Simple backup option non-techy person

On 5/3/20 9:34 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
[...]

I doubt we'll get him [Chris] to look at Linux. If the laptop was for
him, maybe, but it's a family friend's laptop.

Like you, he already has *real* UNIX, so why would he want to look at
some pretend Unix-like thingy!? :-)

But, does he know how to use it... G

I need someone to clone me, so I'd have time for all my computer wishes,
plus day to day life activities. ROFL


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 5/3/20 9:42 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
I've got Linux Mint 19.x with xfce desktop on an old computer, but Mint
has outgrown the abilities of the hardware.

Modern XFCE is more demanding of resources than the past because of gtk3
and other factors.

Give MX Linux a shot. Altho' it is also XFCE, it is lighter. But if
the hardware is older than MX Linux needs, then try its lighter sibling
AntiX.

The lightweight distro/s can do just fine w/ combinations of parts of
LXDE and some window manager as opposed to a conventional desktop.

Surprisingly, modern XFCE is now heavier than KDE. Gnome is the worst
in that regard, and Cinnamon which I like needs some resources.
Something like XFCE but slightly lighter is Mate.

I have an old 32bit 1G laptop that previously did fine w/ Mint 17 XFCE,
but now is antix or mx which both come in 32bit arch.

I would like to find something that is really easy for newbies to learn,
which is why I like the Cinnamon desktop. Especially the seniors.

But, I never have any takers. :-( I think people just listen to their
friends who say you have to have this program or that program. That
used to be true, which is how I feel, but no longer. Especially with
most people migrating to the cloud, whether they know it or not.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:
I would like to find something that is really easy for newbies to learn,
which is why I like the Cinnamon desktop.Â* Especially the seniors.

Mint's Cinnamon is my fave; but I'm booting different live linuxes all
the time. Usually I'm interested in how modest their resource usage is
to the live desktop, how they look in their default mode, how well they
handle their documentation and ease of configuration.

Some people LUV the myriad ways they can configure in terms of themes
and all that jazz, but that experimentation part has never appealed to
me like others.

I don't think it is useful for someone who is completely unfamiliar w/
computers or Windows to try to find their favorite linux, but it is
probably useful for those who've used Win before to have some similarity
to such as Win7 and a bottom panel and conventional menu, and windows
that work like Win as opposed to Mac.

But, I never have any takers.Â* :-(Â* I think people just listen to their
friends who say you have to have this program or that program.Â* That
used to be true, which is how I feel, but no longer.Â* Especially with
most people migrating to the cloud, whether they know it or not.

Sometimes some program has an appeal in spite of all that is logical.
When I was predominately on Win, Outlook Express for mail and news was
my favorite news agent, in spite of the fact that I needed all kinds of
3rd party crutches for it, SpamPal, NFilter/NewsProxy, Yproxy,
OEQuoteFix, and maybe more. And, in those days I was handling and
dissecting spam regularly for spamcop discussions. OE's integration w/
IE and Win vulnerabilities made default use of OE w/ spam in its inbox
hazardous for one's cyberhealth :-)

And even now, I have an old XP over there which came w/ an ancient MS
Works, which I actually use more often for light tasks which involve
printing than I do a decent current LibreOffice suite. I haven't had a
modern MS Office for decades, maybe since the one I bought w/ W95.


--
Mike Easter

In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

Supporting someone - especially remotely - with an OS which is not
your main OS is IMNSHO [1] A Very Bad Idea (TM).

To some extent, doesn't this depend on what type of support you are
providing?

I try to teach the basic computer skills, the things I think Mike Easter
was referring to. Those core things that apply to all computers.
Proper file management, what a word processor is and does, not how to
use MS Word. Etc., etc., etc.

that differs widely depending on the platform, much of which is not
needed.

Mike Easter wrote:
KeePod was doing their thing with NGO such as in the monster slums of
Kenya - Methare, but then keepod went astray with their androidy tech
conversion.

If one wants to read all the raves about keepod that were going on in
2014, then a simple search on keepod will get that done.

But, about the time I considered keepod to have gone astray, other
anti-keepod articles such as this one cropped up:

https://www.ictworks.org/keepod-wast...ux-on-a-stick/
Keepod: Wasting $40,000 to Reinvent Linux on a Stick


And that was when keepod was 'still' a fairly conventional linux, before
it went android. The comments section is also useful and contains a msg
by a keepod dev early in the process of their going android (or thinking
they were going to).

