I recently installed Linux Mint on my new laptop.
As you might remember, if you read one of the related posts like the one linked above, I was mostly using Windows throughout the years.
That makes me a noob in the Linux environment, no matter what distro I installed.
So, today, about two weeks later, a question came to my mind.
Linux kernel brand character, Tux
What kind of maintenance (and optimizations) are necessary for Linux? Both from the OS and apps point of view, but also from the hardware point of view. Because a piece of hardware, if it's used improperly, even if it doesn't break, it wears down much quicker, and so you reduce its duration of life.
For example, I learned today that the Solid State Drives need special care, particularly on writing operations. Too many or too often writing and they apparently wear off quicker than the older drives with rotating disks. This was a problem mostly with older generations of SSDs, but newer generations have this problem to a smaller degree too.
In Windows, regular users would use CCleaner (or something similar) and they would be spared of knowing the details.
There may be something similar for Linux too. But that's not what I found first and I'm glad I didn't.
I found this guide and their first tip is to not use such applications on Linux because they are "risky and may damage your system beyond repair".
I also made some optimizations to speed up the laptop, although it's fast enough. But there's always better, especially while or after I run docker with the video encoder for the SPK Network. But that's understandable, at the amount of RAM it uses (and CPU, when encoding).
Now that I use Firefox on Linux, I remembered how deeply customizable it is. I don't know if the other browsers offer the same options for deep customization, but on Firefox you can change pretty much all settings by using the about:config page. One of them I turned off today was telemetry, one other way Firefox communicated usage statistics to their servers, even if you had the 'Firefox Data Collection and Use' options turned off in Settings.
If you use Linux, what do you do to maintain it?
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Nice, I started with Mint as well about 3 years ago, then migrated to Manjaro and finally Arch, but Mint is just perfect for new users. What DE are you using, I guess Cinnamon?
About your very old laptop, what are the specs? Is it 32bit or 64? We can find a distribution that will work on it.
Regarding maintenance, all I do is regular updates, nothing else. Even the trimming of the SSDs I've set it up to be done automatically once a week or so, but if you have a newer Nvme SSD, that job is done by the controller, no need to worry.
Try the following command, it'll show you which services take the most time when booting up, I'm curious: systemd-analyze blame
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It’s not windows where you have garbage in the registry and orphan files.
I never “maintain” mine when it comes to Linux.
When the time comes I just nuke the whole thing and install fresh (old installation wasn’t bugged down or anything)
Well, that's ok, but it's a lot of work if you have already installed a lot of things on it, particularly through the terminal, and you certainly lost track and you have to start from zero with a fresh install.
I mostly use mobile so don't need to download it, rarely use it on laptop. In today's era, everything is happening on mobile.
Not everything, but a lot, that's true.
Interesting post, Adrian.
I have never embraced Linux like I probably should have.
My understanding is it runs much leaner because it does not contain all the crap that is included on Windows.
!CTP
!ALIVE
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Windows came a long way from its first extremely buggy versions. But so has Linux which was initially almost exclusively for tech guys and now is embraced by the masses, because it became much easier to use and it has other advantages over Windows, like being open-source, more secure, more customizable, more options (distributions/versions) to choose from, without the privacy concerns on Windows, etc.
Linux doesn't generally require the kind of maintenance that Windows usually needs. Given that Linux gives the power and freedom to do what you like, it can be molded and tweaked in innumerable ways, depending on your needs, desires, and hardware. On your particular system, one thing that comes to mind is to remove old kernel versions, as in Ubuntu and Mint they are not removed automatically. The easiest way to do this is to install the Synaptic package manager, and then search for linux, then go down the list, looking for kernels and header files that are older than what you are presently running that are presently installed (green dots). To find what kernel version you are running, just type uname -a in a terminal. 😁🙏💚✨🤙
Thanks for your info! I've turned Automatic Maintenance on in Update Manager -> Automation, which removes old kernels but the latest.
Should I still use Synaptic Package Manager to check on the versions of the software installed? I get many results to go through manually, although only a small part is installed, that's true.
You're very welcome! That Automatic Maintenance feature didn't exist when I was using Ubuntu/Mint! That's very useful! With that being the case, you shouldn't need to install Synaptic, though it is a very useful package manager for finding software! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙
Synaptic is installed too, by default.
Oh, great! It figures that Mint would have it installed by default as it's so useful! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙
I don't think there is much to do besides OS updates. You may need different packages depending on your hardware but if it works, I would just keep everything up to date.
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Well, there are some things, as I've discovered. But updating is definitely the most important one, for sure.
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Not much. Just the regular updates. That’s about it.
I do those too. But apparently, a few actions could help from time to time. Just check out the link in my post. Some of their tips are really simple like emptying the trash bin.
Ah. These are like table stake, we do them unconsciously 😄
I'm a window and mac user and never needed to install Linux.
You don't need to, but here's some reasons you might choose to:
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I am a long-time Windows user too. ;)
Thanks for the info @gadrian. This is very interesting about Firefox and Linux and makes me wish I knew coding. I get way too tired though 🤣🤣
I'm glad you are enjoying Linux on your new computer!
Barb
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That's ok, Barb, many people aren't and are doing just fine without being coders.
Thanks 😆 @gadrian !BBH !CTP !HBIT
Hope your linux has serve you well so far!
Yep, it has! No complains here.
I don't use Linux even though I have heard of it a countless times. Please what is Linux used for?
I use it for general purposes, as a personal computer. But there are all sort of Linux distributions, and Linux is one of the best and most used OS for servers, for example.
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Linux doesn't need special maintenance as far as I know. My college teacher said, "It's safer than windows just because people usually use windows rather than Linux." Based on logic, Fewer people use Less attack happens. Less attack doesn't mean no attack, so at least we have a security awareness to not bring virus or so to our computer.
As always, use "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" or "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" before doing anything. After it's done, It's already updated and you can do what you want.
Have a nice day with Linux. Well, sometimes you need to go back to windows as everything can't be done with Linux and vice versa based on my experience. 🤣
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