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Living Room / Re: How to fix a keyboard with catchy keys

« Last post by Shades on June 03, 2022, 11:47 AM »

Is it a full mechanical keyboard? Or is it one that uses a rubber mat inside to spring the key back in position?

I have bought almost 30 keyboards using the latter 17 years ago. About 20 still survived till this day, and those got really used pre-pandemic. As you can imagine, I have needed to clean and repair many of those to keep these keyboards going. Sticky keys I usually fix with graphite, the core of a pencil, but ground to a powder. I sprinkle it between the moving part of the key and the keyboard, usually on all sides that can cause friction and make the key stick.

In my case I can remove the top of the keyboard as a whole unit. Then I can turn it upside down, do the sprinkling, and use the sticky key to make sure the graphite gets distributed along the surfaces that can cause friction. I keep doing that for a while until the key drops down again by gravity. Whatever graphite is left I blow away. I can then reattach the top with the base of the keyboard again and the keyboard is operational again.

I use these keyboards (Amazon, because it has a picture). While these are not mechanical keyboards, they are great to work with. And have endurance as well.

General Software Discussion / Re: Can I get my data from a laptop that will not boot without dismantling it?

« Last post by Shades on June 02, 2022, 10:33 PM »

Why not dismantle it?

If the water on the keyboard did not reach the SSD, it will actually be preferable to take it out, while the rest is being dried out. While waiting for the drying to finish, use the drive in a (portable) hard disk enclosure to retrieve data from it.

Even worse, the longer it takes for a laptop to dry out, the higher the chance it will never work again. Better to turn it off immediately, then dismantle it as far as you dare and start using (paper) towels to remove all the water as quickly as possible. And blow dry the rest.

If the dried laptop has put all its parts back in and connected, but it still won't boot....well, then it won't take you much time to take the drive out and repurpose it.

However, I have learned along the way that when people say that "the laptop/computer doesn't boot at all" has different meanings. Please explain what you mean with "Does not boot at all" as many of us here in the forum have made presumably "dead" systems work again with surprisingly little effort and/or costs. Looking at myself: before I declare a system "dead", I like to put my hands on the physical device and make my own assessment.

An example:
Some 6 or 7 years ago a friend of mine was gifted a brand new laptop (Lenovo Yoga 500) by her parents. Some 2 years ago she was completely fed up with it. Brought it to me for an attempt of bringing it back to life. Unfortunately I could only tell her that her HDD practically died. And that the battery didn't hold a charge any more according to Windows 10. Without a charge the screen of the laptop continuously switched between 'power saving mode' and 'connected to grid'-mode. She did not want to spend anything on repairs, so I offered to buy it from her for 100 USD.

She could not say 'Yes' quicker. Replaced the HDD with an SSD I had lying around. Installed Linux on the laptop and it came back to life. The SSD gave the laptop a serious 'kick in the pants'. Even better, the battery started to keep a charge again and last about 2,5 hours on a charge. From 0 to 2.5 hours is a bonus.Because the battery holds a charge, the screen flickering was solved as well. I am using the laptop to full satisfaction for 2 years now and think it will last me a few years more. What I am sure of is that if the laptop hadn't crossed my doorstep, it would have ended up in landfill 2 years ago.

Many words to say that your "dead" assessment is not my "dead" assessment.

Non-Windows Software / Re: No data connection

« Last post by Shades on May 21, 2022, 03:24 PM »

You are aware that all you describe is purposely built into the Android operating system? As this is the part where the phone manufacturer and your telecom provider can make deals, luring you and your wallet into their money extraction setup.

Apple phones are not better or worse. In this regard, I mean.

If you absolutely don't want this, better start looking at phones that do not run on Android or iOS at all The PinePhone64 is conceptually a safer bet, as it runs on Linux. While the build quality is ok, it is not a 'looker' of a phone. And hardware specifications are not great. It is not really expensive either, if you can get them.

This data-hunger thing might not have been part of Android from the on-set, but nowadays, with its implementation in modern phones, it only considers your wallet as prime source of revenue, and the user-profile it can generate from you a (very decent) secondary revenue source. Oh yeah, it also provides a bit of mobile functionality as an afterthought.

General Software Discussion / Re: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS vs Intel i7 1260P ?

« Last post by Shades on May 09, 2022, 12:15 AM »

Unless you have an absolute need for DDR5, DDR4 is still fine. And if you spend as much on DDR4 RAM as you are spending on DDR5 RAM, you can get faster DDR4 RAM than what DDR5 is currently offering. And it will be more difficult (read: more expensive) to get DDR5 RAM to DDR4 speeds. The chip that controls the communication speed of the RAM is built into the motherboard that supports DDR4. The chip that controls the communication speed of the RAM is now on the DDR5 RAM module. There are pro's and con's to this approach. Until DDR5 comes down in price, I would not look at DDR5 systems. Right now you need to pay way too much for DDR5, for what it delivers.

More importantly, you have to check if the CPU supports PCI Express 4. Because the difference in RAM speeds between DDR4 and DDR5 is not big and DDR4 still has the advantage. The motherboard for that supports DDR5 RAM is also a lot more expensive than it's DDR4 counterpart. Support for PCI Express 4 is more important, because that speeds up communication between your drives and the rest of your computer. That is a much larger performance gain than what can currently be accomplished with DDR5.

Then you also need to check how many 'PCI lanes' are available. AMD CPU's can support much more lanes than Intel CPUs can.

Now if your motherboard only has 2 PCI-Express slots, all the available PCI lanes are divided over these 2 slots. Usually the slot for the video card "eats" 16 PCI lanes. Whatever PCI lanes remain are accessible in the 2nd slot. If you use such a board, There will not be much difference between AMD and Intel. Intel CPU have just enough lanes for video, 1 Nvme drive and a 10 GBit network card. AMD CPUs can support more Nvme drives, as they can handle more PCI lanes than Intel does.

So it depends on what task you need to do on the computer. If you do a lot of things simultaneously, the AMD 59xx series CPUs are much better. If the main intent is to game, Intel is slightly better, if you can afford the higher costs of purchase, 3rd party cooling solution (as the standard cooler will result in thermal throttling much sooner, nullifying whatever advantage the Intel CPU had over AMD) and you'll end up needing to buy a better computer case that can provide enough air-cooling. Or you need to spend extra on water-cooling solutions, which will take much more time (and expertise) to build up properly. Yes, you can buy pre-made water-cooling parts, but those hardly fit into a smaller computer case, because most people that buy those, make use of nice, large computer cases and everything is specced for those.

Intel CPU's take the 'fastest gaming' crown, as those are easier to overclock. And the Intel CPUs that can be overclocked are i7/i9 12xxxK CPUs, or if you are really have an unlimited budget i7/i9 12xxxKS CPUs.

Intel dropped the ball and their 12th generation CPU is a proper answer to the brute force that the AMD 59xx series CPUs are. And only in the high-end gaming segment. AMD CPUs are still kicking their arse in practically all other segments.

What operating system are you planning to use on this new system? Window 10? Windows 11? Linux? Because Microsoft and Intel are better friends than Microsoft and AMD are, so you will notice that Windows 11 is a tiny bit better on a system with Intel CPU. There have been fixes for AMD CPU's, so that might not be the case any more.

Windows 10 and Linux work both fine on both AMD CPUs and Intel CPUs.

On a personal note:
I have a Windows 11 laptop here (Home edition) and I am not too impressed with it. The switch from Windows 7 to 8.x to 10 was no problem at all for me. But Windows 11 Home edition is too 'stupified' for my tastes.After the guarantee period has lapsed on that laptop, I'll buy another drive for it and will run Linux on that. I'll keep the original drive, just in case.

So if you are hell bent on running Windows 11 on your new machine, then an Intel CPU might be your best bet. Even if you are not hell bent on running Windows 11, October 2025 will arrive much sooner than you think and then you 'll have no choice but to run Windows 11 (or another operating system).

Still, I rather spend money on an AMD CPU and the money I save with that will buy my a much nicer video-card and/or much faster drives. If I had a budget to buy myself a new system, that is.

Developer's Corner / Re: Virtualization to Create Single EXEs from Mixed Assemblies

« Last post by Shades on May 02, 2022, 05:27 PM »

You are correct about program settings not being adjustable after the portable version is created.

