Tippon

Update: I managed to get it working with the answers from @Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me and this link:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-permanently-mount-a-drive-in-linux-and-why-you-should/

I've just installed Mint 22 on my laptop, and I've got two storage drives alongside my main drive. I want these drives to be available to all users on boot, and to be readable and writable. At the moment they're treated as removable drives, and are mounted under the individual user. As a result, any permissions that I'm setting as the owner are not sticking when they're mounted by another user.

The first drive is synced with my main PC through Syncthing, and is synced to Onedrive from there. The second drive is my music, podcasts, and audiobooks, which are all synced through Syncthing only. I'm the only person using the laptop and accessing any of these files, so I'm not bothered about the wrong user accidentally opening them.

I've read some posts about editing fstab to mount them at startup, but they don't cover whether the drives will be available to other users or not. Can I just add them to fstab and mount them somewhere that's available to all users, then sort out the permissions? If so, where's the best place to put them?

Thanks in advance :)

This might sound daft, but something similar used to work with live discs.

I've got Windows 10 and Mint 21.1 dual booting on my computer at the moment. Every so often I'll realise that I've missed something from my Windows installation. If it's important, I then have to boot to Windows to get the information, or the settings etc.

Is there a way to virtualise my Mint installation so that I can run both the OSs at once to make sure that I've got everything?

VirtualBox had a tool to do this with a live USB, but that was back in the MBR days, so it probably won't work with modern hardware.

EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify, Mint and Windows are on the same physical disk, and the plan is to remove Windows once I'm done.

Update: I'm giving up. It looks like it is possible if you have separate disks with separate boot partitions, but getting it to work with a shared boot partition is harder work than I'm willing to do right now.

VMware Player can use a partition or disk, but might be in read only mode, I couldn't get far enough to check.

Thanks for all the replies :)

I've just finished getting my laptop set up the way I like it, including maximising the RAM and upgrading the screen. I opened it up to use it, and the screws on the hinge tore through the plastic.

To top it off, the plastic on the bottom of the laptop, the side that's been removed here, has also broken.

My wife definitely didn't drop the laptop while she was tidying up though...

EDIT: Apologies all, I'm having trouble with Lemmy today, and it's not letting me reply.

I'll try to reply tomorrow, but in the meantime;

It's a Stonebook branded Clevo n751BU, a 7th gen i5. It's held up respectably well until it appears to have been knocked in the corner where the hinge is. The plastics on both sides of the hinge have given out.

I've ordered a replacement base, but the palm rest which is pictured is not available anywhere that I can find. I'm going to dismantle the hinge to clean and oil it, then reassemble it slightly less tightly, and epoxy the screws into place. The reason for taking it apart in the first place was to add a third hard drive. It has an nvme drive, and I had two HDDs going spare that can hold my documents and music. They're being synced now as I was having problems doing it remotely, but once they're in they can be managed with Syncthing. The laptop shouldn't need to come apart agin afterwards :)

I've been building and repairing computers and laptops for about 30 years, so I'm comfortable with completely stripping it, and can use it as an excuse to give everything a clean again. Short of replacing these HDDs with SSDs, there's nothing else that can physically be upgraded, so I'm half tempted to glue it shut so that I don't get tempted again :D

Hi all :)

I manage a handful of websites and their emails using the PortableApps suite on Windows, so have a separate browser and mail client for each one. This has worked well for years, but now I'm switching to Linux, Mint specifically. I've read that I can set up profiles on Firefox and probably Thunderbird, or maybe run separate instances with things like AppImages, but it sounds like it's a messy solution, and could end up with me using the wrong profile by mistake

What I want to do is set up a virtual machine for each site, and have a completely separate instance of the programs, and hopefully a way to easily transfer the machines to other systems if needs be.

I'd prefer to use a Debian / Ubuntu based distro with Apt and the 'Windows' style desktop, as that's what I'm already used to, but am I better off installing Mint and stripping it down, or is there something more suited to this?

Thanks in advance :)

Went out on a rare clear night to a wetlands near me to take some photos of the stars. As it was so dark, and the stars are so small, I had to rely on the focus peaking function of my camera to tell if the stars were in focus or not.

I've got home and started to process the photos, and I've found out that despite the camera telling me that they were in focus, they clearly weren't.

Hey ho, what's a wasted few hours in the freezing cold between friends...

Hi all :)

Apologies for the long writeup, but I'm not sure if the background is important or not.

I've got a media server currently running Xubuntu (getting ready to be transitioned to a proper server OS before anyone asks), and I've been having a problem with static IP addresses.

About a year ago I was having a problem with the ethernet card switching from a static IP to DHCP, and screwing up the services that depended on the IP address. It appeared to be a problem with my ISP router (BT SmartHub 2). I thought I'd fixed it, and didn't have any trouble for a while.

I added a second ethernet card to split my traffic. My VPN doesn't allow split tunneling on Linux, and I wanted some traffic to go through the VPN while some bypassed it. I hadn't set anything up for that yet, but did give the second ethernet card a static IP address. I changed the DNS servers on both to go through my AdGuard installation on the same machine, and some other ad blocking DNS servers.

When I first installed the second ethernet card I had a few problems, but my network switch died at the same time, and replacing it appeared to cure the issues. The issues were similar to before, in that I couldn't get a static IP to stick.

To now - Last night we were having some power issues in the area, power surges and brownouts. In the time that it took me to get to my PC and log in to the media server to shut it down, it had rebooted at least three times. I shut everything down successfully, and after I turned everything back on this morning, the services like Plex that don't need the IP all seemed to be working properly.

