the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-11-04, 00:31:

So I'm guessing your 16.5 year old AMD machine is running Windows 10?

Yes. Technically, it's part AMD, part NVIDIA.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-11-04, 00:31:

I am running my own ~1 year newer than your AMD machine with Linux daily driver and it doesn't seem slow in any browser opening or loading most pages. I have noscript or ublock on my browsers. It only really slows down some if I have many demanding tabs. Certain sites are just badly written, IMO, and it's likely a problem on any machine.

Loading pages is OK generally, with exception of cumbersome ones. Chromium and Firefox have grown very large, they could take a while to load from scratch from HDD. At least on Windows, if any of these browsers is used regularly, Windows tends to keep their files in memory, even if they're closed (unless you open enough other programs or data to force them out), in that case, they're ready sooner than they would be if all files still had to be transferred to RAM.

I used to use both uBlock and NoScript, though it was mostly due to not knowing uBlock as well and thought I "need" both.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-11-04, 00:31:

I've never had issues with video playback. Actually, firefox seems to now have working hardware video decoding on linux for the first time for AMD open source drivers, after all these years. So in that respect, an improvement for once. Not a biggie, because software-only video decoding on the CPU is sufficient on the PC

Actually, I remember VAAPI was supported in Firefox somewhere between versions 28 and 52. It was then removed because it was considered not implemented efficiently. Funny, I remember it being quite helpful on my laptop with poor AMD dual-core APU running at 1,35 GHZ with 2 GB of RAM. I swear I remember this was the only time Half-Life in 20:41 60 FPS on YouTube was smooth on that laptop in a web browser on Linux.

That was Ubuntu 16 era. I haven't put any updated regular distro on that laptop since, last Linux endeavor on it was BlissOS 11 (Android 9) from 2020. Oh my, I've never heard the HDD grind so much as with that OS.

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-11-01, 21:18:

I've been daily driving Linux for the past 6 or 7 years and dual booted it since Windows 8. As I look at the desktop OS market share every now and then Linux usage does grow, but it's Apple that really benefits from MS dropping the ball. I find it ironic that the main complaint I hear from people at every new Windows release since 8 is that each version is more of a walled garden than the last with more privacy intrusion... and then they migrate to Apple.

At the end of the day, all choices are bad IMO.

I put Mint on an USB flash drive recently, I mostly just wanted to test the Flash Player I've packaged in a DEB.

I had to do put Mint on an USB 2 times because I forgot ISO has to be defragged for it to boot and I'm still using an old multiboot 4 GB USB stick prepared with YUMI for experimenting with Linux distros. Basically, copy everything to disk, delete USB stick content, then robocopy content back, starting with Mint ISO.

It booted after a while, but it was scary, some screen blinking and ghost image from boot menu at the beginning, followed by scrolling text with various messages. Did I miss something, or Cinammon doesn't have desktop background slideshow? Maybe when they said Mint is for Windows refugees, they meant Windows XP refugees?

Flash sorta worked after dancing around to disable its hardware acceleration, although that doesn't seem necessary for standalone Flash Player compared to browser plugin. Without hardware acceleration, there are visual artifacts in Crush the Castle 2.

I tried opening YouTube with Pale Moon (GTK2 SSE2 version), stock horrible bloated YouTube that is, which I don't normally do. The browser just hung after I tried opening a video and there was a lot of CPU utilization from palemoon and Xorg. Clean profile + uBlock Origin. Same steps on Windows, works, just YouTube's UI is incredibly sluggish (as expected).

UCyborg wrote on 2025-12-02, 21:52:

I tried opening YouTube with Pale Moon (GTK2 SSE2 version), stock horrible bloated YouTube that is, which I don't normally do. The browser just hung after I tried opening a video and there was a lot of CPU utilization from palemoon and Xorg. Clean profile + uBlock Origin. Same steps on Windows, works, just YouTube's UI is incredibly sluggish (as expected).

Is this still the 16 year old AMD? Is it also the dual core APU you mentioned?

I just tried Basilisk (GTK2 / likely SSE2, I can't remember how I compiled it) on my 15-16 year old Phenom 2. It worked fine on youtube with Basilisk. I don't go to youtube much. On Basilisk, I don't have HW video decode support. However, on firefox on this machine, I now finally do have video decode support after all these years. Go figure.

I also can tell you, I also have an AMD APU dual core. It's used for video playback all the time, including youtube. It is a bit slower than the Phenom 2. I think 1.6 GHZ. It also got HW decode support in firefox in the last few weeks. But this PC has been in use for some time for video play back before I got HW decode enabled -- still was okish.

