Changed disk to SSD

I've had a solid, reliable Dell Inspiron 5558 laptop for 5-6 years now.  Just over a year ago I bought an Acer Chromebook 715 and I was very happy with it.  Like this Dell laptop, the Acer is a well-built system.  Like most Chromebook models, it has solid state drive (SSD) technology.  Unlike my previous Lenovo Chromebook N22 (which was a good unit too), the Lenovo was a low powered device; the Chromebook 715 is much more modern and fast.

A few months after I got the Acer Chromebook 715 I found another good deal on an Acer Aspire 5 A515-55.  This model was an end of the model run, and was trimmer, thinner, and lighter than the Chromebook, but one thing it had in common with the Chromebook was the SSD.

With that background, back to the Dell - it's been a very good device and it's still solid, and it still works, but compared to the other systems, it's been getting to the point that only antiX with a lean window manager worked well (with reasonable speed and response).  Though many distributions still run well, they show their age on the Dell.  Processor-wise, it has plenty of process slots and plenty of memory, and gobs of disk space too, the perfect place to test.  What it was lacking was speed.

I decided to get a Kingston A400 SSD; reportedly ten times faster than a standard 7200 RPM traditional hard drive.  I know that this isn't the TOP END SSD; I rarely buy TOP END, especially now that I'm retired, but I do look for reasonable deals, and this one fit my budget.

Here I am today on the Dell - with the A400 SSD installed, and with 3-4 distributions installed.  Now, with antiX 21 Base runit installed and using Ungoogled Chromium to write this, I can report that this system, while never to be confused with a super fast machine, is still the "stable workhorse" that I purchased, but now it has "new life".  I kept the hard drive; should this SSD fail, I can always either get another SSD or reinsert the original hard drive.  Meanwhile, this machine is running very well and boots much faster than it did previously.

Debian 11 "bullseye" released

 I am running right now on a Live instance of Debian 11 "Bullseye", which was released late in the evening of Saturday, August 14, 2021.

Quoting part of the release Email:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Debian Project                              https://www.debian.org/

Debian 11 "bullseye" released                          press@debian.org

August 14th, 2021              https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20210814

------------------------------------------------------------------------

After 2 years, 1 month, and 9 days of development, the Debian project is

proud to present its new stable version 11 (code name "bullseye"), which

will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of

the Debian Security team [1] and the Debian Long Term Support [2] team.

    1: https://security-team.debian.org/

    2: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

Debian 11 "bullseye" ships with several desktop applications and

environments. Amongst others it now includes the desktop environments:

  * Gnome 3.38,

  * KDE Plasma 5.20,

  * LXDE 11,

  * LXQt 0.16,

  * MATE 1.24,

  * Xfce 4.16.

 I downloaded the edition containing a live instance with Xfce 4.16.

I have not yet experimented much with the released version, but I am running it live now, and I also used test versions of Debian Bullseye, antiX 21 a2 and b1, both based on Bullseye, and MX Linux 21 Beta 1, also based on Bullseye; all of them have worked well for me.

 

antiX releases: 19.4

Earlier I mentioned that the antiX distribution had two releases in development, antiX 19.4 and antiX 21.  The first of these has packages from the Debian 10 "Buster" release, which is mature and has many final release updates. 

Because of this, antiX 19.4 development completed and antiX 19.4 was released on May 22, 2021.

DistroWatch.com has an article containing the announcement and release details at Distribution Release: antiX 19.4

Two upcoming antiX releases: 19.4 and 21

 antiX 19.4 and antiX 21 are currently test releases.  The antiX 19.4 test is an incremental update to antiX 19.3.  I do not expect that it will need a lot of work and testing.  There are just a few things that need fixing; several of them have already been fixed.

The antiX 21 effort, on the other hand, also depends on quite a bit of reworked infrastructure involving major updates to the next Debian release, and also to the fact that the current Gtk release is updating to Gtk+ 3.  The additional switch to Python 3 also takes a lot of rework, so this is a bit more of a work in progress.  Nevertheless, something that is not new to antiX is that whenever there is a new test release, quite a bit actually works long before everything is perfect, so these are outstanding examples of solid systems.  As good as they are, they'd be even better with more testing and testers to do the testing.

Using antiX Live snapshot images

 antiX has the capability to generate snapshot images and also has the ability to remaster an image.

You may either install these images to a hard drive or you can write them to a removable USB drive.

Sometimes I do both.  My current images have been BOTH remastered AND snapshots have been created.

What's cool about these images is that they can serve as a backup for whatever you've done, especially when you create a USB copy.

There are also multiple ways to create them: you can save your entire working environment, including your personal files.  This is good for the backup capability.  Alternatively you can specify which directories to omit, or you can build only a "general" system version, plus combine snapshot and remastered images by repeatedly building copies as your system is changed.

This is the most flexible and practical way I've seen to combine backup and portable, movable images.  Both antiX and MX Linux have similar capabilities, but antiX does more with the light snapshot and remastered images.

Sparky Linux image: sparkylinux-2021.03-i686-rescue.iso

 I'm here with a "rescue image" of Sparky Linux.

It didn't come with much, but since it is Debian-based, I ran an apt update, then an apt full-upgrade to bring the available packages up to date, then, to see what else I could get, I ran apt install firefox chromium and fortunately, both of them were available, so now I am here with Firefox 86.0.1 (32-bit).  Most of the time I grab the 64-bit instance, but this is a 686 image, so it captured the 32-bit image, even though I have a 64-bit Dell Inspiron 5558 laptop.

CloudReady by Neverware - Chrome OS old laptop alternative

 Google's Chrome OS isn't available for consumers to install, so I went with the next best thing, Neverware's CloudReady Chromium OS. It looks and feels nearly identical to Chrome OS, but can be installed on just about any laptop or desktop, Windows or Mac. And, although Neverware has paid versions for enterprise and education users, its Home Edition is free for personal use.

Complete article on CNET @ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-an-awesome-chromebook-for-your-kids/

Not just for kids; I got this working nicely on an old Lenovo Thinkpad X201.

antiX Bullseye Alpha Testing

 I downloaded and installed an early testing image using antiX with a new image that utilizes Debian's Bullseye Alpha.

I also downloaded the Debian Alpha 3 build and installed it.  The antiX one was super easy.  The one I got from Debian was fine too, much bigger in size, took a while to copy, load, and install.  It also took me three attempts because the first two builds did not include the "non-free" wireless firmware that most distributions include.  I was careful to look for the "non-free" Debian 64-bit builds; then I was successful; I never have those problems when I install antiX or MX Linux, and I usually don't have problems when I get the right Debian images; guess it's been a while and I'm getting "rusty" at remembering the details; I guess it is because I run these things for a couple of years and sometimes forget the details needed to get it right the first time!  Anyway, both Debian and antiX have at least one new build based off an early "Alpha" testing phase and the good news is that they both work fine.