Subj : Re: Slimmed down Debian To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Wed Aug 28 2019 16:04:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! > > KM> Yeah, Unity was not well-received. Then again, Gnome3 is why > KM> Cinnamon and Mate exist. > > What some people don't like others do like. ...I had to install Gnome > Tweak Tools on the systems running Ubuntu 18.04 because the 'new way' is > just to have a clock displaying the hours and minutes. Admittedly few > people need the accuracy of seconds but I find their display handy to > verify I didn't lock up something, or something huge just grabbed all > the CPU cycles termporarily. See, that exemplifies what a lot of us hated: removing and dumbing down features, to where it's basically a singletracking OS. > > I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on a few systems here, though I will admit > > those systems are 'hefty': fast multi-core CPU, 8- and 16 GB of RAM, > KM> How fast is fast? It chugged on a 3GHz quad-core. Haven't tried > KM> it on the i7. (Amazingly, the Closet doesn't have anything > KM> inbetween.) > > This one has a AMD FX-8320 8-core @ 3500 MHz with 32 GB of RAM (in > hindsight would have been fine with half that). OS on a 250 GB SSD > 'cause I hate waiting for the thing to reboot when I did something > stupid to cause a lockup or other issue. Storage HDD is 3 TB. Ah, that's practically futuristic by our standards! :D I found 32GB RAM of the fast stuff at half price locally, so one of the 9010s got upgraded and its former 16GB kicked downhill (so now the other two have 16gb and 12gb, with the mismatched slower-clocked RAM ejected to the parts pile, cuz 25% performance penalty seemed an excessive tradeoff for more RAM than they'll need anyway.) > The MythTV Server is an AMD FX-8300, 8-core, 3300 MHz with 16 GB RAM. That's no slouch either! > Actually it started out with 32 GB but one stick was faulty which > between that and me learning about GPT and IOMMU -- umm, provided a Apparently IOMMU is intended for hardware virtualization. > plethora of annoyances. While waiting for the replacement RAM (only a > few days!) I did get Ubuntu and MythTV installed and running; between > seeing this system (with the FX-8320) monitoring the server (FX-8300) > never getting anywhere close to 16 GB decided to leave the replacement > RAM out and eventually use it elsewhere. Yeah, realistically almost none of us use over 8GB or so. But I do try to max up system RAM when I see it priced right, under the theory that it can't hurt to have it available as future-proofing. And that's how I discovered that ReactOS, at least the version I had installed, was fine with 2GB but did not like 8GB. Oh well, alpha software, and they've done so much with it since that I'd have nuked it for a new version anyway. > KM> Isn't MythTV defunct? (not that I'd care; I still run XP for > KM> everyday!) > > MythTV is alive and well -- just finished a project with a gentleman in > New Zealand to copy recordings from a old server to new (old databases > are not directly compatible with then new). The joy of upgrading... > > The Mythbuntu option has been discontinued. Was an abbreviated version > of Ubuntu, just enough to let MythTV run. Now it's a MythTV app added > to the OS. Ah, that's what I'm remembering. > MythDora was a competitor to MythTV several years ago. That ended > around ten years ago and I switched to MythTV. Or that. All I knew is MythSomething died. :P > > KM> If I were to set up a media server, I might look at Kodi. > KM> https://kodi.tv/ > > I had looked at Kodi two or three (maybe three or four!) years ago and > seemed too complicated: seemed had to go down through several seb-menu > levels to get to the TV shows portion. I wasn't too thrilled with that; > the other person using the system here would have never figured it out! Heh... since I don't have TV reception or cable I'd never notice. My idea of a media server is to trawl the big external drive, find the desired MP4, and fire up VLC. > > which once loaded seems to run properly on (up to a point) older > > hardware. Just easier for me to run a constant set: all the same OS. > > Well, then there is the Raspberry Pi's! > KM> Have you tried Rasbian? Debian for RPi. > KM> https://raspbian.org/ > > Yup! :) Actually had used an RPi 3 (B?) as a Frontend. Because of > antenna -- later found out more tuner -- issues was running two > Backends: BE1 and BE2. (The new/current one is BE3 -- isn't my naming > convention clever?!) Was having troubles with pixelation: sometimes one > Backend would have a high-loss recoding while the other was essentially > fine. Antennae were about 10' apart but may have been enough to miss > the tree branch waving in the wind, record on a tuner bettwe suited to > that channel, and other variables. So rather than moving our rumps to a > Frontend looking at the other Backend where we usually watched TV had a > computer looking at BE2 and the RPi looking at BE1 - flip source on the > TV. My brain hurts. :) > New system - BE3 - was partially an expensive experiment. I had read > the Hauppauge 1609 tuner was better at resolving varying signal issues > (so pixelation) but never found any specifics: microvoltage, signal > threshold levels, etc. Everything was empirical. Gee thanks: the old > tuners are supposed to work too. I have some of the old analog tuners. Probably not useful anymore... > Finally found some information which seemed to verify the 1609 tuner is > what I probably needed -- take deep breath and build new system. Needed > one anyway. ...Plugged the antenna input into the splitter for BE1's > tuners and test. New system records "98%" while the old systems are > definitely less. (Meaning there is a little bit of pixelation while the > other two have significantly more when is windy, etc.) Call tree service. :D > ..There are 'flaws' in my reception setup which I can't do too much > about. Trees tower over the house. Have to have the antennae in the > Storage Area on the second floor -- we'll just say discussions to put > outside where they belong were met coldly. Haha... this house has an old very large TV antenna in the attic, probably to preserve it from hail and high winds... I suppose I could put the analog TV up there too. :D þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .