Cheap desk top

Hi All,

Well have got Linux Mint running on our desktop and compared to Windows its so fast and with many programs now easily loadable via the software managers its generally so good to use.

However have a problem or step outside those confines and you are back to the usual hard to understand Linux terms etc.

Had one last night trying to run the Arduino IDE, though did find the solution by googling, but a bit lost as to what all the terminal instructions to overcome the problem actually meant.

Wondered if you had used any particularly good publications, forums or sites to find answers to your Linux problems ?

 

@ricky101
I tried using some manuals, of which there are many on the internet, but frankly I think they are only useful if you are genuinely in love of the command line for the sake of it..
Either that, or you have some very good reasons (e.g. a job) to stick with it.
Otherwise, what I found is that I would soon forget whatever I learned.

I did learn a few programming languages from manuals, but just because I either was very interested or my work required it.

In terms of resources, I used a lot the Ubuntu forum. Many solutions and questions you find there will apply to Mint too.
And yes, I pasted in plenty of commands without quite understanding what they did I am afraid :D

But of course it might be me, we all learn in different ways to an extent..

A good place to start for me was learning about generic commands and tricks which simply save lots of times while using the command line (history, wildcards and similar)

There are many lists online of generically useful commands, for instance:
15 Linux Terminal Commands That Will Rock Your World

An effective way to learn about things useful to troubleshoot and solve problems is to build your OS from scratch. There are many tutorials online and it can be done on a virtual machine running on your current Mint, if you have the patience to go through it (which I did not, it is very time consuming process at first, but of course you end up understanding all the major components in depth, and how to modify them).

 

Hi @Aldo

At least Mint now has enough ready to use programs that you do not need to get involved with the command line from the word go as was the case in years past.

Keeps the grey matter working either way !!

Thanks

 

Very true
Two programs I found quite useful were:

Synaptic Package Manager | Linux
This is a package manager which sometimes can point to more software, and more updated, then the managers which come with Ubuntu/Mint. Is also a bit faster.

Synapse or Albert — Which Is Your Favourite App Launcher for Linux? - OMG! Ubuntu!
Synapse is a semantic search engine you can use to find pretty much anything on your computer in an instant.
It is so fast and practical that I pretty much stopped using the launcher and menus to launch software, and the file manager to find stuff.

I never tried Albert, also mentioned in the article above, but it sounds like a good option as well.

For playing, if you ever play, PlayOnLinux has a few good things for free.

 

Thanks again @Aldo, that SPM looks very handy

 

Been playing about with overclocking - the pi can be overclocked by adding a few lines of text into the boot up config file.

Did run at 1.5ghz - now running at 2.0ghz.

It now goes like Flash Gordon's rocket cycle with a turbo charger bolted on.

 

Hi,

Sounds good !

Expect you will need extra heatsinks and cooling with the extra speed, had read that the standard pi4 ran a lot hotter anyway ?

 

Spot on - 4 aluminium heat sinks and a fan connected to the 5v gpio pin.

At idle it runs at 47 and in normal use about 51/52 -have run a 3d fps game and it has not throttled back.

I've also set the GPU frequency from 400 to 600.

All this in a cheap pc the size of a box of ciggies :o)

 

Be interesting to see a pic of your Pi set up, only use my Pi3 for diy projects rather than pc work.

 

Here it is.

I have purchased a new monitor - the pi was orginally screwed to the rear of the original monitor - the old monitor in now in another room and has been converted into a hd tv using an echo dot and a fire tv.



The only leads are for power and for hdmi to the monitor. The keyboard is connected via a Logitech unifying dongle and the mouse via bluetooth. The mouse can be connected to the dongle at the same time as the keyboard, but I find that bluetooth gives the mouse greater range when I'm sitting back from the desk.

There are 2 no usb3 verbatim flash drives - one with the OS and the other acting as storage - here is a better picture:



The fan is installed inside the case - so it looks neat. The other side of the case has the sd card slot (which normally contains the sd card with the OS - but as I say the OS runs from a usb3). You can see in the picture below that there are 2 leds - the red on the right is power and the yellow on the left shows when the OS is in use - much like a hard drive light going on and off.



The heatsinks and fan keep it cool - it's running at 45 at the moment - they throttle back at 80 - so there is plenty of head room.

The pi has inbuilt bluetooth and wifi - not all of it's competitors do though - so for a cheap, reasonable spec sbc the pi is the one to go for imho.

The 64 bit OS has not been officially released and is in beta stage - but as far as I can see it is stable and ready to go out.

 

Very nice !! Well Done .

 

I've just stretched to 2.1ghz - any more and the system in unstable.

 

Expect there will be an even faster Pi out before too long to upgrade to...

Been running Linux Mint for a few days, but still have to return to Windows for some applications, assume you have managed to do at all with Linux ?

How you ever programmed the Pi to make it work as say a greenhouse controller / temp recorder etc ? Have done a little with Python code but still tend to make the projects with the C++ and the Arduino/ESP hardware.

 

Not into programming - have a basic knowledge but not much else.

I reckon the bluetooth mouse and keyboard dongle are interfering with each other - switched over entirely to dongle now - seems better in terms of response.

 

I was wrong - it turns out that the logitech unifying dongle was interfering with the wifi signal - no idea why.

Plugged in a usb keyboard - now running a solid 2.1 ghz cpu and 750 mhz gpu.

I think that's as far as I can push it without compromising stability.