Solved Dell Inspiron 16 7640 --cannot install Fedora??

[splott]

. Don't ask me how you'd go about it, though; I've used Puppy's lightweight ROX-filer/JWM combo for so many years I can almost tear it down & re-build it in my sleep.....but I'm totally lost when it comes to "full" DEs.

Wouldn't know where to begin with those....

 

[wizardfromoz]

...and the INaction item: patiently wait for @wizardfromoz to wake up, since he's got an older version of this very machine.

Well, I am onboard, but nothing new to offer, yet.

My Inspiron is not a 2-in-1, just regular laptop.

 

[splott]

Well, I am onboard, but nothing new to offer, yet.

My Inspiron is not a 2-in-1, just regular laptop.

and what distro are you using?
did you have any complications with installing?
really i'm not getting far enough to encounter issues with autorotate, it's mostly only relevant because that's why I'm sticking with Fedora...

 

[wizardfromoz]

...and what distro are you using?

See Point 5. in my signature.

Cheers

 

[splott]

See Point 5. in my signature.

Cheers

you have installed ALL distros on that specific laptop? and had trouble with zero of the installs? that seems unlikely...

Ok let's try a different question. BIOS on your Dell, what version is it? Apparently there was an update in March, to 1.11.0, do you have that one? I looked up how to downgrade the BIOS, it doesn't look too hard, but I'd like to have an actual goal...

I'm also going to grab ISOs for Ubuntu for testing...probably try cinnamon and mate, I'd like to have the same distro on both computers in the end and those look compatible with the older lappy too...

 

[splott]

Actually. MATE Ubuntu DOES have the widget on the bar across the top for orientation switching. We may have a winner.

 

[MikeWalsh]

I'm assuming that wherever an icon for auto-rotate is showing up, all it will be is an executable script running the appropriate terminal commands in any case.....and "tarted-up" with an icon assigned to it to make it look better.

This is how JWM does it, anyhoo.....you're essentially clicking directly on the actual script, since Puppy's 'desktop' is in reality nothing more than the 'pinboard' extension belonging to the ROX-filer file manager, which merely 'extends' the file-system onto the desktop via a grid.

DEs probably abstract things a bit by a couple of 'layers', launching that script via an abbreviated .desktop entry instead.....but the principle remains the same.


Mike.

 

[Condobloke]

you have installed ALL distros on that specific laptop? and had trouble with zero of the installs? that seems unlikely...

I would advise caution. We are talking about the @wizardfromoz. The'wizard' portion of that name is not to be taken lightly.

 

[splott]

I'm assuming that wherever an icon for auto-rotate is showing up, all it will be is an executable script running the appropriate terminal commands in any case.....and "tarted-up" with an icon assigned to it to make it look better.

Mike.

lol. probably. it's in the display settings, there's the regular display settings and then there's a box to click that says "show on the panel". and i get a little clickable icon that lets me choose which way is up. I wasn't looking for anything fancy, this will do just fine.

 

[MikeRocor]

Don't ask me how you'd go about it, though; I've used Puppy's lightweight ROX-filer/JWM combo for so many years I can almost tear it down & re-build it in my sleep.....but I'm totally lost when it comes to "full" DEs.

Are you -sure- you're not me? I've been using JWM, and tweaking the config to my liking, for so long that I'd be starting from scratch with any of the "real" DEs. I'm sure I'd muddle my way through, but why?

Thanks to you mentioning it, I just now took a look at ROX-Filer and, at a glance, don't like the look of it. I'd stick with emelfm2 except it's been "unsupported" for so long that shtuff's starting to break. Right now I have a half dozen file managers loaded, trying to decide which I like best and I have no doubt I'll settle on one that I like and find that it, too, is no longer in development. Grr...

 

[wizardfromoz]

Apparently there was an update in March, to 1.11.0, do you have that one?

I am using 1.14.0.

On

...and had trouble with zero of the installs? that seems unlikely...

That may seems a little frustrating for you at this point in time.

My rig shipped with a 256 GB M2 SSD and a 2 TB SATA Seagate drive internally. In addition I have a mains powered Western Digital My Book 25EE 4 TB, connected with USB 3.0. I took ownership on it on 08/01/2018.

Within a day or two I had 40 Linux on it, restored from the WD using Timeshift.

Over time I built up to 89 distros, but found that a bit unwieldy on 16 GB RAM, so I reduced down to the 60s.

Install issues?I had one back around 2017/2018 with Debian not recognising some of my drivers. Our late, great, Super Moderator Alan Rochester @arochester told me about Debian's non-free iso and that did the trick for me. Debian have since incorporated that into their standard iso for ease of install.

Wizard.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@MikeRocor :-

Heh. Oh, the ROX-filer/JWM combo has a LOT going for it in so many ways.....it tends to appeal to that small subset of Linux users who are inveterate "tweakers" (like yours truly).

Yes, I agree; ROX does take some getting used to.....especially if you're absolutely 'wedded' to using copy/paste to move stuff around, and are used to only having one window open at a time.

ROX essentially does everything via drag'n'drop; it's a 'graphical' FM in the truest sense of the word. Although Windoze has had drag'n'drop capability since time out of mind - probably started with XP, I guess - I never used it, and always manipulated files the long-winded, old-fashioned way all the many years I ran it.

