Root Access

> The NAND interfaces with a Silicon Motion controller backed by Micron's own low-power DDR3 memory. This SM controller offers a four-channel interface and is compliant with 128-bit AES encryption and the Trusted Computing Group Opal v2.0 standard, but Crucial does not apply either on the BX200. Nor is the drive compatible with Microsoft eDrive.

Lol, slow as it is, it's still 20x faster than a HDD

Bob

@qasdfdsaq new?

wasn't the bx200 rather shit?

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Well the review was just published a few hours ago on one of my regular sites

And yes, it is shit

Bob

shrug

terrible sustained perf, iirc

well, terrible for an ssd

@qasdfdsaq IOPS drops right off a cliff: anandtech.com/show/9756/…

I've also yet to see any benefit from dumping my games on a Trion 100 (via USB 3.0) :\

Compared to HDD (RAID 1) with a small (96 GB) Intel 330 SSD cache on top.

qasdfdsaq

> Your account has been updated - you will now be entitled to free carriage courtesy of Scan Computers and HEXUS.

Yay

@Bob Well... having an SSD cache basically affords SSD performance 90% of the time, so obviously there won't be much difference :-P

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Yea, that's mostly what I was expecting :P

Journeyman Geek

12:30 AM

Silicon motion controllers tend to be bottom of the barrel ;p

qasdfdsaq

Also the Crucial BX100 was pretty shite, and the Crucial M4 was "the worst SSD we've ever tested" according to some sites :-P

In spite of that I've not heard of any reliability issues with them, so I guess that's a plus

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Well, reliability issues are often due to the controller overheating.

I get the feeling the controllers in these drives don't work particularly hard.

qasdfdsaq

Well the controller in my OCZ drive did die, and take all my precious irreplaceable data with it

I'm still reeling from that one

Bob

Ya, OCZ has a bad reputation for that. And Sandforce iirc.

I only got mine cause it was really cheap, and worst case is I have to download these games again.

qasdfdsaq

12:36 AM

Which is weird cause Intel used Sandforce controllers for a while, yet they have a good reputation for reliability

Speaking of, I still need to send that SSD off to the USA, though there's probably no hope of recovering shit now

scan.co.uk/products/…

First gen i5 with Windows 7, now that's an old laptop if I ever saw one.

Bob

Ha, you call that old? :P

Pretty sure I still have some Pentium M/Centrinos around.

qasdfdsaq

I have one too, but it's not for sale on a major retailer!

Bob

Refurb ex-demo shrug

thgouh they probably should've cleared it out a couple years ago

Journeyman Geek

1:01 AM

@qasdfdsaq there's a specific generation that was unreliable

and they do some slightly odd things to improve performance

qasdfdsaq

The one that took my precious irreplaceable photos with it when it died?

Journeyman Geek

this is why I backup

in duplicate

qasdfdsaq

Would have been nice if that was an option

But I was just back from holiday and also homeless, so no access to my PC or storage.

Course now I carry two SSDs so I can backup photos even while on holiday, as they come off the SD card

Michael Frank

1:52 AM

@Bob ^

Doesn't turn on without the power cable plugged in. But it's the only computer we have that can take a Firewire card.

Bob

o.O

Journeyman Geek

@Bob heh. lol

@MichaelFrank our R61s can handle that

would be nice to have more ram on em tho

I'm kinda impressed how well a upgraded core 2 platform holds up

Bob

2:09 AM

@JourneymanGeek Did you end up forwarding the older messages?

Or were the quotes added by exchange? o.O

Journeyman Geek

I think I hit reply or reply all ;p

Bob

ah, that'd explain it

Journeyman Geek

I was distracted.

(My brother's (former) room might have had termites at one point)

and I tend to be the person called in about these things cause I have ~~dog~~ pretty good hearing, and if you have a reasonably sized infestation, you can hear em

pretty sure someone downstairs has em bad, and hasn't done anything

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Ah, sorry

Michael Frank

@JourneymanGeek Yea, we literally only need it for like 1 or 2 scanners we occasionally service.

