Brainstorming, preparing for new laptop

[GreyGeek]

You're the customer paying $$$, not a member of their quality control staff. I don't know what the rates are now but my rates before I retired were $120/hr or $1K per day in court plus expenses, plus everything in writing with a signed contract.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm here!

Still waiting for UPS to pick up the lemon, but I'm back up and running on the loaner. OMFG.......it is *SO* hard to get used to!!! It's running Pop and I just can't get oriented. Simple, simple tasks on K are seemingly impossible here--like changing my date and time to display the way I want. Or making my trackball move the way I like. Or making Dolphin one-click to open folders. Etc.

One thing to consider: S76 gave me their blessing to put *my* preferred environment on the loaner. So I could, conceivably, install K. But you know...the way things went with the lemon....I'm a little hesitant to do that. I don't LIKE how this one functions, but it's USABLE. My vote is to leave well enough alone. Thoughts?

[GreyGeek]

Gazelle!

[DoYouKubuntu]

I see we got moved!

Okay, guys, this is it.... These are the last words I'll be typing on the 'lemon' Gazelle. Tomorrow, it's on its way back home, and my brand-new replacement will start being built. If you don't hear from me soon, assume that something has gone catastrophically wrong with the loaner laptop AND my smartphone AND my tablet AND my other computers.

[DoYouKubuntu]

That's their version of Monty Python's "It's only a flesh wound!"

Hilarious! Thanks for sharing. And, yes, exactly.

[GreyGeek]

....
It's funny you mentioned the number of Linux users on DB, because they gave me the impression that we were a MINUTE, itsy-bitsy minority of their users. Hmmmm....

That's their version of Monty Python's "It's only a flesh wound!"

[DoYouKubuntu]

Oh, that's too funny, GG! Porn?!

Whichever hosting company I was using at the time said that although my storage was unlimited, only files directly related to a website, i.e., available to the public online like a regular website, were allowed. You could keep backup copies of older versions, and I did, like when I'd make a change to any HTML files, I'd save the old ones in their respective directories, date-stamped to show when they were from, just in case something went awry with the new version. But backing up personal files, images, videos, normal stuff you have on your computers....NOPE.

I've changed providers at least 3 times since then, but haven't bothered rocking the boat. It's not that big a deal to pay the annual fee for a paid account somewhere, like Amazon Drive.

It's funny you mentioned the number of Linux users on DB, because they gave me the impression that we were a MINUTE, itsy-bitsy minority of their users. Hmmmm....

And with Amazon, of course I've pestered them about not having a native Linux client. Every time I go to backup (nightly) by using my browser, I'm prompted to use one of their native apps...and I'd love to, except there is no Linux version! I've explained to Amazon that without Linux, they wouldn't exist...but it didn't help. *shrug*

[GreyGeek]

I remember that DropBox fiasco. The church I attend was using DB to drop mp4's of the service and I would edit them and write them to CDs or DVDs for members who requested them. After a while we reached the limit of our paid account. While that was being addressed my Dolphin suddenly stopped working with DB. Turns out DB had dropped support for all Linux file systems except EXT4, and that was sketchy. A lot of Linux folks jumped off of DB's train and hooked rides with other vendors. That was in 2018. About a year later DB restored functionality to all of Linux's file systems but it was too late. Only 2% of DB users had paid accounts and from what I've read half of those were Linux users, so they cut their revenue in half by that stupid move. That was 4 years ago and I haven't darkened DB's doors since then so I don't know how it works with Linux now.

I did that "use your own host" thing. I put it up right after the Anderson Family Reunion in 2000 (My wife is an Anderson. They were the first to settle in York county, NE in the late 1800s) to display reunion pictures and construct a family tree. And as a storage place for my files. It was up until about 4 years ago, until I began using BTRFS. About a year after I dropped it the preacher's wife met me walking into the building and began shaming me for having porn on my website. When I explained to her that I dropped that site a year previously and that since then a porn purveyor took over the domain name and I wasn't doing the posting I don't think she believed me. LOL! Such is life.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I had a paid Dropbox account for years; they--SHOCKINGLY--actually had a native Linux client!! I dumped it a year or two ago because of an IDIOTIC limitation on file names. I don't remember the names right now, but I can easily look them up. They're STANDARD names you'd find on a windows system, like thumbs.db and something.ini. Attempting to upload a directory containing files with those names would cause the upload to fail. When I contacted support, they said, oh, just delete or rename those files before you back them up! I said, YOU'RE KIDDING, right?! Can you imagine plodding through thousands of directories, spread across multiple computers, to DELETE (like you don't need it) or RENAME (like it will function correctly with a different name) THOUSANDS of files?! Well, I couldn't, so I said goodbye.

