# Linux Mint 8 "Helena" x64 released



## ToeClaws (Dec 14, 2009)

Last week saw the release of the release of the 32 bit Mint 8, and today is the release of the 64 bit.  Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but will probably update my system tonight.

For those who are curious, Mint is based on Ubuntu, but is a more polished and refined product.  Rather than just be a quick tweak, it has a lot of customization as well as its own software.  The update manager and software manager, for example, are much better than the Ubuntu ones.  It also comes with restricted and proprietary drivers installed right from the start, so DVDs, flash, Java and other such things work right away.

For anyone interested in trying, both the 32 and 64 bit versions are on LiveCDs that you can boot up and try without having to install:

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Edit: Page detailing "what's new": http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_helena_whatsnew.php


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

> What's new in Linux Mint 8 Helena?
> 
> Based on *Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala*


Well, I'm done reading.

(Though I'm curious. Has Mint stopped bitching about the Ubuntu repositories being UNVERIFIED yet?)


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 14, 2009)

Heh, I had a feeling you'd say that. I'm kinda curious to see how it works.  Karmic has been an oddball for folks so far.  Worked okay on my work systems, but a lot of people had issues with it.  Mint has always further tweaked what Ubuntu has done and what tends to be problematic in Ubuntu is fixed in Mint.  Won't know until I give it a whirl though and I'm going to take the cautious approach given that I have a lot more concerns of messing up my personal systems than the work ones.

As for the repo thing, it's not that they're complaining about them being unverified in general, it's that they're unverified for Mint directly.  The update system classes updates via a ranking system which basically shows you how tested the updates are with Mint.  Ubuntu updates get a ranking of 3 in that they're considered safe for Ubuntu, but have not necessarily been tested directly with Mint.  I guess the point being that a really picky person that wanted to go with mint-only updates could do so.  I just use the Ubuntu ones and a good dozen other repos.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> As for the repo thing, it's not that they're complaining about them being unverified in general, it's that they're unverified for Mint directly.  The update system classes updates via a ranking system which basically shows you how tested the updates are with Mint.  Ubuntu updates get a ranking of 3 in that they're considered safe for Ubuntu, but have not necessarily been tested directly with Mint.  I guess the point being that a really picky person that wanted to go with mint-only updates could do so.  I just use the Ubuntu ones and a good dozen other repos.


I figured that's what they meant. But that's the sort of thing that keeps Linux out of the mainstream. A big, capital "UNVERIFIED" warning means something completely different to Joe Shmoe that it does to you or I.

I'll stick with jaunty 'til lucid comes out. If it's as bad as karmic, I'll be in the market for a new OS, I suppose.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 14, 2009)

net-cat said:


> I figured that's what they meant. But that's the sort of thing that keeps Linux out of the mainstream. A big, capital "UNVERIFIED" warning means something completely different to Joe Shmoe that it does to you or I.



I would hope that anyone trying it out for the first time would have spent time reading all of the "before you install" and such documentation.  "RTFM" will forever be the curse of the digital realm since almost no one does it, but the documentation does explain what the update status means.  At least it makes for a cautious user rather than a tech-cowboy.



net-cat said:


> I'll stick with jaunty 'til lucid comes out. If it's as bad as karmic, I'll be in the market for a new OS, I suppose.



*nods* Yeah, folks still on Jaunty are probably better off staying there.  Karmic has been a real oddity in how it either works great or bungles things up badly.  10.04 is supposed to be a major crown-jewel in the Ubuntu family as it's the realization of a number of goals and projects that they've had for the last few years.  It's also the next LTS release.  I do hope Karmic's issues help to make Lucid all the better, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

To be perfectly honest, I've not seen an actual bugfix in Ubuntu that's affected me since the move from hardy to intrepid. (That would be the release that made Ubuntu usable for me.) Just regressions and the odd new feature.

I'm not really holding my breath.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 14, 2009)

net-cat said:


> To be perfectly honest, I've not seen an actual bugfix in Ubuntu that's affected me since the move from hardy to intrepid. (That would be the release that made Ubuntu usable for me.) Just regressions and the odd new feature.
> 
> I'm not really holding my breath.



