Re; Lenovo Laptop Love..Not!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| ckrzen Nov 02, 2019 11:48 AM EDT |
Congrats, Scott! Persistence has paid off and you will have learned more than you knew before! Like the emergence of the first protozoa from the primordial M$ soup, you are creating positive change to the status-quo. Now gaze up at the stars and ... wonder where you can go from here! |
| seatex Nov 02, 2019 1:12 PM EDT |
Glad you got it sorted out, Scott. That 8th-Gen Intel CPU has pretty good power for a 15W chip. The 1TB SSD is great! Now just feed that thing some more memory for multitasking and VMs. 16GB should be comfortable. |
| mbaehrlxer Nov 02, 2019 6:45 PM EDT |
has anyone here tried running linux through WSL? unfortunately for banking i need windows with USB support, which, as i understand may not be working well inside a virtual machine, and dual boot is not an option for me. so i have been thinking about using WSL (with fedora) as my primary desktop on that machine instead. how much does windows get in the way when doing that? i really dread working on a machine that runs windows underneath, but if the VM doesn't work then my only other alternative is to carry around another laptop just so i can do banking on the road (which is what i am doing now, and i am getting tired of the weight) greetings, eMBee. |
| gus3 Nov 02, 2019 7:27 PM EDT |
I think "how much does ${OS} get in the way?" should be hung over every door in every corporate OS development house in the world. And I'm sure you (the reader) have some ideas of who should read it. |
| jdixon Nov 02, 2019 9:44 PM EDT |
> has anyone here tried running linux through WSL? The command line version of Ubuntu worked fairly well when I tried it out. There are now two versions of WSL though, and I haven't tried the later one. > unfortunately for banking i need windows with USB support, which, as i understand may not be working well inside a virtual machine, The VirtualBox extensions handle USB fairly well, as far as I know. For business use you need a license though. But why not use Windows as the host OS and use Linux in the virtual machine? No one says you have to primarily use the host OS. |
| nmset Nov 03, 2019 12:21 PM EDT |
>But why not use Windows as the host OS and use Linux in the virtual machine? His machine is already choking while running Windows as the host OS, another OS on top of that would be near impossible, guessing. |
| mbaehrlxer Nov 03, 2019 11:26 PM EDT |
well, it comes down to a test. keep in mind that i want linux to be my primary GUI desktop. so it depends on how well that works. having windows in the VM would be my preferred option really, if i can make it work. but that is straight forward to test. so what i am really asking is if anyone has experience with the alternative solutions. Linux in a VM would require the laptop to have sufficient memory. i am currently targeting 8GB, as i found that 4GB is not enough for my day-to-day work. the VM solution might mean that i need more so that i can give 8GB to the VM. the reverse case would not have this problem, as i can put a windows VM to sleep and free the memory while i do normal work, and i'd only need a few GB when i wake it up. however, that is also subject to testing. i do believe that WSL would not have this memory problem, but that in fact may not be true. after all, windows is still running and taking up memory, so i might need more than 8GB there too. so the questions are (my homework to figure this out, and for anyone who likes to play along :-) : how much memory does windows need as a host, with linux as a VM? how well does linux work as a desktop when running inside a VM? how much memory does windows need as a host, with linux running in WSL? how well does WSL work as a linux desktop? (does it at all?) how well does USB work in a windows VM? (meaning: i need to test my particular use case of a bank security token) is there another option? can i hibernate linux while booting linux? (the short answer is that i actually have this working on an old laptop. it is annoying to switch and have to disable linux while booting windows, but at least i don't loose state on the linux side (it also keeps state on windows, but i care less about that) greetings, eMBee. |
| nmset Nov 04, 2019 3:32 AM EDT |
>how well does linux work as a desktop when running inside a VM? ... how well does USB work in a windows VM? There are two machines at work dual booting Linux and Windows 7. On one host OS, the other one is guest in VirtualBox. The latter forwards very well specified USB peripherals to the guest. Linux as a guest, allowed 4GB RAM (half of total RAM) and all four cores runs nearly as native. Don't expect to play GPU intensive games here. Windows 7 as a guest is more quiet if allowed 2GB RAM instead of four, and two cores instead of four. How about changing bank for tokenless ones ? LOL ! But not really. AFAIK, tokens are not used in internet banking here (FR). |
| mbaehrlxer Nov 04, 2019 12:58 PM EDT |
changing banks is not an option, as this is not personal but for a company, and changing that would be a bureaucratic nightmare. > forwards very well specified USB peripherals to the guest this is what worries me. i fear that the banks USB token may not be well specified since it is not a standard peripheral (like a disk, but could be something entirely custom) games is another issue. not as critical, and the games i like to play are not the newest, so they may work in the VM but we'll see... greetings, eMBee. |
