Linux questions

With my Windows 7 computer offline while I figure out why the motherboard won’t start up or I start building a Windows 10 computer, I’m relying on the Linux computer I built a few months ago. The questions I have right now are:

  1. Has anybody run Windows 7 under Wine on a Linux computer that has a newer CPU than an AMD FX-series processor? They used the AM3+ socket and the Bulldozer or Piledriver architecture, so roughly any motherboard made in 2017 or newer. I’m curious if Wine would get around the Microsoft patch that detects new CPUs and prohibits installation/further operation.

  2. There isn’t any kind of bug in the File Manager (Thunar) where the more files you copy at one time, the slower and slower it goes? You start with it copying several files a second, and then after about 10,000-30,000 files, it’s about one file every few minutes. This might be a problem with the external USB 3.0 drive docking port since the problem shifted over to the partitions on the external drive randomly unmounting and remounting themselves. I just want to check because when I couldn’t get the filecopy to abort and had to shut off the computer, I wound up trashing the file table a couple of times on the drive I was copying to (internally-mounted 5TB drive). Repairing the file system worked once, but I had to format the drive afterwards. A USB 2.0 external dock seems to be working more reliably.

  3. Is it required to have a server version of Linux to run Samba? I’m running Ubuntu Studio.

There is almost certainly a way to run it. My Raspberry pi emulation box runs an instance!

Heck, you can install Samba on a Smoothwall (even though it is Not Recommended).

Wine is a self-contained Windows emulator which will allow you to run some, if not most, Windows programs without havening to install Windows and a licence to run it.

YMMV with Win apps, but Wine is getting better as they tweak things and add new features etc. Just don’t expect Orifice2016 to work out of the box!

Scratch #2 off the list. It was the drive dock. The second one hasn’t had any problems.

I just looked at the drive that I have labeled as having my iTunes files on it and realized that if I don’t get set something working that runs Windows, those are useless because of the DRM in the files. Oh joy.

I dunno if iTunes will run on Wine, maybe you can try and see?

Itunes struggles to run on windows. i cant imagine it working well in Wine.

Big tip for anyone running Firefox, which is Ubuntu’s preferred browser since they don’t agree with some of the data collection behaviors of Chrome.

Go into about:config and change all of the following to True:

  • browser.sessionstore.warnOnQuit       (Firefox v65 and beyond)
  • browser.warnOnQuit                (all versions)
  • browser.showQuitWarning       (older versions)
  • browser.tabs.warnOnClose

This will prevent CTRL-Q from closing every window and tab you’ve got open without warning you. And since Q is next to W and Tab on the standard keyboard most people use, guess how easy it is to accidentally press the Q when you’re trying to use CTRL-W or CTRL-Tab?

The last one puts up the warning about closing multiple tabs at the same time and gives you a choice if you want it turned off. Leave it checked so you get the warning.

There’s other tips on the SuperUser website, such as going into the Keyboard preferences and setting Ctrl-Q to a null or true value, using a program called AutoKey, and importing Chrome settings.

The website points out this has been a long-standing problem in Firefox.The Preferences that are readily-accessible doesn’t have this adjustment. Setting CTRL-Q to provide a warning needs to be there and it needs to be turned on as a default. Allowing data loss without a warning as a default is a design flaw.

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Go tell that to BillG.

Um, Firefox? I need to be able to browse through all of the folders on a hard drive when I’m uploading a file, not just the shortcuts like Documents and Downloads, plus just one folder level on a hard drive. Having to make a copy into one of the locations you’re restricting me to is double plus ungood.

Is there any way to just change the color used for the title bar of program windows without having to install a theme? Everything seems to be stuck using black for the title bar and I can’t see where one window ends and another starts if they overlap.

(update)
Okay, some of this is application-specific in Chrome and Firefox. Turning off “Use system title bar and borders” in Chrome fixed that. Now I just need to find that setting in Firefox.

For other things like the File Manager, it is locked into the theme and everyone seems to be enamored of having a black title bar for some reason.

OS/2 had a nifty utility called Candybarz with which you can skin the titlebars of your windows. I used to emulate a Mac on my OS/2 setup, which was the only bit of eyecandy I would have.

For windows you get WindowBlinds which is produced by Stardock.

Linux may have its own theme customization tools.

Looks like you can select an accent color, and only check Title Bars. Didn’t try it, though.

Why does resizing a window have to be a pixel hunt to find the exact edge or corner?

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Modern OS UI design themes tend to be a little harsh on things like that.

Sometimes I miss the classic Mac OS style where you resized via a comparatively gigantic rectangle in the corner of a window or not at all and you liked it.

Is there a file search option that behaves more like Windows? I work with a lot of .zip files and extract multiple files at once. Linux can do this. Windows says, “No, do it one file at a time.”

But when it comes to searching for a file, Windows is better because you can manipulate the files within the search results. For example, if you need to move all PDFs to a different spot from where they were within the .zip file, you can. In Linux, it limits you to selecting one file at a time, and then you have to use something like “open in folder” to actually get at the file.

I need both for Linux. Extract multiple files at one time and being allowed to do whatever I want in a file search result without jumping through hoops one at a time.

Can you install 7-Zip and use that rather than whatever built-in zip utility you have?

Probably a different shell/file manager does more what you want.

Have a look for something like DCommander, or one of the other file handling tools. There will be something that fits your needs.

I would love to see a new release of Xtree-Pro (anyone else remember that?) with a port to MacOS…

In theory, this is where Linux really shines because you have so many options. A different file browser/manager is just a few clicks away, or you could go the command line route and pipe the results of your search into a bash script to extract the files to a designated location. It’s probably not even a complicated script, like a one-line thing.

But in practice, this is where most people give up because if you don’t already have the level of expertise necessary to write bash scripts, you aren’t going to learn for this task. Picking a different file manager is a technically simpler task, but you have to either really understand the tasks you need to perform well enough to know how developers would describe them so you can find one with the feature you’re looking for, or else just try a bunch of popular ones and hope that one matches your needs. If your use case is relatively specific, you may be out of luck but might waste hours to find that out.

I have a real love/hate relationship with Linux. There’s a lot to be said for unified or semi-unified user experience and design at the end of the day.

I totally agree. Love it for appliances, still not preferred for desktops.