Saturday, May 20, 2017

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] A PC

 

Thanks, Jeff. Comment below:

On 5/20/2017 2:08 AM, J dreadpiratejeff@gmail.com [LINUX_Newbies] wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 12:37 AM, Stan Gorodenski
> stanlep@commspeed.net [LINUX_Newbies] <LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com>
> wrote:
> > Scott, Jeff, and All,
> > I didn't get the Lenovo machine I was talking about. Best Buy had a Dell
> > desktop with an i3 7th gen processor, 8G RAM, and 1T hard drive on sale
> > for $349 plus tax.
>
> That's not a bad price at all.
>
> > In trying to install Ubuntu, the keyboard would unpredictably freeze up.
> > It would freeze up where I would select the network (wifi or cable) and
> > then sometimes it would not. It would freeze up where I would backspace
> > to enter my user name, and sometimes it would not.
> >
> > This is a 64-bit machine, but I am trying to install Ubuntu configured
> > for a 32-bit machine. The Geek at Best Buy said 32-bit Ubuntu will work
> > okay on the 64-bit machine, but maybe installing a 32-bit instead of a
> > 64-bit Ubuntu is the cause of the keyboard freezing up. (the reason I am
> > installing 32-bit is because that is what I had downloaded months ago to
> > play with Ubuntu on my old desktop that is 32-bit).
> >
> > I called Best Buy again and talked to another Geek at the Geek Squad.
> > This one said he would not recommend installing 32-bit on a 64-bit
> > machine and that may be the reason why the keyboard sometimes freezes
> > up. So, I went to Ubuntu's website of free downloads
> > http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04.2/
>
> I have snarky comments about Geek Squad employees, but I'll hold them
> back and leave it to your imagination ;)
>
> > I do not see a download for a server operating system for an i3 64-bit
> > machine. I see server OS for a 64-bit AMD machine, but not for an i3.
> > Should I return the pc and get a machine with a 64-bit AMD processor?
> > Could there be a problem with the pc that is causing the keyboard to
> > freeze up? It would do it with the keyboard that came with the machine
> > and an old Dell keyboard I have. I tried unplugging the key board and
> > putting it back in the USB port but that had no effect.
>
> amd64 is for 64bit. Give it a whirl. Typically, the sort of problems
> you're describing are memory issues (either bad RAM, or it could well
> be that 32bit is being flaky on a system with 8GB). Also remember
> though, you're running this off a USB stick, IN MEMORY, until you
> install it. That means if you're using USB 2.0, it'll be really slow,
> seem to hang or freeze and be generally annoying. And sounds like you
> were using the desktop version of 32bit anyway, so it's possible that
> what you were experiencing was due to video drivers or something along
> those lines. The Server Install is NON-GUI, so just keep that in
> mind. You can install the desktop on top of Ubuntu Server, but Server
> does not include it by default (it's not even on the ISO image).
>

It is running off a CD disk that I burned the 32-bit Ubuntu server
install on (Ubuntu server, not desktop). The CD has a 700 MB capacity
and runs at a max of 52x speed. It is running in the optical disk drive
part of the machine. I assume the drive also accepts CD's in addtion to
DVD's. I'll check with a Geek I have an appointment with to see this
morning to make sure there is no problem running the CD in this optical
drive. Does this help target the problem any?
Stan

