Any fellow Linux users on here?

[Judge]

Have you had a play around with Gimp? That has changed over the last few years too and I wish we could still run the older versions, but such is life.

I've messed around with Gimp periodically. But I'm utterly spoiled having Photoshop on the same drive. No incentive to really learn given how fluent I am in Photoshop. Maybe this glitch will be the incentive I need to get serious with Gimp.

Time will tell. Then again I could still die from old age.

 

[Slime_Punk]

Major disappointment. Just had my first glitch happen with Photoshop 5.5 using Wine 8.0.

In applying the "fade" feature to a filter, when I used the slider rather than type in a percentage to lower the impact of a sharpening filter, it caused Photoshop to crash. Similar to how it can happen with Windows 10.

Not the end of the world, but it makes me sad. Still, at least it doesn't crash when I need to do elaborate marquees around objects that take up a lot of screen real estate. Something that made using Photoshop in Windows 7 & 10 a real pain in comparison. I'd hate to think that future revisions with Wine will eventually ruin my ability to use such an old but otherwise reliable program in a modern operating system.

At least I can still use the filter fade function, but I just have to remember to state a percentage of fade as a text integer rather than use that blasted slider control.

Using a current, full version of Photoshop is IMO now "highway robbery" by Adobe, who charges hundreds of dollars a year rather than a one-time sale of the software as they used to do. Not really an option for me on general priniciple. In the meantime I'm still struggling to learn a Linux version of Gimp 2.10. The most popular freeware substitute for Photoshop.

Any chance this can be remedied by duplicating the layer, applying the filter and then using the opacity and fill sliders + blend modes?

 

[Judge]

Any chance this can be remedied by duplicating the layer, applying the filter and then using the opacity and fill sliders + blend modes?

Oh the remedy is simple enough to get around. -You just don't use the slider. Instead, just input the percentage in text instead. That's all. It won't crash the program or do anything but it's intended function.

But damn...if you do move that slider the whole program crashes. At least it doesn't take down the whole OS with it.

 

[Judge]

Well this glitch has gotten really weird since yesterday. Having two different SSDs for Linux Mint 21.1, I decided to load the other drive just to recreate that glitch in Photoshop. I made it happen by moving the sharpening filter slider abruptly, from 100% to 0%. Expectedly, it crashed Photoshop just like my other drive.

Being on my less-used drive, not surprisingly I noticed I was due some system updates. (System updates come through far more regularly in Linux than Windows). So I stopped messing with this glitch and updated my system accordingly. Though I didn't notice any of the updates pertinent to Wine, or anything else I thought could impact this glitch.

When I attempted to recreate the glitch a second time on the other drive, it failed to happen! I tried multiple times after that, and no matter how abruptly I used the filters slider, it simply did what it was supposed to. Could it be that whatever updates were applied might have changed this glitch? Or is it one of those things that only happens a single time (which doesn't make much sense).

Whatever...LOL. So I switched the drive back to the initial one where I first encountered this glitch that killed Photoshop. But before doing anything, hey...it's Mint 21.1 identical to the other drive, and of course the icon was showing for a system update. So I updated the system accordingly, just as I did for the other drive. Then I went about doing everything all over again to recreate the glitch. And like the other drive, I couldn't make it happen again. Even after rebooting the system.

This is nuts....but I'm NOT complaining. Kind of like my post some months back where I didn't like how fonts were being rendered in Linux. And then some time later with one of those typical updates, voila! The fonts looked considerably better. "Ask and ye shall receive" I dunno....but it works for me! But I can't help but wonder what changed to make that slider NOT crash Photoshop 5.5 on the most current version of Linux Mint on a ten-year old computer I built. Perhaps some "dependency" having to do with a particular update of my existing software. One thing for sure, I like how often Linux distros are updated.

I just may use my second SSD to put a different Linux Distro on it. Played around with Zorin OS16 for a bit, though I might install Zorin OS16.2 this time around, just to check out the changes. Another Linux distro that has a friendlier installation and functionality towards former Windows users.

