W7P, XP, UEFI, Dualboot...ETC...transition

[ImpliedConsent]

I've always liked the KDE DE; however, I never had the juice to enjoy it completely. I played with Ubuntu, but DID NOT like the Unity DE ... and it killed my old laptop and desktop (as it relates to memory and processor). Not Ubuntu's fault, I just had old gear. So, onto the transition:

• Had experience as a "user" on at work. The image was pretty well locked down, so I didn't get a chance to play with Terminal or any customization
• Put Mint on my dual Xeon (5000-series)/16GB old box and had that running fairly decently on Cinnamon. It just didn't have the pzazz and effects I was looking for.
• Had XP on my old laptop (Centrino 1.86GhZ; 2GB Ram) and made the mistake of updating to SP3. Ran like a 2-leg dog. Decided I'm all in with Linux distributions.

---Took the laptop with Mint 15 on my 5th combat deployment to Afghanistan---

• Mint ran well when I could use my personal laptop and it fit the bill while deploy. Swore I was going to put Kubuntu on my home PC when I got home.
• HOME: ahh, time for some Kubuntu. Let me setup a dual boot scenario - but first, lemme do a long overdue update to W7P - ran fine for about 2 days - and I either fried a processor or popped a capacitor somewhere, but it was toast (replaced the Xeons with same "working" Xeons; replaced all RAM; unplugged all drives and plug just the OS drive (120GB SSD); replaced the power supply; replaced the old GT250 video card with my original Quadro 3500) - regardless - it was toast, out of warranty, and getting a new MB was out of the question. I needed to get into the news quad-cores anyway.
• Paid @900.00 for a new system; recovered my SSD and data drive from old PC. Assembled, got it working and (shamefully) installed W7P UEFI/no-secureboot. Ran very well (I'm impressed with the boost on video). So, onto Kubuntu. Started with 14.04 Beta 1. Installer did not see my W7P install (too bad, would have loved to use my unformatted 30GB SSD free space for Kubuntu), but did recommend to use the (SATA3) WD Black 1TB drive. Its a good drive and fairly fast - off 'ya go - install there creating whatever EFI partitions Kubuntu feels best. Install worked like a charm; however, set my EFI to be it as primary (no biggie on EFI side, just a quick F9 and I can pick and choose). I originally planned on going with the tried and true MBR, but no, kinda defeats the purpose of EFI and I did not want to waste any portion of my investment.
• So, since GRUB2 didn't pick up on W7P, it was not an option; however, the Ace in the hole was rEFInd. Installed from the Linux side and voila; nice GUI boot menu. Works like a charm on both OSs.
• I LOVE how KDE4x works. I love the amount of customization I can do.

================================================== =======

• Not so good (and probably kernel issue) is wake from Suspend. Its hit or miss. Basically, it enters into suspend just fine (monitors, PC, etc); however, waking up is an issue. One time I'll get the (customized) beautiful login screen, another time my monitor priority (choice of 3) change and configuration ... or the worst ... I get nothing but a white 1" jumbled bar at the bottom of all screens and a mouse. Can't even get to X (ctrl+alt+backspace - and yes - I did a "sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration").
• Installer could not see the clearly visible W7P on the SSD; however post-install - saw the drive and partitions. Whatever - I'll jump on that on a rainy day.
• Monitor configuration - wants my LG 60" plasma (HDMI) as my primary after reboots and puts my DVI's as second and third. Nvidia issue? Not sure. I solved this by avoiding rebooting (unless I get the wake from suspend issue)
• Did not find my PnP HP P2015d laser printer, but did find my PnP HP CM1312nfi MFP.
• The P2015d driver could not identify 'print to both sides' (duplex). Had to manually configure (no biggie).
• ...and finally...not sure if it auto-updating my Beta 2 right now, or I've got some issue, but for the past 2hrs, I've been D/L'ing something at 680KiB/s'ish. Thats a lot of data. Gonna find a tool to tell me where/what is downloading (any suggestions would be appreciated).

[jlittle]

>Did not find my PnP HP P2015d laser printer, but did find my PnP HP CM1312nfi MFP.

Just yesterday was with a friend with some similar HP, who reported the same problem on Saucy. The printer had been connected wirelessly but had disappeared. I advised him to install hp-gui, and restart, but the key thing was to select the networked/ethernet option, not the wireless one (which was oriented to setting up the printer so that it could connect wirelessly, using a USB cable). The HP app from the system tray found the printer no trouble.

Regards, and HTH, John Little

[ImpliedConsent]

Where is TRIM?

Just yesterday was with a friend with some similar HP, who reported the same problem on Saucy. The printer had been connected wirelessly but had disappeared. I advised him to install hp-gui, and restart, but the key thing was to select the networked/ethernet option, not the wireless one (which was oriented to setting up the printer so that it could connect wirelessly, using a USB cable). The HP app from the system tray found the printer no trouble.

Regards, and HTH, John Little

Well, I decided that I'm going to force K14.04LTS on that SSD if it kills me. Success as EFI and dual-boot W7 (with rEFInd). Wow, even a SATA2 128GB screams past all the spinners I have. Another weird thing, it picked up my P2015d (probably because it was on and plugged in at time of install...v...powering on after install). What I still get that weird 'wake-on-suspend', but the Ctrl+Alt+Del works to fix it. I'm formatting a 1TB drive in FAT32 and moving all data over to it (FAT32 so W7 and K14.04 can see it). GParted had zero issue with formatting above the M$ published 32GB "limit" of FAT32, it took every bit of it.

So, I transitioned easily. The x-term/bash came back pretty quick and I'm using it more and more than I thought. Eventually, I'm gonna wipe the W7 out and dedicate the entire SSD. And lastly - concerning SSD's - wow, no 'good' TRIM support (still have a discard issue). I followed the this:Enable automatic trimming of SSD drives and created an fstrim cron job v. the included kernel TRIM. Not sure if Ubuntu did implement any sort of trim on 14.04LTS, but I believe in it - especially on a 4yr old SSD.

[ronw]

New in 14.04.

~ $ cat /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim 
#!/bin/sh
# call fstrim-all to trim all mounted file systems which support it
set -e

# This only runs on Intel and Samsung SSDs by default, as some SSDs with faulty
# firmware may encounter data loss problems when running fstrim under high I/O
# load (e. g.  https://launchpad.net/bugs/1259829). You can append the
# --no-model-check option here to disable the vendor check and run fstrim on
# all SSD drives.
exec fstrim-all
~ $

[ImpliedConsent]

Eventually, I'm gonna wipe the W7 out and dedicate the entire SSD. And lastly - concerning SSD's - wow, no 'good' TRIM support (still have a discard issue). I followed the this:Enable automatic trimming of SSD drives and created an fstrim cron job v. the included kernel TRIM. Not sure if Ubuntu did implement any sort of trim on 14.04LTS, but I believe in it - especially on a 4yr old SSD.

Well, I'll respond to my own "fail to research" properly: Ubuntu 14.04 to Feature SSD TRIM Support By Default. Not sure if this is the result of the physical S.M.A.R.T. or Ubuntu; however, I ran:

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | awk '/.*TRIM supported.*/{ if ($1 == "*") print "Yes, TRIM is enabled"; else print "No, TRIM is not enabled.";}'

Response:

Yes, TRIM is enabled