>
> Here's a bit of history. In the (much more recent) beginning, there
> was 32bit, ia32, x86, however you wish to call it. RAM was expensive,
> and no one could possibly have afforded more than 4GB, so 32bit x86
> was the defacto standard among the PC world. Then RAM prices dropped
> and companies like SGI and Sun and HP and DEC/Alpha started putting
> smaller versions of 64-bit CPUs in their high end workstations and
> such, because now people could afford more RAM and 32-bit simply
> couldn't provide enough registers to address more than 4GB. Soon
> after that, AMD came out with their 64-bit extensions to the ia32
> architecture and called it amd64. Intel very shortly afterwards came
> out with their own version called EM6T. The two had similar, but
> different, instruction sets, and early on, compilers could only
> compile binaries for one or the other, so you'd see operating systems
> and software compiled for both.
>
> Eventually, compilers progressed to the point where separate binaries
> were no longer necessary and now there's just "x86_64" or "amd64"
> binaries that work on both Intel and AMD 64-bit CPUs. The real
> differences between the two implementations are pretty small, and
> technically, the 64-bit Intel CPUs are still EM64T CPUs, it's just
> that everything is called x86_64 generically, or amd64, which I'm sure
> Intel just loves.
>
> So these days there are simply 64-bit and 32-bit Linuxes. Ubuntu
> calls it amd64, Red Hat and SuSE use x86_64, IIRC (they did back when
> I worked with those daily), but they're the same thing.
>
> 32-bit can only address about 3.7GB of RAM. If the CPU includes PAE
> (Physical Address Extension) code (all modern 32-bit AMD and Intel
> CPUs do, I believe), then it'll support as much as an amd64/em64t CPU.
> Personally, I always found PAE a bit dodgy. It worked fine, I guess,
> but early on it was REALLY dodgy, so I grew up mistrusting it as Black
> Magic. These days, once you have more than 4GB of memory, there's no
> reason not to use a 64bit OS. Time was, you'd use 32bit because most
> all the applications were compiled for 32-bit only, but now just about
> everything is compiled for both anyway (anything you're likely going
> to want is going to be compiled for both in any case).
>
> Also, just for funsies, there was discussion last year about dropping
> 32-bit in Ubuntu by 18.04. Who knows... time will tell.
>
> Finally, if you ever want to play with classics, the OLDER Ubuntu
> releases, can be found at http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/, all the way
> back to Warty Warthog (4.10).
>
> The real question is... why the heck am I still awake at 5 AM?
>
> > Stan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 5/9/2017 10:13 AM, Scott scottro@nyc.rr.com [LINUX_Newbies] wrote:
> >> On Tue, May 09, 2017 at 09:50:21AM -0700, Stan Gorodenski
> stanlep@commspeed.net [LINUX_Newbies] wrote:
> >>
> >>> Thank you, Jeff. Questions inserted below.
> >>>
> >>> On 5/9/2017 7:28 AM, J dreadpiratejeff@gmail.com [LINUX_Newbies]
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Would this be sufficient for a web/file server, possibly a
> discussion
> >>>>> group in the future? It seems I remember reading some where that a
> >>>>> server should have at least 8G ram. It can be increased to 8G on
> this
> >>>>> machine but it has only one slot and so I would have to spend
> another
> >>>>> $50 or so for another memory card.
> >>>>> Stan
> >>>>>
> >>>> For what you described, this is probably more than enough for
> your use
> >>>> case. The only upgrade I may consider, given the parameters you
> >>>> describe, would be a pair of 2TB or larger HDDs and set up as a
> >>>> software raid mirror to provide a modicum of local redundancy.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> The machine comes with 4G ram. Should I upgrade to 8G?
> >>> The machine comes with a 0.5TB hard drive. I am uncertain what the
> >>> advantage of a pair of 2TB HDDs is. Could you elaborate some?
> >>>
> >> Not that I presume to speak for Jeff, but he's saying that it's
> probably not
> >> necessary to upgrade the RAM. If you thought it was going to be a
> heavily
> >> loaded server, then it might be worth
> >> considering, but from what you describe, 4G should be adequate.
> >>
> >> Jeff is suggesting setting up RAID so that if one drive died, you could
> >> replace it. That being said, if you're not expecting to have a lot
> of data,
> >> you may not need 2 TB. However, it would give you a bit of leeway
> if your
> >> content expanded. He's saying 2 drives so that you could create a
> RAID-1
> >> mirror, meaning that if one drive dies, you still have the second
> >> one running.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> > Posted by: Stan Gorodenski <stanlep@commspeed.net>
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this list, please email
> LINUX_Newbies-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com & you will be removed.
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>
>

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Posted by: Stan Gorodenski <stanlep@commspeed.net>
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