And be very careful about Office 2003. While Microsoft won't care if you turn your original Office 2003 copy into a portable version for your own use, do not think that they will not come after you if that portable version of yours becomes public through any means. Do not make the mistake that Microsoft will go easy on you, because it is such an old product already. Office 2003 is functionality-wise already more than enough for most people, I get that sentiment. But all Office products are holy to Microsoft, so expect to be chased down into a (legal) corner by the zealots Microsoft employs.

And there is another thing. Most software that can create a portable version, do this by creating a system snapshot before installing the normal version of the software, then install the software and take an 'after' snapshot when the installation is finished. The differences are stored together with the executables and from that bundle a portable version is generated. Making Microsoft Office portable is very likely to fail and/or become unwieldy, as Office integrates itself very deep into Windows. Your post clearly states that you only wish Word 2003 to be portable. But any version from Office is known to share so much between applications, that with making one application portable, you might as well make all of the tools in Office portable, it will barely make a difference in the size of the generated portableapp.

Better to use the portable version of LibreOffice, much less head-ache.

A tool I have used successfully in the past: Cameyo

Best to use a computer that has only a bare Windows installation, And it should run only the most minimal amount of background services. No Windows Update, no Windows search indexer, no printer services, no anti-virus or malware software. All those things will make the resulting portable version larger than necessary, it might even break the generated portable application. You will end up using a VM for this, it is just easier.

If you go the VM route. Create the VM and strip it down to its bare minimum. Then make a snapshot or better yet, a copy of the virtual disk file into a safe location. Now use the portabilization tool you like to create the before snapshot from all the settings inside the VM. When prompted, install the software inside the VM and when the installer is finished, the portabilization tool will take over again. If the software installer asks for a reboot, don't do that. At least with Cameyo, doing a reboot will break the portableapp generation procedure.

This portablization procedure can take its sweet time, depending on the resources available and the software itself. So be patient.

When the portableapp is finally generated, you will need to test it first. You can use the portableapp outside the VM in the host computer, for example. But any other computer, without the software ever being installed, will do. Only when you are satisfied with the resulting portableapp, you should shut down the VM, remove the whole virtual hard disk file and copy back the safety backup into the place again. So you are ready for the next piece of software to be portablized.

If you are not satisfied with the generated portableapp, adjust settings and re-generate the portableapp. Do this until you either have a satisfactory portableapp or realize that this software doesn't lend itself to become a portableapp. The latter is a real possibility. I fully expect Word 2003 to fall into this category.

What I have noticed with portablization attempts, is that when you wish to make a portableapp that requires registration or a license key, it type of information is often not included in the generated portableapp, even when you take the time to register the software before the taking from the 'after' system snapshot. Which is not handy when you want to portabilize a piece of software with a time-limited license, such as the ones from 'GiveAwayForThe Day'-deals or 'SharewareOnSale'-deals.

But spent the time on looking for portable versions of software that are created by the author(s) first. Quite often they have such a version available. If you see the collection of PortableApps I have collected over the years, it has become pretty impressive. It is over 30 GByte in size now and very diverse in functionality. And for all these tools I have a general or specific use. The collection would have been much, much larger if I kept everything available in portableapps form.

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Shades on April 28, 2022, 11:14 PM »

This is more of a fun thing than a song per se. But you'll sometimes hear the compliment that some singer could sing the phonebook and make it sound good.

Well...Floor Jansen (Nightwish) was asked to sing a page from the Yellow Pages on NPO Radio2 during a studio interview/appearance. And she managed to do just that.

-40hz (April 28, 2022, 09:17 PM)

Floor Janssen has the voice of angel and sings like a goddess. And the weird thing is that actually lived less than 10 kilometres from her home, yet never heard of her.

Here is a far better example of what her voice can really do! Vimeo or on

Here a review from a proper opera singer.

Here is another great example

Living Room / Re: Bought a color laser printer -- it's a game changer

« Last post by Shades on April 25, 2022, 05:43 PM »

And from Amazon or AliExpress I renounce to hard disks of 16 TB for 35 euros some time ago
-Contro (April 25, 2022, 01:26 PM)

Hahahaha, That is what the manufacturer of the HDD pays for the hardware parts that go in the drive and most of the electronics that go on the drive....if it was a 2 TByte drive. A 16 TB drive needs far higher grade electronics and much more specialized hardware for in the drive, using technologies that make it more difficult to produce, so only a limited set of production lines are capable of producing such drives.

