# I Don't Do Windows



## JustinCase (Jan 22, 2022)

A while back I was reading about Edward Snowdon's favorite Linux distro - Qubes.  Very secure, works on the idea of compartmentalization.  I decided that it would be beyond my limited organizational capabilities.  In my Asperger mind I pictured I could modify and create something nearly as good.  Thus started my quest.  My idea was to install as many distros as my storage would allow.  Distro 1 went on as expected then 2, 3 and 4 followed.  They launched from a grub menu, partitioning the HD as I installed them.  Great so far, except getting to the 4th distro took a little tweaking and terminal access.

I decided since I had loaded 4 KDE's Plasmas that the theory would work the same with minimal distros.  I did stop at 3 since the grub menu only showed the first 3.  Everything went well with those installs.  Some negative events gave me pause the last ones installed were awful slow, my HD is 2TB so on the prior test, the ones loaded on sda3 and 4 took forever to respond.  I noticed I was experiencing confusion with which one I was working/configuring.

The more tired I got the more mixed up I became.  3 distros were bad but 4 were a nightmare.  Friday night was not at all enjoyable.  Went to bed determinded to step back and regroup.  Saturday morn I reinstalled one distro I had become adept at and hang the idea.  Back to square one with a much calmer attitude.  Only positive was it exercised my brain and gave me a headache.


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## caroln (Jan 22, 2022)

The only sentences I understood were the last two.  I must *really* be out of touch.


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## JustinCase (Jan 22, 2022)

I did this for 35 years during my career, the 'diaries' were chosen so I could keep a trail without confusing anyone.  I thought this venue was open for anything.  At least it has nothing to do with Covid, natural immunity or vaccines!


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## caroln (Jan 22, 2022)

Okay....  I guess.


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## katlupe (Jan 22, 2022)

JustinCase said:


> I did this for 35 years during my career, the 'diaries' were chosen so I could keep a trail without confusing anyone.  I thought this venue was open for anything.  At least it has nothing to do with Covid, natural immunity or vaccines!


It is.


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## Devi (Jan 22, 2022)

Well, I sort of followed it, but not sure why you installed so many distros ...?


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## Aunt Bea (Jan 22, 2022)

JustinCase said:


> I did this for 35 years during my career, the 'diaries' were chosen so I could keep a trail without confusing anyone.  I thought this venue was open for anything.  At least it has nothing to do with Covid, natural immunity or vaccines!


It is, tell us more!


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## katlupe (Jan 23, 2022)

I use Ubuntu and it was only a few months ago that I was brave enough to buy a new laptop and completely remove windows from it and install Ubuntu myself with no help except YouTube.  I had been using it for years anyway even though Windows took up half of my old computer (my ex-husband had installed it for me and took care of it till I moved). The day I removed Windows successfully (the 2nd day I got the new computer) I was screaming with joy! I hate Windows so much!

Yes, write more about Linux!


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## caroln (Jan 23, 2022)

caroln said:


> Okay....  I guess.


Oh, this is about Linux!  My apologies.  I had no idea what this was all about.  And none of the "lingo" was familiar to me.  My only familiarity with Linux is the _word_ Linux!  
Actually, when I saw the title I thought it was going to be about a cleaning person who didn't "do windows".     Like I said, out of touch!


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

Devi said:


> Well, I sort of followed it, but not sure why you installed so many distros ...?





Aunt Bea said:


> It is, tell us more!


@Devi I wanted to see how far I could go.  Four unique distros, partitioned HD (4 x 440+ GB each) found out within minutes it was too much.  Now back to one distro that I learned to love, easy - without all the quirks.  I'd had enough & needed a reboot, was toying with the idea of 4 more distros.  I've never found my '*KILL*' switch.

@Aunt Bea the wife and I have an understanding, I don't have to listen to her & our neighbor talk about gardening, she doesn't listen to or care about *Linux*. Whenever I try I can watch her eyes glaze over, waiting for the boredom. Give her a Chromebook (my sneaky way to get her to use Linux) with 'Freecell & Mahjong', she's happy.


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

This quote probably says it better than i could.  Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3 is my favorite/current distro.  The other selling point is, Mint doesn't install SNAPD (Google's access point to update their apps, _*Hate Google!, *_I know everybody does it).


