32 Days down!?!

[Gelfling6]

Welcome back to the living! Yeah, I think this year, they've gotten ultra-paranoid on Identity theft.. I just had to deal with the State Of Connecticut DRS (Revenue Services) because, they put my state income tax refund on hold, because the software I had been using (for the past 8 years) had put my street address, instead of my mailing address.. Even though I was getting the refund direct-deposited to the exact same checking account I've had for 6 of those 8 years. (and hadn't changed in that 6..) Yet... here's the main problem...

If I have mail, with the street address on it, it goes out on the rule route, then goes back to the post office, labeled as unable to deliver, and sometimes sent back to the sender.. Because........ I receive my mail, at a P.O. box, at that exact same post office.. They even had the nerve one year, to send the refund check back for this exact same reason.

But.... here's the real fun.. If something needs to be shipped, (UPS, DHL, FED-Ex, etc..) they want the street address..
Some places, when you order online, will not send to a P.O. Box, ONLY a street address. Even for an info postcard. Guess what happens?

Ain't it great, You're a statistic, and no-longer a customer? whom, the retailers were originally supposed to be friendly to?

Welcome to the world of the big bucks!

[swarfendor437]

If this is a comment on my attempt to donate I put all my address details in! And telephone number!
I have PM'd TheeMahn and Blackwolf as pch.shot suggested but the PM system seems to be stuck and I cannot delete previous PM's which I cannot even see! I hope I can donate soon!

[Driver]

TheeMahn, I am glad to see that you are back on your "Internet feet," so to speak.

Unfortunately, I ended up switching to Mint this time around. A good friend recently purchased his very first computer and asked me to, "Install that linux thing that you have on your computer." Being a happy Ultimate Edition user since I discovered it at version 2.3, I installed Ultimate Edition 3.5 on it (which was only a nightmare because it's a Samsung with their buggy UEFI/Secure Boot implementation that made it dangerous even if one jumped through all the required hoops whilst making the correct secret signs and reciting the secret spells ). I was a bit nonplussed by not being able to read a couple of lines that had checkboxes beside them that I was presented with during the installation due to the incompatible color scheme (character color being so close to the background color), but crossed my fingers and managed. However, as it was his first computer and as he is trying to learn how to use it at age 46, lol, he had a few issues. (Luckily, the need to unlearn bad "Microsoft" habits was not one of them.) For example, he kept getting told by the update app that he needed to attempt a "partial upgrade," which, IIRC, involves ripping the heart out of Ultimate Edition and replacing it with the generic Ubuntu swill, lol. And then there were a lot of, "I can't read this black text on the... black background" type calls (interestingly, the ones I couldn't read during installation were (practically) white text on a white background).

While I have hopes that, in the future, all text that a user is presented with during the installation phase (at least) are completely readable out-of-the-box, I made it through that and decided that - since my laptop was still running a damaged 3.0 and my desktop 2.7 - the simple solution was to install UE3.5 on my computers, too, so that I could easily duplicate whatever he was having trouble figuring out on my own computer and then talk him through it over the telephone. Great idea... on paper.

Unfortunately, I had no end of trouble trying to install UE3.5 on my poor old laptop. I'm of the opinion that the fault lies with the laptop - the hard drive seems to be in bad shape, when I installed 3.0 on it I had to attempt it about seven times (and finally went with an installation that ended up being "mostly there, more or less, sort of," that I could only really use in "no effects" mode, and because I had the distinct impression that it was overheating during the installation <SIGH>. And, in fact, the fan failed on the thing about a week ago and I have since only used it for basic tasks (email and accessing a few web-forums) whilst sitting on a cinder block outside where it has been in the 20s(F). I tried using it inside and saw my CPU temps hit 189F doing not much, so, yeah, I don't blame your OS for my issues.

But I was in a bind. I really needed to get the same OS on my computer as on my friend's because he depends on me for anything technological (poor guy ) and it's not convenient for him to drive down here every evening (and I walk, so...). I kept crashing but at one point managed to get through the partitioning/formatting stage (so bye-bye OS). I grabbed my USB flash drive to try yet another time, but ended up grabbing the one that I had previously put Mint 14 Xfce on to look at. To make a long story... just a little bit longer... It worked! I don't know why. Either Mint Xfce's installation routine didn't push my CPU into max-speed mode (thereby running much cooler) or else I just got lucky. Soon enough I was given the option to reboot, did so, ripped out the preinstalled Broadcom BC4311 junk (that has never worked for my rev 01 version hardware), installed the version that does work, and was in like Flynn.

