Plea for help from linux newbie
 

I have been trying hard to have a well-behaved ubuntu installation. For the first 7 months, all seemed well until ubuntu would boot. People helping me couldn't fix the problem (by advising me what to do in the terminal) so they advised a reinstall.

I am on my 2nd reinstall and it seems to me - no offense intended to Ubuntu - that it is an extremely unstable platform, prone to corruptions or software breakages - whatever you call them. Strange problems that appear not connected at all to anything that I do other than use the computer.

I would like to use Linux but it seems more and more that unless you're a hard-core programmer, you're best off not using it. I am a designer, not a hard core programmer.

Is there a kind of linux that will install and let me do my work without having weird failures and corruptions.

I don't use a computer so that I can tinker with it. I know that gives great satisfaction to some people, but I just want to use a computer to get my work done.

I'm a designer and I use scribus, gimp and inkscape as my main applications.

Thank you for any suggestions!

Hmmm - this would be the same person who asked about Linux on a 2009 Mac ?.

Ubuntu would normally be considered at least in the group that most would recommend for new users - well supported by an active community. But nothing can be guarantted on old kit like that. Get something newer, and try again.

You don't go into any detail about the issues you are having. What seems to be breaking on your system? Ubuntu has been very stable in my experience...

Prior to my beginning with linux, I checked on a few linux forums and my "kit" was described as being more than adequate. I never got the sense that it was too old to support the versions of linux that are current.

Linux is widely touted as - among other things - being able to run with success on computers of varying age, in other words, not just on the latest models.

Is this not true? Does linux require the absolute most recent machines to run correctly?

My mistake. I apologize. Here's the high-level view of what's happened:

my installation of 17.04 suddenly would not boot. No clue as to why, no fix available.

I reinstalled and upgraded to 17.10 on recommendation. computer became extremely slow and unresponsive after installing gnome extensions which are offered through the "Ubuntu Software" repository.

I reinstalled 17.04 a second time and upon launching one of the terminals simply to see what it was like, I found myself in a screen containing some..I"m not sure..diagnostic information. I could not escape, or exit or ^C or ^D or ^Z my way out of it (did some googling for "how to exit terminal") After powering down and rebooting, I was presented with not the login screen, but with more screensful of what look like diagnostic information..no way to interact with the computer, no way to exit.

From my perspective, this seems to be extremely fragile. I am only trying to *use* the computer. I'm not trying to hack linux or experimenting with the terminal. When I open a terminal, it's to run commands which I've learned from others, or from tutorials, eg, how to run rsync.

I'm just a guy who wants to use a computer whose OS is stable for the regular everyday user. Under Ubuntu, I've had 3 experiences in a row which seem to be pretty weird.

Hence my query into what Linux forms might be less prone to what I've described.

Thank you!

Nope, but it does need some-one to write (and maintain) the support for any equipment. Where the vendor is deliberately disingenuous, there is little incentive to do so. It may even be impossible/illegal.
Apple is a prime example.

I'm typing this on a 2010 laptop, but things are becoming available that I can't use - pass-through for virtual guests for example. Eventually we all have to bite the bullet and move with the times.

If this is really something that only happens with Linux it would indicate you have some exotic hardware component in there which does not play well with Linux. On the other hand you say that it ran fine for a couple of months, which makes this hypothesis unlikely.

Either way, what you described does not at all sound like a Ubuntu-specific problem.
This sounds to me like dying hardware.
Have you tried other OSes (I don't mean other distros, I mean other than Linux) since you are observing these issues?

You did not answer or confirm syg00's question. The hardware specification, make and model, of your system would be helpful for people to know.ODD major numbered releases are not Long Term Support releases. The odd numbered releases are supported for 9 months and Ubuntu calls them Regular releases. Meanwhile if this is a very old computer, such as the queried about 2009 system, a release of any Linux distribution which is brand new may not work too well.