> Linux Mint 20.1 is, without a doubt, the most polished release I've seen come from the developers. The improvements they've made to the desktop make it such that anyone can jump into this operating system and start using it--and I do mean anyone. By continuing to stick with a most familiar desktop metaphor, Linux Mint is immediately familiar to any user of any skill level. The simplistic desktop menu is a joy to use. It's not filled with bells and whistles, it hasn't reinvented the wheel, it just is and it works to absolute perfection.
> 
> Personally, I find desktops like GNOME more appealing, but knowing the average computer user like I do, Cinnamon is far ahead of GNOME, when it comes to user friendliness. The latest release of Cinnamon is a perfectly spiced icing on an already delicious cake--one that would even make the likes of Paul Hollywood offer up the coveted handshake.    --Jack Wallen of techrepulic.com--


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## timoc (Jan 23, 2022)

I Don't Do Windows​
*Neither do I*, with the arthritis giving me gyp all the time, I prefer to pay a window cleaner.


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

timoc said:


> I Don't Do Windows​
> *Neither do I*, with the arthritis giving me gyp all the time, I prefer to pay a window cleaner.


Linux is arthritis user-friendly with *NO* mask mandate!


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## Nathan (Jan 23, 2022)

JustinCase said:


> I Don't Do Windows


Me neither, I discovered the pure joy of being in total control of my computer when I began using Linux in 2004.
I've used many distros and versions of BSD, even built Gentoo from scratch.  My current favorite(s) are actually related, both being Arch-linux derivatives.
Manjaro
EndeavourOS
Both are built on the Arch-Linux model of incremental updating through rolling release, rather than large, periodic upgrades.


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

Nathan said:


> Me neither, I discovered the pure joy of being in total control of my computer when I began using Linux in 2004.
> I've used many distros and versions of BSD, even built Gentoo from scratch.  My current favorite(s) are actually related, both being Arch-linux derivatives.
> Manjaro
> EndeavourOS
> Both are built on the Arch-Linux model of incremental updating through rolling release, rather than large, periodic upgrades.


Never tried Endeavour, Manjaro was excellent.  Only issue I had was the format/write bootable USB.  Found that the app on Manjaro created an unusable distro with Mint Mate.  Tried several times same problem.  Finally installed Mint XFCE along side Manjaro created a bootable USB using the older format/write on Mint.  Minor issue, yes but without SNAPD installing I went back to Mint, was nicer to my age dated brain.


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## palides2021 (Jan 23, 2022)

I've never used Linux, but I remember years ago when I worked at a research facility that they preferred using Linux and thought very highly of it. I'll check into it. Right now, I use Mac.


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## Medusa (Jan 23, 2022)

JustinCase said:


> A while back I was reading about Edward Snowdon's favorite Linux distro - Qubes.  Very secure, works on the idea of compartmentalization.  I decided that it would be beyond my limited organizational capabilities.  In my Asperger mind I pictured I could modify and create something nearly as good.  Thus started my quest.  My idea was to install as many distros as my storage would allow.  Distro 1 went on as expected then 2, 3 and 4 followed.  They launched from a grub menu, partitioning the HD as I installed them.  Great so far, except getting to the 4th distro took a little tweaking and terminal access.
> 
> I decided since I had loaded 4 KDE's Plasmas that the theory would work the same with minimal distros.  I did stop at 3 since the grub menu only showed the first 3.  Everything went well with those installs.  Some negative events gave me pause the last ones installed were awful slow, my HD is 2TB so on the prior test, the ones loaded on sda3 and 4 took forever to respond.  I noticed I was experiencing confusion with which one I was working/configuring.
> 
> The more tired I got the more mixed up I became.  3 distros were bad but 4 were a nightmare.  Friday night was not at all enjoyable.  Went to bed determinded to step back and regroup.  Saturday morn I reinstalled one distro I had become adept at and hang the idea.  Back to square one with a much calmer attitude.  Only positive was it exercised my brain and gave me a headache.


I am out of the loop on this sort of thing but can affirm by proxy in that my son is a big Linux fan and does some of his own "tweaking," as well.


