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu.   No checksum for the Blue Collar
>> Linux and we can talk about that later.
> I didn't want to be the 800th person to advise Blue Collar Linux
> developer Steven A. Auringer 'Dude, you really ought to publish a
> sha256sum and a cryptographic way of vetting that checksum as
> authorised.'  If you care about the distro, you might want to tell him
> that.  OTOH, certain signs suggest he might not be receptive to the
> message, e.g., the absence of even a release version number or name and
> the near-total lack of information on the Web site.

     Oh yeah,  I get that feeling from his replies to my remarks about 
the checksum.
>
> The consistent pattern is the message 'I will make things radically
> simple for you', so I suspect he'll reject the notion of publishing
> checksums, let alone verifying their authenticity, as much too geeky.
>
> And well, OK, good luck with that, since computers aren't toasters and
> pretending won't make complexity go away.

     Yep!   I have a remastering facility on my PCLinuxOS and hope to 
make my own simple to use distribution
with only the requisite tools for the simple tasks eventually.  I think 
i would try to add a boot up checksum
test as we see on Knoppix and some other distros.  Do you think that is 
simple enough for most folks?

>
>> Well I had a old food plastic container that I no longer care to use
>> for food and I have a lot of my single drives in that to bring to
>> meetings.  Some came in plastic bubble cases and  I trimmed away the
>> excess cardboard and used the bubble to write on, tossing those into a
>> internal side pocket of my wheeled case.  A lot of my drives are large
>> bodied with room to write notes on.
>> Toward the end of last year I bought a couple of 10 drive lots of 4 GB
>> and 8 GB Flash Drives, 10 of each size and was happy to find that they
>> came with a plastic divider that  held them inside light cardboard
>> boxes. When the boxes fail i think flat plastic sandwich boxes will
>> accomodate the plastic dividers.

     I will point out that these are USB 2.0 and not at all major brands 
like my Kingston and SanDisk Flash Drives.
> OK, cool.  I appreciate your ideas and those of others who have various
> creative solutions.  Having pondered some more:
>
> You know about Costco Syndrome?  It's the thing where you go to Costco
> and they have what you want but only in quantities suitable for a family
> of fifteen, but the price is right so you buy the minimum quantity
> anyway.  That's why my wife has just finished the last of four
> gluten-free homemade pumpkin pies I've baked for her -- because Costco
> had cans of pumpkin in shrinkwrapped sets of four cans.  (To my
> surprise, she's not sick of pumpkin, though she says she'll prefer
> pumpkin -- or non-pumpkin -- quickbread for the next gluten-free baking
> spree.)

     Strangely enough over the November January Holidays I baked and 
solely consumed
3 Gluten Free Pumpkin pies.  Like your wife I do not get tired of 
pumpkin but I get tired
of baking pies.  No Costco access so I bought two cans at a time and had 
a third on hand.
  I would share them but getting people to eat these treats is harder 
than taking my time
and eating them myself.

>
> Anyway, about a year ago, I wanted sandwich-size ziplock bags, so I got
> a ginormous Costco minimum-quantity purchase, and practically all of
> that is gathering dust in my garage.  So, I'm thinking a sandwich-size
> ziplock bag for each USB flash drive, labelled with a Sharpie as to what
> the drive currently has / is for.  Sharpies can write 01, 02, etc. on
> the drives themselves, and maybe with a fine-point Sharpie even RM01,
> RM02, etc.  Will see.
>
> But anyway, that's one reason I immediately thought of 'small ziplock
> bags' -- because I have 'em.

     Of course.  We seek the simplest solution preferably without going 
out and dropping a
bundle on various items.

>> Looking at your list I realize that I am currently behind on Debian
>> but few people ask for it so I tend to be neglectful but have a disk 1
>> on hand.  I think it is 9.6.
> Debian 'Stretch' 9.8 came out a few days ago.  However:
>
> You should understand that there is really _very_ little point in
> throwing out one Debian 'point release' just because another one comes
> out, e.g., discard your 9.6 ISOs just because 9.7 and 9.8 have shown up.
> Each point release merely merges in a modest number of package updates
> but there isn't a new installer or kernel or X.org set (etc.) therefore
> you aren't getting ability to install onto spanking new hardware
> unreachable with the prior point release.  But the main reason throwing
> away and replacing Debian ISOs just on account of a new point release
> is:  What's the very first thing you do at the end of installation?  You
> do 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' to sync up to the Debian
> Stable packages in debian's package repos.  The point is that this puts
> your system into exactly the same state at the end of that command,
> irrespective of whether the point release ISOs you used to install were
> 9.0, 9.1 [...] or 9.8.  It really doesn't matter which point release
> ISOs you used.
     Well it is not a matter of throwing out old isos but a matter of 
having a reasonably recent .iso file
to save excessive downloading to get to the latest update.  I have 
downloaded and check-summed
Debian 9.8 so now have it on hand for the next meeting.

>
> You may have noticed that I made a point of favouring the _unofficial_
> Debian ISOs that merge in non-free firmware BLOBs.  This helps dealing
> with the 'dumbass attendee' problem, mentioned below, subvariety 'Why
> does my Broadcom wireless not work yet?'
>
>
>> The ddCopy to USB is pretty fast and much faster than writing to DVDs
>> or CDs.  A Flash Drive (USB) can make an install or simple evaluation
>> much quicker.  That is why I started using my first Flash Drives as
>> one member was very tired of waiting for a disk to load.
> Yep.  Here at CABAL, during CD/DVD days, I'd advise people wishing to
> attend CABAL installfests that I'd gladly download and have ready ISOs
> if they asked a couple of days in advance.  Naturally, most people
> totally ignored the 'ask in advance' bit, expected me to download DVDs
> while they waited, and then acted impatient because the download and
> subsequent burn to media 'took so long'.  Dumbasses.

     We don't see so many of those in our regular attendees.
     Few folks ask for a special distribution in advance though. Maybe 
because
i keep a wide variety at hand.
     A few years back I had a man who hauled a tower to the meeting and 
tried to
install Knoppix on it without listening to advice.  The equivalent of 
Usenet troll but
in real life.  That encounter made me feel bad for a week or so.

     At the last meeting I was asked about Daniel Gimpelvitch and has 
anyone heard
from him lately?

     Bobbie Sellers

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