Journeyman Geek

2:13 AM

;p

Its fine

Bob

@JourneymanGeek isn't that the building management's job?

Journeyman Geek

There's no building manager

We really need to do some basic refurbishment (last time was 15 years ago) but dad's not very keen on it

Bob

Huh. Who takes care of shared property then?

Journeyman Geek

the town council

wierdly tho there's no termite trail

Bob

o.O

Journeyman Geek

2:16 AM

shurg

things in singapore are wierd ;p

Michael Frank

2:29 AM

Cool, just used Android Phone approval to verify a log in with my Google account. That's neat!

Hmm... I wonder what happened around April 2015.

Bob

2:50 AM

@MichaelFrank yay, badstats

More accurate would be, say, hours/month

also who the hell counts that kind of thing in minutes? nice way to inflate numbers

cumulative, again. nice way to inflate numbers.

allquixotic

3:09 AM

Steam

Bob

3:23 AM

@allquixotic Hm?

allquixotic

3:41 AM

was Steam the 2014 bump?

Journeyman Geek

4:02 AM

@allquixotic somewhat doubtful of that

most people who would run steam on linux would have at least a basic knowledge of linux

Bob

That's not the number of people running linux.

That's time spent on online courses on a certain platform.

My bet is on LFS101.

Wait, no, that's edX

Still, the timing is about right. Lots of fuss over lfs101 around April 2014.

JakeGould

4:59 AM

@CanadianLuke FWIW, my concern was the link and some people potentially thinking that it might come off as SPAM. But since people are reporting the same URL elsewhere, hey… I doubt there would be anyone taking issue with that aspect of it.

bob

5:12 AM

hello

Journeyman Geek

eep another bob

(Hi!)

wonders if @bob will notify both bobs

bob

im just bob

I was wondering what would be the best desktop environment?

Journeyman Geek

Best... depends a lot

I use KDE myself

bob

I know this is debatable

Bob

O_O

Journeyman Geek

5:21 AM

Do you want a composited desktop, or do you think it is a abomination onto nuggan? What distro do you run? Do you prefer a 2 panel or 1 panel + start button setup?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Well, it definitely notified me...

bob

um, im the real bob alright?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob has tenure.

Bob

Oi, I was here first!

bob

oh

Journeyman Geek

5:22 AM

(dubs the bobs bob prime and green bob)

bob

journeyman, I wish to work with archlinux but the basic environment is ugly as hell

and... I don't undestand your other questions :P

Journeyman Geek

@bob composited desktop = uses your GPU for fancy things

allquixotic

Just consider that if there were objectively one best desktop environment, no one would use any others.

Journeyman Geek

Think compiz-fusion or transparent window management

allquixotic

also, @Bob' that's funny to have another in here ;p

bob

5:24 AM

actually i'm bob the builder

Journeyman Geek

Well, KDE vs Gnome is a good starting point. If you wanted a lower end option, I'd try lxde (which I love to bits) or XFCE

bob

thats my stackexchange username but wtv

Journeyman Geek

and don't forget, you can customise your desktop quite a bit

I run KDE on a dark theme (wonton soup)

bob

I use a dedicated laptop to test linux on it, I have other computers to do my work on

but that one is not that fast.. by fast

Journeyman Geek

So "the best desktop" is very dependant on your needs and preferences.

Bob

5:25 AM

KDE, Gnome, LXDE and XFCE are the big ones.

There's also Unity if you're on Ubuntu.

bob

idk how I could describe "not fast"

Journeyman Geek

(eww unity)

bob

it runs pretty much all games but in low quality, if that helps? :s

kali runs on kde env?