It... It was green , lol. And... Where's all the STUFF? IDK how long I spent the first time I installed Ultimate Edition, just opening the menu and hovering my mouse cursor over each app to read the descriptions that popped up - but with Mint... It took about a minute .

But I had a working non-Microsoft OS once again. About that time my buddy rang my doorbell and said, "I can't figure out-" and I thought, "Hmm..." So, yeah, I installed Mint 14 Xfce (64-bit for him) on his laptop, too. Felt like I was putting a hand-crank starter on a Ferrari, lol, his laptop having an i5 3210M and six gigs of RAM and me putting Xfce on it, but I still felt that the best thing to do was to place the same OS on both our computers. They just didn't end up being the OS that I had planned on installing.

Okay, I think (hope!) that I have succeeded in getting all of the rambling out of my system. I almost cancelled this post - but then I thought:

The above is a perfect example of the kind of trouble that I get into when you disappear! (LMAO)

Oh, and I think that Mint 14 - even the low-resource Xfce version - uses Ubuntu's Quantal(?q-something, anyway?) as a core, while Ultimate Edition 3.5 uses the previous (IDK what silly animal name they used for that one, sorry) version of Ubuntu as a core? I wanted to make sure and mention that both my underpowered-when-new 2003 or 2004 laptop and my friend's brand new laptop seem to work flawlessly with this OS. Actually... I had always assumed that all the things I couldn't do with mine were entirely due to its p*ss-poor integrated Intel "graphics." For example, I couldn't view the DRM-type streaming video in full screen (Hulu) and even viewing small Youtube videos was an exercise in frustration with me having to pause the thing every few seconds so my system could cool down enough that it could go back into 1.73gHz mode instead of being temperature-locked in 800mhz mode. And the most advanced game I could play was AisleRiot. I tried SuperTuxKart a couple of times and the "3 2 1" countdown at the beginning... took about 20 seconds :yuck: . But with Mint 14, maybe it's because Xfce uses less memory than the Gnome 2.x that I had been using or maybe it's because of the newer versions of all(?) the components, but I was able to view Youtube - in full screen! I was able to watch Hulu - in full screen. And I didn't have to keep pausing to let my CPU cool down so it could get back into its highest speed; it seems like it wasn't even constantly needing to use that speed for once - and at the end, that last day before my fan stopped altogether, when it was barely turning and vibrating my entire laptop whilst sounding like I had thrown a bicycle chain into a blender and turned the thing on, I actually locked my CPU into 800mhz mode... And the video stuff still played in full screen mode without choking! And... My friend decided to subscribe to Netflix. That was a minor PitA, seeing as how Netflix does NOT support linux, lol. So I had to install Compholio's(?) patched version of Wine, install Moonlight, and install the Microsoft Windows :yuck: version of Firefox (actually, I just let Compholio's thing do its magic and take care of all of that, he must be pretty smart). Fearing that I'd screw that up - because, believe me, I'm the best at screwing things up and I had never messed with this stuff before - I tried it on my old laptop first. I figured it'd - at best - display a few frames before it started skipping and then choked. Imagine my surprise when I ended up looking at Netflix. I thought, "What the heck," and had him enter the name/password that he had set up into my computer. And then... We sat there and watched an entire movie! I think I saw a "micro-stutter" twice, no other problems at all; and I would assume that Netflix, especially since it requires Moonlight I mean Silverlight, must be the king of DRM and be about the most taxing way that one could possibly watch a video - in full screen, no less - on a computer. So I installed the mess that is Netflix via Microsoft Windows via (patched) Wine with Moonlight on his system, removed it from mine (I don't have an account), and, again, had NO issues doing so. It works great for him. Which is a relief, because he left three messages on my machine stating, "No matter what I do, I can't log in." Then he called back yet again - and I was only out of the house for an hour, lol - to say, "Yeah, my girlfriend figured it out. Capslock." And then he called later that night saying that nothing he did would allow him to log in, even playing with the capslock button. Turned out that he was using his login password as his user name and his email password as his login password (and everything was printed on a piece of paper that was taped to his laptop :rolleyes: ). So if there was a single (real) problem to be found... he'd have found it . (Oh, and I changed his login screen to just show a picture of him, lol, which he now knows to click on and then enter his password (which is now the only thing taped to his computer - why did I even bother setting it to require one, lol?). Might not be secure, but he can get in ten times out of ten now.