So a much more specialized drive, produced in small numbers for a relatively small market (mostly datacenters, although I'm sure some people here in this forum have such capacity drives or larger ones at home) on offer on AliExpress for 35 Euros....

I sure hope you did not provide your credit card data to the persons behind that AliExpress offer, because they will lavish themselves from your funds. What was that saying again about fools and their money?

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to get the file download link from a non-browser app?

« Last post by Shades on April 24, 2022, 06:48 PM »

That membrane software software is java-based software/API for purposes like converting SOAP calls to REST calls, act as a SOAP (reverse) proxy, OAuth2 and running other software/services in a virtualization setup.

None of those are really related to what you wish to accomplish with the original question. So, your original question is either wrong or missing a lot of information. Pretty safe bet it is the latter.

General Software Discussion / Re: Returning a laptop purchase, how can I purge it?

« Last post by Shades on April 24, 2022, 06:36 PM »

Resetting Windows 10 to factory settings (WindowsCentral.com)

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it possible to get the file download link from a non-browser app?

« Last post by Shades on April 22, 2022, 08:57 PM »

If you know how to filter, WireShark is more or less the be all, end all of network traffic inspection. While the filtering in and of itself isn't hard to do, applying proper filters could be. Which is why most people say it has a pretty steep learning curve.

WireShark is available for free on Windows.

For those that don't want to go through that hassle: NetworkMiner (this software already existed before mining crypto coins became a thing). Much less steep, also much less comprehensive than WireShark. But you might have quicker results with this one.

NetworkMiner is available for free on Windows. There is also a commercially licensed version of NetworkMiner, but that sets you back 1200 USD.

Both software packages require you to install a network capture tool, called: Npcap (for Windows 10 and 11). Earlier versions of Windows can still use Winpcap. Also freely available for Windows.

Can't point it out much clearer than this: use of this type of software is not simple. And don't expect much further help with that type of software unless you show you have done research about computer networking. For work, I am familiar with the tools I mentioned. Never had a need for something simpler, so I never looked further. Surely others may offer up simpler tools, but with the tools above you have at least something to work with.

Screenshot Captor / Re: I have a new problem“memory is out”

« Last post by Shades on March 30, 2022, 09:35 PM »

There is something called: non-interactive desktop heap memory. No matter how much RAM you have in your system, if you exceed this limit, Windows will report that there is not enough memory to complete the task.

Back in the XP days, You still had tools available that allowed you, the user, to have control of this 'desktop heap' memory. In my case I managed to run 50(!) instances of Excel on a computer with 2 GByte of RAM and an Athlon XP 3200 CPU. The reason? A customer had a serious server with 64 CPU's (Xeons) and 256 GByte of RAM. While this is nothing to sneeze at nowadays, back then it was an absolute and very expensive beast. But it had to run on Windows and they were very displeased about the fact that they could not run more than 50 Excel instances at any given time. Yes, my weakling of a workstation was able to do the same as their beast.

Consultants and business processes inside the customer's environment generated Excel files for further processing on that particular server. And the main purpose of that server was to handle several thousands of such processes at any given moment. So they, and we, learned the hard way about something called 'heap' memory. Luckily, one of the software applications in the software suite we make had already quite some functionality of Excel built-in. This software was then adjusted more to their needs and with the included scripting language they were able to ditch practically all of the Excel generating processes and replace those with the software application. And by doing so, several thousands of business processes were being processed.

Since Windows Vista/Windows 7, Microsoft has removed the tools to manage 'desktop heap' memory manually in Windows. Now the operating system manages this automatically. And yes, I checked, my workstation now ran Windows 7 with 8 GByte of RAM on a 3th generation i5 CPU. 13 Excel instances at once was the absolute maximum.

The XP workstation back then became unbelievably slow. Killing Excel instances one by one took at least a hour, if not more. All that time the workstation did not give you the impression that it was frozen, just terribly slow. Of course, everything was recorded in a test report sent to the customer, who then started to listen to our recommendation of swapping out Excel with proper software. A relative small test with 100 business processes doing their thing at once with our software was done without their server not even breaking the thought of going to sweat. After that, it was not a hard sell any more.

Of course, my example does not apply to the situation of the original poster, it is just there to explain why I know there is something like 'desktop heap' memory and that its limitations can seriously spoil your fun, no matter how much resources your computer has or the expectations those resources instil.

