Computer General Discussion Thread

[Bezombia]

Apparently the high school in my town is giving all of its students chromebooks next year, in spite of protests by both the students and the media center. Not sure how they pulled that off.

The students are protesting Chromebooks? Why?

If anything, I'd be cheering; free Linux machine

From what I can tell based on the news article and subsequent news article comments the students will have to keep them in working condition (which presumably means not installing linux) and a lot of them apparently take their own (presumably better) laptops to school anyway.

[May Mays]

The handful of hospitals in my small city all use the attachments that go on the back of the monitors and there's an arm on one of them to which another monitor is attached to.

They have those at my school too.

[YellowApple]

The handful of hospitals in my small city all use the attachments that go on the back of the monitors and there's an arm on one of them to which another monitor is attached to.

They have those at my school too.

Ah, VESA-mount swivel arms. Gotcha.

Yeah, that's certainly an option, though they aren't particularly affordable, either.

[Minoa]

A Chromebook is decisively not a laptop.

Define "laptop", then. For the pricepoint, this seems to kick the crap out of most of the competition.

From the last time I heard of Chromebooks, they were intended for working directly from the cloud. The problem in our case is we are dealing with a mega-load of megabytes of Canon RAW files and the need for powerful processing as a result.

[YellowApple]

Define "laptop", then. For the pricepoint, this seems to kick the crap out of most of the competition.

From the last time I heard of Chromebooks, they were intended for working directly from the cloud. The problem in our case is we are dealing with a mega-load of megabytes of Canon RAW files and the need for powerful processing as a result.

I wasn't talking about any old Chromebook, but specifically about the Chromebook Pixel, which is basically a high-end laptop but with ChromeOS as the default OS. Ships with either an i5 with 8GB RAM or an i7 with 16GB RAM, plus dual USB Type-C ports (can drive a 4K display), dual USB 3.0 ports, and a 2560×1700 touchscreen. The only flaw is the amount of internal storage (maximum is 64GB), but that can be extended with an SD card, USB drive, or network storage (I don't know if the onboard flash is soldered on or not).

[Corvus Metallum]

From the last time I heard of Chromebooks, they were intended for working directly from the cloud. The problem in our case is we are dealing with a mega-load of megabytes of Canon RAW files and the need for powerful processing as a result.

I wasn't talking about any old Chromebook, but specifically about the Chromebook Pixel, which is basically a high-end laptop but with ChromeOS as the default OS. Ships with either an i5 with 8GB RAM or an i7 with 16GB RAM, plus dual USB Type-C ports (can drive a 4K display), dual USB 3.0 ports, and a 2560×1700 touchscreen. The only flaw is the amount of internal storage (maximum is 64GB), but that can be extended with an SD card, USB drive, or network storage (I don't know if the onboard flash is soldered on or not).

That actually looks like something I could use....if I had the cash, of course. Unfortunately, I don't think my dad is going to let me drop almost $1000 for a laptop when I have a perfectly good one sitting on my desk.

[Corvus Metallum]

In other news, I'm going to give Arch a go....and hope I don't get my ass kicked by it.

[Bezombia]

In other news, I'm going to give Arch a go....and hope I don't get my ass kicked by it.

You will if you go in with that attitude.

Arch punishes the weak. Don't be weak.

[Corvus Metallum]

In other news, I'm going to give Arch a go....and hope I don't get my ass kicked by it.

You will if you go in with that attitude.

Arch punishes the weak. Don't be weak.

Very encouraging, Beno.

[Bezombia]

You will if you go in with that attitude.

Arch punishes the weak. Don't be weak.

Very encouraging, Beno.

It should be, if you're experienced enough with Linux to be confident in your abilities.

[Corvus Metallum]

Very encouraging, Beno.

It should be, if you're experienced enough with Linux to be confident in your abilities.

Getting Mint up and running was about as painless as it could get; and, while it was nice not having to worry about breaking anything, it felt pretty much like Windows after a certain point, which made it boring as hell. Really, the reason I'm putting Arch on my IBM (did some research and found out that it can run it) is for the learning experience, and so that. throughout the process, I can make the system want out of it and not have to worry about breaking something that's already in place. Plus, its not like I really care about anything on the R51 anyways, so I've got nothing to lose by doing it...

I should probably stop looking at the wiki and just find some easy to understand instructions about how to get the base system running....

