hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2467.txt

Episode: 2467
Title: HPR2467: I randomly talk about my laptops
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2467/hpr2467.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:44:03

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This is HPR episode 2467 entitled, I randomly talk about my laptops.
It is hosted by Swift 110 and is about 10 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is, random talk about my laptops and the Linux distro's that are on them.
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Hello, this is Swift 110 and today, we'll be working with it
with Ubuntu Mate.
It wasn't that long ago that I gave Ubuntu Mate a try.
And for whatever reason, I just didn't like it.
Now the version of Ubuntu Mate, we'll be using today is 16.04 and if I'm not mistaken,
it's a long term release, so not a problem there.
But you know, it's amazing how my mind has changed about Ubuntu Mate and I guess maybe
I was just so loyal, I would say, to Linux Mint that I didn't give Ubuntu Mate a fair
try.
So in that time, and it's been a period of several months at this point, I now have Ubuntu
Mate on my X60, which is made by IBM.
Now the X60 has a dual core, has it actually a core 2 Duo processor and it has a 120 gigabyte
SSD in there.
I find that putting an SSD, even in a laptop that's 11 years old, is a very good boost to
it.
It gives extra life to an old laptop and that's really what I'm about.
I like taking things that other people don't want or don't feel are useful anymore,
whatever reason, and making them productive again.
That really appeals to me.
Well, now before I go into the weeds too much, I thought I'd give you a little bit of
the specs of that machine now, it's a core 2 Duo 120 gig SSD.
It has 2 gigs of RAM in it.
I plan at some point to actually increase that to 3 gigs of RAM due to its chipset.
It has a limitation in which it can only address about 3 gigs of RAM anyway, so anything
more would be uncivilized.
Thank you Charles Barkley.
Now that machine is running Ubuntu Mate.
And that's what leads me to where I'm thinking, what made me change my mind about Ubuntu
Mate.
I like, first of all, this welcome menu, introduction, features, getting started, community, chat
room, software, get involved, shop, and then the donate button.
I like this, it immediately gets you to resources that'll get you going.
I like that.
Now what I could do, in fact, what I will do is compare this to Linux Mint.
I've been using Linux Mint actually since early 2013, I knew of it years before, but didn't
make the jump until I finally got tired of Ubuntu's crap regarding the Unity desktop environment.
So I've been running on Linux Mint for all this time.
And I've been pretty happy with it, it's on my PC, it's on many of my laptops.
But believe it or not, I'm actually starting to prefer Ubuntu Mate better.
One of the reasons that one of the irritations I've had with Linux Mint over the years
is how slow the packages get updated and that's been cramping my style for a long time.
So I won't completely, while I won't completely abandon Linux Mint, I am going to be using
it less likely at this point.
Ubuntu Mate, I'm going to install one more of my laptops, more of my machines.
In fact, it's very well, I might end up going on my desktop at some point as I change
things around.
So in front of me, there's a Sony VIO.
I'm going to use this Sony VIO running Ubuntu Mate.
So it's not exactly, how do I put this?
Ubuntu Mate on this particular machine is one of the hard drives, obviously.
The hard drive I took from the X60 that I told you about, well, as I mentioned earlier,
that has an SSD in it.
The former drive that was in it, which is a 5400 RPM, 120 gig, or is it a 500, I don't
know, hard drive.
You know what?
I can easily check this so that I can be accurate with what I'm saying and not sound stupid.
All right.
So let's go to the terminal.
I, N, X, I, and it'll give me the hard drive 120 gigs, nice, pretty.
All right.
So let's do this comparison, shall we?
Now there's a welcome screen on Linux Mint as well.
There is an offer in this, a welcome screen there as well.
Documentation, apps, drivers, multimedia, codex, forms, chatroom, getting involved in
donations.
So not terribly different, not terribly different from that at all, and that's nice.
So the welcome screen's nice.
The main difference that jumps out with me is regarding packages not being released in
a timely manner.
So either way, I can use either one of them, just fine.
Well, a bunch of them I'll tell you just seems to have a little bit more than appeal to
me at this point though.
Now, let's talk about the Sony VIO, the Sony VIO EB series, and trying to think how
much RAM is actually in it.
I have, okay, my RAM is, what is it saying, 5,730, that makes no sense at all, it's using
about 500 gigs, I mean, 500 megabytes of RAM right now.
I'm not feeling it.
Anyway, I took this hard drive that has a bunch of my take from another machine, and this
is one of the benefits of Linux.
I can just take it from another machine, take one hard drive from one machine, put it in
another, Bob's Uncle, starts up just fine, love it.
The only thing I've had an issue with regarding the Sony VIO, the trackpad can be a little
wonky, I'm likely going to replace it, other than not perfect.
So now, I'm looking at, first of all, I have this dark theme on here that goes really
well with this black laptop.
Let me be more specific about the Sony VIO.
It's a Sony VIO VPC EB for it to FM there.
I like the way the menu layout is, I'm using my tape, so not a terrible difference from
what I was using, it's the next minute.
There will be not really much of a difference, they're both based on Ubuntu, so not the biggest
changes in the world, nonetheless, I'm happy with what I have here.
But given what I've spoken about Ubuntu and my tape, I'm going to consider more about
why I like it, and pretty much go from there.
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