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

palides2021 said:


> I've never used Linux, but I remember years ago when I worked at a research facility that they preferred using Linux and thought very highly of it. I'll check into it. Right now, I use Mac.


Their hardware is second to none.  Only issue is price & too restrictive control over proprietary software.

On a different note, I've noticed that mostly VW's are the auto of choice for movies/TV shows & Apple is the go to tech device for whatever income level the actor/actress is playing.  Good marketing exposure & not at all invasive for the masses!


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## mrstime (Jan 23, 2022)

We got rid of Windows when we both got Chromebooks.


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## Nathan (Jan 23, 2022)

JustinCase said:


> Never tried Endeavour, Manjaro was excellent.  Only issue I had was the format/write bootable USB.  Found that the app on Manjaro created an unusable distro with Mint Mate.  Tried several times same problem.  Finally installed Mint XFCE along side Manjaro created a bootable USB using the older format/write on Mint.  Minor issue, yes but without SNAPD installing I went back to Mint, was nicer to my age dated brain.


I used to use unetbootin but it seems to have "issues", apparently has dependencies that are not available...<?>    I use the dd command in terminal to make bootable USB installation drives.Example: 
	
	



```
dd if=manjaro-mate-21.1.2-210907-linux513.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M
```


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

Nathan said:


> I used to use unetbootin but it seems to have "issues", apparently has dependencies that are not available...<?>    I use the dd command in terminal to make bootable USB installation drives.Example:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I usually try to avoid terminal commands, very unforgiving caps or lowercase along with spelling cause me to go into self-destruct mode.  Think faster than I type.   Stick with what help I can get.


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## JustinCase (Jan 23, 2022)

Next Linux project, with my wife's old Windows laptop that had update issues, there are 1,400 photos still on it.   I found that with 2 terminal commands you can first - flag the duplicates, second - delete the copies.  The biggest part of the project after booting is to move them to a flash drive then work magic.  I have to do when she's no where around, explanations are foreign to her.


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## JustinCase (Jan 24, 2022)

*Joint health issues*:

Dec 16th finally was able to see a podiatrist about my self-inflicted pain I had with both my big toe nails.  *They're outta here! * After 3 tries at family doctors decided to see a professional.  30 minutes later was somewhat pain free, more respect for POWs dealing with torture.

Dec 17th wife came out of her puzzle room with an emergency problem, she was having problems breathing *NO WASN'T COVID!  *Turned out to be blood clots in her lungs, she had an old known clot in her calf that had broken up, 2 clots moved into her lungs.  Got her on blood thinners immediately.  Then found problems with her thorax, weak walls, a specialist saw her said they will watch it.

Next came her kidneys, we knew she has an unusually small urethra, urinating had been an issue since birth the bladder wouldn't empty completely so they were concerned about her kidneys, they were ok after a CAT scan and a child's catheter was successfully inserted after 9 tries.  She's been on pills for her heart murmur and to control the rhythm .   A urologist was next and follow up surgery.  She had her catheter in for a month.

She' still on her heart medication, Thyroid medicine, Eloquis (blood thinners), calcium, B-12 and Vit D3.  We've seen specialists for all the problems.  I definitely know my around the local medical clinics.

Jan 10th got my follow up exam by the toe Dr. doing great.   Next comes my cataract removals, first consultation Feb 10th. * 

OUR GOLDEN YEARS!*


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## horseless carriage (Jan 24, 2022)

Sorry about this but my mind goes back beyond analogue, I had to Google: "Linux distro - Qubes." Now I'm not only none the wiser, i'm wishing that I hadn't gone there. Think my head might explode anytime soon.


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## JustinCase (Jan 24, 2022)

horseless carriage said:


> Sorry about this but my mind goes back beyond analogue, I had to Google: "Linux distro - Qubes." Now I'm not only none the wiser, i'm wishing that I hadn't gone there. Think my head might explode anytime soon.


Exactly how I felt on Friday night, wasn't much sleep involved.


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## JustinCase (Jan 25, 2022)

> Filling out tax returns has traditionally been an area where Linux comes up short compared to the proprietary platforms, but you actually have several options for using commercial income tax products on a Linux platform. Here’s a quick look at three commercial tax offerings I found that work just fine using Ubuntu 7.10 or, Ubuntu based distros and Firefox, even though two of the three vendors warn Linux users they are not supported. Translation: Don’t look for vendor help if you run into problems.


