An orientation: reading an e-book

A good orientation for a Windows user to Linux Mint is "The Linux Mint Beginner's Guide - Second Edition" by Jonathan Moeller, available from Amazon.

Almost immediately, the book reveals why the command line is so useful to the ordinary user. Linux Mint's graphical user interface is easy for a Windows user to navigate, but the command line is more efficient. This book sets out why, with examples that an ordinary user would typically need to do when building the computer to meet their requirements.

It sets out the ground work that gets the power user started.

Comments

The Big Bang: Microsoft Windows goes for good, positive adaptations required

On 27Mar2021, Linux Mint ate Microsoft Windows 10 on Legolas. Three months on, I conclude beyond any doubt that wiping out Windows was the best decision I ever made. The second best decision I ever made was to test Linux Mint in Virtual Box five years ago. The third best decision I ever made was to take ownership of the learning curve that migrating in Windows really entails. A quick reminder: what’s Microsoft Windows like nowadays? I still need to use Windows at work. I cannot easily describe how painful it now is to use Windows. So I’ll try to describe it difficultly. My work machine is a powerful beast, but it exhibits constant latency. For a keyboard-orientated power user, this means that some keystrokes go walkabouts when other services on the Windows machine go to nuclear war with each other, scrambling to feed their narcissistic self-importance for besieged system resources wholly at the user’s expense. Something on Windows tends to clear the keyboard buffer randomly, resulting ...

Adjusting screen brightness

The machine on which Linux Mint is installed an old Acer Aspire 5732Z (" Gandalf ") It has buttons to adjust the brightness of the screen's backlight. When the user uses these buttons, Linux Mint correctly presented a fading-popup box (a slider bar) to denote relative brightness. But Linux Mint did not actually adjust the brightness of the screen. It seems to be a known issue in the Linux Mint forums and solved in multiple stages by the Easy Tips Project . I followed the instructions on Easy Tips section 5.2 in Gandalf's admin account, then re-booted, then logged in using the user account, and the brightness adjustment function worked correctly. Easy Tips asks the user to discover the relevant property of the machine, then creates a file that contains a script of parameters that other programs in Linux Mint understand. This method worked for Gandalf, because Gandalf has an integrated Intel chipset. Useful commands at the Terminal ALT+T (or th...

Scanning & OCRring to PDF: Simple Scan, gimagereader and gscan2pdf v NAPS2 for Windows

The project is to build a Linux Mint machine to have the identical functionality and ergonomics as the existing Windows 10 machine. This stage relates to scanning paper documents to PDF and digitising the scanned text via optical character recognition. Environment & required functionality The scan-and-OCR function needs to run on the following machines: The Linux Mint Xfce 18.3 laptop " Gandalf "; A Linux Mint Xfce 18.3 virtual machine " Gimli "; The Windows 10 laptop " Legolas ". In any modern office - whether at home or at work - some transactional documents and documents from public authorities still arrive by snail-mail. This requires the ability to scan all documents, optionally with the digitisation of scanned text (typically via optical character recognition). The hardware is an old HP OfficeJet Pro 276dw, connected to the LAN instead of directly to a workstation. Alternatives There are two strategies: To use the software pr...

A Windows user tries out Linux Mint

Search This Blog