After my kid went to bed, I tried to log onto the server to check it. Nothing that needed the IP address would work. I tried the second IP address and that was the same. I managed to log in with NoMachine and saw that there were two new ethernet connections, both set to DHCP, and they were being used instead of the previous connections. The previous connections apparently haven't been used for the last six days.

I tried deleting one of the new connections to see if it would force Xubuntu to use the old ones, and it seemed to work, but deleting the second one cut off the network connections completely. After connecting a monitor and peripherals to the server, I could see an option for an Auto Connection in the network dropdown menu, and that let me connect again.

My previous connections are still in the network manager with all the static IP settings, but there are two new Auto Ethernet connections too, using DHCP.

Can anyone give me a clue as to what's happened here please? I thought it was a problem caused by the power problems, but it's apparently been going on for almost a week.

Apologies in advance if I'm slow to reply for the next few days, and thank you in advance for any help :)

A few years ago I became seriously ill. I was in a coma on heavy duty meds, and had a kidney transplant. I'm much better than I was, but I can't do a lot of things like I could before.

We've now got quite a few kids in the extended family, so a while ago I wrote a short story to try to make it easier for them to understand. My wife and family like the story and have suggested making it into a picture story book. Problem is, I can't draw and my imagination isn't very good.

How can I get pictures for the story if I can't do it myself and don't have the money to hire someone? I want to avoid using AI tools because of the potential copyright issues.

I haven't tried the services like Fiverr because I've heard that they force a race to the bottom on prices, but does anyone have any experience, or have any ideas of what I can do please?

Thanks in advance :)

Are there any good tools for listing your current programs, maybe exporting settings etc. Listing hidden settings and save locations would be great too.

I'm about 90% ready to switch to Linux full time, and I want to make sure that I've got everything. I've got a horrible feeling that I'm missing something, but I can't think what it might be.

EDIT: Ironically, I forgot to mention my ADHD / memory issues. I could do with a tool like this because I forget about anything that I'm not currently using, or actively thinking about using soon >.<

Hi all :)

Apologies, I know this isn't a woodworking question, but I don't know of a better place to ask about restoring a desk like this.

It's an oak desk, but it looks like there used to be a felt inlay, or maybe vinyl. The top of the desk has an inlay of plywood, with a small raised edge to the oak, of maybe 2 - 3mm. Staining or varnishing doesn't seem to be an option, as the style of the plywood doesn't match the rest of the desk, so I'm looking for ideas for the top.

Felt or vinyl would be the obvious options, but I'm hoping to hear some other ideas. It's going to be used as an office desk, with two computer monitors and a keyboard and mouse, but also for writing, mostly notes rather than anything serious.

The underside of the plywood has oak planks running from front to back, so there's the option of removing the plywood and putting in another piece of wood, but I don't want to spend too much if I can help it.

Does anyone have any suggestions or feedback please?

Thanks in advance :)

EDIT: Sorry if I'm a bit slow to reply tonight, I'm having a mad dash to tidy up and make room for the new desk. I've managed to plan everything backwards (again...)

Note for myself - the lip is 1mm and the plywood is 3mm, as best as I can tell without dismantling anything

I found the site and tried to check, but it wouldn't show me anything without being logged in, so I created an account. Now that I'm signed in though, I can only find vague rules, like

The User's account is for personal use only. Only the individual who holds the account is allowed to connect on it. Connections to the User's account are recorded so that we can detect account sharing. The User agrees to keep his login secret, We won't offer technical support for account hacking.

How does this work with a phone or laptop, for example? What if I sign in at my parents house when I visit for a few days?

Can anyone help please?

Hi all :)

I've been using MediaMonkey on Windows 10 and Android to organise my music, playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts, including syncing them to my phone. MediaMonkey has let me down again, so I'm looking to switch, and as I'm trying to switch to Linux too, now would be a good time to get a Linux media manager.

One of the main ways that I use MM is by either building a playlist and transferring the whole thing, or adding to a playlist and just syncing the new tracks. I prefer the tracks to be placed in their artist / album directory though, rather than a directory for the playlist.

I also use MM on Windows to organise my tracks with online metadata, usually from Discogs, so that it matches the entry for the album. I store my media under music\sorted\album artist\album name\track no - artist - title, with a similar setup for audiobooks and podcasts, and would prefer to do the same with the new software.

Does anyone know of anything that can do this please?

I've looked at Strawberry and Cinnamon, but development seems to have stopped, and I don't know enough about things like flaws and bugs to know if they're still safe to use.

Thanks in advance for your help :)

I've got an Epson Stylus SX435W all in one. It's working with Image Scan! for Linux 2.30.4, but is not being detected by Epson Scan 2. I've checked everything I can find, it just looks like my scanner is too old for the software.

Simple Scan seems to be too simple, but I don't want to have to launch something like GIMP and manually tweak everything.

I ideally want something with a built in colour enhancement tool like the Epson Windows software, and something that will remember the directory and name of the scan e.g. if I set it to ~/Pictures/Scans/Scan001.jpg, the next scan will automatically be ~/Pictures/Scans/Scan002.jpg etc. Descreening and Backlight Correction are both tools that I use fairly regularly too, as I mostly scan old photos. There's a screenshot of the Windows Epson software on this page if it helps:

https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/wfp4520/wfp4520ug/source/scanners/source/scanning_software/tasks/starting_scan_icon.html

Does anyone know of anything that might be a good alternative please?

EDIT: I'm just trying out XSane now. XSane and Image Scan! both give a slight colour cast, purple on this particular photo, but XSane seems to have more control over the settings.

I'm currently avoiding VueScan due to the price. While it does look like it's great software, I can't currently justify paying £50 when I've already got working software under Windows.