Explaining the inexplicable
I don’t understand technology.
This is a somewhat scary admission from someone qualified in electronics [at third level] and who made a profession ultimately with computers.
It just seems to have a mind of its own. It doesn’t do things I expect it to, and it does things I don’t expect it to.
I mentioned as an aside a few days ago that I was having trouble with my CCTV’? I ha tried everything I could think of to get it running again. I had reached the point of looking up replacement cameras on the Interwebs. Then the following day it worked! I didn’t do anything that time that could have brought it to life, but there it was, full of beans and rearing to go. Why did it suddenly decide to work? I have no idea.
Likewise this laptop has suddenly decided to behave itself. I literally spent weeks trying to get it to behave and to just boot up properly. There was another problem I hadn’t mentioned – sound wasn’t working at all. No tweak or adjustment made any difference. It was mute and intended to stay that way.
The other day I switched on the machine. One click if a menu, and there was Linux in all ts glory. Wat was worse, it started blaring sounds at me. I found the source – a tab in the browser had a video in it which was now chirping its merry heart out. Then I realised -to my astonishment that the sound was working! What? How?
I can say with my hand on my heart that the Interwebs is full of people with problems with their HP Envy laptops that won’t boot into Linux or that the sound wasn’t working. None of them had found any solution. I had tried all the suggestions that I found, and none of them worked. Now suddenly my self same HP Envy was behaving properly. I haven’t a clue what happened. How can I explain the inexplicable? I can;t even log into all those sites of Envy grief with a cure for their problem when I don’t have one myself. Do I go and tell them to just be nice to their laptops and that sooner or later their machines will behave?
I’m just getting too old for this lark.
I too have struggled with reluctant computers. Sometimes Googling an answer will help, more often not. But I have found that Googling can put me on the right track, even if the proposed ‘solution’ doesn’t work. But you need to know enough to tease out the root cause.
Or it might be fairies, or Murphy taking the day off.
I did discover a command I had used in my moments of desperation – sudo apt-get install linux-oem-24.04b – it was in the Terminal history. Maybe that was the miracle cure and maybe it wasn’t but I think it just may have been the winner.
Don’t you just love modern technology? I know I do…not! I found a solution though, I don’t even bother with it. No more clean installs for instance. Not even with a new version of Mint (21 to 22 etc). I just copy/paste the (terminal) upgrade instructions from Mint’s website into my own command line and off we go.
Hell, the switch on our kitchen light lunched itself and instead of getting a new fixture and wiring it in we just ordered a new plug-in type fixture with a very long cord, drilled it into the ceiling next to the old light and called it good. Actually, my wife did. I can no longer stand on a ladder. I just stood there handing her stuff.
I just stood there handing her stuff. The most important part of the job.
My problem started wen I saw a laptop with nice specifications – a 17″ screen, a good processor, a 512Gb SSD and al at a frankly unbeatable price. Sadly I overlooked the fact that it’s an HP. HO machines are renowned for being tricky with Linux.