Self Sufficient computer repair and maintenance

[Whoey]

Looks like wired ethernet to me. Could be wrong but all he is looking for is a wifi hotspot. like perhaps fon?

https://corp.fon.com/en

not sure if they still provide their own routers... I got some quite a few years ago for shipping cost.

[detron]

glad others answered,  I just saw this,  thanks everyone for helping.

[AlephZero]

I've had good experience with D-Link routers, if wifi is all you need, maybe a travel router might do the trick?

http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solutions/work/wireless-mobile-broadband/dap-1350-wireless-n-pocket-router-and-access-point

[AlephZero]

glad others answered,  I just saw this,  thanks everyone for helping.

We've got your back, bro   

[bmot]

Hmmm, I don't feel much wiser after looking around a bit...

It seems the main measuring point is either GHz or Mbit/s, right?


How many of those will I need for normal internet use and streaming films/tv/netflix to my laptop? Won't need much devices at the same time, for sure.

[detron]

Hmmm, I don't feel much wiser after looking around a bit...

It seems the main measuring point is either GHz or Mbit/s, right?


How many of those will I need for normal internet use and streaming films/tv/netflix to my laptop? Won't need much devices at the same time, for sure.

well, lets see what you NEED.

do you know what type of Wireless adapter your phone/laptop/WATEVER else has?  do any of them have Wireless "N"?
if none of them have "N"  then you can still get an "N" router and be ready for the future,  (or "AC" if you want to go high end)
I have and ASUS RT-N66U Gigabit Router.

BE CAREFUL  the GIGABIT references the wired ports only! 
the Wireless that this can provide is "N" and "G" (G is older, 54Mb)

Here is the breakdown of wireless standards

it might be easier if you can explain how many devices will be running at once?  (laptop, phone, tablet, smart TV, Roku, etc)  and what budget you would like to stick to

[danilo]

I am thinking about picking up an older desktop and trying linux again....must be a gluten for punishment as I have always had a love/hate thing with it.

My question is:  what is the best distro out there to us nowadays?  Linux Mint?  Open Suse? Or other?

I will need the distro to be eash enough to setup up a network for file server/sharing or accessing from outside my house.  I basically only need two users to access outside of my house, me and a guest acct.

Thx.

I'd say avoid ubuntu, you'd be sorry after the first new release.

personally I've used mint debian edition (the nor.al one is ubuntu, avoid it as well)
it works fine and you'll find a lot of documentation . being debian-based commands are identical to what you'd on debian.

I use debian testing on my pc - I'm a developer - and  often things are broken until some update, otherwise it's cool. I would have gone with stable but during the installation it didn't have the network adapter modules, and I went with testing, i'm kinda regretting it, but I don't want to redo everything now: I've so many software installed
...

[bmot]

Hmmm, I don't feel much wiser after looking around a bit...

It seems the main measuring point is either GHz or Mbit/s, right?


How many of those will I need for normal internet use and streaming films/tv/netflix to my laptop? Won't need much devices at the same time, for sure.

well, lets see what you NEED.

do you know what type of Wireless adapter your phone/laptop/WATEVER else has?  do any of them have Wireless "N"?
if none of them have "N"  then you can still get an "N" router and be ready for the future,  (or "AC" if you want to go high end)
I have and ASUS RT-N66U Gigabit Router.

BE CAREFUL  the GIGABIT references the wired ports only! 
the Wireless that this can provide is "N" and "G" (G is older, 54Mb)

Here is the breakdown of wireless standards

it might be easier if you can explain how many devices will be running at once?  (laptop, phone, tablet, smart TV, Roku, etc)  and what budget you would like to stick to

I have a laptop with a "802.11n" WLan thing, it seems and a phone or maybe two if I get visitors, so lets say two at most. Only one using a lot of internet at the same time, probably. The laptop is about three years old now.


My phone's quite high-end I believe, and less than half a year old, so I assume it has a modern wifi connection.

[detron]

Hmmm, I don't feel much wiser after looking around a bit...