Since I already had a [free] Google Drive with little space, I upgraded it to a paid account. Then one day I was browsing my Amazon Prime benefits, which I rarely do--but should--and found something amazing. Even though I've been using Amazon Photos for eons, which I have set to automatically upload new photos, I had not put two and two together until I read my benefits. AP allows unlimited storage of images at FULL resolution, meaning the zillions of photos I've taken with my Nikon cameras are welcome there, with no limit. Once I did some rough in-my-head calculations, I realized that my non-image backup needs would fit easily in their small paid account of 100GB. So I paid for that, and that's how I ended up using AD for backups. (Which reminds me, I need to cancel the paid G account.)

I used to use my own domains for backups, but got in trouble once--years ago, I don't even remember the hosting company now--because you're not supposed to do that. Or at least with THEM. If I went back to doing that, I wouldn't need to pay anyone [anything extra, I'm already paying for hosting]. I just feel safer knowing that my files are stored somewhere that isn't HERE, just in case, you know?

[GreyGeek]

Well, I solved that problem by saying goodbye to Google. Strangely, I got a popup from Google mail this morning claiming "We haven't seen you in over six months! Is something wrong?" *eyeroll*

I switched to MEGA for a while, and it has a nice interface. IIRC, you can store up to 50GB free of charge. With the MEGA Dolphin addon if you assign a folder to MEGA what you drop into that folder gets uploaded to MEGA. What you delete gets deleted from MEGA. I tried that feature for a while but I didn't want to clutter up my drives with that stored data so I just used their Web service to upload, download and maintain my remote storage. After using BTRFS for a while I releazed that I didn't need cloud storage so I deleted my account.

[DoYouKubuntu]

It's just funny with Amazon Drive that it *accepts* directories as uploads, but doesn't *download* them that way. To me it seems like if it works in one direction, it should work in the opposite direction, too.

It's not a big deal, just not what I expected. Hopefully, I'll never NEED to rely on anything I've backed up there, but you never know!

[GreyGeek]

I used to use a Google G drive as a backup (free up to 15GB, IIRC) and used it to pass files to friends and families. When ever someone selected a group of files to download that group was always combined into a zip file, and I assumed it was to minimze the time to download in order to free up the server more quickly. But, that's just a guess.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Exactly, GG. We joined within weeks of each other, and I've never in any way felt censored. THAT is why I was so shocked, because I couldn't imagine we'd been censored...but I also couldn't imagine deleting posts just because of thread-drift. I'm sure I've said many times on this forum that I personally *LOVE* thread-drift, because it more closely replicates *real* conversations. Think if you're at a party or having dinner with friends. You start out talking about one thing, but then it branches off to something else, which spawns something else, and so on and so on. When that happens online, it feels natural. When I was a mod [elsewhere] I didn't delete/move replies that had strayed, unless they blatantly broke a TOS rule, like making personal insults or threats.

Well, guess what? We're doing it again!!!

So back to the original topic: I'm still typing on *my* current laptop. Long story, but I planned on sending it out this morning but didn't. I'm waiting to hear back from S76 before I send it. With the extra time, I've checked, double-checked, and triple-checked that I haven't skipped backing up anything important.

Recently, just to see how it would work if I needed to use it, I tried downloading a directory I'd saved on Amazon Drive. To my surprise, it offered a zipped file as the download. I'm not exactly sure how I THOUGHT it would work, but that definitely wasn't it! So restoring from Amazon will be a last-ditch event, like if all the hard drives I've made backups on simultaneously fail....

[GreyGeek]

Yup, no censorship on this forum. I've been on it since Feb of 2009 and I've posted several highly political msgs and have never been censored. Those discussions were always polite and the sides wererespectful of each other, which makes a HUGE difference. The 1st Amendment is alive and well on this forum.

[Snowhog]

Not censoring you by taking the action I did. It's to keep Thread content 'relevant'. Nothing more. If I were censoring you, I may have simply removed those posts.