I've already completed & efiled my taxes for this year (2021) using this solution, I can only assume it's because of supply and demand.  Not enough need for a Linux based application to justify the development of a workable Linux app.  I used the Firefox browser & TaxSlayer rather than TaxAct (which was used exclusively in the past) with the same results before efiling.


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## JustinCase (Jan 26, 2022)

Spent the week in tax 'hell' I had an accident last Feb that made my laptop & what was on it unusable.  Lost all my saved files, docs and tax returns, in other words the damaged HD was toast.  Tried several 'free' file sites. Thought I was finished and so posted.  Yesterday I got a rejection notice.  Evidently the IRS has issued me a pin 2 years ago, no idea what it was, my 2020 AGI was unobtainable also.  Darn my OCD curse got me again.

Tried to obtain one but kept getting put on hold.  After creating accounts on 2 other 'free' apps, I decided to get an id from ID.gov or something like that.  They wanted a picture from our driver's licenses.  Nope not happening, our supposed smart phone won't take a clear focused pic. the state had created a fancy glossy covering for them.  The site kept timing out between mistakes & retries, telling us to retry again.

Finally, after getting though all the frustration & anger, I decided to refile my fed taxes on a paper form from the post office.  Completed within 30 minutes, printing 3 copies, I was done.  It probably will cause a slight delay in getting our refund.  Luckily the refund is not a show stopper with my financial situation.  I filed paper last year and the refunds took less than 30 days.  And, will do so from this point on.

By the way those 'free' file sites should be illegal because simply it's a '*bait and switch*' scam. The state return is not free and can be darn expensive. I used to do returns as a lark but quit when I retired, so 'Bob's yer uncle' as far as I'm concerned. Technology is great as long as it works. Did find a site that you can have fillable forms in pdf format that is like the free sites. Will remember the first rule in computing, *DO BACKUPS!!!  Save & save often.*


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## JustinCase (Jan 30, 2022)

Personal observation about OS's.  I'm very glad that I have learned to say, 'I don't know!'. During the pandemic one thing stands out, Win 11 is another ballgame.  A few times neighbors have come asking for help.  I've been away from any tech experience since 2009 (13 years) & I've lost a few steps.  Win 10 was just becoming mainstream then.  I am now a dual 'know nothing' concerning Microsoft or Mac, more danger than help.

The Chromebooks are nearing their expected lifespan,  after 7 years+ the support for the hardware/software is nearing an end.  Chromebooks OS and drivers are not supported much longer.  Chromebooks are harder to configure for mainstream Linux distros also, if you get it setup for other distros, you still only have a minimal storage device.  Trust Google to make it about money.


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## JustinCase (Jan 30, 2022)

Jan 30th,  went back and reinstalled Manjaro KDE Plasma.  Arch based above average German engineered.  Liked it better than Mint & needed a challenge.  Runs a little slower but interesting.  Rated as one of five best versions of KDE on several sites.  Of course it's just one person's opinion each.  I have also sent a backup copy of LinuxMint XFCE to my HD as well as my PRIMARY & SECONDARY flash drives.  I figure I can't have enough backups.


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## JustinCase (Feb 22, 2022)

*LONG READ - *I smoked until I was 31 (16 - 31). Quit because of concerns about my health and the long term consequences.

It’s suddenly become acceptable to say that COVID is—or will soon be—like the flu. Such analogies have long been the preserve of pandemic minimizers, but lately they’ve been creeping into more enlightened circles. Last month the dean of a medical school wrote an open letter to his students suggesting that for a vaccinated person, the risk of death from COVID-19 is “in the same realm, or even lower, as the average American’s risk from flu.” A few days later, David Leonhardt said as much to his millions of readers in the The New York Times’ morning newsletter. And three prominent public-health experts have called for the government to recognize a “new normal” in which the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus “is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.”​
The end state of this pandemic may indeed be one where COVID comes to look something like the flu. Both diseases, after all, are caused by a dangerous respiratory virus that ebbs and flows in seasonal cycles. But I’d propose a different metaphor to help us think about our tenuous moment: *The “new normal” will arrive when we acknowledge that COVID’s risks have become more in line with those of smoking cigarettes—and that many COVID deaths, like many smoking-related deaths, could be prevented with a single intervention*.