Nope - nor I.  I'm of the belief that there really is no such thing as a good OS, just differently flavours of "Meh".


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Nope - nor I.  I'm of the belief that there really is no such thing as a good OS, just differently flavours of "Meh".


Indeed.


----------



## WarMocK (Dec 14, 2009)

I wonder if they have improved X.org since the last RC. I wanted to give it a try and downloaded the RC, started it - and Mint came up with the ingenious idea to set my screen resolution to 15xx*1900 (no that's not a typo, it set the height value higher than the width value). And when I tried to change the screen resolution manually, X went straight to hell.
It's things like these that kept me away from Ubuntu and it's derivates so far, I thought they had improved in the meantime. Looks like I was wrong. :-(


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 14, 2009)

More of Ubuntu's changes have been a result of GNOME than not.  As for the KK, I guess I'm one of those who is lucky.  It works perfectly for me.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

WarMocK said:


> I wonder if they have improved X.org since the last RC.


The more I use it, the more I'm convinced that X.org (and X11 in general) just sucks.


----------



## Sinjo (Dec 14, 2009)

I would use it, but ubuntu and my laptop do not agree.

Laptop gets super hot and ubuntu seems to shut off at 95 degrees


----------



## incongruency (Dec 14, 2009)

Without trying it myself, could I ask if the Mint team pulled out Empathy and put in Pidgin for the IM program of choice?  I know that was a change upstream at GNOME, but I would hope some of the distribution maintainers would have sense to put in the more capable program until Empathy can prove itself.  Which, last I checked (please do correct me if I am wrong) was having Empathy incapable of simple file transfers on all but Google/XMPP.

I'm currently running Ubuntu 9.04, but given it's shorter support cycle, I'm going to be needing a new OS soon enough, and if 10.04 (and presumably its derivatives, Mint included) is as bad as 9.10, I'm either going upstream to Debian, or to something else entirely.




			
				net-cat said:
			
		

> The more I use it, the more I'm convinced that X.org (and X11 in general) just sucks.


Too true.  At least it can run sessions over a SSH tunnel, though.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 14, 2009)

incongruency said:


> Without trying it myself, could I ask if the Mint team pulled out Empathy and put in Pidgin for the IM program of choice?  I know that was a change upstream at GNOME, but I would hope some of the distribution maintainers would have sense to put in the more capable program until Empathy can prove itself.  Which, last I checked (please do correct me if I am wrong) was having Empathy incapable of simple file transfers on all but Google/XMPP.


Use Synaptic to install Pidgin. They didn't remove it from the repository. You can also use Pidgin's repository.



incongruency said:


> Too true.  At least it can run sessions over a SSH tunnel, though.


Well. I wouldn't call it "run" so much as "walk..."


----------



## incongruency (Dec 14, 2009)

net-cat said:


> Use Synaptic to install Pidgin. They didn't remove it from the repository. You can also use Pidgin's repository.


I wasn't aware they hadn't removed it from main.  I was under the impression that since it wasn't part of the standard install it wasn't going to be supported.

Their own PPA is a nice alternative, but as easy as it is to set it up with a few commands, it is a hassle to do so on each machine; moreso with having to tell others I hand a burnt copy of Ubuntu they have to do some 'black magic' (as they see it) to have a chat client that can send files.  Until now all I've had to do is give someone a disc with a note to not wipe Windows, this only complicates things.


----------



## ArielMT (Dec 14, 2009)

I'd like to try Mint again, but Felicia didn't have support for the Wacom tablet built into my tablet PC (Toshiba PortÃ©gÃ© m200), and I didn't want to futz about with compiling it into the kernel on a binary distro.

By comparison, with Karmic Ubuntu finally supports sleep and reboot on that tablet.  In Jaunty, I had Wacom support built in, and I only had to tweak it for xrandr and button reassignments, but sleep and reboot both froze the tablet.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 15, 2009)

incongruency said:


> I wasn't aware they hadn't removed it from main.  I was under the impression that since it wasn't part of the standard install it wasn't going to be supported.


