Tag Archives: computers

Installing Slackware 15.0

1 Reply

Back in February I looked at the Slackware Linux web site. After years of working with Ubuntu, and occasionally its parent Debian, I decided to see if I could install Slackware and get it to work. I used it a lot in the first years of the current century. Could I still manage it now, or had the comforts of the Ubuntu installation process dulled my edge? From Slackware 15 – The old brigade:

Slackware is deployed using an ncurses interface, with a set of menus where you must make intelligent choices, including partitioning and package selection. And then, there’s LILO the bootloader. Not GRUB, mind! Feels a bit daunting, but then, if you’re careful and methodical, there should be no issues. That said, the approach automatically precludes Slackware from being a typical desktop choice, as most people would have no idea what to do with the installer.

Continue reading →

More about Zoom under Windows

1 Reply

As I wrote in September, my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF desktop with an AMD PRO A4-8350B R5 processor was giving me messages about limited computer resources when using Zoom under Windows 10, though not under Linux. These sitll occur, even though I have added memory, taking it from 8GB to 24GB. This last time, I finally remembered to bring up Task Manager. It showed me that there was no memory problem, but that Zoom was using a lot of CPU. Why this occurs with Windows but not Linux is puzzling. For now I will have to have all of my Zoom sessions on that system under Linux rather than Windows.

More Storage Upgrades

Leave a reply

I got a new 1TB SSD drive for Christmas. I used it to replace the 512GB drive that I had installed on my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF system. That 512GB drive in turn went back to the old laptop I had taken it from. In both cases the copying was done by Macrium Reflect Free. There were no problems at all with the HP desktop, but the laptop refused to boot afterwards. So I got out my Linux USB boot repair stick and booted from that, ran the boot repair utility and everything was fine. Both Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux 20.04 booted cleanly.

So I now have two extra 256GB SSD drives. Don’t really know what I will do with them. For now they are mounted in enclosures with USD 3.x connections.

A web site that time forgot

1 Reply

Many years ago I used Slackware Linux. I switched to Ubuntu because I was concerned that Slackware seemed to be essentially a one man show, and that seemed like a single point of failure. But Slackware was good to me, and I have not forgotten it. Recently Slackware came out with a new and up to date release and I am looking at it again.

The web site looks much like what I remember from 15-20 years ago. That is OK with me, although I would like to see some more current content. I decided to download the Slackware book in its pdf form. Firefox just hung when I went to that page. However, I noticed that it was an ftp site, not http. 20 years ago I was accustomed to accessing ftp sites using ftp tools, not web browsers. So I guessed that this was what once known as an anonymous ftp site, and that such sites could be accessed with the ftp command line. Feeling like Gandalf recalling a thousand year old spell, I opened a Linux terminal window and proceeded to type:

Continue reading →

Adding a second internal SSD drive to a system

1 Reply

Having done a memory upgrade to my HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF system, it was time to add more storage. It came with a 256GB SSD, and I added the 512GB that I had taken from an old laptop. Since I was leaving the original drive in place and simply adding a drive, the process was much simpler than in the drive replacements I have done. The whole thing would have been trivial if I had put the new drive in an external USB 3 adapter. USB 3 is fast, but imposing the USB/SATA conversion would add some overhead, so I decided to open up the machine and make another SATA connection. There was a free SATA power connector inside, but I had to add an extension cable to reach any plausible place to put a new drive. Fortunately, there was a free SATA data cable already present. I put the new drive into a 2.5″/3.5″ mount, but there were no holes to screw it into the obvious place. This is a problem I have faced before, and I used the same remedy: Duct tape.
Continue reading →

Downsizing a disk

2 Replies

I have an old laptop which I do not use often. I had installed a 512GB SSD on it, but decided to replace it with a 256GB SSD so I could use the larger drive on a more modern system. Once again, I planned to used Macrium Reflect Free to clone the drive. This is a lot harder when you want to clone a larger drive to a smaller one. I had to delete my Linux partitions and shrink the Windows one with gparted on my Linux boot repair disk. My total space in use was well under 256GB but Macrium still objected. Examination revealed that I had forgotten to shrink the extended partition in which my Linux partitions had resided. So I fixed that. Still no joy. There was a big (>256GB) gap between the end of the extended partition and the last Windows partition. So I moved that partition inward to leave all the free space at the end. This finally satisfied Macrium Reflect Free and it was able to clone the drive.

Continue reading →

A Computer Memory Upgrade

2 Replies

Having experienced resourse limitations on an HP EliteDesk 705 G2 SFF I decided to add more memory to it. It has four slots for memory and came with two 4GB memory modules. I ordered two 8GB modules from Crucial, where you can search for upgrades compatible with your particular computer model. These arrived and I proceeded to install them, hoping for a 24GB system. This proved to be trickier than I had expected. Continue reading →

Duct tape disk

1 Reply

Following up on Installing Debian Linux I decided to replace that machines’s hard drive by a 500GB SSD. This went quite smoothly. The only hitch was that the 3.5″ SSD mounting bracket for the 2.5″ SSD did not have any any screw holes to match those in the space left behind by the old 3.5″ drive. So I ended up securing it with duct tape!

I also had to reinstall Debian. The free edition of Macrium did not have an obvious way to transfer the Debian partition from its external USB drive to the new internal SSD, even though there was plenty of space. I expect this can be done, but I did not have the knowledge. I could have left Debian on the USB drive, but the new SSD had space for it and I have too many USD devices hanging off that machine anyway.

Adding new disk partitions to a Linux system

1 Reply

The default Ubuntu installation process places all of the files in a single disk partition. However, it may be desirable to use multiple partitions. In particular you might want to have /home in its own partition and have yet another partition for the swap area. This way you could install another Linux distribution and have it share the swap area and /home, so you can save swap space and share your data files between the distributions. I have done this successfully on another system. In that case I created the multiple partitions when installing the distributions. For the Ubuntu installer it is the “something else” option when you choose how you are going to use your disk. It is fussier than following the defaults, but easier than the Slackware disk partitioning I used to do.

What if you followed the default Ubuntu install process and want to create additional partitions after the fact? That is what I wanted to do before I ended up Rebuilding a Linux System.

Continue reading →