[lug] Fedora 27!

[stimits at comcast.net]

Not long ago I rearranged partitions because of how much more convenient it is to have a home directory on LVM, but a base operating system on its own non-LVM partition (I actually have my "/var/www", "/usr/local", and "/var/lib/pgsql" directories on LVM as well), and as soon as I see something I like I just boot to that now and mount my partitions (I do actually have something a bit more complicated for PostgreSQL since there can be version issues). Although I could try things out with a VM it wouldn't be practical for some purposes...one is some embedded software which does not work well with a VM's USB and networking...another is a complication of using CUDA...and yet one more is from some new software licensing. It's nice to just mount my "/usr/local" LVM and see if it still works...trial by fire from which I can't be burned (or at least not easily).
 
The bonus is that with multiple disks, and a BIOS which can pick which MBR it boots from, I can switch to a test boot, install, and if it fails switch the BIOS back to the original MBR...then fix it. If I want to test out chain loading or odd boot loader arrangements I once again don't worry about boot records getting messed up since I have several and can just pick one. I'll probably be asking some GRUB chain loading questions in the future :)
 
So far as security goes a VM is probably a good idea...if it reverts to going away when done. I think if I had a newer system with more cores and RAM I'd be more interested in this, but my system isn't really a powerhouse (other than the video card it is from a time when UEFI was new and Windows 7 was out and didn't even work with UEFI...perhaps it is a decade old or more).
 
----- Original Message -----From: Bear Giles <bgiles at coyotesong.com>To: Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>Sent: Thu, 04 Jan 2018 01:45:16 -0000 (UTC)Subject: Re: [lug] Fedora 27!


I have to toss in a word for using virtualbox instead of spare partitions for this. It can be a bit of a pain if you require signed kernel modules but with the guest additions you can resize the virtual desktop to cover your full screen and get a good feel for it. There's probably a modest performance hit - but you can have a dozen virtual systems that you quickly flip between (or even run concurrently!) instead of a single partition that you have to manually reloading it every time.

The other benefit is that you can use a dedicated virtual machine for porn to reduce the risk of malware.

BANKING!

BANKING! I meant to type 'BANKING', not 'porn'. Geez, you guys have your mind in the gutter.

It's one of the standard bits of advice that even I often don't bother to follow - create a virtualbox image with a stripped down browser and only use it to access banking sites. The odds that malware will make it onto that browser are low.

You can extend this logic to a few other categories of sites. My AWS stuff should probably go in a virtualbox sandbox. My social media, such as it is, should also go into one.


On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 8:06 PM, Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org> wrote:
XFce has a nice desktop settings panel that allows easy control of font

type and size for most of the UI.  Some apps don't quite follow the

settings but most GTK+ apps do. XFce is GTK2 based and I generally only

use GTK+ apps, not KDE/Qt.  I use XFce on Fedora 26 and CentOS 7.  I've

used it on Ubuntu at a job for a little while till we were lucky enough

to switch to Debian instead (and I switched back to Fedora).

Between XFce's desktop settings and a gnome-terminal (not the XFce

terminal, which isn't quite as easy to configure for my needs) I can

control font sizes for most of my work quite easily.

On Tue, 2018-01-02 at 19:42 -0700, Davide Del Vento wrote:

> Mint MATE (that is, Gnome 2). It has the plain ole "appearance" icon

> in the plain ole "control panel". In the appearance settings, there's

> a plain ole "font" tab where you can select type, style and size of

> the font for applications, document, desktop, window title and fixed

> width (e.g. terminal)

> You can also pick the rendering style with monochrome (useless unless

> you have a monochrome display), best shape, best contrast or subpixel

> smoothing

>

> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 3:40 PM, <stimits at comcast.net> wrote: > > So although I'm only asking about opinions, let me ask from a new

> > point of view not normally asked: What newer distributions

> > (implying a recent kernel) have people here tried where you thought

> > you could set up fonts and readability without great trouble? Which

> > distributions did you find complete, yet still configurable for

> > visual customization (especially if your eyes are not so great)?--

Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>

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