Links about 'heap' memory that may be of interest (or not):
https://docs.microso...esktop-heap-overview
https://docs.microso...tation-out-of-memory

The original poster should check if it still possible to execute the steps mentioned in the following Microsoft article in his Windows installation:
https://docs.microso...tation-out-of-memory

Microsoft does not recommend this at all, because it is highly likely one will get unexpected and negative experiences if they do. Improvements in the automatically handling of desktop heap memory has made Windows much more stable. Or much less friendly towards badly behaving software, whatever your viewpoint is.

General Software Discussion / Re: can’t see any traffic if Protocol Filter is set to “Multimedia URLs”

« Last post by Shades on March 12, 2022, 10:46 PM »

There is the distinct possibility that the site you link to uses a streaming technology not recognized as a 'MultiMedia URL' by the software you use. At least, that would be my first guess.

Protocols have a way of coming up and dying down. Because trying to improve an already existing protocol is more often than not a lot harder than making something new. That and the technical debt that comes with already existing software of any kind, sure makes it an easy decision to make something anew.

General Software Discussion / Re: WiFi management: Windows tool to automatically enforce a connection?

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2022, 06:20 PM »

Guess the name should start with a lower-case s, as that's a common prefix for many of Skwire's specialist tools
-Ath (March 06, 2022, 03:18 PM)

Hahaha...only because I'm rubbish at naming these things.
-skwire (March 06, 2022, 03:42 PM)

Some suggestions:
sWiFi
sWiFind
sWiFinder
sWiFound
sWiHi
sWiHigh
sWiFlight
sWiNice
sWiBest

General Software Discussion / Re: WiFi management: software for Windows 10 with tray icon?

« Last post by Shades on March 04, 2022, 05:06 PM »

Something much simpler to try may be the following:
Set your WiFi connection to your fastest WiFi to 'connect automatically', and the connection to your slower WiFi to 'not connect automatically'. Windows will now not so easily switch between WiFi setups any more. Whenever the fast one is available Windows will switch automagically, yet won't switch back to your slow connection.

Reasoning behind the concept:
After all, Windows does want/need/must/desires to sent back telemetry to Microsoft servers. And it will make sure it has a connection to do just that.

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Inspire Writer

« Last post by Shades on February 25, 2022, 07:32 PM »

Thanks for this. And very good timing! I've started thinking recently that I would like to find a decent WYSIWYG Markdown editor, so it's nice to see more of what the options are.
-Deozaan (February 24, 2022, 10:56 PM)

In my adventures with AsciiDoc I went on a search for just something like this. It remains my firm belief that AsciiDoc or MarkDown would be so much bigger, if there was such a thing as a WYSIWYG editor for it. So onto the forums I went...and what a disappointment. I was far from the only one suggesting it, there were several threads about it and in none a satisfying answer was given. More like putdown's did occur. For a relatively civil and constructive set of forums that stood out to me. As MarkDown has a much wider adoption as AsciiDoc, you would expect that there would be someone (or a team) capable and willing to do so, for money and/or glory.

As I am bound to AsciiDoc because of work, I have very little interest or time to be using MarkDown in any shape or form. But I would be much more willing to entertain working with MarkDown if there was such a thing as a WYSIWYG editor for it.

And if I may continue the rant for a bit, why are there so many Git clients who are adamant at giving their users the choice in which way internal diffing functionality is presented? I love side-by-side diff'ers and I really don't like showing the original line and changed line below. That may work when there are minor and small amount of changes. But with side-by-side diff'ing, you see so much more, better for context too. But you would get the impression that those clients were made by the same persons that are behind AsciiDoc/MarkDown. Their way or the highway. What happened to let the user choose what works for them?

My boss has the same opinion. And so many open source Git clients do not provide this choice, he shelled out money for Git client 'Fork', because of this very poor stance of open source creators. I get also the impression that this is a divisive subject, in the same way as 'spaces vs tabs' is.

Sorry but had to rant about it for a moment.

General Software Discussion / Re: How to check several sites daily with ease?

« Last post by Shades on February 12, 2022, 01:22 PM »

AH - you need an RSS reader, no?

I use QuiteRSS and have for years. It's how I keep track of what happens on DC. It's how I get all my tech news and any word of software giveaways. This way, I get to see all of what is new on nearly any website I want to keep track of. The RSS Reader goes out to all of those sites and fetches what is new and you get to read it like a little morning newspaper.

