Obviousy a dual booting system...
Windows update borked GRUB again.
Help! Does anyone on the bus know Linux?
Most people would be perfectly happy to ride the bus without seeing ads. So this latest public error could be a blessing in disguise for passengers, if not for the bus company hoping to make money. Love it or hate it, this bit of borked digital signage looks to have run into a problem that only an open-source hero can solve. …
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:27 GMT Rol
Re: Obviousy a dual booting system...
oh, I got so fed up with Window's updates screwing with the grub, I finally put each on their own hard drive with a slew of buttons to choose which drive I was going to boot in to. Since then, I worked out that windows has no need for updates if it is air-gapped from the internet, and has worked perfectly for the last 10 years.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 16:08 GMT demon driver
Re: Obviousy a dual booting system...
I suppose separating things to different drives is indeed the way to go... When moving what I need from two PCs, one Linux, one Windows, onto one new dual boot laptop, I was lucky enough to have two SSD slots and so I could separate the two OSes. After I heard that the 25H2 Win 11 upgrade deleted a Linux partition somewhere, I decided to remove the Linux SSD before starting the upgrade just to be safe. But Redmond was faster; the upgrade was kicked off in the background before I did. But it left the Linux drive alone; the Laptop even continued to boot into grub...
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Monday 2nd February 2026 14:13 GMT FIA
Re: Obviousy a dual booting system...
I had Windows update bork Windows the other week.
I dual boot server and 11... (the 11 is being replaced but I occasionally need to boot back in to it)... a windows update cheerfully 'removed' the server startup option menu and put the graphical one from Windows 11 back in there for me. Oh, and set Win 11 to the default again.
Cheers MS.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 11:39 GMT Martin an gof
Linux obviously in favour
One of those humungous LED advertising sites near here was stuck on a Debian login prompt for about a fortnight. Unfortunately, at the side of a dual carriageway (and thoroughly distracting - they ought to be banned) so couldn't get a decent picture of it, though a passenger did try.
M.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 12:10 GMT HXO
Re: Linux obviously in favour
That kind of signage is banned here, except if on the land where your business is operating. And there are still restrictions. Except some counsils give themselves exceptions. I very much hate animation that will distract. Anywhere.
Speed 2. Had to look it up. Worst movie ever. Saw the first 15mins, and the next day I think someone sent it overboard.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 15:33 GMT Pickle Rick
Re: Sorry, Not In Service!
We're stuck with the old driver, might be a bit "finicky" but works on this old bucket. The new one crashed the test rig and, er, "didn't certify live" or something like that. Anyway, didn't HR say you can't blacklist a driver due to age. I never understood what they'd know about it in the first place, it's bloody wokeness gone mad!
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Monday 2nd February 2026 13:00 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Special AU Bus Borkage
In BNE we have a few new fully electric buses fitted with large screens that display the progress of bus along it's route giving the passenger adequate warning of the upcoming stop in order to press the stop request button.
All brilliant until it loses its GPS positioning or whatever and falls back to the (clearly pommie) vendor's demonstration display which starts in Chadwell Heath and progresses to St Georges Hospital which with a little google·fu appears to be the Dagnum 173 route [UK.]
The locals are just a little bemused or amused.
Just before Christmas I was in this bus on which a middle aged French tourist couple had just boarded to return to their host; they had used the outbound (correct) display to navigate and were intending to do the same on the return leg.
After the first few 173 UK stops the pair were in a blind panic and at the next stop went to ask the driver to determine were going. The driver was a fairly new arrival from outside the anglophone (and also apparently the francophone) world so they didn't get much joy there. Madame spoke and understood English somewhat better than Monsieur so I managed to convince her they were on the right bus and the stop after the next was theirs. I am fairly certain they didn't believe me that the incorrect display on an Australian bus was of a UK bus route. I should have said the bus was made in the UK - infinitely more credible.
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Monday 2nd February 2026 20:15 GMT The Organ Grinder's Monkey
Re: Special AU Bus Borkage
Relatively recently it was quite a common sight to see chassis cowl buses being driven from the factory to have their bodywork fitted, presumably at Carlisle's in Carlisle as this was on the upper reaches of the M6.
Drivers were completely exposed to the elements like an Edwardian chauffeur, complete either with crash helmet or goggles (& flys in their teeth I assume.)
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Monday 2nd February 2026 17:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Yes, I know Linux.
Try being an IT Expert who 'Does NOT use Windows'.
As most Non-IT Users (Normal People) use Windows... they quickly move onto other people/things with a glazed look on their face. To them the world is ruled by Microsoft (as far as IT goes...)
I gave up on Windows when I retired. I'd already been using Unix and then Linux for more than 20 years and a Mac user for eight. Everyone in my social group knows that I don't do Windows fixes and accept that I'm just a bit weird in that respect. Life goes on and slowly more and more of them are giving MS the finger and buying a Mac. Linux is a bit too radical for them. Just using the command line to do things makes them shake their heads and do something else.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 03:15 GMT jake
Re: Easiest solution ?
I used to carry a programmable remote control to turn off the overhead televisions that were pushing inane drivel like RachelFuckingRay[0] demonstrating yet again how to dry out pork in the meat department of my local grocery store. Likewise, I would physically unplug the monitor pushing advertising in the checkout line. I was not alone.
Around these parts we no longer have monitors blaring at us to buy shit we don't want in grocery stores.
Score one for the little guy.
[0] Remember her? If so, WHY?
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 11:47 GMT Stuart Castle
I used to get the 108 bus in London fairly regularly.
For those who don't know, London buses have automated announcements in them that give the bus's destination, next stop and a whole load of other announcements. This is part of a london wide management system called "iBus", which also powers the various apps and journey planner websites that tap into TFL's journey planner.
The iBus hardware on each bus is essentially a small PC that as well as doing the announcements and digital signs for the passengers, also tracks the bus's position, and reports it to the iBus servers via a mobile connection.
Buses on some routes have dot matrix indicators, some have LED screens.
The buses on route 108 have quite large LED screens. For the first few weeks they were running, they were on, and clearly running the iBus software, but not displaying anything remotely useful. Then, while the announcement worked, the screends just displayed the top of an AMI Bios screen. I wish i'd have got a photo of this, because now the screesns are just left off. The announcements still work, which suggests that they have a seperate computer for the displays.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2026 12:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well, welcome to the big time. For years, the known issues of Linux and Open Source were largely ignored "out of sight, out of mind."
But as the platform becomes more visible to the general public, its flaws become more visible too.
Soon enough, Linux will be entering the full arena of public ridicule and disdain, just as others before it have.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