ROX works best with a decent sized display, if you've got room for multiple windows. I often explored other FMs with the old Compaq desktop rig, since my screen real estate was limited to just 1024x768.....but since 'upgrading' to 1080p with the HP Pavilion desktop, I've stuck with ROX.....drag'n'drop works really well here, since ROX will auto-resize every window it opens to 'fit' whatever it finds in that location (I frequently have a dozen or so small ROX windows open on the desktop at a time if I'm doing a lot of file-transfer stuff)......and with using half-a-dozen workspaces as standard (6 'desktops', if you like) I can dedicate a couple to file-manipulation while doing other stuff on the remaining 4.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Nah, I've stuck with ROX. I've gotten SO used to all its wee quirks & foibles I simply can't imagine using anything else.....and on the odd occasions when I use a more 'traditional' FM I find 'em SO 'clunky' & awkward to use that I cannot wait to return to the sanity of the 'kennels'! The only other one I could live with, I guess, would be PCManFM.....because it's possible to drag'n'drop betwixt multiple windows there, too.

We're all the same, though. We all develop our preferred workflows as we discover what works best for us.


Mike.

 

[MikeRocor]

...it tends to appeal to that small subset of Linux users who are inveterate "tweakers" (like yours truly).

It never ceases to amaze me that the tweakers aren't the majority of linux users. So many just change their wallpaper and show off their "customized" system.

Although Windoze has had drag'n'drop capability since time out of mind - probably started with XP, I guess

I'm pretty sure Windows had "dragon droppings" way before XP - even back to Win95.


I have a couple of things I want that will set a file manager apart:

• Multiple panes, whether a "tree" pane and a file list pane or multiple file list panes or both. Multiple -windows- working together isn't a complete non-starter for me, but definitely not what I really want.
• The ability to add buttons with arbitrary actions to the toolbar (and no, adding custom items to a right-click menu is not what I'm looking for)

I'm fooling around with a bunch of file managers right now and, while it's not the nicest looking, "fluff" is currently the closest one I've found to being a replacement for emelfm2.

(Sorry if any of the above seems incoherent - I was falling asleep.)

 

[MikeWalsh]

It never ceases to amaze me that the tweakers aren't the majority of linux users. So many just change their wallpaper and show off their "customized" system.

Oh God, yes. How can ya call a change of wallpaper & an icon set "customisation"...? Yet I suppose that for some folks, even that counts as a departure from the norm.....and they can feel quite pleased with themselves for doing so. We all have different levels of involvement with, and interest in this stuff.

The possibilities with Linux really are "endless". It's entirely down to the individual as to how far they want to run with that....

(shrug...)


Mike.

 

[splott]

I am using 1.14.0.

On

That may seems a little frustrating for you at this point in time.

My rig shipped with a 256 GB M2 SSD and a 2 TB SATA Seagate drive internally. In addition I have a mains powered Western Digital My Book 25EE 4 TB, connected with USB 3.0. I took ownership on it on 08/01/2018.

lol. yes, frustrating. Also I was wondering what you use for your daily-driver needs. your favorite if you will.

and apparently you don't have a machine from the same line as me like I thought. mine literally doesn't have room for a sata drive inside. I didn't realize they'd changed that much. I've got a Lenovo p52 sitting in the living room to sell off, I contemplate keeping it cuz it's got room for 2 SSDs and a SATA, but it's a already a BEAST, with all those in there i'd probably weigh 6+ lbs, and that's too much for me to juggle around. (my office space is taken up with work stuff so my "play" computers live in the living room. and no, that's not great. <lol>)

I tried ..probably 4-5 distros? on the old Yoga X1. That one is lightweight and useful for portability and testing, but it's a 14" screen and that is a bit constraining. Esp by comparison to work, where I have two large monitors and could use more if I could figure out how to fit them. So I figured, that's a great machine to test distros, it's still convertible so I could test those features...did not count on the Dell being so stubborn about installing my carefully chosen distro! But I can still use the Yoga for reading, the 14" screen is not such a problem and that one does autorotate.

I've got MATE ubuntu installed on the big Dell now, so far it's really nice, got plenty of customizations but usable out of the box. only actual issue I'm having is window flickering (disappearing for a split second) when scrolling on certain windows, like the App Center, haven't had time to work on that.

As far as BIOS goes, it hasn't offered me 1.14.0 yet. we'll see, i guess.

@MikeWalsh back in the old days I was a Slackware user, so you know I know about customization. But now I'm older, I've got a job that involves troubleshooting and tweaking all day long, I don't want to do it at night, and I've got about a million other things to take up my time. (I dearly wish I'd bought a house that just needed maintenance, not replacing things that should've been replaced years ago, and finishing things, same. I'm so tired. 100% of the time.) So I'll do my customizations as I need them, don't think I won't, but ...I need something that's fairly smooth. <sigh>

 

[splott]

lol. I think I just fixed the flickering thing but I'm not sure what I was doing, there were instructions to go between wayland and X11, they involved a gear on the login screen, the gear wasn't there but instead there was an option about "xsession". I clicked that and then logged in and the flickering hasn't reoccurred. but not sure what I just did..?

 

[wizardfromoz]

...and then logged in and the flickering hasn't reoccurred. but not sure what I just did..?

If it works, fine.

I use the xorg (X11) product except where there is no choice. Wayland is still a work in progress.

your favorite if you will.

Couldn't narrow it down to less than 6, likely.

 

[theLegionWithin]

I tried ..probably 4-5 distros? on the old Yoga X1. That one is lightweight and useful for portability and testing, but it's a 14" screen and that is a bit constraining. Esp by comparison to work, where I have two large monitors and could use more if I could figure out how to fit them.

I use relatively larger monitors at the office as well, but at home I use a 50" tv as a monitor.

 

[Condobloke]

I use two 24" monitors....Lint Mint cinnamon 22.1

I have been using them since I started with Linux...around 2013/2014

one via hdmi cable and th eother via a DVI Connector

 

[splott]

I use relatively larger monitors at the office as well, but at home I use a 50" tv as a monitor.

Hah, I use the big TV for the gaming system.
which I'm ALSO installing Linux on, there's a distro called "Bazzite" that worked really well on tests..just gotta make sure I get the right flavor.