 

[Judge]

Turns out I just had to move that slider a few more times back and forth to again crash Photoshop in Linux Mint 21.1. I tried to do the same with other filters, but so far it seems to be just the sharpening filter that has this glitch. Haven't had any Wine updates yet, though I'm not really sure that they may even address such an issue given how old Photoshop 5.5 is.

 

[Judge]

I just figured out how to stop this glitch I was encountering each time I attempted to "fade" a filter action. This time I tested it over and over as aggressively as possible, moving the opacity slider back and forth right to left. The only thing that happened was what was supposed to happen. I couldn't make Photoshop crash. What did I do?

Two things:

1) When in doubt, consider reinstalling the application.

2) Probably at the heart of the problem. I cheated at one point in installing Photoshop 5.5 in an earlier version of Linux Mint. Each time I would attempt to install Photoshop through Wine, when I attempted to set up Photoshop's "preferences" , the program would just freeze up with no place to go.

At the time I had not found a fix for this, and in desperation I decided to take the entire photoshop 5.5 folder from my other drive that still had an earlier version of Linux Mint on it and copy that folder to the newer version on a different SSD. It worked, and I was really stoked that it did. Something you could never do on Windows...lol. It worked, and I forgot about my little hack.

When I upgraded Linux Mint again, from 21.0 to 21.1 I got lazy and stupid. Rather than attempt a normal installation of Photoshop through Wine 8.0, I simply did my hack, and transplanted that older Photoshop folder from an earlier version of Linux Mint into the latest version 21.1 (Vera). Bad idea, apparently. So I simply went into the Wine Uninstaller using the terminal, and deleted Photoshop and keeping Wine 8.0 completely intact.

Then I simply reinstalled Photoshop the correct way....and voila! Even added my Extensis Plug-ins which also worked. Then tested it over and over again as posted above. Never could crash Photoshop, even trying other filters and fading them with that slider. Nada.

Moral of the story: One hack in one version of an OS doesn't necessarily work when applied to another version. Duh. But at least now I know it was my stupid mistake and not a Wine or Linux error. Guess I'm back in the saddle again. Let's hope so, anyways. And Linux still rocks!

 

[Judge]

Another great thing about Linux distros is that with their iso file you burn to a flash drive usually allows you the choice of running a perspective Linux operating system right off that drive before actually installing it. In the past I always seemed to bypass this option and do a complete installation. I was considering trying Zorin OS16.2 as it was recently updated. This time around instead of using my 256GB SSD to install it, I chose to simply run the OS directly from the ISO flash drive. Glad I did, too.

Seems there are two particular Linux Distros often touted as the best alternative to Windows for newcomers to Linux. Linux Mint, and Zorin OS16. And I agree with this distinction whole-heartedly. They both have a user-friendly approach in allowing you to boot the iso flash drive to install these operating systems to your hard drive. More so IMO than other Linux Distros.

But in running Zorin OS16 right off the flash drive, it allowed me to surmise what I already thought about it. From a perspective of functionality it's first-rate. And it allows a choice of multiple graphic user interfaces that you can change on-the-fly. Pretty cool. But what always seem to bother me personally, are the quality of the graphics and icons which seem less than that offered by Linux Mint, which to me is simply a downright elegant OS. I love it. So it kind of puts a crimp on my "distro-hopping". Can't say I've found something better so far.

To begin the installation process of a Linux Distro, you have to download the iso file pertaining to whatever OS and then burn it to a USB flash drive. If you're presently a Windows user, I use a freeware program called "Balena-Etcher" to a create a Linux boot drive. There's also another Windows program called "Rufus" that does this, but for whatever reason I had problems getting it to work. Once you have a successfully created a bootable Linux flash drive , you can install that version of Linux in a matter of minutes by booting it through your BIOS. I think a basic installation of Linux Mint 21.0 took around 20 minutes. Far less frustrating for me than installing Windows 10.

I suppose I'm posting this to save some of you some grief in attempting to understand this initial process in installing a Linux-based OS. It all seemed confusing to me at first, but once I understood how to use Balena-Etcher it all seemed to work for me. Except in one instance where I apparently had a flawed (Onn) USB stick. Even when I used both drive repair functions from Linux and Windows it wasn't enough for Balena-Etcher to work properly. Switched it out with San Disk and PNY flash drives which worked fine. So be aware that USB integrity counts when you are creating a boot disk from a downloaded .iso file.

https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-balenaetcher-on-linux-mint/

 

[Slime_Punk]

I'm having the weirdest things happen with Linux on ex-Windows machines. It's pretty good comedy so far

After my one PC has been on for a few days, the taskbar suddenly stops responding until I power down. Simply logging out and back in again seems to only fix it for a few minutes, but I get a little more juice out of a full power-cycle. This never happened when the PC had windows on it.

The funniest glitch so far is that if I'm playing music in VLC for a long time (which was standard for me on the same system running Windoze), the audio will drop out and require a hard reset. Youtube videos, spotify and / or VLC won't even load because they can tell the audio is out.

It always seems like certain versions of apps are 10,000 steps behind the Windows version; the Arduino IDE still looks like it fell out of Windows 98-hell (and lacks the fancy, newer features), VSC (I know, I should be using VIM or something probably) doesn't even allow the copying of paths (IIRC the right-click menu is nonexistent on Linux), and even stuff as simple as spotify is missing the menu that allows for offline functionality (unless I'm massively overlooking something or there's a secret passcode in order to get there).

I'm not giving up on Linux yet but these things are common across all 5 setups I've put it on (I'm definitely crazy, but some of these are dual-boots because I thought that would be a cool idea for some reason) and I'm wondering if this is just par for the course. It's kind of hilarious, but only because I still have Windows 10-11 installed on other platforms to rescue my sanity.

 

[Angular Chap]

I'm having the weirdest things happen with Linux on ex-Windows machines. It's pretty good comedy so far

After my one PC has been on for a few days, the taskbar suddenly stops responding until I power down. Simply logging out and back in again seems to only fix it for a few minutes, but I get a little more juice out of a full power-cycle. This never happened when the PC had windows on it.

The funniest glitch so far is that if I'm playing music in VLC for a long time (which was standard for me on the same system running Windoze), the audio will drop out and require a hard reset. Youtube videos, spotify and / or VLC won't even load because they can tell the audio is out.

It always seems like certain versions of apps are 10,000 steps behind the Windows version; the Arduino IDE still looks like it fell out of Windows 98-hell (and lacks the fancy, newer features), VSC (I know, I should be using VIM or something probably) doesn't even allow the copying of paths (IIRC the right-click menu is nonexistent on Linux), and even stuff as simple as spotify is missing the menu that allows for offline functionality (unless I'm massively overlooking something or there's a secret passcode in order to get there).

I'm not giving up on Linux yet but these things are common across all 5 setups I've put it on (I'm definitely crazy, but some of these are dual-boots because I thought that would be a cool idea for some reason) and I'm wondering if this is just par for the course. It's kind of hilarious, but only because I still have Windows 10-11 installed on other platforms to rescue my sanity.

I may be a Linux fanboy, but you're not wrong. Some software devs are behind on their Linux support.

My gaming rigs are dual-boot with Windows for that reason, some gaming and console mod tools are just non-existent on Linux. Wine is great and usually gets the job done perfectly fine, sometimes even with a performance boost compared to Windows, but throwing in game and console modding gets tricky. I enjoy a technical challenge, but I play games more for fun than anything else.

 

[Outdated]

I'm having the weirdest things happen with Linux on ex-Windows machines.

Did you set the bios to non-Windows OS?

It always seems like certain versions of apps are 10,000 steps behind the Windows version; the Arduino IDE still looks like it fell out of Windows 98-hell (and lacks the fancy, newer features), VSC (I know, I should be using VIM or something probably) doesn't even allow the copying of paths (IIRC the right-click menu is nonexistent on Linux), and even stuff as simple as spotify is missing the menu that allows for offline functionality (unless I'm massively overlooking something or there's a secret passcode in order to get there).

What desktop environment are you running? I've been using Linux for 20 years and don't have those sorts of problems.

I recommend the Cinnamon desktop, it has all the features necessary to support the programs you're trying to run and yet is still light enough on resources to be fast. I can give you help on how to do that if you need.

My gaming rigs are dual-boot with Windows for that reason, some gaming and console mod tools are just non-existent on Linux.

This is very true, sadly. That's also the best part of gaming for me, modding. To me that's more fun than the actual games. I haven't had a working copy of windows in years now so there's some games I just can't mod.

 

[Judge]

I may be a Linux fanboy, but you're not wrong. Some software devs are behind on their Linux support.

My gaming rigs are dual-boot with Windows for that reason, some gaming and console mod tools are just non-existent on Linux. Wine is great and usually gets the job done perfectly fine, sometimes even with a performance boost compared to Windows, but throwing in game and console modding gets tricky. I enjoy a technical challenge, but I play games more for fun than anything else.

Well stated. If anything, where Linux so often falls short is usually within the realm of gaming. Compounded by a turbulent relationship with Nvidia. Though admittedly these days, Nvidia seems to have a turbulent relationship with everyone.

Recently I made the mistake of thinking the one Nvidia Open Source driver could work with my GTX 1660Ti. When I installed it I ended up having to use the ISO flash drive just to boot back into the OS. Otherwise I couldn't even get into Mint 21.1. Ouch. Their "470" driver seems to run ok, though it still spits out nasty entries while booting up, that I have blacked out applying "loglevel=3" to my GRUB command line. Of course if you really want to hear colorful comments and hostile gestures about Nvidia relative to Linux, I'll defer to Linus Torvald for that....LOL.

With Adobe Photoshop 5.5 (1999) running so well under Wine 7/8 in Linux Mint 21, I may push that edge of the envelope and attempt to run EA's Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2003 in Wine. According to WineHQ it runs quite well. I'm a bit skeptical on that note...we shall see.

 

[Angular Chap]

Of course if you really want to hear colorful comments and hostile gestures about Nvidia relative to Linux, I'll defer to Linus Torvald for that....LOL.

Yup, I think the man himself said it best!

 

[Judge]

View attachment 96101

Yup, I think the man himself said it best!

Between Nvidia and Microsoft, they sure don't make things easy for most if not all Linux distros.

At least Nvidia reluctantly provides proprietary drivers that seem to work. Though my gaming days ended pretty much with Windows XP, so I can't elaborate much on all the potential difficulties of getting such a video card to work optimally.

Microsoft OTOH seems to enjoy a monopoly of having most motherboards automatically conform to their standards, which can often be at odds with trying to install Linux. Where you need to eschew Microsoft's EUFI settings for "legacy settings" and not initiate things like Secure Boot or TPM (Trusted Platform Module) technologies just to get your computer to boot. If not, even if you get Linux running it could still create problems as @Outdated may be implying in an earlier post. Though I'm hearing some occasional chatter citing that Linux is working to accommodate Microsoft's proprietary motherboard engineering . Making BIOS settings work for either OS. Though I remain skeptical of that given Microsoft's drive for proprietary technology and monopolistic practices designed to subvert any and all competitors.

One advantage in continuing to run this ten year-old motherboard is that such considerations were barely on Microsoft's radar. I never bothered to even use Secure Boot for Windows 10, and don't have TPM. Allowing me to use removable SSDs for both Windows and Linux Mint.

I'm still giving some thought to building another computer that could in theory run both operating systems from a removable drive, with a minimum of BIOS changes on boot-up. But right now the industry seems unclear as to whether or not Microsoft will allow it, given their present stance on dual-booting which I prefer to stay away from. Microsoft seems to have lightened up a little over their Windows 11...but that may turn out to be little more than public relations damage control. Hard to say. But they still seem to want to crush anyone they consider to be their competition, even with Linux's two percent or less market share.

 

[Angular Chap]

Between Nvidia and Microsoft, they sure don't make things easy for most if not all Linux distros.

At least Nvidia reluctantly provides proprietary drivers that seem to work. Though my gaming days ended pretty much with Windows XP, so I can't elaborate much on all the potential difficulties of getting such a video card to work optimally.

Microsoft OTOH seems to enjoy a monopoly of having most motherboards automatically conform to their standards, which can often be at odds with trying to install Linux. Where you need to eschew Microsoft's EUFI settings for "legacy settings" and not initiate things like Secure Boot or TPM (Trusted Platform Module) technologies just to get your computer to boot. If not, even if you get Linux running it could still create problems as @Outdated may be implying in an earlier post. Though I'm hearing some occasional chatter citing that Linux is working to accommodate Microsoft's proprietary motherboard engineering . Making BIOS settings work for either OS. Though I remain skeptical of that given Microsoft's drive for proprietary technology and monopolistic practices designed to subvert any and all competitors.

One advantage in continuing to run this ten year-old motherboard is that such considerations were barely on Microsoft's radar. I never bothered to even use Secure Boot for Windows 10, and don't have TPM. Allowing me to use removable SSDs for both Windows and Linux Mint.

I'm still giving some thought to building another computer that could in theory run both operating systems from a removable drive, with a minimum of BIOS changes on boot-up. But right now the industry seems unclear as to whether or not Microsoft will allow it, given their present stance on dual-booting which I prefer to stay away from. Microsoft seems to have lightened up a little over their Windows 11...but that may turn out to be little more than public relations damage control. Hard to say. But they still seem to want to crush anyone they consider to be their competition, even with Linux's two percent or less market share.

This was my concern back when Secure Boot and TPM first started appearing. Just another thing to work around right now I thought, but what will it lead to in future? Whatever Microsoft wants to do with Windows and software wise, fine. Their house, their rules. But when their practices start spilling over into hardware as well, that's concerning.

 

[Judge]

This was my concern back when Secure Boot and TPM first started appearing. Just another thing to work around right now I thought, but what will it lead to in future? Whatever Microsoft wants to do with Windows and software wise, fine. Their house, their rules. But when their practices start spilling over into hardware as well, that's concerning.

It was the "cornerstone" for my decision to abandon Microsoft Windows. Microsoft relative computer hardware and software is very similar to that of Walmart when it comes to groceries and other things. Being so powerful in the marketplace that they openly dictate terms favorable only to themselves and no others.

I suppose we can only wait, and continue to read articles about how Microsoft may or may not mitigate some of their draconian policies just to keep up their market share. The irony is that if they do, it just might be enough for me to build a system that not only works for Linux Mint 21.1, but Microsoft Windows 11 as well. Though personally I'll never likely consider a dual-boot system. Microsoft still seems hellbent on making that an impossibility for Linux users. But who knows? They may eventually lighten up on that as well.

At the moment none of it seems really clear enough for me to begin building a system based on present or even future considerations. But with this technology, it's probably not realistic for me to keep this computer running beyond 2027.

 

[Outdated]

The irony is that if they do, it just might be enough for me to build a system that not only works for Linux Mint 21.1, but Microsoft Windows 11 as well. Though personally I'll never likely consider a dual-boot system. Microsoft still seems hellbent on making that an impossibility for Linux users. But who knows? They may eventually lighten up on that as well.

I never had a problem with dual boot, but this is using internal drives in a desktop PC.

I always give each OS it's own physical drive. In modern bios you have the option to turn harddrives off, During install of any OS turn off all other drives except for the one you are installing on. They can all discover each other later on, but not during install, let them all think they are the only OS.

This gets around Windows's problem with boot menus. Instead of using a boot menu generated by Grub you use the bios boot menu. That is disabled by default, the F12 boot menu. Once enabled just use the F12 key during boot to get the menu.

 

[Judge]

Attempted to install Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2003 without any success after trying multiple methods of installing them through Wine 8.0. Frustrating, but not really surprising. I installed "Hearts of Iron II" and got it to work, but it really made a mess of my screen resolution. Seems it couldn't properly adjust to my native 1920x1080 resolution.

One thing I'm considering is to load the program "Bottles" on my other SSD with Mint 21.1 just to see if it improves my prospects for installing 32-bit Windows game programs. Though it remains unclear to me whether or not "Bottles" is intended to run on its own, without Wine.

Interestingly enough, the Mint Repository (software store) has a Flathub version of "Bottles" ready for downloading. Seems more complex than Wine, and that it may sandbox applications so that whatever dependencies are involved remain exclusively with that Windows app you try to run. Beyond that, I don't know squat about it. Though I have heard a few Linux gurus on YouTube who prefer Bottles to Wine.

Anyone here using "Bottles" ?

https://usebottles.com/

 

[Outdated]

Attempted to install Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2003 without any success after trying multiple methods of installing them through Wine 8.0.

I run a couple of PGA games without a hitch. It's very rarely that I ever play them these days but I keep them for nostalgia's sake. They're free on abandonware sites these days.

https://www.myabandonware.com/search/q/pga/page/2/
The trick to getting these older games to run is in your wine setup. Here's a tutorial I wrote a while back:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/yxj8t48n3wvganj/Wine_Tutorial.pdf/file

 

[Shevek]

Download MX from here (top link):

Download Links – MX Linux


Now, I'll try not to post a wall of text here, so let me give you a few links and a few terms or jargon to search:


As tkcartoonist recommends, Etcher, Universal USB Installer, Rufus.

Make Bootable USB from Linux | Category | Pen Drive Linux


Now if your old system is too outdated, you may have trouble with the above tutorials, so you may have to go the command line route:

dd command. (be ULTRA careful with your /dev/sdX letters and numbers to avoid mishaps!)

How to make a bootable USB from an ISO in Linux

How To Burn ISO Image To DVD And USB Using dd

or search "dd command write ISO USB"

Again, please be VERY careful with the dd command! Double and triple check the letters and numbers in /dev/sd[letter/number]. dd is nicknamed disk destroyer or data destroyer for a reason!


Next you want to either find out how to enter the BIOS on your new machine, or how to boot directly to external media from the boot screen, if possible.

Try keys Delete, F2 or F12 are the common ones. It may tell you briefly what key to press on the boot screen. You may get lucky and be able to press a key to boot directly from external media. If not, once in the BIOS, you are looking for the term "boot order" You want your USB drive to be at the top of the boot order list. Look for terms such as "USB drive" "external media" "external USB"

Search terms are "entering BIOS" and "change BIOS boot order" or "boot external USB" maybe with the manufacturer of your machine or any brand name displayed on the boot screen.

Once you have changed the boot order, look for terms such as "save and exit" "save and reboot" "save changes and reboot" either in one of the menus or maybe a keyboard key.


Once rebooted you will hopefully boot from your USB drive, ready to install.

Good luck!

Thanks very much. I've been preparing the physical space, and am now starting on the software. At your first link, I was able to select and download MX-21.3_x64.iso.torrent. I don't know if that's some sort of zip format, but they like the download speed. The site recommends a custom installer, but their link only gets the help file, not the program. Moving on to your second link, for installers, I'm deep into needing a glossary about once per sentence.

 

[Angular Chap]

Thanks very much. I've been preparing the physical space, and am now starting on the software. At your first link, I was able to select and download MX-21.3_x64.iso.torrent. I don't know if that's some sort of zip format, but they like the download speed. The site recommends a custom installer, but their link only gets the help file, not the program. Moving on to your second link, for installers, I'm deep into needing a glossary about once per sentence.

Maybe they've changed the links around or something, here is another, click the green button "Download Latest Version MX-21.3_February_x64.iso (2.0 GB)"

MX-Linux - Browse /Final at SourceForge.net

For USB installers, it looks like Etcher is the gold standard right now on all platforms:

balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives

When I first switched to Linux from Windows, I used YUMI on Windows, but I've only ever used dd on Linux since.