Anyway... All of that is supposed to mean that if you are wondering if it's safe to use the "Q" version of Ubuntu stuff to build your next Ultimate Edition or if you'll have to spend a great deal of time fixing bugs, well, Mint 14 uses all that (I am pretty sure) and it, as they say, "Just works." At least with the Xfce version. I wasn't going to even try one of the fancy desktop environments with such an old system, but I have been able to do things with it that I have never managed before - and without a lot of help, meaning it, again, pretty much worked out-of-the-box. Even on my old laptop with Mint's now-required PAE kernel.

I... I'm going to stick with Mint this time. I couldn't figure out how to make the nVidia driver (tried the 173 version, was supposed to work with my old FX5200 AGP card, but...) work on my ancient desktop. So it's "laptop or the desktop in Windows XP OS" at present for me. And as I can only use my laptop outside, dodging snowflakes until I can obtain some kind of replacement fan that'll fit both the small space and the copper heat-pipe gizmo that it's attached to and "man up" enough to try taking the thing apart to R&R it (NOTE: The fan in an HP DV6226us is apparently the bit that all the other bits are bolted onto - because you have to more or less completely disassemble the entire laptop just to get to it :grr!: )... Well, I seriously doubt it would live long enough to install Ultimate Edition on it. Unless you'd consider creating a "lock the CPU into the lowest speed possible and take a nice long break every few seconds so that I can turn installation into an eight-hour treat and only include like five apps (okay, that's an exageration, Mint came with more than that and I really shouldn't be knocking it even in jest, because it actually turned out to be a decent OS)" version of Ultimate? No? I didn't think so, lol.

But I'll check in from time to time (future posts will be shorter and less rambling, even if I have to go back on the meds :rolleyes: in order to stick to it, I promise!). And at some point, I'll manage to fix this old tur- I mean laptop (or maybe dig a much newer and more powerful one out of a dumpster, lol), and I'll once again install Ultimate Edition. 'Cause I might be cheating on it, stepping out with its "cousin"(?) and all, but hey, I still loves ya, Ultimate! And I'm sure that we'll find a way to spend many a night "not sleeping" again, some day!

So... Yeah, TheeMahn, glad you're back. Life got a lot more complicated without your little piece of the Internet to visit. Hope all of your issues (at least the ones that deal with technology, ha ha (guess you'd have to have been there - and I hope you never had the dubious pleasure) ) are safely in the past, bro.

[crossbones]

Well Welcome back! I think you know who this is by the first part of my username. Anyhow I just installed ultimate 3.5 and I am really liking it. After I stress it out some more I will share comments on what I think.

[TriTon]

Good Job.... ^^

[JOHNNYG]

I just want to thank you again TheeMahn for providing this forum that is the most useful and helpful on the internet! There is not one day that passes, that I forget how much help and information I have received here! Also have great gratitude for all those that were able to contribute and have to say, you all have done the world a great service! I hope one day to also be able to contribute monetarily, but at present am an unemployed student. I would also love to issue Paypal a big boo at this time! To put a damper on a site as invaluable as Ultimate is a sheer travesty. This forum should be considered Prime Example how a forum is run. Think about it! No one here cuts another down. There is simply help, advice and friendship offered here! In this day and age, is the rarest even more so than the finest of diamonds!!!! Not only that, if a problem is not solved immediately, it is investigated and solved eventually! I dare someone to explore other forums to see if that fact exists there! Most forums do not come close to the professionalism I have observed here! Once again I offer my salute to everyone here on maintaining the most exemplary professionalism I have ever seen in my life! Long Live Ultimate and always best wishes to everyone that makes this possible!!!

test

[pam]

...testing..

[Wolfy]

Hi I'm new here love the linux works great sorry to hear about your trouble with paypal I dropped them along time ago not sure why now been some time but I think it was about my worries of just how secure are they. When ever I start having questions like that about something it's time to move on to something better. I hope all is well now . I see that linux is getting more support in many areas I can use it right out of the box so to speak and I like the so many options to choose from all the package managers are nice feature and the tweak tool is to die for it works well I was afraid at first to try the updates from past experiences of doing them reboot and finding I wipedout the whole thing replaced with something else not here it all looked as it should and is up to date runs smooth on my old Semprom 2gig system with 1 gig ram the ac97 audio worked sometimes but it was onboard chip so I disabled it and went with a old cm8738 soundcard works great now that old card never sounded that good in windows but it rocks on here reverb or something gives it that 3D sound thats rocks not bad for a cheap generic $5 card new in it's day. I'll get the latest version when it comes out and put it on my AMD 6 core system with 8gigs of ram see how it goes I ran live 3.4 on it from a usb stick and it ran fine. No questions for now keep up the good work smarter than me lol you all do such a good job on this .