My old laptop has a virus called "XP"! -Split from edX topic

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Sounds interesting nevertheless.

I've recently been given an old laptop by my brother, who got fed up with Windows taking so long to do anything, and have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on it - works fine.

I've also resurrected my old Dell T600 XPS - originally had 98 on it, then XP - and am thinking of doing the same with it - maybe the server edition. It's taking ages to install anything - even the few things I've go on it: Agnitum's free suite, MalwareBytes, Avira, Firefox and Open Office,

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Prolescum]

Re: edX courses

$2,400 “Introduction to Linux” course will be free and online this summer: The Linux Foundation is putting its training materials up on edX's platform.

The timing could've been better. If they made it available now, people who are running out of win xp support would be more likely to switch to Linux.

True, but glacial pace is the norm for many things these days.

Greetings,

Sounds interesting nevertheless.

I've recently been given an old laptop by my brother, who got fed up with Windows taking so long to do anything, and have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on it - works fine.

I've also resurrected my old Dell T600 XPS - originally had 98 on it, then XP - and am thinking of doing the same with it - maybe the server edition. It's taking ages to install anything - even the few things I've go on it: Agnitum's free suite, MalwareBytes, Avira, Firefox and Open Office,

Kindest regards,

James

You may be better served running Xubuntu or Lubuntu than Ubuntu Server Edition on such an old machine. They're both light on resources by default yet maintain the *buntu way of doing things (like the file hierarchy, release cycles, PPAs, apt etc). Ubuntu's default interface isn't really designed with older hardware in mind.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

Thanks Prole, Lubuntu's (light Ubuntu) a thought - I'm not sure what's the difference/benefit of Xubuntu might be!?

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Aught3]

Re: edX courses

I can also rcommend lubuntu. I just brought my net book back to life with it.

 

[WarK]

Re: edX courses

Other people are switching to Linux too

International Space Station attacked by ‘virus epidemics’

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

@Prole/Aught3

I'm downloading a live DVD version of Debian 7.4 (with LXDE) to test it based on a recommendation.

As Ubuntu is based on it...

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Prolescum]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

Thanks Prole, Lubuntu's (light Ubuntu) a thought - I'm not sure what's the difference/benefit of Xubuntu might be!?

Kindest regards,

James

The XFCE environment in Xubuntu is very much a lightweight replacement for GNOME, so its conventions are GNOME-like, but both use GTK+ to write to the desktop.

As I understand it, LXDE relies on fewer dependent libraries running and therefore consumes fewer resources. XFCE is no hog, though. LXDE is also more Windows-like in appearance (start menu, window list, notifications tray) so better for XP muscle memory.

If you're technical enough, you might want to check if the installer assigns an adequate amount of swap space to bolster your paucity of RAM, at least the same amount (512MB RAM - 512MB or more of swap).


Edit: Yeah, Debian's a good choice.

 

[Inferno]

Re: edX courses

Yeah so edX...

 

[Prolescum]

Re: edX courses

Soz

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

Well, I hope I'm techie enough having a computer industry background, though not with Linux.

The Dell's got 768MB memory (maxed out) and the C: partition's 16GB - though I can of course up it by merging other partitions. I can always use part of the current partition or another for swap space - I'd done the same under XP before.

I was a bit surprised as I'd had to reinstall XP+SP2 from a DVD, which I then found I couldn't get WU without bringing it to a grinding halt. I then added the security apps - as I'd had before - which brought it to a stand-still. :shock: Which was a surprise as it had worked alright before....hence my decision to bin XP in favour of Linux (I'm typing this on one of my laptops with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - my other one has Vista).

It'll be interesting seeing how Linux works on the old tower. I'd also considered Gentoo, as I'd heard it is particularly good at running all sorts of hardware.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[WarK]

Re: edX courses

Maybe this topic should be split?

Gentoo may not be the best choice for a slow hardware because you have to compile it which can take a lot of time.

In principle, hardware support is up to the kernel so all the distributions can support hardware that is supported by the kernel.

Some hardware doesn't come with open source drivers so you have to get the driver from the hardware manufacturer or an unofficial package repository.

 

[Aught3]

Re: My old laptop has a virus called "XP"!

Maybe this topic should be split?

Agreed and split. Hope everyone likes the new topic

 

[WarK]

Re: My old laptop has a virus called "XP"!

Maybe this topic should be split?

Agreed and split. Hope everyone likes the new topic

Ha! That's exactly* what they caught on the Space Station (the article I linked to above)


* from what I remember from using windows it was sometimes hard to tell where the OS ended and a virus started

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: My old laptop has a virus called "XP"! -Split from edX t

Greetings,

:facepalm:

I was going to apologise for going off-topic but...

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Prolescum]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

Well, I hope I'm techie enough having a computer industry background, though not with Linux.

Oh, I think I recall you mentioning that several years ago

I don't really imagine you in a dank cellar rebooting servers.

The Dell's got 768MB memory (maxed out) and the C: partition's 16GB - though I can of course up it by merging other partitions. I can always use part of the current partition or another for swap space - I'd done the same under XP before.

Hunky dory.

I was a bit surprised as I'd had to reinstall XP+SP2 from a DVD, which I then found I couldn't get WU without bringing it to a grinding halt. I then added the security apps - as I'd had before - which brought it to a stand-still. :shock: Which was a surprise as it had worked alright before....hence my decision to bin XP in favour of Linux (I'm typing this on one of my laptops with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - my other one has Vista).

If it's of help to you, the go-to apps for *nix virus checking and a firewall are clamAV and Firestarter. Of course in a Debian system, they're only an apt-get away. Of possible interest, Ubuntu's next LTS comes out next month.