However, his 'inspiration' re android doesn't begin to address the
hurdles that folks have encountered who put together androidy systems
for x86 architecture for more years. I've seen android-x86 and their
struggles. Going the other way works much better; putting linux on ARM
devices, which arm just keeps getting better.


"This is a project to port Android open source project to x86 platform, "

Or maybe the keepod people and their ngo friends decided to recycle old
arm phones into Nairobi's Mathare slums instead of USB sticks.

--
Mike Easter

Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/3/20 9:25 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Oops! Case of foot-in-mouth! I didn't realize that Chris is using
MacOS, so probably/possibly Windows, Linux and ChromeOS are all more or
less 'alien' to him.

I don't remember Chris saying what he uses.

"It's all in the headers!" :-) (User-Agent

But, I obviously use MacOS. VBG

That's OK, some of my best friends are Mac users! :-)

On 5/3/20 1:14 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/3/20 9:25 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Oops! Case of foot-in-mouth! I didn't realize that Chris is using
MacOS, so probably/possibly Windows, Linux and ChromeOS are all more or
less 'alien' to him.

I don't remember Chris saying what he uses.

"It's all in the headers!" :-) (User-Agent

I never look at the headers unless I'm trying to solve a problem

But, the headers won't solve my current problem. Finding someone to do
my work for me! Rather like Tom Sawyer finding someone to whitewash the
fencs! LOL

But, I obviously use MacOS. VBG

That's OK, some of my best friends are Mac users! :-)

They must A) think you're really special, or B) you're paying them
pretty good!!! ROFL



--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 5/3/20 11:26 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
I would like to find something that is really easy for newbies to learn,
which is why I like the Cinnamon desktop.Â* Especially the seniors.

Mint's Cinnamon is my fave; but I'm booting different live linuxes all
the time. Usually I'm interested in how modest their resource usage is
to the live desktop, how they look in their default mode, how well they
handle their documentation and ease of configuration.

These days, #1 on my list... Can I read the screen. Mint's default
color scheme has become a problem. As well as screen resolution. I'm
using a 1920X1200, but I run at 1600X1000.

After this, the documentation and configuration are next on my list.

Some people LUV the myriad ways they can configure in terms of themes
and all that jazz, but that experimentation part has never appealed to
me like others.

Now wishing anything negative, but I'll bet if your eyes start getting
bad, you're priorities will shift. G

I don't think it is useful for someone who is completely unfamiliar w/
computers or Windows to try to find their favorite linux, but it is
probably useful for those who've used Win before to have some similarity
to such as Win7 and a bottom panel and conventional menu, and windows
that work like Win as opposed to Mac.

Xfce reminds me of XP. Haven't experimented with a distro that looks
like a Mac.

For those completely unfamiliar, it would be pointless to find a
favorite. You need some experience for that. I'm thinking more along
the lines where someone has an old computer that just doesn't quite cut
it anymore. And if they are trying the cloud, maybe installing Linux
would save them a dollar or two.

But, I never have any takers.Â* :-(Â* I think people just listen to their
friends who say you have to have this program or that program.Â* That
used to be true, which is how I feel, but no longer.Â* Especially with
most people migrating to the cloud, whether they know it or not.

Sometimes some program has an appeal in spite of all that is logical.
When I was predominately on Win, Outlook Express for mail and news was
my favorite news agent, in spite of the fact that I needed all kinds of
3rd party crutches for it, SpamPal, NFilter/NewsProxy, Yproxy,
OEQuoteFix, and maybe more. And, in those days I was handling and
dissecting spam regularly for spamcop discussions. OE's integration w/
IE and Win vulnerabilities made default use of OE w/ spam in its inbox
hazardous for one's cyberhealth :-)

But you're not the average user. Folks I know are usually those that
just take it the way it is, and never even ask themselves if there's a
better way.

And even now, I have an old XP over there which came w/ an ancient MS
Works, which I actually use more often for light tasks which involve
printing than I do a decent current LibreOffice suite. I haven't had a
modern MS Office for decades, maybe since the one I bought w/ W95.

