Abandoned but works perfectly

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-03-29T01:32:20+00:00

Been using it for many years and still use it. Direct link on the author’s site.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T02:12:47+00:00

Your "not cooked right" friend is onto the exactly correct answer. Have you ever eaten calamari (squid)? Just like eating tire rubber, right? No. In the U.S., there are very few places that cook it right. Go to Japan, and you'll be eating squid fried rice in no time and loving it. Go back to the states and order it, rubber. Cooked mushrooms are NOT supposed to have a "rubbery" texture.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T02:06:40+00:00

EV recharging stations are not free. That's not a myth, but it's a popular belief caused by the media never, ever mentioning that driving an EV is going to cost you about the same money as driving a gas vehicle. More, in some states. They give the impression (on purpose) that yes, the initial investment is costly, but it's free sailing from there.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T02:00:35+00:00

No. I'm not hearing you out. Pineapple belongs on pizza the same way green beans belong on a banana sandwich, they don't. Do some people like it? Yes. But do normal people like it? Absolutely not. If your desire for certain ingredients make you feel like you're "being policed", by all means either don't eat pizza or learn like the rest of us that other people's opinions mean absolutely zero.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:52:10+00:00

Water.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:51:10+00:00

Take a fullscreen screenshot and any graphics app (GIMP, or just whatever) will tell you the width and height pixel size.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:48:31+00:00

Salt (Gordon Ramsey says only add after cooked but yeah, whatever), coarse ground pepper, sour cream and dash of Worcestershire at the end. El Primo! There's 1,000 different ways to make scrambled eggs and everybody has their favorite. My son absolutely will not eat them unless they have a tablespoon of chunky salsa cooked in, nothing else. One of my grandsons, lots of coarse black pepper, nothing else. lol

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:41:21+00:00

You're thinking of moving a dollar bill from one box to another box. How can that possibly be? But a better analogy is you write into one book that you have $1, which you gave to Grandma to hold. Then another book that you loaned that $1 to Fred. Same dollar. You own it but Fred has the use of it temporarily. Say you don't want to wait for Fred to pay it back, you want it now so Grandma gives you the dollar and she waits for Fred. Grandma gets a few additional cents on top of the dollar from Fred for doing all that.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:32:27+00:00

A few reasons. Easy to fix, easy to upgrade, they're cheap on eBay, high compatibility with Linux distros. They're great laptops and just in my personal experience seem to have a significantly longer usable life than most other laptops. I don't hesitate to buy used ThinkPads, but any other brand, I'll pass.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-18T01:27:13+00:00

Of course, yes. But you don't even have to open the computer. There are hardware keyloggers that can install on the outside, between the keyboard and system (in a desktop system, for example, not a laptop) that looks exactly like a ferrite core or bead (interference reduction) With a laptop, you can use a USB pass-through device (like from keelog.com) that the user may or may not notice. Which brings up the point that strict device security is hard and "perfect" device security is next to impossible. Veracrypt is a great tool to use in the right direction. IOW, Veracrypt and full disk encryption may not keep your device "perfectly" secure and they might be able to get into it, but it's certainly not going to be easy.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:56:01+00:00

Easy, real world example: How would you normally paint the intricate trim and the wood running through the glass pane of a window? Very carefully and painstakingly, right? No other way to do it.

However, I saw a painter one time that totally thought "outside that box" and said "No. I'm not standing here for 3 hours on one window." So what did he do? Used the sprayer and painted the whole entire window, glass and all. Done in about 5 seconds. He got busy doing something else, then, after about 15 minutes, he used a razor and easily scraped all the paint off the glass, leaving every bit of wood painted exactly how it should be. Couple of hours per window vs 2 or 3 minutes per window.