Journeyman Geek

eww

eww eww eww

(kali is... kinda garbage for most users)

bob

hater?

the new version it not good I agree :P

Journeyman Geek

5:27 AM

@bob too many folks come in here with kali questions

but utterly no knowledge of the basics

kali runs gnime 3.0 by default it seems

Bob

I'm getting confused by the pings :P

bob

I'm not here to talk about it :P im just wondering which env it runs on (the 2nd version)

ok

bwDraco

phonearena.com/news/…

Journeyman Geek

(I googled it)

bwDraco

Wow. Facebook app is a power hog.

> Android users can add up to 20% more battery life on their phones by uninstalling this one app?

bob

5:29 AM

how did you guys learn linux?

Bob

@bob Put it this way, if your machine has an onboard GPU 2nd-gen Intel Core i3/i5/i7 or newer, you probably want compositing.

Or any discrete GPU from the last 7+ years or so.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob I just started with what I wanted to do with it, and worked from there.

bob

I have i5 on it and 4 ram (2012/2013 I believe)

bwDraco

@bob That should be good enough for basic desktop compositing.

Bob

@bob "Need to do thing" => "Find out how to do thing" => "Know how to do thing" => ... years later ... => "Know how to do lots of things"

Journeyman Geek

5:30 AM

^ this

bwDraco

Desktop compositing isn't just for fancy effects. It makes window management so much easier.

bob

:P I try to read and learn quick! (my big goal is a sec engineer/pentester)

Journeyman Geek

Some people don't like it tho

and its a useful starting point for choosing a DE IMO

bob

I understand

Journeyman Geek

I mean

you could go hardcore and run openbox or TWM ;p

bwDraco

5:32 AM

On a traditional (stacking) window manager, the windows as stacked are just rendered as a single surface; contents of windows that are not visible are not kept in graphics memory. A compositing window manager keeps the graphical contents of every open window in memory, allowing a variety of effects to be applied to them.

bob

archlinux was hardcore for me enough haha, I installed it this morning

Journeyman Geek

I tend to run more mainstream distros

I tend to run fedora on bare metal (with KVM!) and ubuntu on top of that

bob

some people told me to play with this distro then go on something called ummm jumboo or something like tha

Bob

@bob Different people learn differently.

Journeyman Geek

your people are silly

Bob

5:33 AM

Some people do well with structured courses.

bob

gentoo

Bob

They learn with bottom-up guides, etc.

Journeyman Geek

IMO its probably a better idea to start with a mainstream distro.

bwDraco

Compositing is such a basic feature on modern window managers that it's literally mandatory on Windows 8 and later—if graphics acceleration is not available, the system uses software rendering to do compositing.

Bob

I personally do better when given a real goal first.

Journeyman Geek

5:34 AM

Then work your way towards the hipster distros where you have to boostrap from bare metal.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Does manually installing a FS and the bootloader count? :P

bob

I started with gnome-ubuntu and then on mint-cinamon

bwDraco

I recommend openSUSE. Very easy to set up and administer, but heavier than many other distributions including Ubuntu and Fedora.

Journeyman Geek

@bob prime - more or less

bwDraco

My servers use openSUSE. They've proven to be very stable.

Journeyman Geek

5:35 AM

@bob the builder - I'm too impatient for that sort of distro. ;p

bob

well, I feel like I "made my computer" and thus can customise it all I want

Bob

Eh. I really can't be bothered messing around with machines I use daily.

In a VM, fine.

Journeyman Geek

yup

Bob

On a server, well, if I can get it working and it stays working, great.

On my home desktop/laptop? Nope. I don't want to tiptoe around every change.

Journeyman Geek

and one does not touch it except for security updates ;p

bob

5:37 AM

it's my first time here and you guys are really great, you guys really took time to help me here, I'll come often

Bob

Oh god the confusion is going to continue -_-

bwDraco

@JourneymanGeek I've successfully installed Gentoo in a Hyper-V virtual machine. It's very, very fast but compiling every package from source gets very time-consuming on any system with a less-than-top-flight processor or with a slow Internet connection (source packages tend to be much larger than binary packages).