As we're getting all soft about which distro we're running, I'll jump in :lol:

I run ElementaryOS and Ubuntu GNOME Edition here at home. My old Debian machine is on its last legs (also currently packed away), so I don't really use it much these days.

It'll be interesting seeing how Linux works on the old tower. I'd also considered Gentoo, as I'd heard it is particularly good at running all sorts of hardware.

Kindest regards,

James

Gentoo is much more hands-on than Debian-based distributions, but if you want to use it as a learning experience, it's a good way to go.

 

[WarK]

Re: edX courses

As we're getting all soft about which distro we're running, I'll jump in :lol:

I run ElementaryOS and Ubuntu GNOME Edition here at home. My old Debian machine is on its last legs (also currently packed away), so I don't really use it much these days.

I've run Slackware on my desktop for over a decade. I can't imagine using anything else. Although, compared to other distros, number of available packages is low.

My laptop has Fedora, I'm liking it. Its development pace is rather fast, there are package updates every few days. New version comes out roughly every 6 months. A version gets updates for 13 months after its release then its life ends.

I also use Scientificlinux and CentOS which are clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They're stable but dated. There are additional repositories for them so you can get a new versions of some of the packages (Firefox). Red Hat 7 will be released in the near future.

I used to use Debian/Ubuntu at work, I find them annoying. Debian's needless complexity especially. I really enjoy Slackware's simplicity.

If that's not enough to choose from go to distrowatch

… or you could build your own Linux From Scratch

The nice thing about open source software is that you can try them all out and pick the one which you like the most. And it's ok to change your mind later

If you don't want to mess with your current OS you can use VirtualBox or similar to install a distribution inside a virtual machine.

As for a desktop environment - KDE (although I miss WindowMaker)

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

Oh, I think I recall you mentioning that several years ago

I don't really imagine you in a dank cellar rebooting servers.

Echo on-n-n-n-n-n ... Echo off.

If it's of help to you, the go-to apps for *nix virus checking and a firewall are clamAV and Firestarter. Of course in a Debian system, they're only an apt-get away.

As I'm sure you'll know, ClamAV and other AVs are not really necessary on Linux unless you're file-sharing with Windows or running Wine. In fact, they're really only looking for Windows viruses, not Linux ones.

What's really needed is a passive anti-malware, like Spywareblaster or Threatfire to cover both Windows and Linux malware - the first sets "kill-bits" for known malware, so they can't run in Windows, the second uses behavioural software to prevent suspicious activity.

Arguably, the best is MalwareBytes - if you run Windows (or Wine), you must have this.

Currently, there's nothing specifically for Linux systems, which is not very good. Granted, any security holes are closed through ongoing development but there really should be a - at least - passive anti-malware application on the lines I've suggested.

As for firewalls, which are more important for Linux, Firestarter is no longer supported.

Also, again as you'll know, it and GuardDog are only GUIs for IPTables.

I've enabled the more powerful UFW in Ubuntu, so that's alright - and I can always use GUFW as the front-end.

Of possible interest, Ubuntu's next LTS comes out next month.

I did try to upgrade to 12.10 but it hung when it couldn't find an external drive ("Continue to wait or press S to skip mounting or M to mount manually"), as the keyboard didn't work, that left me with no alternative but to reinstall. Rather silly hole in th coding - all that's needed is a 30 wait before it defaults to Skip mounting! :roll:

I then tried 13.10 but couldn't get it to accept Skype - it apparently isn't coded for 13.10.

So I went back to 12.04.

As we're getting all soft about which distro we're running, I'll jump in :lol:

I run ElementaryOS and Ubuntu GNOME Edition here at home. My old Debian machine is on its last legs (also currently packed away), so I don't really use it much these days. Gentoo is much more hands-on than Debian-based distributions, but if you want to use it as a learning experience, it's a good way to go.

It (Gentoo) might be interesting - I did read a article years ago by someone who said that he'd compiled/installed it himself but found that he hadn't gained anything over the ready-made distro in terms of hardware performance. Gentoo caught my interest at the time for its handling of all sorts of hardware.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Dragan Glas]

Re: edX courses

Greetings,

As we're getting all soft about which distro we're running, I'll jump in :lol:

I run ElementaryOS and Ubuntu GNOME Edition here at home. My old Debian machine is on its last legs (also currently packed away), so I don't really use it much these days.

I've run Slackware on my desktop for over a decade. I can't imagine using anything else. Although, compared to other distros, number of available packages is low.

My laptop has Fedora, I'm liking it. Its development pace is rather fast, there are package updates every few days. New version comes out roughly every 6 months. A version gets updates for 13 months after its release then its life ends.

I also use Scientificlinux and CentOS which are clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They're stable but dated. There are additional repositories for them so you can get a new versions of some of the packages (Firefox). Red Hat 7 will be released in the near future.

I used to use Debian/Ubuntu at work, I find them annoying. Debian's needless complexity especially. I really enjoy Slackware's simplicity.

If that's not enough to choose from go to distrowatch

… or you could build your own Linux From Scratch

The nice thing about open source software is that you can try them all out and pick the one which you like the most. And it's ok to change your mind later

If you don't want to mess with your current OS you can use VirtualBox or similar to install a distribution inside a virtual machine.

As for a desktop environment - KDE (although I miss WindowMaker)

interesting range of experience you have with Linux, WarK!

I'd like to try Debian for it's rock solidness and security - I might put the server as public-facing. Although my main idea is to use it as a base for running VMs - either VMWare or VirtualBox, not sure about QEMU. Polls seem to favour VirtualBox over VMWare on Linux, though I'd rather stick with the latter as it's industry standard.

Main idea is to get back into the swing of things installing various flavours of Windows and applications to recertify myself prior to returning to the workforce, as we're looking to put Mum into a home (after five years looking after her, it's reaching the stage where I can't cope anymore).

Kindest regards,

James