I find that restoring multiple Firefox windows is hard work, they appear randomly on one of my two screens. Also, when I open a program but move the mouse to the other screen while it’s loading, the program sometimes follows the mouse and opens on the other screen.

Iccan’t tell if that’s a terrible idea, or absolute genius. I’ll let you know tomorrow! :D

I’ll give that a try, thanks :)

I can use the terminal in short bursts, but switching to black text on a white background just looks wrong. I might just have to suffer >.<

I’ve got a feeling I’ve tried bigger, but not bolder. I’ll try them both, thanks :)

Try having astigmatism, white text on a black background is physically painful

A lot of the time it’s a man with a van scenario, where someone’s had too much rubbish to take to the tip themselves, so have hired someone cheap to take it away. They either don’t realise or don’t care that the person taking the rubbish isn’t licensed so can’t take it to the tip, and the rubbish gets dumped

At least they’re summarising it, which implies that they’ve done some work. Lots of UK online ‘newspapers’ now have a brief story with a load of quoted tweets at the end. They’re absolute shit.

I have got a mental picture of a Linux super nerd trying to browse through a text only browser on their oven’s display now though 😁

What? Nobody’s using their browser on an appliance (except for a handful of masochists with Samsung fridges). I said to most people their browser is on an appliance, as in they treat computers, phones, and laptops like appliances, in that they’re mysterious boxes that do a particular job.

Hardly anyone is trying to hack their appliances, and the majority of people just lump their computing devices into the same category - it does what it was designed for and nothing else

Don’t forget that most people don’t know that blocking ads is possible. To most people, their browser is on an appliance, like a washing machine or fridge. They know how to do the basics, but that’s about it.

It depends on what you’re doing. I’ve got Mint on my laptop and main PC, and the experience is different on both. On the laptop I tend to play Minecraft and do some basic tasks like taking notes and browsing the web. There’s nothing in Mint that really affects that, so it doesn’t hold me back at all.

On the PC though, I’ve got all of my important software, and some of it has had to be installed manually because the Mint repos are outdated. It’s nothing that’s particularly difficult to fix, but I know my way around computers. For your average user, it would be too much.

Thanks for replying :)

I think there’s some confusion though, none of the sites are hosted locally, PortableApps just lets me use a separate browser and email client for each website, effectively sandboxed from each other so that there’s no chance of accidentally editing the wrong site or posting from the wrong account. Each PortableApps instance has its own set of logins and bookmarks etc. to manage one website and the associated emails.

I essentially just want to run a program in a Windows 10 VM that’s stored on the Linux host but on an NTFS drive. As far as I can tell, the permissions on the NTFS drive are interfering with that, as the files are in the root group on Mint, whereas I’m in the tippon and vboxuser groups. I’m not sure how to change that without risking breaking something, but the way the NTFS drive is mounted through fstab seems to be the answer.

I think that changing fstab so that the drive is mounted under my user and group will fix it, but I don’t know how that will affect anything else on the drive, or any Linux programs that access those files. I’m stuck with NTFS for now as I occasionally need to dual boot, and need these programs available while I’m in Windows too.

Ideally I’m going to move away from using PortableApps to manage the sites, but I haven’t found a better way yet.

Thanks for replying :)

It’s a 10th generation, but it’s fully updated. I turned off automatic updates with the fire toolbox, but the setting either didn’t take, or was overridden, and it was updated while charging.

As far as I know that stops me from rooting or jailbreaking for the time being, but I’ll read through your links tomorrow and see where I stand :)

Thanks again :)

Anything by Randolph Lalonde. He’s concentrating on his space opera series, Spinward Fringe, and the side books lately but his fantasy work is great too. Spinward Fringe has its flaws, but they tend to be addressed, and they’re easy to overlook when you’re enjoying the books.

I’ve started reading some Jack McDevitt books too, after someone recommended one here, and I’m finding them hard to put down. It’s the God Engines / Chindi series (that I’ve forgotten the name of) . The protagonists do seem to bounce from one problem to another, but it’s done in a fairly realistic way, the whole ‘we’ve accidentally ended up here, so we may as well look around’ kind of thing. I’ve read two and a half books in a couple of days in between looking after my kid and visiting family, so they’re definitely keeping me hooked :)

You’ve never taken out a sniper with a well aimed Terry Pratchett?

I think at least part of the problem has been the built in expiry date, and the fact that so many off brand Chromebooks are absolute shit. They have tiny screens and low specs, and struggle with multiple web pages open.

I fancied one myself to take out and about, as I do most of my work on my PC, but they all seemed to have under 13 inch screens, and a five year shelf life. I like to research my family tree, so have a few tabs open, but the lack of memory would kill them and make it painful to do.

You’re being downvoted, but you’re right.

People want something simple. Something that just runs the basics and automatically backs up online and invisibly.

The vast majority of people don’t need to have the choice of 17 different browsers, or 43 office suites, and they certainly don’t need the terminal or Powershell, or anything else. They just need a browser and a way to maybe write a letter and view photos. Maybe a way for the kids to do their homework. If their laptop spontaneously combusts, they want to be able to sign into a new one and have everything put back as it was automatically.

ChromeOS is perfect for them, apart from being a Google product. It’s something we tend to miss because we’re technically minded, but most people don’t care about computers, and don’t want what we want. They want an appliance. If someone created that system with privacy built in, it could be great :)

I’m in the UK, and I’ve had decent laptops from rapidIT and ITZoo, both .co.uk as far as I remember. I can’t remember which laptop I got from Rapid as it was a few years ago, but the first one had a faulty motherboard, and they swapped the laptop with no issues.

I had a Stonebook branded Clevo N750BU from ITZoo, which is an i7 based laptop, and Mint works perfectly on it. It’s quite old now, so you’ll probably get a newer one for your budget, but with a RAM upgrade it runs everything I throw at it. I use it for designing and editing logos in Inkscape and Krita, and for editing a website in html, css, and javascript, so anything newer should do it even better :)

Just a reminder: