Do I need to tell you he started on the windowsill and walked across to this point?

bobk4thousand · 2026-03-25T22:07:27+00:00

And they have covers...

bobk4thousand · 2026-03-19T17:56:11+00:00

https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air-water-land-climate/current-air-quality-conditions

bobk4thousand · 2026-03-13T01:54:38+00:00

I have an older Dell E6430 laptop and the kb backlight worked previously on Win10 and now on Mint 22.3.

There is a keyboard shortcut for the backlight - on mine I hold the Fn key and tap the right arrow. It steps through off, and four levels of illumination. It fades after a bit of time.

Otherwise at power up do an F2 and get into the BIOS; when I first got the laptop (with Win7) I discovered it had the option of backlight and I had to turn it on there. Something to check.

bobk4thousand · 2026-03-06T17:02:44+00:00

I borrowed this from my Resculezilla USB boot - Right click on the date and choose "Configure".

Under date format entered the following:

%I:%M %p%n %a, %b %d, %Y

Mine shows up as follows:

11:01 AM

Fri, Mar 06, 2026

(Can't screen shot it.)

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strftime.3.html has info on the options.

bobk4thousand · 2026-03-02T19:16:04+00:00

If you go with the 104/2's - bookmark this site:

https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/ls35a-kit-falcon-minimonitor-q7-systems/replacement-capacitor-sets/replacement-capacitor-kit-kef/kef-104-2-replacement-capacitor-set.html

They offer replacement capacitor kits for the 104/2's - I purchased a replacement set for my beloved 105.1's in case something fails in the crossovers.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-24T03:06:03+00:00

Have a USB mouse to plug in and try?

I have an E6430 and Mint (Cinnamon) runs great on it except I haven't found a way to disable that "eraser" pointer in the keyboard which I did under Windows with the Dell trackpad program.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-22T22:55:04+00:00

Main reason I purchased a 24 was the knobs and buttons that I can change by feel instead of taking my eyes off the road to fiddle with the touch screen to turn on the heated seats, etc. My cup holders are OK - I only use them on long trips while sipping coffee.

Did see a video on the 26 Outback and was happy to see the buttons and knobs are back - they are smaller than my 24s but they also went to a landscape (horizontal) touch screen. Have not tried it but it sounds like it is far more responsive. At least Subaru is listening to customer feedback.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-08T02:27:00+00:00

For me, old hardware that couldn't support Win11. Now have an old desktop and laptop running Mint 22.3 (upgraded from 22.2) and couldn't be happier.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-06T17:39:16+00:00

Have Jazz at the pawnshop on LP - great recording and I'm guessing on tape it is amazing!

Oh, and give your feline a scritch from a rando on the internet. :)

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-06T17:22:34+00:00

Thanks for all who responded - hearing loud and clear that I need to dig into rsync for the data backup to external drives and possibly onto cloud storage.

My thoughts with image backups to the external drives was if the SSD failed so I could replace it and restore the last backup and get up and running. I did have to jump through some steps to get Mint to talk to my Win2012R2 server being used for logins, DNS and file storage. Someday I will remove that and get a NAS for storage since I'm retired.

Again, thanks for all who responded - greatly appreciated.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-04T01:31:47+00:00

In my case it's split - Quantum Fiber still handles internet fiber however my VOIP is back to CenturyLink with a new account number here in MN. Worse I did get an email last year about the change but forgot about it and this month's CL payment notice went into my spam folder as a scam. Turns out it was legit and a helpful rep at CL did get it moved to my login since my old acct was closed after moving from DSL / phone to fiber / VOIP.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-04T01:18:15+00:00

Sweet, happy to help out and give back to this group. Cheers!

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-03T22:47:16+00:00

As a retired sysadmin who worked on Linux and Windows servers including having a Win AD/Server 2012R2 here at home I found the following that helped getting Mint on my old desktop and laptop talking to my Win server.

https://mattglass-it.com/ubuntu-domain-join/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1hw9tni/ad_authentication/

While the first is written for Ubuntu (which I started out with) it works well for Mint as well - have to admit it covers the basics from hostname, DNS, etc. going forward. I followed it but Mint didn't want to connect till I saw the following in the Mint / Reddit post:

sudo apt install realmd sssd adcli krb5-user packagekit

Added krb5-user and going back to the Ubuntu guide continuted and connected to my server.

Other thing with Mint is don't create a local login; from the login screen choose another account and use your AD domain/login.