The pandemic’s greatest source of danger has transformed from a pathogen into a behavior. Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, right now, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States. Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, told me that if COVID continues to account for a few hundred thousand American deaths every year—“a realistic worst-case scenario,” he calls it—that would wipe out all of the life-expectancy gains we’ve accrued from the past two decades’ worth of smoking-prevention efforts.​
The COVID vaccines are, without exaggeration, among the safest and most effective therapies in all of modern medicine. An unvaccinated adult is an astonishing 68 times more likely to die from COVID than a boosted one. Yet widespread vaccine hesitancy in the United States has caused more than 163,000 preventable deaths and counting. Because too few people are vaccinated, COVID surges still overwhelm hospitals—interfering with routine medical services and leading to thousands of lives lost from other conditions. If everyone who is eligible were triply vaccinated, our health-care system would be functioning normally again. (We do have other methods of protection—antiviral pills and monoclonal antibodies—but these remain in short supply and often fail to make their way to the highest-risk patients.) Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have already declared themselves broken up with COVID. They are confidently doing so not because the virus is no longer circulating or because they’ve achieved mythical herd immunity from natural infection; they’ve simply inoculated enough people.

President Joe Biden said in January that “this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” and vaccine holdouts are indeed prolonging our crisis. The data suggest that most of the unvaccinated hold that status voluntarily at this point. Last month, only 1 percent of adults told the Kaiser Family Foundation that they wanted to get vaccinated soon, and just 4 percent suggested that they were taking a “wait-and-see” approach. Seventeen percent of respondents, however, said they definitely don’t want to get vaccinated or would do so only if required (and 41 percent of vaccinated adults say the same thing about boosters). Among the vaccine-hesitant, a mere 2 percent say it would be hard for them to access the shots if they wanted them. We can acknowledge that some people have faced structural barriers to getting immunized while also listening to the many others who have simply told us how they feel, sometimes from the very beginning.

The same arguments apply to tobacco: Smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Quitting the habit is akin to receiving a staggeringly powerful medicine, one that wipes out most of this excess risk. Yet smokers, like those who now refuse vaccines, often continue their dangerous lifestyle in the face of aggressive attempts to persuade them otherwise. Even in absolute numbers, America’s unvaccinated and current-smoker populations seem to match up rather well: Right now, the CDC pegs them at 13 percent and 14 percent of all U.S. adults, respectively, and both groups are likely to be poorer and less educated.

In either context, public-health campaigns must reckon with the very difficult task of changing people’s behavior. Anti-smoking efforts, for example, have tried to incentivize good health choices and disincentivize bad ones, whether through cash payments to people who quit, gruesome visual warnings on cigarette packs, taxes, smoke-free zones, or employer smoking bans. Over the past 50 years, this crusade has very slowly but consistently driven change: Nearly half of Americans used to smoke; now only about one in seven does. Hundreds of thousands of lung-cancer deaths have been averted in the process.

With COVID, too, we’ve haphazardly pursued behavioral nudges to turn the hesitant into the inoculated. Governments and businesses have given lotteries and free beers a chance. Some corporations, universities, health-care systems, and local jurisdictions implemented mandates. But many good ideas have turned out to be of little benefit: A randomized trial in nursing homes published in January, for example, found that an intensive information-and-persuasion campaign from community leaders had failed to budge vaccination rates among the predominantly disadvantaged and low-income staff. Despite the altruistic efforts of public-health professionals and physicians, it’s becoming harder by the day to reach immunological holdouts. Booster uptake is also lagging far behind.