There would be better recommendations for a distribution as well as version for your system if people knew better what the hardware exactly is.

Over in this thread you offered system specs and asked what distributions would work best, https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ni-4175609991/. Please confirm if this is still the same system, and recommend you try the suggestion offered by Timothy Miller.

How old are the harddrives.
Which type of harddrive

i replace any harddrive older as one year and 6 months.

Has nothing to do with the distro. it is more a generic issue of bad media, maybe bad filesystems

that depends on which patchset his filesystem is. ext4 had some issues but we talk about sevearl years ago, or btrfs.

Well that does not free you of

maintaining your box. includes changing harddrives after a certain age, repalcing thermal paste, clean fan. use the package manager. making backups. having a generic knowledge of what you do

I would consider any drive older as 1.5 years as unreliable. i would only use it for data which i do not care.

It depends if your hardware is supported. Some windows only hardware will be never supported.

False claims that's it.

Best example, my dinosaur notebook. asus g75vw. ACPI is broken. Uefi is partly broken by design. IVYBRIDGE kinda dated hardware.

So what is acpi, explained in my words for someone who is not a computer nerd. acpi is the nice feature that you can turn on or off: wireless lan and bluetooth = airplane mode on off. turn on and off the touchpad. turn off and on sound = mute and such. keyboard backlights. for geekts => dsdt, acpi tables, uefi, and such ... I could fix it iwth a custom dsdt. i tried it but gave up, as all those are hardly documented what to change. ASUS uefi is not really well designed and tested

4.13 kernel branch broke the speedsteep feature of my ivybridge. i can not enforce lowest cpu frequency anymore. 4.12 broke the intel hda_sound soundcard. sometimes i have sound sometimes not, a reboot sometimes solved it.

Linux can run on old computers when certain requirements are met. Fresh thermal paste is in use. The capacitors are not blown on the mainboard. The hardware has to be in decent condition. I saw a lot of abused hardware in the past. the drives need to be fresh, out of the package. Also I would never buy again any SAMSUNG Harddrives, regardless if HDD or SSD.

Linux did not run well on new hardware. e.g. forums.gentoo.org the topic named amd ryzen. all those bios patches for intel and amd in regards of those recently.

I also had to patch my gpu in early days on ASUS g70sg. I bought it fresh.

In my opinion. FREEBSD and gnu linux may run on your hardware. Same as any operating system. Windows also has its requirements. NEeds skylake cpu bla bla. old days my pentium 120 was unable to run windows 2000. the prerelease did run of course on that same hardware. so what! microsoft just made a new barrier that's it

What makes matters worse. those newbie binary distros including suse and such. suse was one of the few distros where the network was broken on a fresh install. other binary distros worked well. linux mint just nukes the bootloader without telling the user. binary distros are some sort of disease in my point of view. those automatic changes to certain bits and pieces are not a good idea.

and those who claims linux work on anything, are just those who use a binary distro like ubuntu.

-- in your case i suspect bad harddrives or something hardware related. as ubuntu is one of the most used newbie distros, these errors will be discovered in a certain time frame.

edit: changed typos

My hard drives (2) are both Samsung SSD, both well under 1 year old. I have run Mac OS X on them without issue.

Ubuntu ran largely without issue for the 7 months - I had a few OS errors..I think they were OS-level "process stopped running. consider rebooting computer" but since Ubuntu seemed unphased and I could keep working, I assumed they were minor and in OSX things like that happen as well. Didn't seem serious.

The only real problem I had was inability to boot into 17.04 - something to do with lvmetad not able to be found. As suggested, I disabled lvmetad and the problem persisted, and I was advised to re-install ubuntu. Which I did, and (mistakenly) decided as long as I was at it, I might as well install all the way to 17.10

Seems that 17.10 has a few serious issues such as an easily-corruptible BIOS. I personally wouldn't consider that a public release and wouldn't have installed it if I'd known of the issues.

