During my recent Linux distributions experimentation, I noticed a few times that Windows 8.1 would no longer “see” a particular USB stick I was using. It would appear within the device list, would test correctly but would not appear in the left-hand pane in explorer.
I learned that this was because one or more of the distributions I was testing would, for unfathomable reasons, prep the USB stick strangely.
Why Windows wouldn’t just offer to format the stick is unknown to me.
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Software >
(on Wikipedia)
https://github.com/lxde
http://www.lxde.org/
A desktop environment of some note.
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Mark Tyler’s Painting Program
Good god this is both simple and convoluted.
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(on Wikipedia)
https://www.keepassx.org/
A password manager.
I found KeePassx while exploring replacing Firefox, and when looking at replacing web browser components. I wanted something cross-platform and open source.
Abandoned 2021-12-09 – official statement
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After taking another pass at a bunch of Linux distributions, I feel it’s important to detail the most important things to me.
This can now be here to act as a kind of checklist for considering a distribution.
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(on Wikipedia)
https://www.joonet.de/lilo/
A boot loader, generally considered less used and less featureful than GRUB.
Although I had used LILO quite a lot in the past, and was doing some interesting things with it, like having multiboots with DOS and rearranging partitions to hide some or change what was primary, I tend to not use a bootloader like that anymore. I expect a distribution to be magical regarding a boot loader.
When LILO breaks, I use boot-repair.
Windows > Windows 8.1 >
This is a fairly complete HOWTO for modifying Windows 8.1 so it’s sensible and “oldschool”.
I want to remove all of that fancy new shit and make it look and work more like the earlier versions of Windows, e.g. Windows XP.
~2015-05-03 – I migrated from Windows XP (Windows XP configuration)
FAIL – does not recognize SD cards
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Linux distributions + Slackware >
(on Wikipedia)
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=Porteus
porteus.org
Although installable to a hard drive, this is generated as a LiveUSB distribution.