It's "supported" in so far as they build it for the platform and will update it when there are security issues, same as it's always been. The only difference is that it's not installed by default.



incongruency said:


> Their own PPA is a nice alternative, but as easy as it is to set it up with a few commands, it is a hassle to do so on each machine; moreso with having to tell others I hand a burnt copy of Ubuntu they have to do some 'black magic' (as they see it) to have a chat client that can send files.  Until now all I've had to do is give someone a disc with a note to not wipe Windows, this only complicates things.


Indeed.

One of the things that attracted me to Ubuntu initially, though. When Debian was forking Firefox for not being "free" enough, Ubuntu was working with Mozilla to enable branding. (Remember when Mozilla branding wasn't enabled in Ubuntu?) They were fairly pragmatic in that regard.

Now, they're dropping recognisable, free alternatives that work in Windows (Pidgin) in favor of the apps that don't work very well, don't work in Windows and nobody's heard of. (Empathy.)

So, yeah. I don't know. I'll keep using 9.04 'til I find something better, whether it be 10.04 or something else entirely.


----------



## Runefox (Dec 15, 2009)

net-cat said:


> Well. I wouldn't call it "run" so much as "walk..."



X11 Forwarding's like that, but have you tried NX? As far as speed goes, it seems much faster than the likes of VNC (mainly due to the fact that it's basically an X11 implementation with compression and heavy caching).


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 15, 2009)

Sinjo said:


> I would use it, but ubuntu and my laptop do not agree.
> 
> Laptop gets super hot and ubuntu seems to shut off at 95 degrees



I feel your pain - I'd been trying to get Linux on my laptop for a while - ever since Ubuntu 6.06, but it wasn't until 9.04 that everything was properly supported and worked.  If you fire it up on the LiveCD, it should give you a good enough idea of whether things are yet supported or not.

As for the talk about packages, this is the one major complaint I have about ANY of the Linux distributions - I wish they would stop pre-loading them with software.  I rarely keep the software that comes with it.  Now, in the Ubuntu world, it's not exactly hard to uninstall and install something different, but it's annoying that they shove a bunch of apps on for you under the assumption you'll want them.  I'd love to see a bare-bones version for experts or something. :/


----------



## net-cat (Dec 15, 2009)

Runefox said:


> X11 Forwarding's like that, but have you tried NX? As far as speed goes, it seems much faster than the likes of VNC (mainly due to the fact that it's basically an X11 implementation with compression and heavy caching).


No, I have not. Neither Ubuntu nor PuTTY implement it.



Sinjo said:


> I would use it, but ubuntu and my laptop do not agree.


A common lament. My laptop will run Windows 'til the day it dies for the simple fact that there is no support for my tablet or tablet buttons in Linux. (xrandr is great, but I still want to be able to press the "rotate screen" button.)


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 15, 2009)

Oh, and @WarMocK - yes, video mode selection in just about every OS seems to be some sorta magical voodoo that either mostly works, or fails miserably.  Puppy Linux is the only one I've ever seen that actually stops to ask you before it loads what video mode and what colour depth you want to use.  Moreover, it has better success at finding and configuring the cards than anything I've ever seen.  It makes me wonder why no one else has had the insight to do the same simple "stop and ask" approach.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 15, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Oh, and @WarMocK - yes, video mode selection in just about every OS seems to be some sorta magical voodoo that either mostly works, or fails miserably.  Puppy Linux is the only one I've ever seen that actually stops to ask you before it loads what video mode and what colour depth you want to use.  Moreover, it has better success at finding and configuring the cards than anything I've ever seen.  It makes me wonder why no one else has had the insight to do the same simple "stop and ask" approach.


As far as I can tell, it's driver dependent. nv and radeonhd seem to pick the screen's native resolution. nVidia binary blob seems to pick 800x600, but also provides a utility, nvidia-settings, that allow you to rewrite /etc/X11/xorg.conf. ATI binary blob is similar, but you have to apt-get the needed utility. (Don't remember what it is off hand.)


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 15, 2009)

For those competent, I switched to ARCH last night.  It's .. basically Gentoo with binaries, and it's very lightweight.  