Encountering such things makes it hard for a new user to discern between, say, a dumb beginner mistake, failing hardware, or a problem with the software release.

Also: I am accustomed to the way OS X releases are numbered. The whole number indicates the major release, to the right of the decimal is the revision or update.

I never jump on a .0 release, ever, even if there are very compelling features. I don't consider them to be production-ready.

When I see "17.10," I think that version 17 has seen more than one update, possibly 10 of them and assume that it's well-seasoned.

This has turned out to be extremely not the case and I am happy to stay right where I am until...I don't know what the source for information that a release is truly ready is - says so.

Maybe give Ubuntu 16.04 a try? It is the "long term support" (LTS) version, intended for users whose top priority is stability. It will be supported until April 2021, which is probably longer than the lifespan of that hardware.

Debian Stable is another good option for stability-conscious users.

Wow. That sounds a bit drastic. SMART data is there for a reason.

Not meaning to sound nasty, but based on your posting history, I think the best thing you could do would be to re-load the Mac OS and not touch Linux. And while I realize that you're a designer, you seem to have a bit of a double-standard, going back to your very first post. Because you've said, in the past:

• "Some say Ubuntu or Mint, but those same people say both distros have failings that make them unacceptable for what I need to do. Mostly it has to do with instability or some other fatal, hair-pulling issue."
• "From my research so far, Ubuntu is a "No" because of the phoning home" (note: and you're using Ubuntu now, despite saying this back in June?)
• And you loaded Ubuntu anyway: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...es-4175610143/ And say the trackpad/etc, aren't working correctly.(note: and you're using Ubuntu now, despite saying this back in June?)
• ...and you want to blow away and load Linux on a tablet. That is not a trivial thing to do.

The "double-standard" part comes in when you are complaining about having to set your Linux system or have a small program error, but say things like:

• " I assumed they were minor and in OSX things like that happen as well. Didn't seem serious." (note: so it's somehow OK if OSX does it, but Linux is unstable if it does?)
• "I don't mind configuring things if there's support as to how to properly do it, and as long as, once set up, you're "there."" (..and then say your trackpad was too sensitive, because you didn't configure it?)

You are going out of your way to make things difficult on yourself, and seem to blame Linux. Dual-booting is NOT a very easy thing, especially on Mac hardware. Granted, it's not as difficult than it once was, but it still isn't trivial, and adds a LOT of complexity to things for a new user. And then you add it you'd like to boot/use your external Firewire drive(s) into the mix, and are messing with logical-volumes. Things really don't add up here, because what you WANT is not lining up with what you are actually DOING.

Want things to 'just work'? Then take OSX off your system, load Linux Mint on the internal drive, and that's it. You're done. Use your Firewire drive as external storage with zero problems. But if you want to dual-boot with external firewire drives/logical volumes/etc., then you need to make peace with the fact you're going to have to do some work.

Otherwise, enjoy OSX. For what it's worth, I'm using openSUSE Tumbleweed on a 2009 iMac, with ZERO issues. I have upgraded the RAM to 6 GB (despite Apple's insistence that it only supports 4), replaced the wifi card with a brand-new 802.11AC card, and the internal hard drive with an SSD. I'm running KDE with all the eye-candy I can find, on dual-monitors, and have had no problems at all. Bluetooth, sound, camera, everything 'just worked' after initial installation. And I did an EFI installation, not legacy. So if you're having problems, and you really want to use Linux, I'd suggest finding a local LUG nearby and get someone there to do a proper installation for you.

I did glance at an article that suggested that Mint could in fact somehow brick some UEFI firmware.

I'd consider trying Fedora 27 if it suites your need otherwise. Think it comes with a 4.13 or higher kernel.

Part of your reply almost suggests to me that maybe you have a system problem. Voltages wrong, memory bad, bad connection or such or even heat. There is no way to guarantee linux will work on a system unless it was fully factory tested too.