Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date As eagle-eyed readers may have noted, Vulture Central UK is on the move. Our migratory path has led us to London's Grays Inn Road and, well, you can see what was waiting for us. We normally like to feature Windows machines in various states of distress, be it a Tesco or Boots self-service till, or the odd railway terminal …
Anyone else remember this BT ad from the mid 80s, trumpeting their efforts to keep phoneboxes in working order?
A timely story seeing as I'm just in the process of migrating my two home PCs to Fedora from Windows. Frustrating for me though as I've not administered any form of UNIX since being a SUN systems engineer back in the late 1990's and I think I've forgotten more than I ever knew :-)
Fedora - Mint Whatever - all systemd - fsckd by RedHat, now International Bowel Movement, that old Nazi appeaser gang who provided computers (such as they were) to the Nazis.
And, the chap to whom you addressed the reply said "administered", not "mouse-clicked".
13 up-votes for "don''t have to learn nuttin".
Instead of learning Fedora, you might want to give Slackware a spin and learn Linux. On the desktop it's a modern Linux, but under the hood it's a lot closer to the Sun systems of old. It's also one of the most stable distros out there. The only thing I need to change for most people is to get rid of Calligra and install LibreOffice (or just leave Calligra in place after installing LO; it won't harm anything just sitting there). Try it regardless, it won't hurt and you might like it.
Slack -stable will suit your needs admirably. For the record, the more up to date and modern -current (Slackware's version of a rolling release) is almost as stable as -stable.
While good recommendations are abundant in this thread, it also shows why *nix is having a tough time knocking Windows off of the desktop.
Almost every time I see a useful comment about how to move from Windows to *nix there are multiple competing statements about which flavor to try. Now, on a forum such as this it can be a good thing because sometimes you hear of obscure releases that might be just what you wanted. However, most typical computer users just get confused and fix their issue by buying a new computer pre-loaded with Windows. That might keep the hardware manufacturers solvent but it doesn't help the *nix to desktop cause.
Erm but I can't see anything from the screenshot showing it is reporting an issue.
I assume its hung during initialising the program used to display the ads, however I'm more used to seeing Kernel panics or if anything has failed, Failed showing in red on Linux based Operating Systems.
Edit: DOH last two lines clear state error and failed. I clearly need to go to specsavers (Other opticians are available)
And my personally favourite - rounding your prescription to the nearest (specsavers) standard numbers to reduce the number of unique lenses they need to buy. And yes it does make a great difference when you're given some specs that actually match your exact prescription (especially when these are the parameters for astigmatism: i.e. anyone over 40).
Last time I went looking for an opticians - I purposefully strode into the nearest locally owned practice - I prefer patronise local rather than big chains if possible.
Unfortunately, all their qualified staff were off sick, on holiday or not scheduled to work today or that week. All that were instore were the non-skilled.
So chainstore concern it had to be.
I must admit I have never run Slackware.
Tried it once, years ago, ran into trouble with a lack of firmware for my hardware. As it was the broadband, I'd need to have been fairly adamant of getting Slackware running to sort that out.
I grabbed another install disc, this one did get my problem hardware running.
What I really want to get is a USB-to-USB adapter - something that ONLY allows through the handshake necessary to get the power flowing, but blocks all other data traffic. Would turn even a computer's USB port into something the phone sees as only a charger.
Anybody know where I can buy some? From a reputable dealer, of course.
They’re called “USB data blockers”, or more colloquially “USB condoms”, and here’s one of many on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T0DW3F8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_TuLEDbGBCBS7W
Life tip: do not google for “USB condom”, at least not from a work device. Some sixth sense tells me that it would be inadvisable.
"Life tip: do not google for “USB condom”, at least not from a work device."
Too late! :P Did a quick search after my post, and came across the USB condom. Not sure if Amazon counts as "reputable" these days (too many counterfeits!), but the reviews seem to indicate these are pretty good. (Just one seller, a good sign.)
"Life tip: do not google for “USB condom”, at least not from a work device. Some sixth sense tells me that it would be inadvisable."
Why not?
I did - not from work as I don't do that any more but from my home pootah - of course I didn't use the Evil Empire, I used www.startpage.com which says it's safer.
