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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Leaving the Sinking ship - Moving to Linux
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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4264 |
Fantastic! And well done. John |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1687 |
Keepis here is some info on the distro I have here and a bit of info on this computer System: Kernel: 6.12.63+deb13-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 14.2.0 clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.12.63+deb13-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash Desktop: Xfce v: 4.20.1 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.48 wm: xfwm4 v: 4.20.0 with: xfce4-panel tools: xfce4-screensaver vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0 Distro: MX-25.1_Xfce_x64 Infinity January 18 2026 base: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) Machine: Type: Desktop System: Dell product: OptiPlex 9020 v: 00 serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 15 serial: <superuser required> Mobo: Dell model: 0XCR8D v: A00 serial: <superuser required> part-nu: 05A4 uuid: <superuser required> BIOS: Dell v: A25 date: 05/30/2019 CPU: Info: model: Intel Core i7-4770 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Haswell gen: core 4 level: v3 Got that info from the system quick view and the next step is downloading Arduino and get that working as I do think I need to connect to the nano on the brainboard for my inverter to setup the inverter. |
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KeepIS Guru Joined: 13/10/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2050 |
I agree with John(S) great find with the i7 PCs. It's crazy that corporate users are scrapping PCs just a few years old because of the MS Win upgrade path requirements. This may be even worse for MS than they realise, as the memory/SSD and some hardware supply sources for the whole of 2026 are already pre-allocated and bought out by big tec AI. I hope it bites all of them BIG TIME in the you know where, only time will tell - what utter stupidity. The HW restrictions by MS for Win systems may have been hit with a perfect storm of upgrade supply demand doom. Bryan, that looks really good, the only difference is the ahs release Kernel is at 18.8-1 and waiting for the official release of 6.19 in a few weeks, but with the version you installed (or any version) it will be a great system with the i7 PC, I doubt you will notice any differences between the releases.  NANO:Inverter V 8.2ks - Linux AvrDude GUI script V3.0 |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1687 |
Well downloaded the Arduino software and programmed a nano with the inverter code which did work first time too Well nothing showing in the code where further settings need to be done and found the serial monitor was blank. Anyway what is a good terminal program for MX as I reckon connecting via that may show a different story. Now using the USB-format app did format the 32gig disk drive but I did find with the 32gig SDCard it kept falling over with an error so will try again tomorrow. Win10 did stuff this SDCard up failing to load the ISO properly. Edited 2026-02-04 16:40 by Bryan1 |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3034 |
Have had that too. Used Linux gparted to wipe it and create a new FAT32 partition. |
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| KeepIS Guru Joined: 13/10/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2050 |
gtkterm or GFXterm by forum member robert.rozee These are uncluttered and simple to get running for USB coms with things like the Arduino Nano etc. . Edited 2026-02-05 10:10 by KeepIS NANO:Inverter V 8.2ks - Linux AvrDude GUI script V3.0 |
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| KeepIS Guru Joined: 13/10/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2050 |
I've had the chance to try a few different distros, all running on the same hardware and drive, including Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin ETC.. To tell the truth, once installed, all are easy to start using straight away, the main difference from a user perspective is the Desktop, power users experience will vary as the underlining OS gets used via the terminal ETC.. Obviously when you get below the desktop (and related desktop apps) to the underlying file system and terminal commands, there are some small and a few big differences. On my MX-25 installed version, which feels like a rolling release as I get updates daily, including Kernel version increments, now at 6:18.13-1. If you use the same desktop then it's "almost" like any Linux running that desktop, no I did not notice anything faster than Xfce and the MX-25 ver I use, some were not as responsive as MX-25. Today I decided to try the latest CatchyOS Arch Linux distro, which allows you to select from around 18 desktops, or install most of them and select which desktop to open at logon. The install was a pain with an error of not enough space in the EFI partition, main windows efi partition is around 300mb to 500mb, this WANTS almost 5GB ??. This is Drive C and it has a cut-down Windows11 (previously installed) and my