It's certainly not as failsafe as Ubuntu is, but you definitely can't blame anyone for the flaws other than yourself


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 15, 2009)

GraemeLion said:


> For those competent, I switched to ARCH last night.  It's .. basically Gentoo with binaries, and it's very lightweight.
> 
> It's certainly not as failsafe as Ubuntu is, but you definitely can't blame anyone for the flaws other than yourself



I tried Arch, but when I realized I had to set things up manually like I did 10+ years ago, I said "no... hell no" - that's exactly the reason people could never use Linux back in the day.  I'm just not that patient anymore.


----------



## Runefox (Dec 15, 2009)

net-cat said:


> No, I have not. Neither Ubuntu nor PuTTY implement it.


Actually, I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu has a FreeNX package (if not, there's a non-free (yet free as in beer) binary available), but no, PuTTY doesn't implement it; You need an NX client.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 15, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Actually, I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu has a FreeNX package (if not, there's a non-free (yet free as in beer) binary available), but no, PuTTY doesn't implement it; You need an NX client.


Yeah... 99.9% of the things I do over PuTTY are console-based anyway.


----------



## Runefox (Dec 15, 2009)

net-cat said:


> Yeah... 99.9% of the things I do over PuTTY are console-based anyway.



I have to say I haven't had too much use for it so far either, but if there's absolutely a GUI app that I need to run, it's my best bet - At least, far better than X11 forwarding and VNC. Works even better on a Gb LAN.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 15, 2009)

Heh. Every once in a while, I launch firefox through a PuTTY session. But I so rarely have to do that...


----------



## Axelfox (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Last week saw the release of the release of the 32 bit Mint 8, and today is the release of the 64 bit.  Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but will probably update my system tonight.
> 
> For those who are curious, Mint is based on Ubuntu, but is a more polished and refined product.  Rather than just be a quick tweak, it has a lot of customization as well as its own software.  The update manager and software manager, for example, are much better than the Ubuntu ones.  It also comes with restricted and proprietary drivers installed right from the start, so DVDs, flash, Java and other such things work right away.
> 
> ...




Downloading seems to be very slow though. ):


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

Axelfox said:


> Downloading seems to be very slow though. ):



Try one of the mirrors if possible.  Download times within the first week of release are often brutal. :/


----------



## net-cat (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Try one of the mirrors if possible.  Download times within the first week of release are often brutal. :/



Or, you know, be one of the few people who actually uses BitTorrent legitimately!

http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-x64.iso.torrent


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> I tried Arch, but when I realized I had to set things up manually like I did 10+ years ago, I said "no... hell no" - that's exactly the reason people could never use Linux back in the day.  I'm just not that patient anymore.



I thought the same, but having the gnome desktop appear ten times quicker than Ubuntu because I'm not loading every module under the sun, and fourteen daemons I don't need, has quite an advantage 

Sure, it was a pain in the rear to set up, but I just used a subversion repo on my VPS to hold my configuration files, and next time, all I'll have to do is check them all out.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

net-cat said:


> Or, you know, be one of the few people who actually uses BitTorrent legitimately!
> 
> http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-x64.iso.torrent



I hate P2P - it is a horrible, bandwidth-devouring technology.  I don't use it, and don't recommend or support the use of it to anyone.  In my workplace, as with many others, P2P is blocked, so trying to use torrents won't work anyway.



GraemeLion said:


> I thought the same, but having the gnome desktop appear ten times quicker than Ubuntu because I'm not loading every module under the sun, and fourteen daemons I don't need, has quite an advantage
> 
> Sure, it was a pain in the rear to set up, but I just used a subversion repo on my VPS to hold my configuration files, and next time, all I'll have to do is check them all out.



Yeah I know... and that's what burns me really - I love efficiency and simplicity, but I just don't have the patience to build stuff from scratch anymore.  Even at work, we have guys here who have been working with Unix since 1972, and who have been using Linux as their OS of choice since it's creation, yet even they run Ubuntu and Fedora derivatives now because they can't be bothered with doing everything from scratch anymore.

What I wish Arch would do is semi-automate things; make it so that you can select and choose what you need off the install, but so that it works once the install completes.  That would be a bridge enough between the extremes to make it less annoying.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> I hate P2P - it is a horrible, bandwidth-devouring technology.  I don't use it, and don't recommend or support the use of it to anyone.  In my workplace, as with many others, P2P is blocked, so trying to use torrents won't work anyway.