--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:
These days, #1 on my list...Â* Can I read the screen.Â* Mint's default
color scheme has become a problem.Â* As well as screen resolution.Â* I'm
using a 1920X1200, but I run at 1600X1000.

There's more than one way to fix making things bigger. I like to keep
the monitor's native resolution and make things bigger another way.

If the colors are problematic, change the theme. If the fonts are too
small, adjust the font size in whichever different places you want them
bigger.

There's a curiously named default application in Mint and some other
distros that is very useful. Qt (now 5) is a toolkit that is used for
KDE or LXQt, but not the GTK (now 3) based desktops such as gnome,
cinnamon, mate, xfce, etc. However, in those gtk/s there is an app
named Qt5 settings, which is actually 'made for' gtk desktop tweaking,
not Qt (place an interrobang here). If you are tweaking a mint such as
cinnamon or xfce or mate, take a look at it.

I might be able to tell you more of my own eyeball stories than you have
or even would want to hear :-)

For many many decades I bought my eyeglasses off the shelf and never
visited an eye or lens person. Once I decided to go that professional
lens fitting route not so very long ago, I moved up the chain from one
eye surgery to another. I have another appt for f/u this month.


--
Mike Easter

On 5/3/20 7:29 PM, Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
These days, #1 on my list...Â* Can I read the screen.Â* Mint's default
color scheme has become a problem.Â* As well as screen resolution.Â* I'm
using a 1920X1200, but I run at 1600X1000.

There's more than one way to fix making things bigger. I like to keep
the monitor's native resolution and make things bigger another way.

I know them all! LOL The problem with them is they are lacking in some
way or another. Since this is the W10 newsgroup...

CTRL with the + or - key... Doesn't work universally. Usually only on
the data in a window, but not the window itself. Not at all for the
desktop. Each windows has to be done separately. And, often it doesn't
"stick" with a program window when it is closed and then reopened.

The magnifier... 2 useful modes, one that's like a magnifying glass
called Lens (adjustable in W10), and full screen. There's a 3rd one
called Docked, but I've not played with it much.

As a magnifying glass, works great to read specific areas, such as the
fine print at the bottom of the contract. But do you really want to use
it to write the Great American Novel?

Full screen...I first saw this in the Windows 3.x era. Thought it was
pretty neat, your desktop slides around until the part you want is
visible. But it didn't take long for me to decide I didn't want to look
at my desktop, the paper I was writing, whatever, through a porthole. I
ditched that back then, and I didn't need the magnification then. Back
then, the feature came with the graphics card in the computer, not part
of the OS. And the card maker called it Virtual Desktop. I saw this
effect somewhere else too, probably some program on the Atari.

Make text on the screen larger... Usually the choices are 100%, 125%,
and up. Not t hat much difference than the magnifier, except...
Sometimes a program will put up a dialogue box in the middle of the
screen, with one or more buttons at the bottom of the box that you have
to click on. And those buttons are off the bottom of the screen, and
you can't scroll down to click on them. I see this on small laptop screens.

Only the magnifier with it's downsides affect the ribbons in programs.
I've not come across any utility that affects those @$%^@$@#& ribbons.

But... If you are willing to buy a larger monitor, then move down a
screen resolution or two, maintaining the correct aspect ration, you
have none of the above issues. I've done this for people, and they are
such happy campers, enjoying being able to read the screen without some
kind of farting around. The only negative I've found is if you use
rulers. You won't measure 1" between those marks. But this is also not
universal, once in a while it does work. I don't know if it's the
software program, graphics drivers, or a combo that makes it work.

If the colors are problematic, change the theme.

Colors.... What a nightmare this is.

Let's start with the fact that not all LCD/LED moinitors can display all
the colors. I've seen monitors that cannot display certain shades of
yellow, blue, or grey. If you want to see those colors, dang well
better have a good IPS panel. Been there, done that. Both of my main
monitors are IPS panels.

I had a website where the main area of interest was a gorgeous
tan/sand/light shade of brown, if you get the idea. Designed on my 2009
iMac. My Dell U2412M monitor did and excellent job of displaying that
color. But I've seen other screens where that area is white, or some
shade between white and what it's supposed to be.

