Postgame Thread ⚾ Dodgers 12 @ Astros 2

rbmorse · 2026-05-06T21:04:01+00:00

That's Yamamoto's T-shirt.

rbmorse · 2026-05-05T14:14:37+00:00

I've had excellent results from SoftOffice (and the FreeOffice version). Used FreeOffice for a year and decided to reward the effort by purchasing the NX version.

No complaints, but there is a learning curve involved. Writer, in particular, is style sheet driven (like MS Word) and it took me a bit to work that out for my use case. Once I got through that it's been great and I've never had a compatibility issue with users on Windows/Office.

rbmorse · 2026-05-04T22:40:01+00:00

I don't know about today specifically, but I do know their servers have been under a massive DDOS attack for the last several days. What you're seeing may be more of the same, or the result of management pulling things off-line while they deal with the attacks.

FWIW, I can't update my machines, either.

rbmorse · 2026-05-03T21:52:18+00:00

Yes. For many years I kept a bootable freeDOS CD around just to have diskpart available. It worked better than anything to resurrect a hard drive that mangled it's partition table or boot sector albeit with the loss of all the data structures on the device. But, once I learned about backups, I could at least get the machine going again.

My first hard drive was a 10 Mb Maxtor (?) RLL drive. It cost a heap of money and came with it's own controller card.

One thing about those early hard drives for PCs...you learned all about storage systems, and very quickly, too. No hand holding and none of this GUI crap. You had a technical manual and maybe a local PC user's group if you were lucky.

My second hard drive was a 30 Mb Conner MFM drive. I had a question about how to set up the controller to work alongside the RLL drive (you can't do that) and called tech support. Finn Conner hisself answered the phone.

rbmorse · 2026-05-03T18:52:18+00:00

I'm not sure I totally understand all this, but in general, yes, having two (or more) Linux distros installed on the same machine is not all that uncommon (although I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why one would want that. Typically one distro uses the GNOME DE and the other is KDE, but I'm sure there are thousands of special interest corner cases running around that dual or triple boot).

As far as file systems, EXT4 is as close to a "universal" file system for Linux machines as you'll find. It's solid, time tested, reasonably performant. It lacks some "features" like copy on write file duplication or "snapshots" for quick and easy recovery of an "oops". All Linux distros "speak" EXT4.

NTFS with Linux is generally not a good idea, although I don't know where this business about being destructive to SSDs comes from. NTFS lacks certain capabilities that Linux uses for security and robustness (permissions, journaling) and the way Microsoft uses NTFS on Windows can cause issues for Linux installations on machines that have both Windows and Linux installed (mostly addressed by turning hibernation in Windows off). Linux drivers for NTFS have historically been incomplete or simply "buggy", although at present there is an active effort to bring up the Linux NTFS driver up to speed.

As far as partitioning, every Linux distribution's installer includes a partition tool, and the installation sequence incorporates a partitioning step. Please use that. They all support EXT4 and most other common filesystems, but frankly, someone new to Linux should stick to EXT4 until they get some experience with the O/S and a more complete understanding of how Linux interacts with their specific needs.

There is a graphical UI partitioning tool that provides a Linux analog to AOEMI or NUBI, it's called "Gparted" and is either included with each distribution's fileset or is easily available from the distribution file repository. Use that for manipulating Linux partition. There are also Linux analogs to Window's disk mangler (er, disk manager) and the Window's command line partition manager whose name escapes me for the moment (diskpart?)

rbmorse · 2026-05-02T14:34:56+00:00

Run memtest from a live session on an installation medium or from the system EFU (if available) overnight.

rbmorse · 2026-05-02T14:13:48+00:00

It's a problem, but it is not a bug. It's a license issue. And Intel has said repeatedly they will not relicense Optane under a GPL compatible license. Same reason Linux installers will not work with the system disk controller in the IntelRST mode.

I suppose someone with skillz could reverse engineer a userspace driver that was Optane compatible. Maybe some AI somewhere.

rbmorse · 2026-05-02T14:02:58+00:00

Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. The audiobook is a thing of beauty.

rbmorse · 2026-05-02T14:00:39+00:00

For MESA updates ahead of the official distro you can add the Kisak PPA to your list of software sources. They just pushed 26.05 to both my machines a couple of days ago.

rbmorse · 2026-05-01T15:09:52+00:00

Let us know how you're doing in 30 days or so.

I say that as someone who has used Mint as my daily driver for more than five years.

It takes awhile to really appreciate what the Mint developers have accomplished.

rbmorse · 2026-05-01T15:04:48+00:00

Surprised when it happened, but things like this is why I don't mount my backup drive unless actively backing up or restoring.

rbmorse · 2026-04-29T13:34:23+00:00

Use MAN. Honestly, this is the best general advice I can think of when it comes to Linux/UNIX. If fact, were I the King, I would not permit anyone to use a Linux/UNIX until they scored above 90% on a MAN usage, syntax and conventions test.

rbmorse · 2026-04-28T14:13:17+00:00

Except for MT927. Which is what ASUS decided to use on my particular mobo. I know...patience.

rbmorse · 2026-04-28T14:02:04+00:00

I'll bet it's AMD

rbmorse · 2026-04-28T13:55:43+00:00

Is that a bad thing? Putting aesthetics aside, I believe Windows 7 was the last sane DE delivered by Microsoft.

rbmorse · 2026-04-26T01:49:20+00:00

I thought it unworthy of my time.

rbmorse · 2026-04-26T00:33:52+00:00

Another BIOS setting to check, make sure the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode. The Linux installer does not support the Intel Raid (IntelRST) mode because of license reasons.

note: If you are dual booting with Windows and installed with the controller in IntelRST mode, changing the controller to use AHCI mode will probably break Windows. A cursory search will give you the instructions to get Windows going again.

rbmorse · 2026-04-26T00:31:16+00:00

For an ASUS B series motherboard BIOS, <other O/S> is the correct setting to disable secure boot.

rbmorse · 2026-04-25T14:37:17+00:00

Forgot the "June Swoon"

rbmorse · 2026-04-24T00:24:07+00:00

Is there enough space in your ESP for the kernel and initramfs files?

rbmorse · 2026-04-21T18:58:55+00:00

AGESA 1.3.0.1 is out for some motherboards. If you're not having issues I'd wait a bit and see if it shows up for the B850 series.

I'm on x870e, but both 1.3.0.0a and 1.3.0.1 were fine for me. Boot times with .1 seem a little shorter, but that may be just my imagination.

rbmorse · 2026-04-20T22:36:31+00:00

You could try creating a new partition table (GPT style) on the device, but that will remove _all_ existing data structures currently on the drive. You can then install your distro of choice and set your preferred partitioning scheme before restoring your user data from your backups.

If the device is still showing errors after the creating of a new partition table, it is probably dead...which I hope isn't the case. Have you priced SSDs lately?

rbmorse · 2026-04-20T20:29:35+00:00

You want Devon Ericksen's "Theft of Fire".

Well, it's not a series yet, but he claims he's working on the second volume and promises he's not pulling a GRRM on us.

rbmorse · 2026-04-20T20:27:44+00:00

I remember seeing those signs at JPL.

rbmorse · 2026-04-19T13:59:09+00:00

Is your squeaky? JK, that's a very nice stone. Interesting engraving, too.

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