…… Mint vs Ubuntu? Also VPN.

[Satanta]

I have used Ubuntu off and on over the years. I like it. Last instal [[Dual Boot]] I could not get it connected to the Net.

Thinking Mint.

Who has used one or both and experience. One thing I like about Ubuntu is it is not Centralized-community built and maintained, how about Mint?

Also, anyone use a VPN? How hard to set up and can you determine where your IP showsas?

 

[LoupGarou]

Mint works fine. As far as Ubuntu, you have to install it with the "3rd party programs and drivers" in order to get WiFi rolling on the broadcom chipsets.

As far as VPNs and Linux, you may have to load the IPSEC and L2TP modules and drivers to get it rolling.

 

[Knight_Loring]

I use Proton, it is free and from Switzerland.

 

[Knoxville's Joker]

Ubuntu is a consumarized OS. Fedora is an early adopter of things and I have had versioning issues (too new unsupported versions) when trying to get software suites working on it.

 

[Raffy]

I’ve installed Mint on a couple of older laptops, and it does a good job. Much better than Windoze, for sure. I’ve read that other distros of Linux are a bit faster, but with less features. I can’t speak to that from much personal experience, though.

I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi 400 kit along with a small touchscreen, and the Raspberry Pi OS (used to be Raspbian) works very well and fast on it. If you have about $200 or so to spare, this may also be worth considering. The 400 is essentially a keyboard with the Pi computer built into it. $200 or so will get you the Raspberry Pi 400 and a decent 7” touchscreen, and will include a mouse and all necessary power adapters and cables. Unlike the Raspberry Pi 4B, the 400 is actually available for a reasonable price at present.

 

[Knoxville's Joker]

I’ve installed Mint on a couple of older laptops, and it does a good job. Much better than Windoze, for sure. I’ve read that other distros of Linux are a bit faster, but with less features. I can’t speak to that from much personal experience, though.

I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi 400 kit along with a small touchscreen, and the Raspberry Pi OS (used to be Raspbian) works very well and fast on it. If you have about $200 or so to spare, this may also be worth considering. The 400 is essentially a keyboard with the Pi computer built into it. $200 or so will get you the Raspberry Pi 400 and a decent 7” touchscreen, and will include a mouse and all necessary power adapters and cables. Unlike the Raspberry Pi 4B, the 400 is actually available for a reasonable price at present.

The Pi 4 barely handles VLC player. It will barely handle some web browsing and some document editing. Great for information displays or self serve kiosk setups though.

 

[Raffy]

The Pi 4 barely handles VLC player. It will barely handle some web browsing and some document editing. Great for information displays or self serve kiosk setups though.

That’s not been my experience.

My Pi 400 seems to handle VLC just fine. I copied a DVD into it and it played just fine, just as good if not better than my Windoze PC. I’ve also had no problems with web browsing via wifi either. I have not tried document creation and editing on it with Libre Office yet, so can’t comment on that. The Pi 400 has a quad core processor running at 1.8 GHz, so it’s got some power, though not as much as most decent quality PC’s. The Pi 4 is clocked slightly slower at about 1.5 GHz but has the same processor.

 

[Alaskan_Leatherhead]

I tried both when I first started using Linux ten years ago, I liked Linux mint a lot better and have used it ever since. Be careful about putting one’s trust in VPN’s. You kind of have to trust the company as they can always have an unknown back door / agreement with an ABC agency, especially if there in a five eyes country. I’d use a TOR browser before i went with a VPN. Theres a great YouTube channel with tutorials and info about online anonymity called “The Hated One.”

 

[Dennis Olson]

Sat, I say agin, PLEASE USE THE HELP PREFIX WHEN ASKING FOR ASSISTANCE.

Changed (again)

 

[knowzone]

Mint and Surfshark, here. Dropped into Linux after XP. Some amazing different versions of Linux out there. Tried some, I like Mint.
Too lazy to come up to speed with brave, using firefox for years.

Not doing much with the net these days beyond Youtube vids, email, banking, buying. If you want privacy, Run your Linux OS, have your vpn running, then go into an installed windoze or whatever OS your heart desires running in virtual server, which is an available program, for your linux environment. "software manager" is a gui library offering software for your linux system. Open the program, do a search for your interest, download. It sets up and maintains.

Easily install and run windoze in virtual server, install your vpn in windoze. Now your main OS, (Linux), is going through your VPN. Startup virtual server/windoze, it starts its VPN, (your main system is it's network connection) making sure to use a different location than the primary OS.

This is all I got. My approach these days, (I recall an $1100 ATT bill one month, because I was fascinated back in '93-94? being able to go dial up on my then new 2400kb modem to an Excalibur BBS in Australia. This on a used IBM 386

As I intimated, anyone tracking my trail these days is likely to die of boredom.

kz

 

[LinuxFreakus]

Debian (upon which Ubuntu is based) was what I used for a long time until around 2005 or so when started using Gentoo... IMO, all the distros are pretty much the same, but the package management is what keeps people "locked in" to one or the other it seems... some of them are more opinionated than others about what a "default" setup should be, and various GUI libraries, etc.

So the main thing is to understand what it is you mean when you say "couldn't get it connected to the net"... and for the VPN, no its not that hard to setup, but it doesn't necessarily protect your identity either.

 

[Knoxville's Joker]

That’s not been my experience.

My Pi 400 seems to handle VLC just fine. I copied a DVD into it and it played just fine, just as good if not better than my Windoze PC. I’ve also had no problems with web browsing via wifi either. I have not tried document creation and editing on it with Libre Office yet, so can’t comment on that. The Pi 400 has a quad core processor running at 1.8 GHz, so it’s got some power, though not as much as most decent quality PC’s. The Pi 4 is clocked slightly slower at about 1.5 GHz but has the same processor.

The Pi4 does handle things better. Just bear in mind most of my work with linux involved high level advanced processor intensive functions.

I have done a few things with linux folks say could not be done

I had to upgrade from an arduino build over to a pi as I was pushing so much data I was over taxing the 16mhz processor on the arduino.

But I mainly switched to the pi as I was finding that the arduino was getting supplanted with circuit python and the boot loader code setup was in my view more painful. I found that the full python support in the pi was better suited to run with circuit python libraries.

Plus the fact that c## is mimicking python in the latest versions and python is becoming the dominant programming language of choice now a days. And by my estimates one to supplant everything else in the coming years.

 

[Raffy]

The Pi4 does handle things better. Just bear in mind most of my work with linux involved high level advanced processor intensive functions.

I have done a few things with linux folks say could not be done

I had to upgrade from an arduino build over to a pi as I was pushing so much data I was over taxing the 16mhz processor on the arduino.

But I mainly switched to the pi as I was finding that the arduino was getting supplanted with circuit python and the boot loader code setup was in my view more painful. I found that the full python support in the pi was better suited to run with circuit python libraries.

Plus the fact that c## is mimicking python in the latest versions and python is becoming the dominant programming language of choice now a days. And by my estimates one to supplant everything else in the coming years.

Cool! I’ve done a little bit with Arduino also, but the Pi’s have a lot more computing power. Python is a powerful language! I’ve started playing with Scratch3 a little bit and plan to play with Python a bit later. I haven’t done much programming since the days of Fortran (yeah, I’m getting older, LOL).

It really is amazing what a little and fairly inexpensive computer like the Pi can do these days. Tech sure has come a long way.

 

[LinuxFreakus]

Cool! I’ve done a little bit with Arduino also, but the Pi’s have a lot more computing power. Python is a powerful language! I’ve started playing with Scratch3 a little bit and plan to play with Python a bit later. I haven’t done much programming since the days of Fortran (yeah, I’m getting older, LOL).

It really is amazing what a little and fairly inexpensive computer like the Pi can do these days. Tech sure has come a long way.

RPi is a great little computer, if you don't care about playing games and stuff, it might be great for a complete system for a lot of folks... I used to have a several old DEC AlphaServers from one of my old jobs.... the power they used relative to how much computing power they actually had was pretty astounding compared to something like RPi.... I still kept those old servers for many years out of nostalgia, but they didn't make the move with me when I moved to AZ... couldn't justify something that big and heavy in the trailer when there were other things that could fit instead :P