Themes... Eye candy for interior designers, using various shades of the
same color. Be it shades of blue, brown, whatever. But sometimes the
shades are so close together, I can't tell the difference. High
contrast themes often go to far, hard on the eyes. That's not good either.

If the fonts are too
small, adjust the font size in whichever different places you want them
bigger.

You can't do this to the text in ribbons. :-(

IIRC, you can't do this to the menus, either.

Rt. click on the desktop, choose personalize. That used to bring up the
color adjustments found in the Control Panel. For the icons on the
desktop, you could change the font, font size, color, bold, italics,
etc. Not any more. It's gone.

Yet, you could do all of this and more in Windows 3.x to make things
easier to see. Now, we have computers that can do more, but they remove
some really useful features while telling you about their accessibility
features. You could change the font, color, size, etc. in the system
windows, easily. Now, you need something like WinAero Tweaker, or know
how to access the settings to do this.

I look for things the normal user can do to help them use their
computer. And those things get to be fewer and fewer.

I do like the Night Light setting, though. The same feature is called
Night Shift on the Mac. Don't know if it's in any of the Linux distros.

There's a curiously named default application in Mint and some other
distros that is very useful. Qt (now 5) is a toolkit that is used for
KDE or LXQt, but not the GTK (now 3) based desktops such as gnome,
cinnamon, mate, xfce, etc. However, in those gtk/s there is an app
named Qt5 settings, which is actually 'made for' gtk desktop tweaking,
not Qt (place an interrobang here). If you are tweaking a mint such as
cinnamon or xfce or mate, take a look at it.

Is it easily accessible and understandable for the normal computer user?

I might be able to tell you more of my own eyeball stories than you have
or even would want to hear :-)

Cataract surgery in both eyes. Wet macular degeneration in the right
eye. Stopped it with the first treatment in 2013. Dry macular
degeneration in both eyes, but stable for a long time. Really makes
typing a pain. Astigmatism too. Fortunately, better off than one
reader of this newsgroup.

For many many decades I bought my eyeglasses off the shelf and never
visited an eye or lens person. Once I decided to go that professional
lens fitting route not so very long ago, I moved up the chain from one
eye surgery to another. I have another appt for f/u this month.

I get an eye exam every 4 months. I religiously take my Areds 2
vitamins every day for the macular degeneration. I've worn glasses
since the 7th grade.
--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 03/05/2020 15:48, Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Order the laptop online, drop ship it to you. Install TV, make the
data usage settings, mail it to her.

But we have to get Chris up to speed on using and supporting linux first
:-)Â* But that should go pretty quickly.

I've been using linux for 20 years. For work and at home. I /know/ it's
not suitable for her. Or me for that matter. If I gave her linux I would
then become the *only* person she can turn to for help. I don't want to
be in that position.

On 03/05/2020 14:47, Mike Easter wrote:
Chris wrote:
She has a 10GB monthly cap which should
be plenty for most months.

You are saying she has 10G data plan for her phone I gather.

She *has*Â* an internet service. Not sure why you think she hasn't? Just
because it's not unlimited broadband.

Well; I don't equate a phone's data plan with what I would be looking
for, but one could make it do 'something'.

But, I don't know if you can count 10G of phone data plan as being the
equivalent of 10G of non-phone/ computer internet connectivity at 4G/LTE
speed.Â* That would require decent tethering capabilities of the phone,
the computer, and the provider.

Your lack of understanding of how smartphones work is showing. There's
nothing special required other than a decent mobile signal. Why would
mobile 10GB be any different from landline 10GB?


But, I look at all this discussion from the perspective of someone who
needs no cell data but unlimited broadband cable at the lowest tier my
provider offers of 200 Mbps.

Lucky you! The latest report from the UK shows 82% have 100Mbps
connections and 34% are 10Mbps. For some areas mobile speeds are
actually faster than the landline.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-an...rformance-2018

On 03/05/2020 15:29, Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/3/20 6:57 AM, Chris wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/2/20 10:11 PM, Paul wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
oops.

Mike Easter wrote:

I don't like to refer to yt/s or click on yt/s that other people
refer, but here's one anyway.Â* It is 40 min by an inexperienced
hardware reviewer, so don't even go unless you are actually
interested
in options other than Win10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmFDCZcxM0

That is a Debian Mate instead of the current Manjaro KDE.