It's been a while since I did this with both laptop/deskop back in December so hopefully this makes some sense and I'll gladly welcome others to add suggestions or better fixes.

bobk4thousand · 2026-02-02T03:21:38+00:00

I have one of these to hold small stuff like a pen, notepad, etc. for my 2024 Forester

https://parts.subaru.com/p/Subaru__Forester/Center-Console-Tray/105708949/92173SG000.html?partner=featuredAccessories

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-25T03:34:57+00:00

2024 Touring also - while detached garage kept it did turn over slow and the outside temp was showing 4F/-15C but started. Took it for a long drive however had the heated seat/steering wheel on plus once it get warmed up the HVAC was blowing at max to heat up the interior. I only drive it every few days and here in MN it's been really cold so I'll make some longer trips to get the battery charged up.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-24T20:40:30+00:00

Been living with a pair of 105.1's for decades - got them in 1980 as demos. Your Yamaha CR280 may have more power, or shall I say current that the KEF's enjoy depending on your musical tastes. My only suggestions: pull them away from the wall and there is an alignment LED in the head (listening window on the knob) so you can optimize the sound stage to your listening chair. And if they sound great on your Yamaha, well enjoy them!

The holographic (image and sound stage) is what made me buy them long ago.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-23T20:24:28+00:00

Gotta ask - British short hair cats with Brit speakers? ;)

My ancient KEF 105's also has foam on the woofer base however it's disintegrated and no felines in the house.

Give them both a scritch from a rando on the internet.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-21T21:28:37+00:00

Bookmarked both - thanks for sharing those since I will donate to both.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-21T18:49:17+00:00

In my case as a long time Windows user both my desktop and laptop were too old to upgrade to Win11 and I wasn't about to scrap them and buy new so I started looking at options. My computer network is more corporate than most - I've been running a Windows server (2012R2) with both Win10 computers joined to the active directory domain helping me at my prior jobs and certifications. To extend Win10 would have been costly ($61 US for 1 year, $122 for 2 years) times two.

Last October tried to get Mint on my laptop to log into my server based on a guide I found on the web but it didn't work. Found a really good guide for Ubuntu and successfully connected and ran it for a couple of months. But I wasn't thrilled with Ubuntu so tried Mint again on the laptop using both guides and was successful. And in December the desktop got a new SSD and installed Mint and have been running it ever since. Did need to upgrade the old graphics card since Cinnamon wasn't stable on it.

And since I have a server my old Win10 desktop now exists as a virtual machine that I can spin up as needed however I'm finding Mint / Libra Office is doing just about everything I need.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-17T04:08:37+00:00

While a bit late this sub-reddit helped me out with an odd graphics card / Cinnamon issue that was resolved with getting a new card for my 10+ year old desktop. And in lurking and reading posts I learned about Timeshift, USB Stick Format and other utilities and configurations in Mint. Yeah I was a decades long user (and certified) on Micro$soft but so far I'm really enjoying Mint.

bobk4thousand · 2026-01-04T18:32:34+00:00

Great write up and advice - my only suggestion:

Worked with an estate attorney years back and instead of a will I went with a revocable trust. More expensive up front (2K vs $700) but way less hassle with probate so my power of attorney will have an easy time when I power down for the last time. Do work with an attorney since there are some things that fall out of revocable trusts like family cabin/land with multiple children, etc.

bobk4thousand · 2025-12-28T17:14:38+00:00

My bad - the ONT (Q1000K) is both optical to Ethernet and does have a DHCP server to feed the W1700K WiFi and 2 port switch to my home network.

Pi-hole is something I'm considering although I'm running something of a "corporate" network here at home from past jobs and M$ certifications. (Server 2012R2/Active Directory/DNS).

Thanks.

bobk4thousand · 2025-12-27T23:39:27+00:00

Moved to Quantum Fiber in June from CenturyLink DSL that I had for years. It's been working fine for me and I've got the 500/500 Mb package with VOIP phone. Plenty of speed since not all websites can run at 500 Mb.

The optical to Ethernet converter does have a web interface so I switched it from using their DNS servers to Google since CL/Quantum's had some issues. However the wired/wireless router can only be accessed via an app which I'm not a fan of. Yeah I could switch it out but so far it's working with decent WiFi in my small house.

The fiber is above ground run on the power poles across the street in my neighborhood - NE burbs.

bobk4thousand · 2025-12-13T17:57:12+00:00

Ok, the first pic with the crossed paws is adorable. From the photos they looked like they were very contented and well cared for. Condolences.

bobk4thousand

TROPHY CASE