[Bezombia]

It should be, if you're experienced enough with Linux to be confident in your abilities.

Getting Mint up and running was about as painless as it could get; and, while it was nice not having to worry about breaking anything, it felt pretty much like Windows after a certain point, which made it boring as hell. Really, the reason I'm putting Arch on my IBM (did some research and found out that it can run it) is for the learning experience, and so that. throughout the process, I can make the system want out of it and not have to worry about breaking something that's already in place. Plus, its not like I really care about anything on the R51 anyways, so I've got nothing to lose by doing it...

I should probably stop looking at the wiki and just find some easy to understand instructions about how to get the base system running....

Installing Arch will be nothing like installing Mint.
For one, I'm fairly certain that Mint had an installer. Arch doesn't - it just sorta gives you a file system with the required files on it and leaves you to your own devices. Or device, I guess, in this case.
Which is really great for getting to know what actually happens in the installer, and really great for customizing what does and doesn't get installed, and really great for taking up eight hours of your time, but no so great if you have no idea what you're doing.

The beginner guide on the wiki is pretty good but is kinda schizophrenic. I don't know who wrote the bootloader sections but they need to be fired from their volunteer position.
Because I'm sure it'll throw you off too, remember that you need to follow only the EFI instructions if you have an EFI board, and only the MBR instructions if you have a BIOS board - for some reason the wiki combines the two into the same instruction set which is terrible.

[YellowApple]

My RAM has tripled from 8GB to 24GB on this machine. I don't know what to do with it all.

I should probably stop looking at the wiki and just find some easy to understand instructions about how to get the base system running.... :unsure:

Good luck with that :)

I ended up following this guide back when I was toying with Arch (before I got tired of rolling upgrades breaking my shit all the time, thus prompting me to switch to Slackware), but that was a long while ago, and it looks like things are different from what I remember. Instructions look pretty straightforward, though; nowadays, they look like they're finally closer to Slackware-level than Gentoo-level absurdity.

[Corvus Metallum]

My RAM has tripled from 8GB to 24GB on this machine. I don't know what to do with it all.

I should probably stop looking at the wiki and just find some easy to understand instructions about how to get the base system running....

Good luck with that

I ended up following this guide back when I was toying with Arch (before I got tired of rolling upgrades breaking my shit all the time, thus prompting me to switch to Slackware), but that was a long while ago, and it looks like things are different from what I remember. Instructions look pretty straightforward, though; nowadays, they look like they're finally closer to Slackware-level than Gentoo-level absurdity.

....ok.....

Question: how do I format the harddrive I want to install Arch on?

[Bezombia]

My RAM has tripled from 8GB to 24GB on this machine. I don't know what to do with it all.



Good luck with that

I ended up following this guide back when I was toying with Arch (before I got tired of rolling upgrades breaking my shit all the time, thus prompting me to switch to Slackware), but that was a long while ago, and it looks like things are different from what I remember. Instructions look pretty straightforward, though; nowadays, they look like they're finally closer to Slackware-level than Gentoo-level absurdity.

....ok.....

Question: how do I format the harddrive I want to install Arch on?

YellowApple's guide is shitty, use this one instead:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Can't answer your question until you tell me if your mb is BIOS or EFI.

[Corvus Metallum]

....ok.....

Question: how do I format the harddrive I want to install Arch on?

YellowApple's guide is shitty, use this one instead:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Can't answer your question until you tell me if your mb is BIOS or EFI.

BIOS.

[Bezombia]

YellowApple's guide is shitty, use this one instead:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Can't answer your question until you tell me if your mb is BIOS or EFI.

BIOS.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be ... R_examples

The Arch Wiki is heavily biased towards people who go crazy with their computers so here's the basics:
1: You don't, despite what people may tell you, need a seperate partition for anything other than / and your bootloaders. You can even skip making a swap partition if you want.
2: When you get to that point in the installation, just run `parted /dev/sdx` where "sdx" is the name of your device (as found in /dev - nine times out of ten this is just /dev/sda).
Then just follow the instructions from the wiki:

example:

# parted /dev/sda
(parted) mklabel msdos #Tells parted to create a label on the drive of type `msdos`, or MBR.
(parted) mkpart primary ext3 1MiB 100% #Tells parted to make a primary partition of type `ext3` that starts 1MiB into the disk and uses 100% of the rest of it.
(parted) set 1 boot on #Tells parted to set that partition to bootable

Then you'll have to configure the file system, which is very straightforward and clearly laid out on the wiki.