So I dunno. If this AMD, your laptop, you are using linux on. Not sure but it seems the main issue with it is its speed. Yes the youtube page is going to be horrible, and slow as is. I stopped going there in a web browser for practical reasons, and know how to get in there if I have to. So linux is probably a better bet than Windows, but these website are the problem ultimately. They pretty much decided not to be friendly to old hardware.

Apparently, a lot of Windows 10 refugees have been flocking to Zorin OS lately.

It supposedly got a million downloads in the past month.

As a fan of both the 80s and James Bond movies, I can't help but think of Christopher Walken's villain role in A View to a Kill, every time I read or hear about that OS.

digger wrote on 2025-12-03, 10:16:

Apparently, a lot of Windows 10 refugees have been flocking to Zorin OS lately.

It supposedly got a million downloads in the past month.

As a fan of both the 80s and James Bond movies, I can't help but think of Christopher Walken's villain role in A View to a Kill, every time I read or hear about that OS.

... and Duran Duran 😀

Something was lost in the modern Bond films (thinking Pierce Brosnan onwards) that the Connery and Moore films had - I think it was the crazy fantasy element. Now we get gritty and 'realistic', but there's something to be said for the grin inducing comic fantasy aspects of the older films.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-12-03, 16:08:

... and Duran Duran 😀

Ah yes, both the song and the accompanying music video were epic.

Grace Jones and Christopher Walken were quite the villainous power couple.

Something was lost in the modern Bond films (thinking Pierce Brosnan onwards) that the Connery and Moore films had - I think it was the crazy fantasy element. Now we get gritty and 'realistic', but there's something to be said for the grin inducing comic fantasy aspects of the older films.

Actually, I enjoyed most Pierce Brosnan bond films too. Having him drive through the streets of Saint Petersburg in a tank in Goldeneye was pretty epic, and it definitely had a bit of a comic fantasy aspect to it. 😁

The only bond film with Brosnan that I didn't like was his last one, Die Another Day. That movie was absolutely horrendous. Not because it was too realistic, but quite the opposite: it was so crazy and outlandish that it shattered my suspension of disbelief. The invisible car scene was the definitive "come on, man" moment for me. Also, it had a lousy soundtrack. Madonna really phoned that one in.

Anyway, I'd be happy to take this discussion elsewhere, because we're veering a bit off-topic here. 😅

Anyway, here is a recent article that compares Linux Mint with Zorin OS.

The James Bond films from Connery to Brosnan, weren't meant to be too serious (well, maybe aside from Connery's earlier films), they were power fantasies - Bond is the ultimate male fantasy figure for many men; he's a totally suave and charming man who can win any fight, he can think or talk his way out every trap or danger, he can get any woman he wants, he gets to drive the flashiest cars, he gets to play with the latest top secret technology, he's an expert on every subject under the sun, he's an expert at driving or piloting every vehicle or craft he comes across, and he regularly saves the world. He's also totally fit despite never exercising, can apparently drink as much alcohol as he likes without getting drunk or a hangover, and he never contracts an STD, and never gets contacted by the child support agency over paying for child maintenance re: some woman he knew two or three years ago for the length of a film.

I'm quite sure most blokes (in the Western world, and have seen the films) have daydreamed about being like Bond. I certainly have, and repeatedly.

The Daniel Craig films have gone more for realism (well, realistic by action film standards) but that does reduce them to something less interesting and appealing, if you ask me. There are always real-ish action films for us to watch, but Bond should be Bond, the over the top alpha-male that men want to be, and women want to be with.

digger wrote on 2025-12-03, 18:22:

[The only bond film with Brosnan that I didn't like was his last one, Die Another Day. That movie was absolutely horrendous. Not because it was too realistic, but quite the opposite: it was so crazy and outlandish that it shattered my suspension of disbelief. The invisible car scene was the definitive "come on, man" moment for me. Also, it had a lousy soundtrack. Madonna really phoned that one in.

Yes, me and my mates agree with you about Die Another Day, it Just didn't feel Bond-ish, it was too far fetched. Some Bond fans say that Die Another Die was a really good James Bond film, until the opening credits appear. They say that the few minutes before the starting credits, the few minutes where Bond gets captured and tortured, are great. Then the credits roll, and the film goes really downhill. In fact, some fans say, more or less seriously (I don't know) that the part before the staring credits is the only bit of reality in the film, and that everything after the opening credits takes place only in Bond's mind, as he lies dying in a filthy cell, which is why the film after the opening credits seems so unrealistic and divorced from reality. Not a pleasant idea at all, but some fans believe that 'James Bond' is a codename given to anyone who holds the position of '007', and that when the 'James Bond' played by Piers Brosnan was captured, tortured and executed, then a different agent, played in the films by Daniel Craig, was promoted to 007, and assumed the name 'James Bond'. Accordingly, the George Lazenby 'James Bond' retired from service when his wife, Tracy, was murdered.