| ckrzen Nov 05, 2019 10:02 AM EDT |
@mbaehrlxer: I run Win10(1903) in KVM/QEMU(libvirt) using "GNOME Boxes". USB redirection is working well in Fedora 30/31. I usually setup a customized VM using "virt-manager" in a "qemu:///session" with Spice guest tools so that I can access it from gnome-boxes. This is so that we can deposit checks using a USB check scanner. All F/OSS, so no need for a business-use license. |
| Scott_Ruecker Nov 08, 2019 3:41 PM EDT |
Update: So far my Linux Mint install is running perfectly. Every program I have opened works, surfing the web is awesome in that I can have 10-15+tabs open in my browser and they all load and I have no freezing issues. I have wanted to try out a chromebook in the recent past but after finally getting my love (Linux) installed on my laptop I have no wants or needs anymore. :-) Scott |
| caitlynm Jan 15, 2020 5:40 PM EDT |
My work laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad T480. It's running CentOS 8.1 (8.0 before today) and everything works as expected. It did need a firmware upgrade when I first did the install but that was easy enough. I do like the machine. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 22, 2020 2:04 PM EDT |
Well..There's not much you can do when it will not turn on any longer. :-( About two weeks ago my wonderful Linux Laptop decided not to power up anymore and there is not much I can do about it besides take it to a 'repair' shop and pay more than it is worth to try and fix it. I took it to one and priced it and they won't even tell me how much the final cost might be. The laptop brand new cost roughly $400 and besides, I don't have the money to fix it. I am better off 'saving up' to buy another one if possible. Without it even turning on I am basically carrying around a paperweight. It just makes me sad that after succeeding at finally getting it the way I want it now it does this. It was given to me so I can't complain that I didn't get "my money's worth" but still, ugh. Scott |
| jdixon Jan 22, 2020 4:07 PM EDT |
> Well..There's not much you can do when it will not turn on any longer. :-( I assume it's dead on both the power supply and battery and that you've tried another power supply, Scott? |
| ckrzen Jan 23, 2020 11:48 AM EDT |
@Scott: I consistently have great results on ``ThinkPad`` laptops with Linux. Gently used ones from a couple of years back are truly an unbeatable value! May I suggest that you take a look at a ``grade B`` or ``grade C`` ThinkPad T450: 1. newegg.com/p/pl?N=100006740%204018&d=thinkpad%20t450&Order=PRICE or 2. amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-i5-5300U-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B07GCRBLQS |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 23, 2020 4:15 PM EDT |
>I assume it's dead on both the power supply and battery and that you've tried another power supply, Scott? I tried several different power supplies. Thank you for the links to other laptops. :-) |
| gus3 Jan 24, 2020 7:08 AM EDT |
Also, I hope you have backups of any critical data on the dead laptop. If not, do you have a recovery procedure in place? |
| WB7ODYFred Mar 06, 2020 1:42 PM EDT |
Look at using a Live Linux Booting from a USB flash drive with persistence, like https://puppylinux.com or Fatdog64
http://puppylinux-or-pcbsd.blogspot.com/2019/04/fatdog64-800... A second thought is to install either Windows 10 or Linux distro (of your choice) to a 120 or 240 GB Sata 2.5" SSD placed in a SATA to USB 3.1 external case. I like HornetTek Leopard modelHT-223APC. UPC 7 99599 16498 8 Metal case. You hit F12 , F10, or ESC key and select external USB for boot drive or set BIOS boot drive order USB before internal hard drive. Now carry one computer and one external USB sdd drive. You might even look at external 128gb USB flash drive for $30. |
| Scott_Ruecker Mar 10, 2020 4:57 PM EDT |
"You might even look at external 128gb USB flash drive for $30." That is my intention exactly. Once I get another USB Drive I am going to install a Linux distro onto it and make it bootable. |
| cr Mar 19, 2020 12:35 PM EDT |
Scott: One ancient laptop here (battery long since faded away, so operation is AC-only) stopped booting with the battery inserted. It booted just fine, last I looked, with an empty battery bay. I suggest trying that, if you haven't already, before dismissing the machine as dead. |
| mbaehrlxer Dec 10, 2020 3:38 AM EDT |
sorry to revive an old thread. i still haven't bought a new laptop yet, but in the meantime, someone helpfully pointed out that all the games i like to play have gold status in proton, so i won't be needing windows for any games. only for the bank. greetings, eMBee. |
| Scott_Ruecker Dec 10, 2020 4:23 AM EDT |
Gold status in Proton? I've never heard of that please tell me more. In the not needing Windows dept. with my new laptop I am just forcing myself to keep Windows around until I pay off the laptop. Running Linux from USB or as I am going to experiment with soon WSL2, we'll see how it goes. |
| mbaehrlxer Dec 10, 2020 4:42 AM EDT |
proton for steam from valve is using wine to make many windows games run on linux. https://www.protondb.com/ tracks the status of games. gold means they run just fine. there is a discussion about it on hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25333219 greetings, eMBee. |
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