Episode: 3517
Title: HPR3517: Hp stream laptop with Lubuntu 20.04
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3517/hpr3517.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 00:51:39

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3517 for Tuesday the 25th of January 2022.
Today's show is entitled HD Stream Laptop with Ubuntu 20.04.
It is posted by JWB and is about 38 minutes long and carries a clean flat. The server is Laptop Update.
Good day everyone. My name is JWP.
I got the word from Ken that he needed some shows. I saw some news. It was really interesting.
Gekulinix offered their version of Linux updated. It is off of Sousa Stable.
Open Sousa has always been strict because of the legal consequences of copyrights and patterns.
I had this old laptop and I hadn't used it in quite a while. I think I've told you all about this before but we'll go ahead and go through it again.
I had so much done on it. The first thing I did when I picked it up was when you got the Windex and cleaned it up before even opened up the show.
The story of this laptop was pretty cool. I was with my stepbrother. I was on vacation and Corpus Christi. One of the things that we like to do is when I come down is go pawn shop them.
This thing was originally 144 but they had it forever in a day. It had the blue screen of death on it.
I think I talked them down to like 50 bucks because it had the blue screen of death. I had no idea how to make the blue screen of death go away.
It's an HP stream which is a really minimal laptop but on the exterior and haven't even opened it yet to see what's going on. It's got an HDMI output.
It's got an USB 2.0 and an SD micro on one side with the power connector. On the other side it's got an earphone jack and another USB 2.0.
There's not 3 USB ports. If they did they were staggered it would be pretty good. It's about the original sticker on it. It's an incredible affordability, totally productive.
I guess it originally came with Windows 365 subscription and one terabyte of storage. It's amazing that this thing is about 10 years old and I'm pretty sure.
The Microsoft 365 model is still the same one terabyte.
But anyway Windows 10 on this thing was just too, even back then it was just too slow.
I pressed the on button and another great thing about this is unlike on my laptop it's got a standard laptop keyboard, maybe a little cramped on the arrow keys but other than that everything's great.
It's coming up. I believe it. So it's got the Ubuntu running on it.
So I'm having a hard time believing that I could actually do better than Ubuntu with this suzer that I wanted to give the suzer a spin.
But it's good just to check it out with Ubuntu. It came up. It's there. Let's see. Let's go to the terminal.
Accessories system tools. Let's see the Qt terminal.
And so let's go 3-H and okay. So it is a two gigabyte system and it's going to tf-H and it's got the it looks to be.
It's a 32 gigabyte system and so let's do the free command again.
So with everything going on right now. So it's Ubuntu uses 314 and I have gotten it down to 118 with stock.
I mean, I'll say stock. I mean the real stock except suede with debut.
The thing is this actually works. So you don't have to do anything with the Wi-Fi.
So if you do the stock, the stock baby in, it doesn't come with Wi-Fi built in. So you have to get the USB dial and didn't solve it that way.
It's a real pain in the keyster. So more of the story is that you can make it lighter.
But you have to build it absolutely yourself from the ground up using the date and the date and stay up.
So I'm really curious. So 314 is what I'm pulling and with xse I really don't think that it's going to be that much easier.
I would see if I can connect to that internet.
And let's see. So he does not have 5G. He only has 240 gigahertz.
And let's see. So I don't really know for sure if I'm actually going to use a change.
Because Ubuntu is pretty stable and it seems to be working quite well.
And let me press the pause button real quick because I'm having to walk connecting to the internet.
So with the LXQT module, you can't edit from the taskbar the settings.
So you have to go into what's called the advanced network settings. So it's in the menu, bring it up and then you edit the Wi-Fi.
So all of my Wi-Fi changed and it actually told me. So it had been since November 2020 since I had touched the laptop.
And so let's go through what's happening with the laptop now.
So he wants to, I think probably the best thing to do now that it's done is to do at update and see what happens.
And it looks really simple. All of it seems so it's on the focal.
And let's see. It's 8791. So so pretty quick. That's not too bad.
Let's take a look at why. It's used on first generation. It's not SSD. It's some kind of chip built directly and a great built directly in the app.
I think that's the other thing. I think with the, it being a 32, all the windows machines have 64 now. And so that's a, that's the reason that I couldn't do that.
And remember, we installed windows with it. So it's said, we're going to 20 or four. I think that's still the correct one.
And it's see, it's reading the packages. So finally it's done.
So let's see, we after one year of doing nothing. Let's see how big upgrade will be. And the upgrade is, oh, it's, it's 607 megabytes of additional space will be this.
Okay, so let's press the ideas. So he's going to update from the Bluetooth Germany website. And he's going along. So let's let him do that.
And I'll press the pause button again on the recorder.
So I checked and yes, 20, 0, 4, it's still the latest, the latest Ubuntu. So it's still the latest LTS. And we're going to is a 36 month, 36 month LTS, LTS on this. And so it should, it should function.