Not a fan theory that I believe, but I thought it was interesting.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-12-03, 03:21:

Is this still the 16 year old AMD? Is it also the dual core APU you mentioned?

I just tried Basilisk (GTK2 / likely SSE2, I can't remember how I compiled it) on my 15-16 year old Phenom 2. It worked fine on youtube with Basilisk. I don't go to youtube much. On Basilisk, I don't have HW video decode support. However, on firefox on this machine, I now finally do have video decode support after all these years. Go figure.

It's the 16 years old AMD (Phenom II X4 920) with NVIDIA GPU (GTX 750 Ti) and 6 GB of RAM. Turned out Pale Moon worked so horribly on YouTube due to nouveau driver (it's that bad). I managed to install the proprietary one from 470.xx branch, had to use this and some terminal magic remotely through ssh to get it to load without reboot (live session, it would be lost). They have 470 in the official repo, but it's not compatible with the kernel they ship... Newer driver would probably work normally, but it's too big to install in live session. Video decoding only works through VDPAU, so only usable from dedicated video players AFAIK.

I missed that Cinammon does have desktop background slideshow, though it's not per-monitor, the same picture is used for each screen. I noticed the Driver Manager could tell progress through the program's button in the taskbar (I know, Windows term) like Win7+. Interestingly, Firefox can also tell file download progress through it, but Pale Moon does not.

I've not yet tried Mint 22.2 on that laptop with AMD APU. This one only has 2 GB of RAM.

Kerr Avon wrote on 2025-12-03, 20:01:

The James Bond films from Connery to Brosnan, weren't meant to be too serious (well, maybe aside from Connery's earlier films), they were power fantasies - Bond is the ultimate male fantasy figure for many men; he's a totally suave and charming man who can win any fight, he can think or talk his way out every trap or danger, he can get any woman he wants, he gets to drive the flashiest cars, he gets to play with the latest top secret technology, he's an expert on every subject under the sun, he's an expert at driving or piloting every vehicle or craft he comes across, and he regularly saves the world. He's also totally fit despite never exercising, can apparently drink as much alcohol as he likes without getting drunk or a hangover, and he never contracts an STD, and never gets contacted by the child support agency over paying for child maintenance re: some woman he knew two or three years ago for the length of a film.

I'm quite sure most blokes (in the Western world, and have seen the films) have daydreamed about being like Bond. I certainly have, and repeatedly.

The Daniel Craig films have gone more for realism (well, realistic by action film standards) but that does reduce them to something less interesting and appealing, if you ask me. There are always real-ish action films for us to watch, but Bond should be Bond, the over the top alpha-male that men want to be, and women want to be with.

I'd add that Bond can win any fight, as long as he loses or struggles a fair portion (he tends to win in the end through something clever), he does get out of traps nicely - but then they are set in somewhat silly ways for him, he can get any woman he wants (to slap him or double cross him, but then kinda likes him anyway), he does drive flashy cars (maybe not the renault 11 or 2cv - but they were fun!), he tends to mock the tech but always saves his life with one of the items, he is expert on many topics - but nevertheless is *always* seen through by the bad guy whether pretending to be horse breeder, diamond trader or anything. the fitness thing was looked at in a couple of films, a connery and craig i think.

Part of the success is the formula, quickly refined in the 1960's and held pretty much until Craig. Craig's series darkened the tone and added new patterns (did he actually ever work for intelligence or was he perpetually leaving, on leave, retired, awol etc), they we're good films in themselves but didnt feel like a Bond film in the same way.

Maybe the spell is gone and making new ones while moving further from the classic formula just means using the name Bond for what are actually no longer Bond films

So is Bond Linux Mint? Suave on the surface but tricky under the hood?

I fit the stereo type of a windows user who switched to mint, except I did it about seven years ago. I do admit to still having a windows machine, though. One of my big gripes about Linux in general, is how flaky and difficult seemingly random, normal things are on it. Getting USB devices that aren't USB sticks to work is kind of hit and miss. My printer used to work, but now it doesn't. My external harddrive acts funny sometimes. And It can't burn CD's on a USB CD/DVD burner. It's because of these reasons I still keep a windows machine around.