If I was shopping today, the "size" of updates for
the prospective OS would be the question I'd want
answered. In this case, the recipient is on mobile data,
and we can't have an OS "with a huge appetite".

But with any OS, how can you know what the future will be?Â* Both W10 and
Macs eventually have a huge update.Â* I just got one a couple days ago
for Mojave.

On win 10 you can limit data usage. Not sure how that works in practice,
but we'll see. I'm hoping she'll be able to manage her usage so that she
can update at times that suit her. She has a 10GB monthly cap which
should
be plenty for most months.

Here's a couple of web sites that may help you.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/man...10-data-usage/

https://www.auslogics.com/en/article...ed-connection/


https://www.guidingtech.com/reduce-w...10-data-usage/

THanks!

But none of this controls what the user does.Â* What happens if/when she
discovers You Tube videos, music sources, streaming, etc.Â* All of these
are probably useless at the library, as I'll bet she's limited to the
amount of time she can use the library computer before being
automatically logged off.Â* My libraries limit the session to 1 hour.Â* A
friend's library is 15 minutes.

But W10 keeps kicking out updates, and that can be a problem if they
aren't installed.Â* I had a friend who gave me his W10 laptop, telling me
he wanted his OS reinstalled because it was so slow.Â* And, boy, was it.
He couldn't use it because it was trying to download and install more
updates than I bothered to try to count.Â* My internet speed is slow
(fast enough for me, though) and not even offered any more.Â* It took 22
hours for it to finish updating.Â* Then, it ran fine.

I can envision this happening if you enforce data usage and she
discovers all the things she couldn't do at the library.

I agree. She's quite a disciplined person so I think it's OK, but we'll
just have to see.

And really, is there an OS that fits that description ?
You couldn't run Windows 10 on Hughes Satellite (a service
with a small cap). I would think that the Linuxes would have
a decent appetite too. I've had some 500MB sessions on
setups here with Linux (Ubuntu Fossa Beta).

If the recipient had more modern amenities at hand,
like a broadband service, these concerns would be
a non issue.

One question none of us have asked Chris is, why not have her get
internet service?

She *has* an internet service. Not sure why you think she hasn't? Just
because it's not unlimited broadband.

My apologies, Chris, my statement did not accurately reflect what I meant.

I mean, get internet service with no data limits.Â* Or, get rid of the
limits she has now.

The reality is that's not where we're at, so is not helpful. We may get
there, but baby steps...

Chris wrote:
If I gave her linux I would then become the *only* person she can turn
to for help.

I never recommended linux to a couple of people (elsewhere) that it was
a pain to support on Windows. Doing it w/ the phone was misery; doing
it w/ TeamViewer was OK when that would work for the problem, but of
course not for such as connectivity problems.

One of those people now deceased did just fine while visiting and using
a linux system here; the other stopped needing help when she went to
chromebook.

The guy who died considered going Mac, but I didn't know who was going
to support him -- even tho' I figured he would need less support, I
didn't know where it was going to come from, as I didn't have a Mac
system to look at.

--
Mike Easter

Chris wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

Well; I don't equate a phone's data plan with what I would be looking
for, but one could make it do 'something'.

But, I don't know if you can count 10G of phone data plan as being the
equivalent of 10G of non-phone/ computer internet connectivity at
4G/LTE speed.Â* That would require decent tethering capabilities of the
phone, the computer, and the provider.

Your lack of understanding of how smartphones work is showing. There's
nothing special required other than a decent mobile signal. Why would
mobile 10GB be any different from landline 10GB?

Well, I do /have/ a smart phone w/o a plan which I use its smartness and
wifi connectivity and bluetooth for a number of useful purposes. The
rare circumstance I need a mobile phone and use the old clamshell w/ a
plan only for voice and receiving text. And it has bluetooth.

If I'm going to send/receive text from home, I use a desktop computer
and fullsize keyboard and googlevoice, not a cell phone.

The constraints point I was making about tethering requires a tethering
capable phone, which not all are, and a mobile provider who allows
tethering which not all do. The tethering capabilities of the computer
would be its wifi, which not all 'computers' have, but a laptop would.


--
Mike Easter