The first link up was this : https://int3.cc/products/usbcondoms which looks appropriately safe and nicely technical.
Most of the rest were of a similar vein and some were even Amazon.
As far as odd looks from bosses go, mine would have understood the need for something like this after a brief look. They might even have turned it into company policy. Not all employers are 14th Century Luddites smashing printing presses.
You could use a public USB power socket to charge your power-bank, although I think that's considered cheating.
There also are charger-only cables (multi-port cables often are this, see packaging), but I think USB-C doesn't allow dumb cables, so even the microprocessor in your power cord could get a virus!
"Just like you don't know that those handy USB phone charger sockets that are springing up in coffee shops and pubs haven't been subverted to silently install malware."
I had a similar thought about the USB chargers on buses but my paranoia ran more along the lines of USAlien Border Control Agency tactics, sooking the data from phones and cameras to sell off to the nearest Spooks. Not that I would ever think any large enterprise in UKland would *ever* do such a thing because they are *far* too ethical but it could offer someone less so a small additional revenue stream and profit is mostly all that matters, today.
"Paranoia isn't always a bad life choice."
No, not always, a healthy dose of constant concern is slightly better than walking into heavy traffic for example but it is possible to overdose.
Not charging your phone because you suspect the bus may be watching you, linking your face to the device and creating a profile for the busies may just be over the safety limit.
Or not?
Saw something like it in Northampton the other day
weird triangular free standing jobbie not last a minuet (or a minute) in a good old british riot (also know as clothing bargain sale) - old dears and housewives on a budget will demolish it in seconds.
The good old proud to british (or prodded) should have gone for a tried and tested phone box design. Red or Blue (for the tourists).
Post box for something more compact.
Two check in counters for Air Asia - one queue is domestic, the other international.
The screen over both just shows the "Air Asia" logo, they're not showing a helpful indicator and instead rely on a member of staff to guide people to the right queue.
One screen rebooted to the Raspbian splash screen.
Might as well just have big cardboard signs up there.
Cardboard signs have the virtues of never crashing, unless they physically come unstuck from whatever is holding them up, not consuming any power so they are impervious to any disruptions in the power supply, and are easily updated using readily available analog tools.
At first I thought they'd got their marching orders from WeWork due to that unflattering coverage of the IPO plans. I guess loss of the on-tap beer is as good as that
https://www.wework.com/en-GB/buildings/fox-court--london
Does this mean the LESTER the Beer Robot will be refitted to deliver ...
Micro-Roasted Coffee
Stay caffeinated throughout the day with an infinite stream of freshly roasted coffee.
... and discovered that the computer had not crashed after all.
What that screen shows is a simple failure to launch a program ... The OS is happily waiting for someone/thing to login, in all its uncrashed glory. Blaming Ubuntu for the inlink startup script's failure is rather unfair, don't you think?
"Depends what they paid Canonical to write it..."
I seriously doubt inlink paid Canonical anything. That's why fly-by-night companies use the likes of Ubuntu ... it's free. Chances are it boots a complete, full bells&whistles, vanilla OS, and they simply added their own startup script to it. It's probably that script that failed.
For a kiosk, pausing at the text login prompt is a fail. I don't think Ubuntu is being blamed, though - although systemd is. Rather, not only has this device crashed, but it's done so to reveal a firmly out of date software version.
The basic joke is the same as in a television blooper show - the serious business of, um, whatever this thing does is interrupted by a breakdown of the means by which it is done.
Yes. It appears it tried to load something that it couldn't find, and went back to the login prompt.
If I know these kiosks/terminals, everything they show is just an autorun powerpoint running ads on loop or something, maybe reading a database (like airport schedules). That's the only thing the OS didn't find.
Someone booted it without payload or network.
Icon, because I'm totally guessing.
Heh, I was just walking along there on Friday evening. Very pleasant nowadays, thanks to the "regeneration" up around King's Cross pushing a lot of the unwanted-by-most, very-wanted-by-a-few ne'erdowells who used to lurk around street corners further north and east out into Camden and Islington. There are some fabulously old-fashioned proper boozers up a lot of the sidestreets in the area, was that a site selection criteria?
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