And it seems to be, it's actually a little zippier than I thought. But it's, it's being zippy, but it's still only at 5% 5% progress on the update.
So the, the gecko Linux folks, they still, they still use the source for forward. So I'm always not a huge fan of going to the source forage and going to the website and clicking and looking at the advertisements and things like this.
But then again, it's a free project. It's not, there is no enterprise support there. So that that's how that works.
And it's really interesting. So there's static versions of it or based on 15 to open to is 15 over 3 and rolling is based on tumbleweed.
And I downloaded the Bungie version and I had to do a comparison. So the Bungie version isn't for this laptop. I have to find something else to test the Bungie rolling release version on to the Bungie.
But those that don't know is, it's, it's based on GNOME. So it does a little layout based on, based on GNOME. And the memory footprint compared to XFCE is substantially, substantially more.
And I'm really curious about LDME versus Alex QT. And I found that, okay, L&D from the L&D website says that it's still the lowest of them all. But if you really look at the chart comparison, the Alexa, Alexa QT.
What is it? I'm going to panel section here.
That's the preferences about Alex QT. So Alex QT, it's still pretty lightweight. It's a little less than XFCE.
So to me, they're all about the same. I mean, and when you book, when you're dealing with two gigabytes on X86, you might do that.
Like I said, the performance of this 10-year-old stream or eight-year-old stream, somewhere around there, it's much better than the original Pine Book.
So I have the original Pine Book and it's, you know, that I really like it because it had come with Trinity out of the box. So I opened it up and Trinity, the KDE 3.1 was right there.
And, you know, I could go back sort of to the, you know, early 2000s with Trinity and have a look.
But everything else about that laptop, it's just a dog. And particularly, you know, I could get around it if it had a good keyboard.
If it had a good keyboard, I could get, I could do something with it. But the original one did not come with a keyboard again. I think it was a hundred bucks.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's going to be a donation if you ever have an old camper can because of Corona, I'll just probably donate that thing.
And someone else can see if they can get more joy out of it than I had.
And so that's why I've been really reluctant to buy any more Pine stuff. I bought the original Pine Board.
And it's still down on my basement and I have a cool case for it. And he still runs and does stuff, does stuff.
Currently, he's disconnected.
I disconnected my server farm, everything except for the open media server.
And I need to redo that whole thing. And again, again, because I bought some Raspberry Force.
I wanted to get that to try. And of course, I don't be a show when I do the open cloud or own cloud with the PI4.
And if that's another source of much, of much heartbreak, you really have to know what you're doing.
That is no way plug and play like the open media server. That thing crashes and won't boot and do all kinds of stuff.
And I compare it on exactly the same hardware. So they're both on three B's.
And so I've had the open media server running for, I don't know, five years on the Raspberry 3B.
And never had a trouble for care by drive straight up. No issues ever.
Automate updates every morning at two o'clock, from two o'clock.
Once a week, it reboots. And never ever has an issue that's all scheduled.
And I never have to touch it. I never have to touch it. That own cloud or next cloud.
Whatever it is, it runs on the PI.
You know, it just requires so much human intervention that it can't be good.
And that said, there's a lot of projects there. So you can run your office.
You can have like an online Google office thing there.
You can much learning to be down there. But as far as an alternative to Google Drive and syncing my phone and all this other stuff,
it's just not available enough to really make a difference.
So let's have a look back at the command function, command line.
Okay, so it's a 50, 55% and it looks like the big things are the lines.
So it's it's it looks like it's it's converting from five dot four dot zero dot five four to the same thing with six two.
So interesting, interesting. It's still sort of slow. So I'm going to press the the pause button again here on my tablet where I'm recording.
And so it's still updating, but it's interesting.
It's doing all of the old kernel. So it started at 62, it then did 54 now at 47 and now at 42.
Got no idea about how to make that any quicker.
Well, back to the the pond 64 thing. So I don't know how many of y'all still read digital watch, but I still do.
I have the RSS feed. I know that sort of dates me with the RSS feed.
But I have the RSS from distro watching and I don't suggest he came up with a thing for his.
So his pond 64 phone. And so I read it.
And guess what? I mean, just he's an American.
So he deals with AT&T Verizon or T mobile. And that's pretty much your choice.
I'll go with a like a third party that uses one of those things.
I think sometimes when I'm in the state, I use a team.com.
Some of y'all might know that Chris Fisher, you know, it doesn't advertise me there.
So I used it once and with team and they send you the the GSM, the SIM card.
But it's interesting that the that he cannot get it to make phone calls or send SMSes or connect to.
So he just uses it to connect to the internet.
So it could be that it's not really a phone.
So it's it's more like a phone tablet kind of thing.
So the interesting might be that that little keyboard with the so I have a keyboard case now.