I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the sound of this ISO downloading at 1 MBps. 

(Which is something I've never been able to accomplish from a HTTP distribution site over any connection ever. Except Microsoft.)



ToeClaws said:


> Yeah I know... and that's what burns me really - I love efficiency and simplicity, but I just don't have the patience to build stuff from scratch anymore.  Even at work, we have guys here who have been working with Unix since 1972, and who have been using Linux as their OS of choice since it's creation, yet even they run Ubuntu and Fedora derivatives now because they can't be bothered with doing everything from scratch anymore.


Pretty much that.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

net-cat said:


> I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the sound of this ISO downloading at 1 MBps.
> 
> (Which is something I've never been able to accomplish from a HTTP distribution site over any connection ever. Except Microsoft.)



Good download speeds to me don't justify the huge problems that P2P causes on networks.  If it behaved ethically by only using clearly defined ports, and only operating for the duration of the users' transfers, then it wouldn't be so bad.  But it's designed instead to remain operational (and most users are so unaware of how to use computers, they have no idea it's left as a TSR on their system), and it uses as many ports and subversive methods as possible to try to get around things that would restrict it.  The potential speed gain is not worth the bad conscience of knowing I'm doing something horrible on the network. 

Besides, I get in early in the morning and download ISOs via the campus pipe.  I frequently get 1 to dozens of Mbps/s.   Especially nice if the mirror is hosted by another university on the Orion network, in which case we have a 1Gbps link to them.


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Good download speeds to me don't justify the huge problems that P2P causes on networks.  If it behaved ethically by only using clearly defined ports, and only operating for the duration of the users' transfers, then it wouldn't be so bad.  But it's designed instead to remain operational (and most users are so unaware of how to use computers, they have no idea it's left as a TSR on their system), and it uses as many ports and subversive methods as possible to try to get around things that would restrict it.  The potential speed gain is not worth the bad conscience of knowing I'm doing something horrible on the network.
> 
> Besides, I get in early in the morning and download ISOs via the campus pipe.  I frequently get 1 to dozens of Mbps/s.   Especially nice if the mirror is hosted by another university on the Orion network, in which case we have a 1Gbps link to them.



Heh.  You're not doing something horrible on the network by using bittorrent if you set up proper quotas.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

GraemeLion said:


> Heh.  You're not doing something horrible on the network by using bittorrent if you set up proper quotas.



Aye, but that's part of the issue though.  How many computer users actually understand how to configure the software, or what it means for a program to be a TSR?  10%?  5%?  less?  Because so few people really understand how things work, P2P apps are left on their default settings which tend to be overly aggressive.  

I may be able to change my own settings, but P2P is something I dislike so much that I try to avoid using it at all, that way I'm not supporting its use.  Also, there is little point for me even if I did like it.  My job blocks P2P (though technically since I control that aspect of policy, I could make a work around), and at home, the ISP rate-limits it to ISDN speeds.


----------



## net-cat (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Good download speeds to me don't justify the huge problems that P2P causes on networks.


It does to me. I'm sorry your networks are oversold and under-equipped.



ToeClaws said:


> If it behaved ethically by only using clearly defined ports, ... and it uses as many ports and subversive methods as possible to try to get around things that would restrict it.  The potential speed gain is not worth the bad conscience of knowing I'm doing something horrible on the network.


There are officially designated BitTorrent ports. Like any protocol you care to think of, HTTP, SSH, FTP, etc, you can very easily run it on alternative ports. You know, to get around a restrictive firewall.



ToeClaws said:


> and only operating for the duration of the users' transfers, then it wouldn't be so bad.  But it's designed instead to remain operational (and most users are so unaware of how to use computers, they have no idea it's left as a TSR on their system),


Won't deny that there are some shadier BitTorrent clients out there. But uTorrent, Azureus and most mainstream ones, last I checked, will ask if you want to quit or stay active in the background.



ToeClaws said:


> Besides, I get in early in the morning and download ISOs via the campus pipe.  I frequently get 1 to dozens of Mbps/s.   Especially nice if the mirror is hosted by another university on the Orion network, in which case we have a 1Gbps link to them.