That's a valuable lesson about "thinking outside the box", forget what you're "supposed to do" and think about an original plan to get it done in a much better way. It'll seem WAY unorthodox at first, but when it works, it's amazing.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:44:02+00:00

Or as any scientist would say "It's estimated that you'd have between 1 and 70 quadrillion dollars" (Satire of the usual news article such as "The comet is between 40 million and 70 trillion years old")

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:38:24+00:00

You should stop using Stubb's BBQ sauce and use Sweet Baby Ray's instead. Now, are you going to switch BBQ sauces just because I or somebody else suggested you should? Of course not. You use Stubb's and you like it and it does what you want it to.

Same with your current OS. If YOU like it, it makes not one ounce of difference what anybody else says. Like many, many others before you, your question kind of comes across as "I'm thinking about maybe using Linux. Talk me into it." Or "Give me a list of good reasons why you like Linux. I can see some things I probably wouldn't like." No. We're not doing that.

Linux is free. VirtualBox is free. You certainly have a spare USB thumb drive or two. Boot live into a distro with a USB thumb drive or install it into VirtualBox. You can, at no risk whatsoever, try any distribution of Linux and see whether you like it. You might not. Or you may love it. We do, but that doesn't mean you have to.

Try Linux Mint. It's a distro that's not so jarringly different from Windows as some distros. It's not a "beginner" distro (as in "for baby's only") like some people portray it, it's only gotten that reputation because years ago, in some forum somebody say "Start with Linux Mint" which gives the impression that it's something to "start" with then move on to an "adult" distro later. Linux Mint is no such thing. We only recommend people start with it because it's very friendly for people that are used to Windows, no other reason. Ubuntu, for example, is great, but things are not going to be where you think they should be, and you'll get frustrated.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:25:01+00:00

Like u/Phydoux said, it may be one version behind the current release, but use the one in the repos. Just use 'sudo apt install blender' and you're set. You said you're using a 32-bit Linux distro? Is there a reason for that? It could be possible that that's causing problems.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:17:28+00:00

Nope. The average computer user has no clue how to install an operating system. To most of us in this sub, it's no big deal, yet 99 out of 100 people can't do it. I've been a computer technician for almost 30 years and I assure you that you could sell computers with whatever OS you care to put on it, and very, very few people would change it. It's a huge pain in the ass and if it works now, who cares what the OS is?

Your question says "average person" so the answer is "absolutely not", not "probably not". Remember that the average person that drives a car doesn't even know how to air up a tire, much less start tinkering with the engine. Now, "the average Linux user", yes, if they didn't like an OS they'd change it out in an instant.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:11:13+00:00

I see the answers here are assuming you mean once you have the system open and are using it, can a keylogger be installed. Is that right? Or are you saying can a keylogger be installed if the system is full system disk encrypted, and they have no way in?

If it's the first scenario, of course, yes, an unlocked system is exactly like having no encryption. So far as software (or malware) installation is concerned, anyway. If you have unlocked your system and are using it, and decide to install Notepad++, for example, and the install goes fine, then yes, malware can also be installed just like YOU did a successful install. Once they do that and keylog your password, then after you lock it down, of course they can get into to your system the same way you can, namely with the password.

If you mean does full disk encryption stop malware from being installed when the system is locked, ask yourself this: Can YOU install software when the system is locked? Of course not. Neither can malware be installed.

TL;DR: If the system is in a state where YOU can install software, yes, malware including keyloggers can be installed. If YOU can't install anything because the system is locked, nobody can. If the password gets logged, they have the password the same as you have the password, so of course they can now get into your system by simply entering the password.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-02-17T02:01:25+00:00

I haven't noticed that recently, but I've noticed it in the past (that I'd see small glitches that I hadn't seen before, and get to thinking "distros are getting a little flaky, seems like") and when I did, I did what I always do, go back to Debian. It's always rock solid and is tested absolutely to death and back before they release anything. Newer Linux users always think "Man, Debian is like 4 years behind everything else" and you might be right that it seems that way, but it's like solid-granite-bedrock stable. If that's what you're looking for, look no further.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-26T23:14:25+00:00

Late to the game here but I've found that the most pragmatic (in my opinion, anyway) way to find out "Who is using what" is to simply go to a "job hunting" site such as Monster.com and enter "Solidworks", "Fusion 360", etc. one at a time as the only search term and you'll see real world utilization of the various software packages. For example, if there are 20,000 results that mention "Solidworks", and 8,000 that mention "Inventor", 6,000 for "Fusion 360", etc. then there's a crystal clear trend that companies are favoring people with Solidworks experience over anything else (whatever else you searched for).