And if you get the standard one, which is sort of a sucky phone, by the day of standards,
and you get the keyboard case with it, you have something about the same size as the Sion.
So if you go back to the late 90s Sion, a UK company, had these wonderful little PDAs.
And so if you wanted to re-experience the PDA experience, you could probably make a pretty good PDA out of that phone.
But out of what they call a pine phone, but it doesn't it wasn't working well enough for Jesse to make phone calls with it or send SMSes with it in his review.
And so that didn't really worries me because I had a I've had a less than great experience with the pawn 64 notebook.
And Jesse can't get at this late stage of pine phone.
It to work with AT&T or Verizon or whatever he's using in the States to make a phone call.
And so that and and that said the state isn't easy because this just last September I went back to the States and I had my Huawei.
And I got the Huawei phone and I deleted everything, reset everything and made it into like the ultimate vacation phone.
I wasn't at AT&T, they were like, we're sorry, the CME code does not match anything that supported on America, on America.
And I was like, oh no, that's exactly what I was like, I was like oh no.
And so long story short, I just ended up going to Target and I highly recommend this to anyone, to anyone who's doing that.
So rather than face so unless you have an iPhone with you or a well known Samsung with an international build on it.
You're not going to walk into the AT&T store and walk out with a SIM card.
It's just not going to work.
And by far in Texas, I think AT&T is by far the better one.
If you use the T systems or T online or whatever they call it, T mobile in the States and it's okay.
It's okay and they have a vacation, a three week or 21 day vacation one for 20 bucks.
And that's fantastic. You walk into the store.
It was no problem that they put it in and they were like, wait a minute.
So they didn't do any CME check at the T online place.
And granted so that, you know, the other thing in the States right now is they're moving to 5G.
So they're much more restrictive than it was a 3G kind of thing.
One of them was a 3G type environment.
But it was so two devices from the platform.
So I'm interested in the eReader.
I have a massive EPUB thing that I downloaded from...
Oh, you name it. I downloaded those EPUs from.
I bought EPUB CDs back in the day and put them all on this multimedia server.
So I have literally thousands of these book formats, right?
If anybody wants me to share, all of it's public domain or even some of it is...
I hate to use the word pirate bay.
I think some of it might be even that.
I can share.
And then of course I'm a big Gutenberg fan.
How RSS feeds for Gutenberg and every time something cool comes from Gutenberg.
I'll come and I'll download it.
So I'm interested in that eBook reader that they got.
But I'm really, really hesitant.
They said that the Pine Book Pro is much better.
But I'm going to get more use.
I mean, they're selling.
For $300 you can get a Chromebook now that's supported for nine years.
For nine years.
And that's pretty, you know.
So if you compare the cost of the Pine Book Pro versus something like the Lenovo, do it.
And the do it, if you find it, might come with a pin.
So it's sort of an interesting argument.
We're just going to be better in a long run.
The do it or the Pine Book Pro.
I like that here.
So anyone that has pine stories, I would really love to hear.
Because I was really, really thinking about a new pine purchase either the reader or the tablet or the pro, but not all three.
And of course the phone was interesting because of the PDF.
But it's hard for me to believe that the phone at this late stage of the game is not making calls in the United States.
And I mean, Jesse is no Linux loud.
She does a digital watch podcast every week.
Him or one of the guys.
And they write the block there.
So it's obvious that he does a great deal of practical Linux knowledge just from that.
So if it's not working for him, it probably wouldn't work for me either.
So it would be really interesting to have a, have a review.
Have to have the community talk about the Pine Book.
So let's check and see.
So I'm at 93%.
And I'm going to press the pause button.
My wife has exploded a chocolate cake in the microwave.
And I have to check on this.
Okay, back from investigating the chocolate cake explosion.
And it's interesting.
She made the chocolate cake from melting Christmas chocolate tonic laws.
So that was pretty interesting.
So we're at 99%.
Lord knows how long 99% will go.
So it's updating.
And it's still pretty fast when I click on the menu and things like this.
So let me try to open another tab and see if I can get another tab.
And let's see the ping.
So ping.
We got Amazon DE.
Those dudes are always up.
So yeah, I got 8.4 milliseconds.
It's just not bad.
Not bad at all.
And back and still at 99%.
And let's go through the menu again.
So accessories.
This thing uses Pac-Man.
And it's got a Qt, something game.
So it's got one game.
It's got Linux image.
Then to leave it off.
I sent a screen grab for the internet.
It's got a blue double sin file, blue double wizard.
I think that's something to do with Bluetooth.
So it's got Firefox and Midori on it.
And I'm pretty sure I put the Midori on it.
Something called T-R-O-J-I-T-A for the thing.
It's got a RC client and a bit torn on it.
So it's pretty simple.
And so he's still doing something with the kernel.
So he's installing.
He's still at 99%.