Well, that's just swell for you, isn't it? Why don't you roll some of that fiber out to my apartment? No? Then shut the hell up. I'm lucky to get 300 KBsec from most Linux mirrors via HTTP. Maybe someday when I'm fantastically wealthy, I can afford to live on principle rather than thrift and pragmatism.

(Yes, bitter kitty is bitter.)


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Aye, but that's part of the issue though.  How many computer users actually understand how to configure the software, or what it means for a program to be a TSR?  10%?  5%?  less?  Because so few people really understand how things work, P2P apps are left on their default settings which tend to be overly aggressive.
> 
> I may be able to change my own settings, but P2P is something I dislike so much that I try to avoid using it at all, that way I'm not supporting its use.  Also, there is little point for me even if I did like it.  My job blocks P2P (though technically since I control that aspect of policy, I could make a work around), and at home, the ISP rate-limits it to ISDN speeds.



Well, like Net-cat said, I'm sorry your service sucks.

However, the technology in P2P is unavoidable and is sound.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

net-cat said:


> It does to me. I'm sorry your networks are oversold and under-equipped.



Has nothing to do with oversold/under-equipped - by the nature of it's terrible design, TCP/IP will always be overrun by such applications.  



net-cat said:


> There are officially designated BitTorrent ports. Like any protocol you care to think of, HTTP, SSH, FTP, etc, you can very easily run it on alternative ports. You know, to get around a restrictive firewall.



Yes, but most of the P2P activity we see each day (over 2 million connection events a day at the campus) are not using "official" ports.  



net-cat said:


> Won't deny that there are some shadier BitTorrent clients out there. But uTorrent, Azureus and most mainstream ones, last I checked, will ask if you want to quit or stay active in the background.



Agreed - the better ones are ethical about it.  



net-cat said:


> Well, that's just swell for you, isn't it? Why don't you roll some of that fiber out to my apartment? No? Then shut the hell up. I'm lucky to get 300 KBsec from most Linux mirrors via HTTP. Maybe someday when I'm fantastically wealthy, I can afford to live on principle rather than thrift and pragmatism.
> 
> (Yes, bitter kitty is bitter.)



*laughs* Awesome.  Bitter is pretty much a prerequisite for the IT field.  Eventually, you reach a state where your hatred of the user allows god-like walls of apathy to form around you and dismiss all things with a casual "meh".

Honestly... if I were in that situation AND didn't know the pain and issues P2P caused on the ISP side of things, I would be doing the very same thing (though with above said controls on the program).  

Sidenote: You need a NetCat t-shirt with "Yes, bitter kitty is bitter" on the front, and "Also, yiff in hell" on the back. :mrgreen:


----------



## net-cat (Dec 16, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Has nothing to do with oversold/under-equipped - by the nature of it's terrible design, TCP/IP will always be overrun by such applications.


Indeed. Each TCP connection has a lot of overhead.



ToeClaws said:


> Yes, but most of the P2P activity we see each day (over 2 million connection events a day at the campus) are not using "official" ports.


Of course not. Most clients, even the good ones, assume the "official" ports are blocked/filtered/throttled/otherwise interfered with whether they actually are or not. If you can find a way to stop people from doing what they want to do on a network, I suggest you give China a call. They'll probably pay you a lot of money.



ToeClaws said:


> *laughs* Awesome.  Bitter is pretty much a prerequisite for the IT field.  Eventually, you reach a state where your hatred of the user allows god-like walls of apathy to form around you and dismiss all things with a casual "meh".


I'm there. And (in theory) I don't even do IT for a living.



ToeClaws said:


> Honestly... if I were in that situation AND didn't know the pain and issues P2P caused on the ISP side of things, I would be doing the very same thing (though with above said controls on the program).


I do know the pain it causes. I got to see BitTorrent crush my school's ResNet routers. And, you know, I still don't care.



ToeClaws said:


> Sidenote: You need a NetCat t-shirt with "Yes, bitter kitty is bitter" on the front, and "Also, yiff in hell" on the back. :mrgreen:


This. Must. Happen.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

GraemeLion said:


> Well, like Net-cat said, I'm sorry your service sucks.