Timothy Dalton was best Bond, IMO.

CMR779 wrote on 2025-12-05, 01:52:

Timothy Dalton was best Bond, IMO.

He was fantastic, yes. I loved his first film, The Living Daylights, it's one of my favourite Bond films. But his other Bond film, License to Kill, I thought didn't feel very much like a Bond film. Or it didn't, until the Daniel Craig's films came along, then License to Kill suddenly did feel much more like the classic Bond films. I will watch License to kill, but it's way down on my list of favourite Bond films. I also didn't like it's name. 'Licence Revoked' is reputedly it's original name, which would have been much better, but allegedly the film studio renamed it because they thought that audiences wouldn't understand the phrase 'Licence Revoked'...

It's no wonder that the vast majority of films seem to be written for idiots, if indeed the film makers view us as being so endlessly stupid.

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load the video, the entire system hung, only mouse cursor was still moving, but otherwise, couldn't do anything except hold the power button.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-12-06, 22:49:

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load th […]
Show full quote

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load the video, the entire system hung, only mouse cursor was still moving, but otherwise, couldn't do anything except hold the power button.

This is the kind of stuff that kills it for me. I want everything I do on my PC to work the best it can, and if it doesn't I want to be able to figure out why and fix it if possible. There are well established tools to make almost all of this happen with Windows (30 years worth... and most still work in some capacity)... and if some specific niche problem can't be fixed with a program, I have spent years making sure I have work-arounds in place via registry edits or other things. I think the biggest problems I'd have would be with hardware related or hardware-specific programs... monitoring\tweaking programs (MSI Afterburner, Ryzen Master, Fan Control), extremely specific refresh rate and resolution settings (including things like DLDSR, which I can almost guarantee isn't a thing in Nvidia's Linux drivers), ClickMonitorDDC (amazing for quickly changing monitor brightness), Hotkey Resolution Changer, Nvidia Broadcast (excellent mic noise canceling), equalizer APO + Peace for multiple audio devices, Hard Disk Sentinel...

The list goes on.

The fact that just playing videos or using USB devices is sometimes an issue is just a huge red flag for me. It'd probably take a day or two of struggling with that stuff before I switched back to Windows. Incorporating retro computing into the mix just makes it even less likely to work out for me. A good portion of my time on my modern PC is spent digging through files (or even drives\disks) related to old Windows and DOS computers.

Still... I will probably test out some modern distro on a spare drive when I get some time. I just don't see how all of the compromises would be worth spending so much time trying to learn how to use whatever alternatives exist for the things I can practically do with my eyes closed on a Windows PC.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-12-06, 22:49:

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load th […]
Show full quote

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load the video, the entire system hung, only mouse cursor was still moving, but otherwise, couldn't do anything except hold the power button.

Can you check for any system logs (e.g. journalctl) to see if any lines saying things like "ring gfx_0.0.0 timeout"? If so it means the GPU suffered a crash.

AFAICT it's not unusual for this kind of error to occur with AMD graphics on Linux. On my system, web browsers with hardware acceleration enabled may lead to such timeouts which leads to complete breakage of GPU functionality, so I have to disable hardware acceleration on the browser I use most (not a big issue, however).

Very recent kernels seems to have gotten better on how to recover from this (so things may still work without reboot) but still, the issue seems too sophisticated to be completely fixed and can be caused by various reasons. On my system, the video card seems to spit corrected AERs once in a while and the only way to get rid of it was to downgrade its slot to GEN2 speed.

Kerr Avon wrote on 2025-12-06, 20:36:

It's no wonder that the vast majority of films seem to be written for idiots, if indeed the film makers view us as being so endlessly stupid.

What I noticed about reboots/remakes it that they're focusing on action and lots of spectacual effects.
What they lack, however, is any sort of thrill. There's no build up in tension, no story that unfolds.

In classics such as Alien ('79), Tarantula, Andromeda Strain, Christine, Terminator 1 or The Fog you have this darkness, this level of uncertainity that's part of it.
It makes people think and question what's really going on in the fictional world.
Sometimes the slowness almost feels like torture to the viewer, but in a good way in retrospect.

By contrast, in modern films, the camera perspective changes almost on an
constant 1 0r 0.5 sec interval so that you can't unsee it once you know it.
There's no time to immerse yourself in the fictional world, be part of it.
I miss the times when the camera stayed in one position for multiple seconds.

