{"id":1378,"date":"2013-11-28T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2013-11-28T12:00:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T17:00:26","slug":"new-hardware-new-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/desktop-env\/new-hardware-new-software","title":{"rendered":"New Hardware, New Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, new<\/em><\/strong> is tough to define since computers and technology move so fast.<\/p>\n

April 2013: I treated myself to a new laptop: an i7 machine (Dell inspiron 15z) and I’m happy with it. Great specs, such as 8GB of RAM, a touchscreen, and the “dual-drive” thing where one drive is a 5400 RPM in tandem with a 32GB SSD. So far, it’s got the best response time of any computer I’ve owned.<\/p>\n

We’ve covered the hardware, on to the Software! The machine has Windows 8 & a UEFI Secure-boot BIOS. Yes, my fellow fans of Linux, I was “well aware of the challenge” of dual-booting that lay ahead. Still, I pressed on.<\/p>\n

Information these days it’s available from many sources. For up-to-date Linux info, I trust Chris Fisher and Matt Hartley over at the Linux Action Show podcast<\/a> and have been a listener for many years – a shout out to you, Brian Lunduke<\/a> as well. Miss ya bud.<\/p>\n

While listening to the podcast, they mentioned the emerging (at the time) technology of Secure Boot computers, and the potential impact it would have on us Linux users. I could have (and there are days that I wish I had) purchased a System76<\/a> laptop – however I did want to have “some access” to a late-model windows OS “just in case”. Chris and Matt informed me that Ubuntu and Fedora were (again, at the time) the only distros that would be compatible with the UEFI Secure Boot System.<\/p>\n

A few of you still reading this post may be saying “Booooo, down with MS Windows…” – but I must say that having the real “Microsoft word” was critical for my job hunting. Open Office just isn’t there yet (sorry Apache), and Libre Office… disappointing as well. I needed (and used) the “real deal” – I don’t enjoy saying this, but there are just some MS Apps that are not directly replaceable (yet) in the Linux world.<\/p>\n

I will say that getting Ubuntu to properly dual-boot was an arduous process. The good thing is that I did eventually get it working with the help of various software (such as EasyBCD for Windows, and Boot Repair Tool for Ubuntu). Things worked great for a long time. Then it was time for upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10, which I now sort-of regret. The upgrade broke a lot of stuff. Broke it to the point where I had to disable a lot of BIOS things just so I could hold down F12 key each and every time I boot.<\/p>\n

I was livid, and have so much ire about this, that it deserves to be in it’s own blog post. Stay tuned – more to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, new is tough to define since computers and technology move so fast. April 2013: I treated myself to a new laptop: an i7 machine (Dell inspiron 15z) and I’m happy with it. Great specs, such as 8GB of RAM, a touchscreen, and the “dual-drive” thing where one drive is a 5400 RPM in tandem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6,15,20,23,24],"tags":[73,71,72,68,70,62],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux-apps","category-desktop-env","category-distros","category-install-linux","category-use-linux","category-freedom-choice","tag-15z","tag-dell","tag-inspiron","tag-kubuntu","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nylinuxhelp.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}