QuiteRSS runs on my desktop like an extra browser. I've tried over a dozen RSS readers and this is the one I've used the longest and am still using.

https://quiterss.org
-BGM (February 12, 2022, 08:09 AM)

RSSOwl i liked much better, but that one didn't handle the amount of websites I track through RSS (including the YT channels, there are 109 feeds). So I looked for an alternative and also "landed" on QuiteRSS. That one fails once every 2 to 3 days, not like RSSOwl 2 or 3 times a day. I also use RSS to keep track of YouTube Channels. Perhaps that is what trips these clients. Still, tracking new content on YouTube using an RSS client, improves the whole YouTube experience a lot for me. And, I can't help but note that QuiteRSS on Linux hasn't failed me once, since I have been daily driving Linux for about 2 months now.

Doesn't Vivaldi browser comes with a built-in feature to keep track of websites that do not have RSS support? I know it has a built-in RSS feed reader. And the ability to show multiple tabs at once. With that in mind you might be able to reduce the amount of sites to check if you can keep all your RSS feeds in the browser next to the tab you use to look on sites without RSS support. Granted, it sounds like a hodgepodge solution, but I found that browsers behave a lot better when there are not so many extensions installed.

Now I find browser-hopping between FireFox and Vivaldi not a big deal. You might experience browser-hopping as the worst thing that could happen, I don't know.

Screenshot Captor / Re: Grab selected region makes screen go big

« Last post by Shades on February 02, 2022, 01:26 PM »

Thanks, restarting did the trick.
-bwoods (February 02, 2022, 12:26 PM)

If you haven't seen "The IT crowd", that is your loss. Even if you are not that fond of British comedy. But if you did see it, you are very familiar with the phrase "Have you tried turning it off an on again?" The solution for practically everything

Here is a gif from that meme:
https://media1.giphy...d=200w.webp&ct=g

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 11 Announced

« Last post by Shades on January 31, 2022, 11:45 AM »

I still use linux on my home server, VPS, and in VMs that I spin up for various reasons. It's phenomenal for many workloads, but desktop is not one of them.
-cthorpe (October 07, 2021, 11:47 AM)

Oh it's not all that bad - I very, very seldom switch over to my windows partition, and that's pretty much just to play No Man's Sky nothing to do with desktop discomfort
-allen (January 30, 2022, 11:09 PM)

Same here. There is a hot summer going on here in Paraguay and both my desktops started to turn themselves off as protection against heat. So I was forced to use my laptop, which runs: Pop!_OS (v20.04 (LTS or nothing!))

It took a bit to get around the quirks of the default desktop experience that is delivered in that version of Linux. But much less time than I expected. Most of the tools I was using in Windows were also available in Linux, so that was not much time lost either.
And now, I am daily driving it for almost 2 months now. As I am not playing games, I don't even have a Windows partition. Whether I lucked out with this experience, who knows. But it is actually a more stable experience.

Most of the tools don't hang themselves up as quickly in Linux as they do in Windows. I use an RSS reader for websites/youtube/etc. The Windows version hangs at least once every 2 days. The Linux version hasn't done so in all the time I have been using it. And yes, it uses the exact same configuration. Vivaldi works awesomely. Skype and Teams do so as well. DoubleCommander does a decent enough job as file manager and MPV media player has no issue playing 1080p content with 10-bit x265 compression.

FireFox is also a good experience, not one hiccup between the laptop and the 5.1 audio-set connected by Bluetooth. Not the case with the Windows desktops, even though those have 4 times the amount of RAM and way better CPUs. The CPU (in the laptop) is a 6 year old Pentium class model with 2 threads. And no, when playing x265 compressed 1080p content those threads are loaded between 60% and 70%. 1080p streaming video from Youtube, also no issue, as the load on the threads are similar.

Lots of text to say: it just worked "right out of the box".

Of course, my experience with desktop Linux will not be your experience with Linux. The only thing I can say is that the Linux desktop has come far along. I have tried Linux around the 2000's, tried it around 2010 again, as I was now busy with Linux on the server side. Both those times the Linux desktop was less than enjoyable. Installed Linux near the end of 2020 on this laptop. Used it mainly as a device to watch/hear Youtube videos while working on my desktops. Until about 2 months ago.