[Corvus Metallum]

Well, I managed to worm my way through installing it...go to reboot it to start installing X and my DÉ, and all I'm greeted with is a black screen. Lovely.

[Bezombia]

Well, I managed to worm my way through installing it...go to reboot it to start installing X and my DÉ, and all I'm greeted with is a black screen. Lovely.

looks like you fucked up

[Corvus Metallum]

Well, I managed to worm my way through installing it...go to reboot it to start installing X and my DE, and all I'm greeted with is a black screen. Lovely.

looks like you fucked up

Obviously.

[Lechites]

In other news, I'm going to give Arch a go....and hope I don't get my ass kicked by it.

Can always look at Antergos as well.

[Ardavia]

Had a question to ask on behalf of someone else:

"I have an AMD 5800k CPU purchased (on a budget, can't switch CPUs) and I'm interested in overclocking its' igp, cpu (slightly), and the RAM.

I'm getting an MSI A88XM Gaming motherboard and (16GB 4x4) 2133 of Corsair RAM to facilitate the OC, as I understand more RAM is needed because of the igp. (I also plan on keeping this RAM so I can run Minecraft servers when I upgrade to an ATX build.)

I'm getting a Corsair H100i 240mm radiator and I've got a Corsair RM550 Gold+ PSU from a friend.

The question is, am I able to significantly overclock any component of the three listed with the parts I'm getting, and what sort of volts should I watch going over if overclocking the CPU?

I'm just worried about what sort of volts I'll be getting and if my PSU and CPU cooler can faciliate a large OC.
I plan on bumping it from 4.2 GHz to like, 4.8, and maybe even 5 GHz if the voltage isn't too crazy."

[YellowApple]

My RAM has tripled from 8GB to 24GB on this machine. I don't know what to do with it all.



Good luck with that :)

I ended up following this guide back when I was toying with Arch (before I got tired of rolling upgrades breaking my shit all the time, thus prompting me to switch to Slackware), but that was a long while ago, and it looks like things are different from what I remember. Instructions look pretty straightforward, though; nowadays, they look like they're finally closer to Slackware-level than Gentoo-level absurdity.

....ok.....

Question: how do I format the harddrive I want to install Arch on? :unsure:

Presumably using fdisk or parted to make the partitions (depending on whether you're using a BIOS or UEFI firmware, respectively), then using mkfs.ext4 or mkfs.btrfs to actually format the partitions. Optionally, you could use the LVM commands to create a volume group, but that's usually not necessary for simple rigs.

....ok.....

Question: how do I format the harddrive I want to install Arch on? :unsure:

YellowApple's guide is shitty, use this one instead:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Can't answer your question until you tell me if your mb is BIOS or EFI.

Not shitty; just assumes the reader to actually know what he/she is doing. Yours was the first one I looked over when I was first toying with Arch, and I gave up and opted for the other one after having to wade through fifty million paragraphs on Linux basics like how to boot into the installer.

You can even skip making a swap partition if you want.

You can, but it's a really bad idea unless you know what you're doing. Swapping is generally a better-case scenario than hard crashes due to memory exhaustion.

Also, regarding separate partitions, it's generally a good idea to make a separate partition for /home. That way, if you fuck up your system (as inevitably happens with Arch), you can blow away your / partition without affecting /home.

[Ardavia]

So, in addition to my 850€ planned gaming build, I am now in need of a laptop for schoolwork. It has to have an Intel CPU, at least 2 gigs of RAM, and a 1024x768 screen that's no bigger than 19" at the most. Any recommendations?

Also, how do you go about booting and running an OS from a flash drive?

[Corvus Metallum]

So, in addition to my 850€ planned gaming build, I am now in need of a laptop for schoolwork. It has to have an Intel CPU, at least 2 gigs of RAM, and a 1024x768 screen that's no bigger than 19" at the most. Any recommendations?

Also, how do you go about booting and running an OS from a flash drive?

For the last question:

1. Download OS of your choice.
2. Use Unetbootin or similar program to make flash drive bootable with OS.
3. Restart computer with flash drive plugged in, press F12 at start up to open boot menu.
4. Select flash drive.