Incorrect - my service is great - it's 8Mbps, very fast even in peak hours.  They just filter P2P which is becoming quite common with Canadian ISPs.  If I were to try and find out that could offer me the same speeds without filtering P2P it could cost more, and there's no guarantee that they wouldn't start filtering it at any time.



GraemeLion said:


> However, the technology in P2P is unavoidable and is sound.



*nods* Totally agreed on both accounts.  I'm not saying it's some unstable thing that will eventually just go away.  I know it's here to stay, and that it will grow immensely in the years to come, evolving even more complex methods of getting through detection and defences against it.  What I hope to see in the years to come (and I hope more so as the world slowly embraces IPv6) is the global adoption of QoS models that simply rank P2P as a lower priority service.  When it can't push more time-critical traffic out of the way, then it's not doing any harm.  Currently infrastructure as a whole in the Internet does not support this well enough yet since it would have to apply QoS based on a layer 7 analysis of payload, but eventually this will be normal.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 16, 2009)

net-cat said:


> If you can find a way to stop people from doing what they want to do on a network, I suggest you give China a call. They'll probably pay you a lot of money.



*laughs* Yeah really.  I don't believe in miracles though.



net-cat said:


> I'm there. And (in theory) I don't even do IT for a living.



See, that's even more impressive - you get to be bitter, IT savvy AND have the peace of mind that it's not your job.



net-cat said:


> I do know the pain it causes. I got to see BitTorrent crush my school's ResNet routers. And, you know, I still don't care.



Well of course you don't - if you did, it would violate the bitter principle and turn you into a caring IT (who's not really IT) guy.  The paradox would probably end life as we know it.



net-cat said:


> This. Must. Happen.



<_<  >_>  I should mention this to CAThulu... she knows the magicks behind making t-shirts.


----------



## ArielMT (Dec 17, 2009)

Way OT, but...



net-cat said:


> ToeClaws said:
> 
> 
> > Sidenote: You need a NetCat t-shirt with "Yes, bitter kitty is bitter" on the front, and "Also, yiff in hell" on the back. :mrgreen:
> ...



http://www.furaffinity.net/view/638134/


----------



## Duality Jack (Dec 17, 2009)

Personally I like Backtrack currently playing with the Pre Release of BT-4 it and waiting for the full


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 17, 2009)

ArielMT said:


> Way OT, but...
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/638134/



*chuckles* See... that shirt's just begging for wordage.


----------



## Irreverent (Dec 17, 2009)

Appears the OEM install in Mint 8 is brain-dead...it installs to an "OEM User" account that can't be changed, and mucks with the permissions.  At least they have acknowledged this and will hopefully fix it soon.


----------



## GraemeLion (Dec 17, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Incorrect - my service is great - it's 8Mbps, very fast even in peak hours.  They just filter P2P which is becoming quite common with Canadian ISPs.  If I were to try and find out that could offer me the same speeds without filtering P2P it could cost more, and there's no guarantee that they wouldn't start filtering it at any time.



I disagree. 

Service is not just bandwidth, it's also in how you treat your customers.  

Your service assumes you are a criminal.  That's not good service.

The speed might be enough to make up for it, but you automatically don't have good service if you pay for unlimited and get limited.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 17, 2009)

GraemeLion said:


> I disagree.
> 
> Service is not just bandwidth, it's also in how you treat your customers.
> 
> ...



Whether or not a business cares about how they treat their customers has a lot more to do with competition than it does ethics.  In Canada, there are very few major service providers because for a very long time, there were only monopolies here.  For that reason, all of the major providers treat their customers terribly and really don't care what you think.

By rate-limiting P2P, they are not assuming I'm a criminal, they're just trying to keep bandwidth use under control.  Now... by applying it globally to EVERYONE on the service, yes, they are at least assuming that I will be a negligent and irresponsible user.  That bugs me a little, but depending on the complexity of the environment, implementing policy on a per-user basis may be difficult to impossible, or just not feasible.