It seems the main measuring point is either GHz or Mbit/s, right?


How many of those will I need for normal internet use and streaming films/tv/netflix to my laptop? Won't need much devices at the same time, for sure.

well, lets see what you NEED.

do you know what type of Wireless adapter your phone/laptop/WATEVER else has?  do any of them have Wireless "N"?
if none of them have "N"  then you can still get an "N" router and be ready for the future,  (or "AC" if you want to go high end)
I have and ASUS RT-N66U Gigabit Router.

BE CAREFUL  the GIGABIT references the wired ports only! 
the Wireless that this can provide is "N" and "G" (G is older, 54Mb)

Here is the breakdown of wireless standards

it might be easier if you can explain how many devices will be running at once?  (laptop, phone, tablet, smart TV, Roku, etc)  and what budget you would like to stick to

I have a laptop with a "802.11n" WLan thing, it seems and a phone or maybe two if I get visitors, so lets say two at most. Only one using a lot of internet at the same time, probably. The laptop is about three years old now.


My phone's quite high-end I believe, and less than half a year old, so I assume it has a modern wifi connection.

then I would buy a "N" router.  maybe decide on a budget, then start the shopping.  some examples

[bmot]

Thank you, sir


Any brands or routers I should avoid?

[detron]

Thank you, sir


Any brands or routers I should avoid?

I usually deal with ASUS or Linksys (Cisco),  others have mentioned D-Link.  I really do not have a DO NOT BUY _____ BRAND that I know of,  but read the reviews.

[zoidberg]

I tend to use Cisco if possible.

[detron]

I am sure I posted this in here already,  but this is such a hi-res version, that I wanted to share again.

this is a 4320 x 6120  poster showing computer hardware parts identification

http://www.radiocool.lt/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Computer_hardware_poster_1_7_by_Sonic840f.jpg

17.1 Meg, so be patiend

I actually have this printed on 13x19 Photo paper, and it is a nice poster for the office, as well as being very useful


here is a low res example

[Whoey]

that's pretty awesome, I think I may have examples of most of that in my junk collection 

[zoidberg]

I'm going to have to print that one out. 

[Sazabi]

Ok, so a friend's laptop has been having issues; it turned on yesterday and at boot went directly into chkdsk.  Fast forward almost 36 hours later, the file progression is still ticking by, but isn't that majorly excessive in terms of run time? o.O

[Whoey]

yeah that sounds pretty bad...

[Sazabi]

I figured as much. It had tried running in the past, but they thought it kept on freezing, so they did hard shutdowns while it cycled. I do know it found over 3.7 million orphaned or unindexed files.

[detron]

I figured as much. It had tried running in the past, but they thought it kept on freezing, so they did hard shutdowns while it cycled. I do know it found over 3.7 million orphaned or unindexed files.

that could simply be a corrupt master file table.   (which is usually a symptom of a failing hard drive)

add the drive to another computer (or boot up linux CD) and see if you can copy important files to a flash drive.

[Sazabi]

I figured as much. It had tried running in the past, but they thought it kept on freezing, so they did hard shutdowns while it cycled. I do know it found over 3.7 million orphaned or unindexed files.

that could simply be a corrupt master file table.   (which is usually a symptom of a failing hard drive)

add the drive to another computer (or boot up linux CD) and see if you can copy important files to a flash drive.

Will do, I copied seventy gigs of pictures and video from their old desktop; other than a smurfload of dust, it has a failing onboard graphics chip, at the minimum.  The laptop apparently had two antivirus programs, got bogged down (no wonder), and she tried to delete one of them... not uninstall, but delete. She may as well have sped it up by deleting System32....

[detron]

I figured as much. It had tried running in the past, but they thought it kept on freezing, so they did hard shutdowns while it cycled. I do know it found over 3.7 million orphaned or unindexed files.

that could simply be a corrupt master file table.   (which is usually a symptom of a failing hard drive)

add the drive to another computer (or boot up linux CD) and see if you can copy important files to a flash drive.

Will do, I copied seventy gigs of pictures and video from their old desktop; other than a smurfload of dust, it has a failing onboard graphics chip, at the minimum.  The laptop apparently had two antivirus programs, got bogged down (no wonder), and she tried to delete one of them... not uninstall, but delete. She may as well have sped it up by deleting System32....

    I have seen attempts at "getting rid of that folder I don't use"   

[Whoey]

yeah someone I know recently deleted "a compressed folder on his mac that was using all his space", turns out it was his user/home dir, and he wiped out his entire music library.  I did of course being the tech friend mention he should make a backup BEFORE clearing out anything, which like most people taking advice from tech minded friends ignored said advice and did what the hell he felt like anyways.

WHY BOTHER!?!? 

[derekmac]

Well, I want to delete my two Linux partitions and create just one and do a fresh install.  Will I be ok deleting them, joining them together and then installing?  They are the 39 and 25 gig partitions.

[detron]

Well, I want to delete my two Linux partitions and create just one and do a fresh install.  Will I be ok deleting them, joining them together and then installing?  They are the 39 and 25 gig partitions.

You should be fine.   The easiest way to do it is during the fresh linux install

sent from phone

[derekmac]

Ok thanks. I'll give it a go and report back.
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 1020 using Tapatalk

[danilo]

Well, I want to delete my two Linux partitions and create just one and do a fresh install.  Will I be ok deleting them, joining them together and then installing?  They are the 39 and 25 gig partitions.

You should be fine.   The easiest way to do it is during the fresh linux install

sent from phone

But they aren't adjacent! Is the EFI partition something you created when installing linux? (if so you can get rid of those 4 partitions, the two highlighted by you and the two in the middle (EFI and SWAP).

Beside, I would suggest you to have two separeted partitions for the OS and for your /home. This way it will be easier if/when reinstalling/changing distro.

15/20 Gb for the OS if enough, the rest can be your /home.

As for the swap, you will need it to be twice the amount of your RAM to suspend to disk (aka Hybernate) the system.

good luck and have fun !

[detron]

Well, I want to delete my two Linux partitions and create just one and do a fresh install.  Will I be ok deleting them, joining them together and then installing?  They are the 39 and 25 gig partitions.

You should be fine.   The easiest way to do it is during the fresh linux install

sent from phone

But they aren't adjacent! Is the EFI partition something you created when installing linux? (if so you can get rid of those 4 partitions, the two highlighted by you and the two in the middle (EFI and SWAP).

Beside, I would suggest you to have two separeted partitions for the OS and for your /home. This way it will be easier if/when reinstalling/changing distro.

15/20 Gb for the OS if enough, the rest can be your /home.

As for the swap, you will need it to be twice the amount of your RAM to suspend to disk (aka Hybernate) the system.

good luck and have fun !

tapatalk did not show me a picture!  thanks danilo,  I saw your reply and went to my computer, and you are correct on all accounts.
the ONLY warning I will give about a /home partition, is I saw someone who trusted it so much, that he did not back it up, and when installing a new distro,  selected his /home partition by mistake,  and lost everything.  that is not a normal issue,  but you know, be mindful of what you are doing

[derekmac]

But they aren't adjacent! Is the EFI partition something you created when installing linux? (if so you can get rid of those 4 partitions, the two highlighted by you and the two in the middle (EFI and SWAP).

Beside, I would suggest you to have two separeted partitions for the OS and for your /home. This way it will be easier if/when reinstalling/changing distro.

15/20 Gb for the OS if enough, the rest can be your /home.

As for the swap, you will need it to be twice the amount of your RAM to suspend to disk (aka Hybernate) the system.

good luck and have fun !

I honestly can't remember if I created that EFI partation.  Hmm, I guess I'll need a 32gig swap than?

[derekmac]

If I delete those four partitions (haven't hit apply yet), this is what I'll get.

[detron]

If I delete those four partitions (haven't hit apply yet), this is what I'll get.

I have no idea what EFI system partition is,  I am afraid to delete it