‘Gaming laptop, only used occasionally. Been sitting around for a while because my kid’s got a new hobby. £1,200 no offers. I know what I’ve got’

The pictured laptop has a Centrino sticker on it and looks like it’s been used to dig a garden

That’s brilliant, I hope it all works out 😊

It’s a great idea, but don’t forget about how these people are going to get support in the future. If something breaks, most helpers (computer shops, kids friends etc) are going to be Windows users.

Mint can do automatic updates, but both my laptop and PC have had serious issues with version upgrades. My laptop, which is Mint only, asked me to remove a load of software before upgrading, then booted with loads of errors and had to be reinstalled. My PC was mostly fine, but had no sound. It turned out that Mint switched from Pulse Audio to Pipewire, or vice versa, and the old audio manager left config files behind.

They were both annoying issues more than anything else, but would be difficult for the people in your scenario to get fixed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put you off, just checking that you’ve thought of the downsides :)

Automatic Ripping Machine can pull the main movie off a disc automatically, but I’m not sure about imaging the full disc. Once it’s set up, you just put a disc in and wait.

https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/

Because this is a thought experiment. There’s no waste when nobody’s actually buying anything.

Sorry, my bad. I found my old 486 PC in my parent’s attic recently, and started planning to get it running again

This is one that was shared recently:

!https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42247576

I can’t remember much about it now, but I remember really wanting BeOS. I managed to get it installed once, but couldn’t get the internet working, so ended up uninstalling it.

Because it’s a scam, and they’re trying to find as many victims as possible 👍

Typical, I’ve just spent several hours over the last few days downloading everything manually 😫

If it makes you feel any better, I did something just as infuriating a few years ago.

I had set up my home media server, and had finally moved it to my garage with just a power cable and ethernet cable plugged in. Everything was working perfectly, but I needed to check something with the network settings. Being quite new to Linux, I used a remote desktop tool to log in and do everything through a gui.

I accidentally clicked the wrong item in the menu and disconnected the network. I only had a spare ps/2 keyboard and mouse, and as the server was an old computer, it would crash if I plugged a ps/2 device in while it was running*.

The remote desktop stayed open but frozen, mocking me for my obvious mistake and lack of planning, with the remote mouse icon stuck in place on the disconnect menu.

*I can’t remember if that was a ps/2 thing, or something specific to my server, but I didn’t want to risk it

Yes, that’s what it does by default. The problem happens when you open a new tab to search for something, for example, and the update screen and restart distract you and you forget what you were going to search for. It’s like the feeling you get when you walk into a room and can’t remember why.

Mint, it just works.

You can set up automatic updates too, so they won’t end up with out of date software and possible security holes. The only downside is Firefox. If an update runs while your grandparents are using Firefox, it will stop working and show them a page that says it needs to be restarted.

It’s not a major issue in itself, but if you have any sort of memory issues, like I do and lots of older people do, it can derail your train of thought and cause you problems.

I bought myself a copy of Neat Image a few weeks ago for noise reduction, and it works really well on Windows. I haven’t had a chance to test the Linux version yet. I think it’s proprietary, but like you say, there’s not much else out there.

There’s a free demo if you want to try it

https://ni.neatvideo.com/

I’m still mostly using Windows on my main PC. I’ve got a few jobs to finish before I switch, but the main one is scanning old photos from the 80s and 90s. I’ve tried lots of different scanning software on Linux, but I can’t find anything that works as well as the Epson software that was bundled with the scanner.

It’s got a few one click fixes for bad exposures that work really well too, so things like that orangey reddish cast that some photos have is fixed almost automatically. It can all be done easily in other software, but the time saved by doing it in the scanner software is massive.

Yeah, this is how I understand it too. From the end user’s point of view, there’s just one wifi network throughout the building or property. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cable running between the access points, that’s all invisible to the user.

Sorry, I forgot to reply sooner >.<

I’ve been trying to get my head around this and also looking into Docker containers with Gluetun, as that looks a bit easier to start with. I think for the moment I’m going to go down the Docker route, and at least get the bulk of the programs separated, and give myself some breathing space to learn a bit more.

Docker isn’t ideal, as not everything has a Docker version, but the main programs that I originally mentioned do, and it will let me open the Minecraft servers to the kids in the extended family, especially as it’s getting colder and darker here.

I just want to say thank you to you, @jet@hackertalks.com, @lungdart@lemmy.ca, and everyone else who’s helped :)

I’m not giving up on this, I’m just going a bit more towards the basics and learning to walk before I try to run. This switching from Windows malarkey is hard work! ;)

Thanks for replying :)

I think I’m getting it, but my brain is definitely pickled at this point :D

I’ve also found this post and a Stack Exchange thread to go with it, and it’s sinking in slowly

https://schnouki.net/post/2014/openvpn-for-a-single-application-on-linux/

I need to go to bed for the night though, I’ve just realised that it’s gone 3 am :o

Thank you :)

The reply from @jet@hackertalks.com below lead me to the man page for ip netns here:

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/ip-netns.8.html

As far as I understand it, I could run programs like this:

ip netns exec vpn ~/qbittorrent/start.sh

ip netns exec clear ~/minecraft/start.sh

but I can’t figure out how to get the VPN to only run under the namespace. When I run it now, it reroutes all connections through it. I’ve got an OpenVPN connection that I’ve set one of my network connections to connect to automatically, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. As soon as I connect the VPN, everything goes through it.

I’m still reading though, so hopefully I’ll figure it out :)

Apologies for the slow reply :)

These are the things that I don’t understand. When you say I need to specify the destinations, does that mean the destination of the traffic, like lemmy.dbzer0.com, or the destination network interface like tun0 or enp2s0?

I’m searching for split tunnel VPN, but the majority of results are either sales sites, or Stack Overflow with no confirmed answers.

I’ve been having a bit more luck with this page after searching for Jet’s answer below:

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man8/ip-netns.8.html

but I’m still confused >.<