In my job, we have to rate limit P2P on the RezNet Internet feed for the simple reason that were it not, it rapidly swells to consume over 80% of the available bandwidth, compromising the quality and responsiveness of other more important or time-critical services.  For that reason, it was decided to impose strict ceilings on the amount of total bandwidth that could be consumed by P2P applications.  One could argue that the pipe could be larger, but there's a cost trade off to that - bandwidth costs money, and the students pay a monthly fee for their RezNet connectivity.  If they wanted to have the sort of "unlimited" bandwidth to do P2P, video and everything else they wanted, they'd be getting a $50 a month bill.  As it stands, most of them already complain about the $15 a month they pay.

Also, there is no such thing as "unlimited".  I wish ISPs would stop saying that and just state the real limit.  ISPs don't sell you a connection based on 100% usage 24/7, they sell you one based on a tiny fraction of that.  ISPs always oversell their capabilities, just like airlines oversell flights (only to a greater extreme).  

For the record, I used to have a provider that I liked a lot more - treated me well, gave me a static IP, and the didn't care what I did with the connection.  Unfortunately, the phone line (it was ADSL) degraded to the point where the service was unstable.  I couldn't get the phone company to fix it because the Internet service was not through them, and thus they only guaranteed the line for voice (here's the monopoly issue again).  I had no choice but to switch to cable, where there is only one choice in ISP, and it sucks.  The other company is now struggling to survive because the bigger companies are pricing them off the grid.


----------



## Irreverent (Dec 19, 2009)

ToeClaws said:


> Also, there is no such thing as "unlimited".



Actually, there is....you just can't have it for $29.99 per month. Nor for $80 per month.  



> I wish ISPs would stop saying that and just state the real limit.



I think you'll start to see more of this in '10 as a market differentiator.  Especially now that there are HSPA cell services that can provide similar bandwidth (in some regions) to DSL.  I was playing with an 80mb/s service on a cell device the other day.....not ready to come out of the lab yet.  But the cell contracts do spell out bandwidth, throughput, caps and floors.


----------



## ToeClaws (Dec 19, 2009)

Alright - back on topic: Finally had time to convert the laptop to Mint 8 from Mint 7.  The process on Mint is not available via an "upgrade" sorta button like Ubuntu because Mint has always taken the stance that moving from one distribution to another should never be taken lightly.  They provide, instead, either a small GUI application that will attempt to do it for you, or you can use command line and do it manually.  I chose the manual approach.

The upgrade took a while to churn through, but after it was done, the system rebooted without issue.  At arriving at the GDM, it did complain about video drivers and offered to rebuild them, which I did, rebooted, and done.  Everything worked fine including sound and ACPI features of the laptop (which have been a pain in the past).  

When upgrading from 7 to 8 (or even from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10), GRUB is left alone, even though the newer release uses the more bleeding edge GRUB 1.97.  I manually updated that afterwards and again had no issues.

Quite impressed so far in that Mint 8 once again seems to be a lot more polished a product than Ubuntu 9.10.  Though I didn't have as much grief as some people with 9.10 on the work systems, it did require a little more elbow grease to get back to a normal state after the upgrade.

I have yet to have a chance to put it on the new PC, but did at least boot it up last night on the LiveCD to check out functionality, and it seemed to recognize everything correctly, so that's a good sign. 



Irreverent said:


> Actually, there is....you just can't have it for $29.99 per month. Nor for $80 per month.



*laughs* Well yeah - just like a fast car really - you can have one without a speed limiter getting in the way of your driving, but you're gonna pay for it. 



Irreverent said:


> I think you'll start to see more of this in '10 as a market differentiator.  Especially now that there are HSPA cell services that can provide similar bandwidth (in some regions) to DSL.  I was playing with an 80mb/s service on a cell device the other day.....not ready to come out of the lab yet.  But the cell contracts do spell out bandwidth, throughput, caps and floors.



Nice!  Yeah, wireless, satellite and direct laser are technologies that will be bringing pretty impressive upgrades to the pipe soon.  How that will play out for the consumer, I'm not sure.  If there's enough competition in the market, the prices might be alright, but if you use Canada's cellular market as a template, then that's not looking very promising.  Hopefully more companies will be allowed into the sandbox.


----------