This is where the “new normal” of COVID might come to resemble our decades-long battle with tobacco. We should neither expect that every stubbornly unvaccinated person will get jabbed before next winter nor despair that none of them will ever change their mind. Let’s accept instead that we may make headway slowly, and with considerable effort. This plausible outcome has important, if uncomfortable, policy implications. With a vaccination timeline that stretches over years, our patience for restrictions, especially on the already vaccinated, will be very limited. But there is middle ground. We haven’t banned tobacco outright—in fact, most states protect smokers from job discrimination—but we have embarked on a permanent, society-wide campaign of disincentivizing its use. Long-term actions for COVID might include charging the unvaccinated a premium on their health insurance, just as we do for smokers, or distributing frightening health warnings about the perils of remaining uninoculated. And once the political furor dies down, COVID shots will probably be added to the lists of required vaccinations for many more schools and workplaces.

To compare vaccine resistance and smoking seems to overlook an obvious and important difference: COVID is an infectious disease and tobacco use isn’t. (Tobacco is also addictive in a physiological sense, while vaccine resistance isn’t.) Many pandemic restrictions are based on the idea that any individual’s behavior may pose a direct health risk to everyone else. People who get vaccinated don’t just protect themselves from COVID; they reduce their risk of passing on the disease to those around them, at least for some limited period of time. Even during the Omicron wave, that protective effect has appeared significant: A person who has received a booster is 67 percent less likely to test positive for the virus than an unvaccinated person.

But the harms of tobacco can also be passed along from smokers to their peers. Secondhand-smoke inhalation causes more than 41,000 deaths annually in the U.S. (a higher mortality rate than some flu seasons’). Yet despite smoking’s well-known risks, many states don’t completely ban the practice in public venues; secondhand-smoke exposure in private homes and cars—affecting 25 percent of U.S. middle- and high-school children—remains largely unregulated. The general acceptance of these bleak outcomes, for smokers and nonsmokers alike, may hint at another aspect of where we’re headed with COVID. Tobacco is lethal enough that we are willing to restrict smokers’ personal freedoms—but only to a degree. As deadly as COVID is, some people won’t get vaccinated, no matter what, and both the vaccinated and unvaccinated will spread disease to others. A large number of excess deaths could end up being tolerated or even explicitly permitted. Noel Brewer, a public-health professor at the University of North Carolina, told me that anti-COVID actions, much like anti-smoking policies, will be limited not by their effectiveness but by the degree to which they are politically palatable.

Without greater vaccination, living with COVID could mean enduring a yearly death toll that is an order of magnitude higher than the one from flu. And yet this, too, might come to feel like its own sort of ending. Endemic tobacco use causes hundreds of thousands of casualties, year after year after year, while fierce public-health efforts to reduce its toll continue in the background. Yet tobacco doesn’t really feel like a catastrophe for the average person. Noymer, of UC Irvine, said that the effects of endemic COVID, even in the context of persistent gaps in vaccination, would hardly be noticeable. Losing a year or two from average life expectancy only bumps us back to where we were in … 2000.

Chronic problems eventually yield to acclimation, rendering them relatively imperceptible. We still care for smokers when they get sick, of course, and we reduce harm whenever possible. The health-care system makes $225 billion every year for doing so—paid out of all of our tax dollars and insurance premiums. I have no doubt that the system will adapt in this way, too, if the coronavirus continues to devastate the unvaccinated. Hospitals have a well-honed talent for transforming any terrible situation into a marketable “center of excellence.”

COVID is likely to remain a leading killer for a while, and some academics have suggested that pandemics end only when the public stops caring. But we shouldn’t forget the most important reason that the coronavirus isn’t like the flu: We’ve never had vaccines this effective in the midst of prior influenza outbreaks, which means we didn’t have a simple, clear approach to saving quite so many lives. Compassionate conversations, community outreach, insurance surcharges, even mandates—I’ll take them all. Now is not the time to quit.

*ADDED* - I personally have received my 3 doses,  wear my mask, avoid crowds and wash my hands frequently.  I never liked crowds so that was easy.  I get an annual flu shot being somewhat compromised.  The mask was a win/win for me, walking in the cold has been positive now.  I have dentures so going without gives my gums a rest and I don' t need to be that cheerful with it on.​


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## RFW (Feb 22, 2022)

Didn't expect this to end where it did. Good read though.


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## David777 (Feb 22, 2022)

Humorous presentation haha.