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

(nah, feel free to come back - that was a joke)

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco I gave up when I needed to recompile my kernel for X ;p

bob

5:38 AM

oh bob...

Journeyman Geek

@Bob prime - well, you're here. he gets all your pings...

You get pinged a lot here...

IMAGINE HOW HE FEELS?

bob

idk @bob how does it feel?

uhhh

doesn't work

Journeyman Geek

actually this is probably a meta question

Bob

ahhhh the typical beauty product spam

why they're spamming that on a tech site I haven't any idea

bob

what do you guys do for a living?

Journeyman Geek

5:42 AM

~~I'm a dog~~ I'm in between jobs

bwDraco

With Gentoo, you can compile software to fit your hardware. When normal binary distributions can only target the lowest common denominator (e.g. using no more than SSE2 instructions on x64), Gentoo lets you target the most advanced instructions available from your processor. Software compiled with -march=haswell on a fourth-generation Core processor will be considerably faster on many workloads than generic SSE2 binaries.

Bob

@bwDraco Incidentally, that also falls under premature optimisation.

Unless you can demonstrate that you're bottlenecking on CPU, chances are you'd never notice the difference.

@bob Various things involving a keyboard and a screen.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob

Hm

Bob

o.O

was that a superping?

Journeyman Geek

Even superpinging bob dosen't work

I was testing if I can normal-ping like a superping

but there's too many bobs

bob

5:45 AM

hehe

Bob

I've memorised my chat ID after trying too many searches.

Journeyman Geek

I don't want to abuse a superping for that tho

bob

would anyone know which env is this? : i2.wp.com/www.techews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/…

Bob

Looks almost like Knoppix, running an older LXDE variant?

Journeyman Geek

I'd guess customised LXDE

@Bob meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274364/…

bob

5:51 AM

its written window manager: openbox, would that be it?

Journeyman Geek

Openbox pretty much has nothing on it

Bob

@JourneymanGeek You could always do a reply to message, I guess.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob yeah

Bob

@bob blog.lxde.org/?p=1013

bob

meh looks like an old windows xp linux version

I feel like its a version of cinnamon

datab.us/khC1i58qUdo#Cinnamon%202.0.2%20Arch%20Linux%20Overview

I think its this one

@Bob what do you think about it?

another question, can I change desktop env. whenever I want? Lets say try them all for 10 min ish? Or there will be repercussion or wtv?

Journeyman Geek

6:13 AM

If its just the DE, you just need to log in and out

Lots of distros package DEs with additional apps and libraries, which may need you to be careful

bob

what do you mean by that?

Journeyman Geek

by which part?

bob

what should I be careful of?

Bob

@bob I wouldn't recommend doing so on a system you intend to use.

It can be a real pain in the arse to remove all the packages later.

Journeyman Geek

^ this

Bob

6:15 AM

Sometimes they come as meta-packages that can't even be removed directly.

You then need to find all the dependencies and remove them, while praying that they're not a dependency for one of the other DEs you installed.

bob

haha okay yea

Bob

Test them out in a VM, or in a live boot.

You can do the install - log out - switch - log in there.

bob

oh thats a great idea!

Bob

Then you can just nuke the env when you're done, no need to juggle packages.

Live boot will probably give you performance close to what you really use.

bob

hey while we are at it. I'm a bit scared that I might f**k my linux machine one day so I would like to make a backup of my files. How should I do that? Ghost? copy files on usb? directories?

Bob

6:18 AM

Uhm... shrug

I've never actually backed up a desktop *nix machine.

You can just clone the drive (clonezilla, etc.), I guess.

Journeyman Geek

I tend to just backup my package list and config files. For a one off backup clonezilla works

Bob

Not very space-efficient, and you don't get versioning, but it does give you an easy restore.

bob

ok thanks guy

Journeyman Geek

7:07 AM

hm

Reactos redesigned their webpage again

Now,if only they'd release as often as they redesigned...