Linux MX-25 as the 2nd last partition, between those two OS's I have play around partitions. So I resized one of the partition and placed a 5GB fat32 partition before another resized partition for CatchyOS. Setting the 5GB partition as boot/EFI was all it needed to bypass the install error. This will catch out some users as the boot efi entry may not show in the boot menu. Fortunately the MX-25 "Boot Options" is brilliant to use manually, if you can't fix it there, then "Boot Repair" is seriously good, it searches and places all OS links and OS boot options, including Windows, into the boot partition menu correctly. Anyway, I installed two desktops, Cosmic and Xfce. With Xfce desktop it feels almost the same as MX-25 Debian with Xfce, tried Cosmic desktop, and yea, nice, but don't know what the fuss is about, just me I guess, as Xfce can be made super luxurious and is so responsive, and menu options are just brilliant. My reason for this was to try installing some Apps I use that are not in the general repos and to see how much trouble I had with user and groups settings, and getting the USBasp and others running, it took a little longer, as I had to use terminal commands for everything, which I also did in MX-25 to understand what happens behind the GUI's, just in case, was a wise move and time well spent. User groups are slightly different to the other distros, but in the end it all went smoothly. I found it would not run an AppImage as it complained of some missing dependencies, however it gave me the option to install the AppImage itself, instead of trying to run it, and offered a command line option for installing from the AppImage. It placed everything in container folder of sorts, by the looks of it, I haven't looked more into that due to time constraints. It downloaded all needed dependencies and the app ran perfectly once I made a launcher for it, same as MX-25 launcher, which looks to be part of the Xfce desktop experience and right click options. I'm looking forward to getting under the hood and discovering the system apps ETC. I see no reason to change at the moment, it's just nice to see what other distros have to offer in case something goes wrong in one branch of Linux. I'm not happy with the path Ubuntu and others are taking, which is why I went to Debian MX-25 and Arch CatchyOS as a 2nd option. FYI: My poor initial attempts at a GUI script has come a long way, the one I posted was a bit cringe worthy, but gee it's going nicely now. Finally, for anyone using the USBbasp programmer who hates the error "upgrade firmware could not setting tick period", the firmware can be upgraded and that message is now gone after I upgraded the USBasp programmer. - Edited 2026-02-27 18:09 by KeepIS NANO:Inverter V 8.2ks - Linux AvrDude GUI script V3.0 |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4264 |
Interesting! A bit odd that an AppImage wouldn't just work. Has me puzzled. (I hardly ever use one, though, and I guess most users never will). John |
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| KeepIS Guru Joined: 13/10/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2050 |
Funnily enough, there was a big tech discussion about Snap, AppImage and Flatpacks a while back. From the comments posted to the discussion, opinion of results varied with various Linux religious beliefs, like everything in this world some thought feelings mattered more. But from a technical coding perspective, the outcome was that AppImage was fine, but poorly implemented in some cases. The smaller Appimages ran without issue in both OS, from memory I had to download some dependencies in MX-25 before the Image would run, but I was very taken with the install option offered in Arch CatchyOS, and how smoothly it did everything with that AppImage. Sometimes a program I want is only available as an AppImage, so I'm happy to use them if required. Mike NANO:Inverter V 8.2ks - Linux AvrDude GUI script V3.0 |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 763 |
CachyOS is special compared to other distros: CachyOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It focuses on speed and security optimisations - the default Linux kernel is heavily optimised using the BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) scheduler, while the desktop packages are compiled with LTO, x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4, Zen 4 optimization, security flags and performance improvements. On my I5 Gen3 is does not run, I3/5/7 Gen4 is minimum requirement. I don't want to use it anyway, only if these optimizations would get into the vanilla kernel.. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4264 |
I'm so far avoiding snap and flatpack but have resorted to AppImage occasionally and without hassle. What errors did you get using AppImage? I thought it meant all libs were included (thus the bloat) and so all it would need would be the relevant APIs. A Wayland/X.org-related problem? John |
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| pwillard Guru Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 339 |
I also tried CACHYOS recently. It didn't last a week on my pc as I didn't have the patience to deal with it. |
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