I'm sure the Linux desktop experience won't be for everyone. However, the Windows 11 (Home edition) experience on the laptop work provided, also requires adjustments you may or may not be ready for.

Will it be the year of the Linux desktop anytime soon? For most, no. But I would say it is far enough along for a lot of people to try. Especially if you aren't playing the most demanding and modern games, you will be pleasantly surprised. Linux installers ask at the start of the procedure if you want to install or if you wish to try it out (from the installation media) on your hardware. You'll get a pretty good idea what Linux can mean for you, at the cost of some time.

Dismissing the Linux desktop out of hand is already not the case anymore for at least the last 2 or 3 years.

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there a dual page file manager that works well on Google Drive (and Docs)

« Last post by Shades on January 24, 2022, 05:16 AM »

You can use Windows to set up a permanent link to GoogleDrive or any other similar services, as long as you have drive letters free?

And then you can use your file manager of choice? Look up how to use the command 'NET' in Windows. It is pretty versatile (and part of the tools that come standard with any version of Windows).

Living Room / Re: Like a bad penny...

« Last post by Shades on January 21, 2022, 08:16 PM »

Life sure dealt you a bad hand.

Here's to hoping you are right about the cause and that it is acknowledged by your specialist, so treatment (if there is one) can start. And that knowing you were right all along, gives you at least piece of mind.

Good luck...from this inmate.

N.A.N.Y. 2022 / Re: Thank you to everyone who participated in NANY 2022

« Last post by Shades on January 11, 2022, 02:22 PM »

I'm actually rather tired of computer stuff in general and preferring to spend my free time outside in the woods. But I'm hoping maybe to do something for the next one.
-BGM (January 11, 2022, 09:30 AM)

People absolutely underestimate the benefits of letting their brain do nothing (or very little, like when enjoying the woods). It makes you more creative/productive during the hours you do work. So, by all means, enjoy the woods.

N.A.N.Y. 2022 / Re: Document Projects

« Last post by Shades on January 02, 2022, 07:34 PM »

It is a WordPress website. There is the possibility that an extension in there triggers your security solution. Or your solution doesn't like software created/compiled with Delphi.

From here, I have no problem opening the website: https://limelect.com...s/document-projects/
But then I use browser extensions uMatrix, ublock Origin, Privacy badger, Java script restrictor and Disconnect. This makes running any background javascript pretty much impossible.

The site appears to be benign.

My 2 Guaranies...

General Software Discussion / Re: Regarding O&O Shutup

« Last post by Shades on December 17, 2021, 05:18 AM »

Partner does not mean what you think it means in this context.

[snip]
How to Achieve Microsoft Gold Partner Status

In order to attain Microsoft Gold Certified partnership, the highest level given to Microsoft partners, a company has to first join in the Microsoft Partner Network community, qualify for membership, become eligible and meet the requirements set forth by Microsoft.

Microsoft Gold Partner competency requirements include:

- Certification and sales requirements
- Have four qualified Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) that have passed one or more of certification exams issued by Microsoft as well as have one of them that has passed the licensing overview assessment and two that have passed the sales and marketing assessment
- Submit five customer references
- Earn the necessary 120 partner points
- Pay the gold competency fee

To enroll, one has to simply sign in to a Microsoft account – using, for example, a Windows Live ID and entering its related password - which will link to the network membership that matches the company's qualifications and business goals.
[/snip]

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway

« Last post by Shades on December 10, 2021, 07:08 PM »

It says coming soon on Gog
-wraith808 (December 10, 2021, 06:42 PM)

24th of December?

100

General Software Discussion / Re: Croc: Command-line secure file transfer tool

« Last post by Shades on October 19, 2021, 10:11 PM »

As I was in need of transferring a rather large file (about 400 GByte) from a remote location a problem was encountered. None of the computers I normally use for file transfer is able to cope with such a large file. So, I was tempted to try out croc to transfer the file directly to my workstation.

The remote computer is not a "weakling" by any stretch of imagination (16 GByte RAM, 3 year old Intel Xeon CPU, fast drive), but waiting 7+ hours now for a code to be generated by croc (to actually start the transfer) is rather long. Even when the file is about 400 GByte.

And installing Python on both the remote PC and my workstation just to make Magic WormHole work, seems less than ideal as well.

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