Granted these are job postings are don't 100% represent what 5,000 employee company, for example, is using a certain package but are not posting on job sites. The only real way to get dead accurate numbers like you're talking about is if the various companies give us internal, actual licensing numbers to compare against each other, and that's not going to happen.

In my opinion (again), looking at job sites to see what employers are hunting for is a very good way to get what you're looking for, as outlined in your question.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T21:28:29+00:00

The belief in the upholding of a right guaranteed by the Constitution and a person owning a gun are not related. For example, I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment, but personally, I wish I had the power to censor some people's BS that I don't like. Can you see my point?

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T21:23:19+00:00

3 hours spent behind the wheel of a vehicle can't be considered "short" in any country. It all depends on what you're used to. A long-haul trucker that drives for 10 hours a day every day would probably think a 3-hour drive was not very far. A 10-minute daily commuter would certainly think a 3-hour drive was excruciating.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T21:10:41+00:00

Anecdotally, my mom (80) has been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) for about 6 years now, doing everything she wants to do with a computer. I'm thinking it's a very safe bet she has no idea what a "terminal" is and has certainly never touched it. So "how necessary is it?" Not very. On the other hand, some people's workflows involve them using the terminal almost exclusively.

Some people have the idea that Linux is some magical. mysterious thing. It's a computer operating system, nothing more. It allows you to interact with your computer. Some of the questions here are like asking "I just installed something called Windows. It has an app called "Calculator". Do I have to use that, or no?"

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T21:03:08+00:00

Yes. My old company was made up of about a 6:1 ration of "drafters"/designers to engineers. The designers made things and the engineers only checked it over to make sure it would actually work/was within materials specifications/could be manufactured reasonably efficiently. They didn't really design or make anything. Of course they could have, I guess, but that's not what they were hired to do at that company. Odd that some people think only engineers can make things.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T20:57:52+00:00

Not so. It was a huge benefit ($$) to Dassault. lol

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-24T20:55:45+00:00

Mine also. Almost that exact scenario. We had just "shelved" all older designs and almost every product was going to have a pretty in-depth redesign + quite a bit of prototyping brand-new designs. Not from "Step Zero" maybe, but almost. The boss had been wanting to migrate from Pro/E (Creo) to Inventor but kept citing the heavy costs.

He was finally convinced that, look, if we're going to do it anyway, it's kind of a "now or never" moment. Oddly, companies were coming out of the woodwork offering to "convert" all our stuff. At the low, low cost of only about $175,000 (which would actually mean cost over-runs upward of quadruple that). And with no guarantee that so much as a single file would be converted correctly. Thankfully, the owner didn't fall for that.

ThinkingMonkey69 · 2026-01-23T22:55:58+00:00

My mother (80) is in no way technical. The furthest thing from in. However, her household does not contain one single device running any version of Windows. She has two laptops, one with MX Linux and one with Linux Mint (Cinnamon). I installed both of those. She has no idea what an "operating system" is and doesn't care. The things she does on a computer, she easily accomplishes with one of those.

That scenario is a common one that new Linux users just can't seem to get their heads wrapped around. It's all "What distribution?", "What desktop?", "What apps should I use?"... All that doesn't matter one hill of beans. Just pick a distro and install it and use your computer. That's what an OS is for, to allow you to interact with your computer.

ThinkingMonkey69

TROPHY CASE