In the office, it looks like it's a Libra office.
And it uses something.
Q-P-D-F-U.
That's something that I haven't used.
Sound and video, something called KB3.
So I'm pretty sure that's MP3 player.
And I'm pretty sure I installed the LC myself.
And for system tools, again, it's got the two blue things.
Oh, I don't want it.
So it's an H top.
It's got the KDE partition manager.
So somehow KDE partition manager showed up in the system preferences.
So there's an LXQT settings, additional drivers, advanced network configuration.
And that's where you go if you have a network.
And network problem, alternative configurator.
Apply the full upgrade button.
Punder screen saver software sources.
And then about LXQT.
So let's look about LXQT.
See what comes up.
LXQT.
What does it say about it?
Advanced.
Easily used.
Fast desktop environment based on QT technology.
So.
And LXQT would not have been possible without the Razer QT project.
And it's many contributors.
Copy right to 2010 to 2022.
LXQT team and home page LXQT.org.
Okay.
So that's our authors.
And nothing to get there.
Thanks to.
So they've got four in.
And they so yeah, so they do do.
They do have some KDE stuff in it because they have a thank you to the KDE organization.
Technical info.
So I'm a version 0.1414.
And the Ubuntu with Ubuntu.
And still at 99%.
Well, I guess I gotta pause it again.
God, this is the longest update of my entire career.
Okay.
Finally, it finally stopped.
But it did completely update.
And so now it's to shut down.
Now minus R.
And of course, it was the password because update was so long that it did that.
And now we get to see if it'll really update.
And it blanks grain, blanks grain, blanks grain.
Here it comes, here it comes.
Okay.
And it looks.
And okay.
All right.
So now that I saw the HP logo on there's a little Ubuntu one button two button three button four button five button.
Oh, it starts again.
It starts again.
It starts again.
Okay.
And mouse cursor.
And we're in the JWP.
Let's put in the password.
And did he remember to.
So he's so it's good.
Let's do the same.
The same test that we did before.
Go down system tools.
And.
Let's just do the H top now.
Okay.
So if he's with the H top going, he's at 352.
So 352 with update.
He was at 318 before.
So with all the update and H top running.
So let's cancel H top control C.
Hopefully I'll get the prompt.
Okay.
That didn't.
I was hoping I got a prompt instead.
It just closed it down.
So let's go to the Qt terminal again.
And let's start three dot eight slash age.
And he's using.
So the difference between the H top and the free is.
The free does 323 while the H dot does 354.
So it's about the same.
So you still need about 300 megabytes to run everything.
And again, I have no Google Drive, no Dropbox, no anything going on.
So it's just it's just stock.
So let's click the Firefox button.
Firefox buttons clicked.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Okay.
So it took nine seconds to open it.
It says we haven't used it in a long time.
So we're going to refresh it and refresh Firefox.
And so one, two, three, four, five, six.
Import complete.
Finish.
Okay.
Now he's opening.
One, two, three, four, five.
Oh, that's, that's not too bad.
That's it.
That's, uh, um, restore tabs and windows.
Okay.
Um, so it's sealed.
Let's, uh, let's see if it'll let me.
Let's just do the YouTube test real quick.
Okay.
It's just.
Oh no, it says.
I also have to agree.
I hate agreeing.
So, so let's see.
Click on the first thing.
The whiskey blues.
Okay.
So I've got the video, YouTube video plan.
The speaker's on the same.
Okay.
So let's do the free command.
Let's do the H top again.
And so with the browser tab open.
And one browser tab open, plan a YouTube video.
One browser tab open.
I got, uh, it's, uh, 46%.
For, uh, uh, so both CPUs are heavily tacked.
So, CPU on the CPU feed on the stream.
So, you don't have to 80%.
Um, and the memory is at 1.5 gigabytes.
So then the only two things are running on this, the base system,
which was 300, was 300 megabytes before, 330 megabytes before.
And so, yeah.
I don't know if it's still off.
I can still use this laptop in a, in a modern sensor.
No, I don't think you can have more than more than 10.
I mean, it's it for sure.
It's not a two users system.
So it's not something I'm a wife could log in and then I can log in.
It could have hernate.
That's, that's, that's for sure.
That's for sure not going to happen.
That my nook with a Ubuntu, uh, 20, 20.04,
the standard, uh, Ubuntu, uh, it, it has trouble with that,
with eight gigabytes of RAM.
So, uh, better than it is what it is.
So, uh, is it serviceable with the Ubuntu?
Yes.
Uh, am I going to install all these,
Susan now probably not because that's, there's no trouble here.
Uh, so I probably won't install the Gecko,
where I have to find another machine to install the Gecko on.
All right, uh, guys, well, it's been 37 minutes
and that's what I'm able to do, which is not normal for me.
Um, you all take care, have a good day.
Uh, be safe.
Bye.
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