Boris_yo

7:19 AM

Familiar with DLS Shop? How is this tablet?

They were selling similar laptop to mine that I bought 3 years ago.

Journeyman Geek

7:33 AM

hm

Pretty sure that nomachine is crashing kwin.

Boris_yo

Nomachine?

Journeyman Geek

If you need to ask...

(remote access application)

Nicolas Raoul

8:03 AM

I have a certain power adapter and would like to know how it is called. Is it on-topic here? Thanks!

Bob

@NicolasRaoul Hardware-ID on main is so-so.

On chat it's fine.

Journeyman Geek

@NicolasRaoul chat's the best place for that sorta thing.

Nicolas Raoul

8:36 AM

Meanwhile I have finally managed to find the product reference, thanks and sorry for the trouble :-)

Bob

Now I'm curious :P

Ahhh I just love the feeling of putting (gluing!) something back together and finding an extra piece.

Nicolas Raoul

Lenovo Thinkpad's new power adapter is apparently called "Slim Tip". It looks just like USB, actually my coworker just tried to insert it into her USB port by mistake. I wonder why they switch from the round type that has been the Thinkpad norm for so many years.

Oliver Salzburg

Is msdn.microsoft.com slow to load for anyone else?

Nicolas Raoul

Bob

@NicolasRaoul Hmm. Barrel connectors are notorious for having the centre pin come loose/break off. So that might be it.

Oliver Salzburg

8:41 AM

Takes 23s to load here, due to some stupid .js file in the head

Bob

@OliverSalzburg It's usually slow for me but pretty fast today.

<5s

Nicolas Raoul

@OliverSalzburg: Took ~7 seconds to load indeed

Oliver Salzburg

Hmpf

Bob

They must've moved some of the German servers to Au :D

Oliver Salzburg

I'm probably on the wrong end of a CDN then

But, well, you gotta have your visitor tracking on your documentation pages

Journeyman Geek

8:51 AM

@NicolasRaoul alas, that's unique to newer thinkpads

and I guess its cause its slimmer, and probably lets them add more 'intelligence'

And they cannot leave perfection alone ;p

tereško

2

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

9:08 AM

I just "glued" my headset volume control back together with double-sided tape :D

Not the shoddy plastic tape coated with adhesive.

The gummy one. The kind they use to hold mice feet on, phone screens together, etc..

It's not the strongest, but it'll be easier to open than glue.

Hm... might need to fall back to glue here though. Lots of stress on this piece.

Journeyman Geek

Epoxy!

Or hot snot I suppose

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ...wasn't I the one saying that the other day? xD

But, yea, too permanent.

Journeyman Geek

Plausible

Bob

And not enough space for hot glue inside.

I'll probably either go epoxy or that contact adhesive if this doesn't work out

o.O 4 GB RAM Zenfone 2 for $290, 2 GB RAM variant for $240... that's a lot cheaper than I expected

I need to find my xacto

ahh... not really enough surface area for the tape

guess I'm getting the glue out later

Journeyman Geek

You could tape over it

Burgi

9:31 AM

hey

quick question, is it possible to find out why a flag was disputed?

or am i worrying unnecessarily?

Journeyman Geek

9:50 AM

@Burgi bit of both

What was the flag about?

Burgi

i've flagged them as not an answer

Journeyman Geek

ahh

I might be able to help

got a link?

Burgi

2 of the 4 have been deleted so no worries on them

0

A: Linux startup script to connect to bluetooth and cron to keep it connected

Old post but i searched the whole web for a acceptable solution. Here it is.. quick and simple Create the device configuration file. # nano /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX { name "Apple Wireless Keyboard"; auth enable; encrypt enable; } run and add this line to your /e...

1

A: Desktop suddenly shut down and can't start

Try a different power supply. Momentary power is not a sign of a fully functional PSU.