Worked a decade at 2 UNIX computer corps hardware engineering groups during its hey days.  As a strong command line person from earliest era before Linux rose, have always ported UNIX commands onto to windows computers in order to run commands from cmd prompt or .bat scripts.  Although recent Windows platforms now have power shell commands that cover such functionality, learning any syntax again for what I may need such for has little value.  grep cat dir awk sed du sort tr...


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## JustinCase (Feb 22, 2022)

David777 said:


> Humorous presentation haha.
> 
> Worked a decade at 2 UNIX computer corps hardware engineering groups during its hey days.  As a strong command line person from earliest era before Linux rose, have always ported UNIX commands onto to windows computers in order to run commands from cmd prompt or .bat scripts.  Although recent Windows platforms now have power shell commands that cover such functionality, learning any syntax again for what I may need such for has little value.  grep cat dir awk sed du sort tr...


Went from pcam to machine language/MVS to Vax/VMS to UNIX.  Had to type slower then, damn UNIX didn't like my liberal/free use of caps or lower case.


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## JustinCase (Feb 22, 2022)

To my own amazement I'm still using the same distro I installed a couple weeks ago.


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## Bellbird (Feb 23, 2022)

Interesting post, I never knew there was a choice, Windows can be a real pain.


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## JustinCase (Feb 23, 2022)

Bellbird said:


> Interesting post, I never knew there was a choice, Windows can be a real pain.


Get more info @ www.distrowatch.com I've used Linux since 2000.  Only been hacked (compromised) once in 22 years my fault used same password for both Facebook & Gmail.  Easy to install or reinstall as many times as you want, with over 900 distros one should meet your needs & it's mostly free.  Even Microsoft uses it.  The internet is mostly made using Linux as it's OS.  Good luck.  I no longer use either Facebook (or any social site) & gmail.

Chrome OS, smartphones using Android, tablets, Chromebooks, all use a variation of Linux.


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## JustinCase (Feb 28, 2022)

My eldest daughter & visiting friend in SW AZ both came down with Covid 2-3 weeks ago.  Both had all their shots and boosters.  Daughter kept us posted starting with their 1st day through their negative results.  She said she had a sore throat, cough & felt like a truck was somehow responsible for running over them.

Both have been sleeping a lot but now the friend can board a plane for home (couldn't without a negative result).  She did say it was akin to a bad case of flu.   She still gets a little tired after walking but feels the worst is behind them.  That's 4 (out of 15) of my immediate family that developed Covid after getting their shots & boosters.  All ok.


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## JustinCase (Mar 1, 2022)

Been trying for the last coupla weeks to clean up my records. Just finished reporting to the IRS concerning my 2021 taxes seems they wanted me to verify my identity. Spent hours trying to get someone to answer my 800 call for TAC (Taxpayer Assistance Crap), the 'C' doesn't mean Crap not sure what that is. Finally had to put my son on it. He's a fraud investigator for IRS. He got it resolved with very little input from me. Learned what a fiasco the ID.me website is all about (embarrassment to the IRS). They canceled it without telling many.

Next I've been trying to get a copy of my Social Security card needed for identity. Finally figured out they were not going to answer my calls either. Did locate the link to request a new SS card. They pulled a photo ID from my state's DMV records (my last photo on my new license). Spent countless time on hold with them, no one ever did answer. My son told me to never call an 800 number, not enough operators on hand to answer.

My state had the brilliant idea to put a hologram on the licenses to prevent fraud. You can't make a copy without putting it underneath a heavy piece of clear plastic to get it to copy. The sites trying to setup an account for the identity verification process only want you to use a smartphone for photos or communication. I have a simple flipper without data personally. My tablet wasn't good enough for them. Also they are completely unaware that there are 9 million Linux users in the US, They have no clue how help them without Windows.

Next was me trying to close out an old Credit Union Account. Been trying off and on for the last 2 years told the drive-up teller I wanted to close, said she'd let them know, This was in 2020, last week I got a notice that they were going charge me $5 a month for inactivity. tried to call their 800 number but again no one would answer. Perseverance paid off there I waited out the on hold limit and finally got someone to answer, I'm getting a cashier's check for $11.60 soon with a promise my account was closed. *I HATE TALKING OR CALLING ON A PHONE!!!*

I hope I can finally take a breath.  Ain't technology great?


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