Likewise, in the new Bond movies, the espionage part/story part has become a bit of a secondary, it seems.
The character has become more of an assasin than an undercover spy that sometimes has to fight his way through.
Some call it a progress and being closer to the book, but can unnecessary cruelty and wanton desctruction be a progress?
Or is that just a lame excuse for a lower quality of writing/screen play?
In reality, an excellent spy is supposed to act quietly without raising suspicion. Or so I thought.
The author of the original book(s) apparently had a different point of view here.
Also: A Bond movie without Q doesn't feel complete. IMHO. ;)

Edit: @CMR779 What I miss on Linux/Unix are the small things, like a virtual null-modem driver.
So I could connect two programs via serial connection, such as DOS VM and CoolRetroTerm via CTTY and serial i/o.
Or DireWolf (as KISS TNC) and an old Packet Radio terminal program.
After fiddling with *nix pipes I gave up and simply used an multi USB-serial converter and wired up a real null-modem cable.
Picture: Re: Injecting files into a running PCem/86Box machine

UCyborg wrote on 2025-12-06, 22:49:

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load the video, the entire system hung, only mouse cursor was still moving, but otherwise, couldn't do anything except hold the power button.

Radeon R2 could be either Mullins/Beema (GCN2, UVD4.2) or Stoney Ridge (GCN3, UVD6.2), both modern enough that video acceleration should "just work" on a recent Firefox (at least from the past 3 years). I assume this is still Mint 22.2, presumably with Cinnamon (i.e. X11)? Start with about:support and check that the "Media" section has "Codec Support Information" with hardware decoding supported for the appropriate codecs (H.264 for both, plus H.265 for Stoney though that's not used on YouTube). Might be the worth splitting this out as a separate thread if you want to troubleshoot further.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-12-06, 22:49:

Wanted to try out if hardware video decoding in Firefox works on the laptop with AMD APU with Radeon R2. When I tried to load the video, the entire system hung, only mouse cursor was still moving, but otherwise, couldn't do anything except hold the power button.

If that's the one with 2GB of RAM, then I don't think any modern OS is going to run well on it. Your only hope might be antiX, but I haven't used it in such a long time that I don't remember how easy it was to set up.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 02:47:

This is the kind of stuff that kills it for me. I want everything I do on my PC to work the best it can, and if it doesn't I wan […]
Show full quote

This is the kind of stuff that kills it for me. I want everything I do on my PC to work the best it can, and if it doesn't I want to be able to figure out why and fix it if possible. There are well established tools to make almost all of this happen with Windows (30 years worth... and most still work in some capacity)... and if some specific niche problem can't be fixed with a program, I have spent years making sure I have work-arounds in place via registry edits or other things. I think the biggest problems I'd have would be with hardware related or hardware-specific programs... monitoring\tweaking programs (MSI Afterburner, Ryzen Master, Fan Control), extremely specific refresh rate and resolution settings (including things like DLDSR, which I can almost guarantee isn't a thing in Nvidia's Linux drivers), ClickMonitorDDC (amazing for quickly changing monitor brightness), Hotkey Resolution Changer, Nvidia Broadcast (excellent mic noise canceling), equalizer APO + Peace for multiple audio devices, Hard Disk Sentinel...

The list goes on.

The fact that just playing videos or using USB devices is sometimes an issue is just a huge red flag for me. It'd probably take a day or two of struggling with that stuff before I switched back to Windows. Incorporating retro computing into the mix just makes it even less likely to work out for me. A good portion of my time on my modern PC is spent digging through files (or even drives\disks) related to old Windows and DOS computers.

Still... I will probably test out some modern distro on a spare drive when I get some time. I just don't see how all of the compromises would be worth spending so much time trying to learn how to use whatever alternatives exist for the things I can practically do with my eyes closed on a Windows PC.

Yeah, the lack of tuning software is a problem. If it does exist, it's usually a command line tool. KDE has a built-in monitor brightness adjustment tray icon that works on desktops, but KDE has lots of things that annoy me. My problems with video playback and USB turned out to be distro-specific, which is worse in some ways than being a general Linux limitation (especially since those were the top two on DistroWatch).

The other problem is outdated documentation. For example, I booted Fedora live on my laptop, and I forgot that this laptop has broken panel self-refresh. Even in Windows, panel self-refresh results in random screen flickering, but it was easy to turn off in the Intel graphics settings. In Linux, the instructions I found online refer to the old (I don't think it's under development anymore, and it doesn't support some features anyway) i915 driver instead of the modern driver.

I still don't know what I would recommend to someone who is new to Linux. Fedora looks good so far, but I don't know if it has any kind of third-party repository like Ubuntu PPAs or the AUR in Arch. I've never used Kubuntu, but it looks good on paper.