Journeyman Geek

ahh

Looks like the first one was review queue

second one. Meh, its a plausible answer IMO

I'd swoop in and post a better answer for great justice ;p

Burgi

now i've looked at the 2nd one, i agree

Bob

9:56 AM

Hm. That IPv4/IPv6 question is making its way up the HNQ list :P

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

And the one about getting 'hacked' is still way up there.

Journeyman Geek

Ya

Bob

Also, sorry 'bout the answer snipe :P

Journeyman Geek

All is fair ;p

(i'd do it in a heartbeat ;p)

Burgi

10:00 AM

@JourneymanGeek i'll post a better answer at lunch or something

i was probably in a rush when i flagged it

Bob

Hm 13 hours left in the day.

Should be enough to repcap :)

Abhishek Bhatia

Hi guys!

I have been stuck at this question for a while. Please check superuser.com/questions/1000040/…

I tried to make it work on linux machine askubuntu.com/questions/731546/… and debug the issue but I can't figure it out.

Bob

@AbhishekBhatia In Australia, a powerboard looks like this:

I'd suggest either changing the title to say "interactive whiteboard" or specifically "geenee powerboard"...

also, that's a rather niche area :\ not surprised you don't have many answers, and it's unlikely anyone in htis room is all that familiar with it

if they only support it on XP (eww) the easy way might be to just fire up an XP VM

Burgi

10:21 AM

so in australia plug sockets look like scream masks?

Abhishek Bhatia

Haha

I have made the changes now. Thanks.

Boris_yo

Anyone knows if there's emergency device that with push of a button alerts another person far away and works on radio frequency?

Device for caregivers to locate seniors without technical mumbo-jumbo knowledge requirement.

Journeyman Geek

@AbhishekBhatia I remember that!

Abhishek Bhatia

@Bob When I called the company, they said it won't work on VM machine.

Journeyman Geek

Still trying to beat that piece of crap into working?

@AbhishekBhatia the company is full of shit if its a USB device

Have you actually tried it?

I'm pretty sure we'd have suggested doing USB passthrough, and that it works on virtualbox and where you can get a test vm

Abhishek Bhatia

10:35 AM

What is a USB passthrough can be provide details.

Journeyman Geek

@AbhishekBhatia most decent vm software have an option for passing through a USB device directly to a VM

Burgi

@Boris_yo is this what you are looking for? ageuk.org.uk/products/mobility-and-independence-at-home/…

Boris_yo

@Burgi Yes but it has service associated. I am looking for independent personal alarm that does not tie me to emergency services with monthly subscription.

ARe these devices location trackable by the way?

Michael Frank

Gave myself a mini heart attack. Saw TeamViewer was installed on my computer less than a week ago and had no recollection of that ever happening.

Turns out that was the date I reset this local account... so it just defaulted to that date instead.

Burgi

@Boris_yo usually not, because they use the old person's landline.

my search terms were: google.co.uk/search?q=elderly+alarms

why don't you want a subscription service?

Boris_yo

10:47 AM

@Burgi It's for emergency but I need just for more broad use.

Burgi

iirc the one used by my grandmother could report which room she was in

Abhishek Bhatia

@JourneymanGeek Thanks I trying it right now. Otherwise, my main aim is to make work on ubuntu 15.10. I am thus trying to figure out why the application compatible for ubuntu 9.10 doesn't work.

Journeyman Geek

@AbhishekBhatia could try it on a 9.10 VM too ;p

blade19899

There seems to be some spam account active. They have been deleted from Ask Ubuntu, but ont still exist on superuser: superuser.com/users/555883/mansyelerth

Abhishek Bhatia

I am trying that only right now

I fixed the minor installation issues. So it got installed perfectly but it doesn't poll the device somehow.

Journeyman Geek

10:48 AM

@blade19899 not any more

blade19899

@JourneymanGeek :)

Burgi

the service option is the better option for safety reasons. what if you aren't contactable and your elderly person needs help?

the service centre can dispatch emergency services then attempt to call you

Transcript for