Lubuntu vs. Acer Revo M1-601

[porina]

As mentioned in another thread I had a time wrestling with Win7 on a Revo M1-601, but Win10 went on smoothly enough. Would I do better with Linux?

 

The spec of the unit is basic:

Celeron N3050 1.6 GHz base, 2.16 GHz turbo, dual core

2 GB ram in a single module

32GB EMMC storage

 

I debated a bit over full Ubuntu and Lubuntu, and eventually went for the latter as I know this isn't the most powerful box.

 

Win10 was still on the box. I prepared a bootable USB stick with Lubuntu 15.10 64-bit, and away we go. Booted from stick ok, I filled in the stuff, told it to nuke the disk, and let it get on with it. After a while it was done, I rebooted and... no OS found. Did I mess up a setting somewhere? I did it again with slightly different options (no LVM this time) and... no change.

 

Now I started digging in the device bios. Is secure boot getting in the way? Turned that off, reinstalled, still nope. By this point giving money to MS for Win10 was starting to look tempting. But I had a further thought. I had left it in UEFI mode, why not try legacy? Bang! Installed first time. The old grub booter isn't as pretty as the UEFI graphic shenanigans, but it works which is more important.

 

Now, what do I do with this box? I need to turn off monitor power saving as that is really annoying. After that, I want to get VNC going ASAP so I can remote control it. After that, let's see if this thing will do 4k Youtube (it just about managed under Win10!).

[RedWulf]

I would try zorin or zorin lite before lubuntu but ubuntu before those or even mint. 

Aside from that, Its a matter of support, If you can deal with the lack of support of linux systems then go for it. Also, for videos try xRDP to RDP since vnc isnt always the best for smooth video from linux to windows. 

As for the bootable OS you may have nuked the usb too since the wipe programs run in ram most of the time.  

[porina]

2 minutes ago, RedWulf said:

I would try zorin or zorin lite before lubuntu but ubuntu before those or even mint. 

Aside from that, Its a matter of support, If you can deal with the lack of support of linux systems then go for it. Also, for videos try xRDP to RDP since vnc isnt always the best for smooth video from linux to windows. 

As for the bootable OS you may have nuked the usb too since the wipe programs run in ram most of the time.  

Haven't heard of Zorin so will look at it.

 

I might not have been clear, I wanted to use this box to display on a 4k TV, but control it through VNC from another system. Not idea I know...

 

It comes with Firefox, and whatever is installed with it, isn't good enough to drive smooth 4k like Win10 did with Edge. Chrome also choked and died, a well known problem it seems, all the more stupid given they're both Google owned. I'll make do with 1440p... oh, no sound over HDMI is something else to figure out.

[RedWulf]

Just now, porina said:

Haven't heard of Zorin so will look at it.

 

I might not have been clear, I wanted to use this box to display on a 4k TV, but control it through VNC from another system. Not idea I know...

 

It comes with Firefox, and whatever is installed with it, isn't good enough to drive smooth 4k like Win10 did with Edge. Chrome also choked and died, a well known problem it seems, all the more stupid given they're both Google owned. I'll make do with 1440p... oh, no sound over HDMI is something else to figure out.

Its debian based same as the others, but more windows like and the lite 32bit version is really light

Ah, I have alot of struggle running a duplicate x-session, I just end up sending 

chromium --display=:0 --kiosk http://site.com/page

to launch a web site in full screen. But you can find a way to run x-0 twice. 

If its just web browsing try chrome os or android x86. It will be just as light and more web geared. It may not support 4k nor vnc though, just dig around. 

If the laptop doesn't have hdmi you can always run sounds from the 3.5mm out. 

[porina]

1 minute ago, RedWulf said:

Its debian based same as the others, but more windows like and the lite 32bit version is really light

Ah, I have alot of struggle running a duplicate x-session, I just end up sending 

chromium --display=:0 --kiosk http://site.com/page

to launch a web site in full screen. But you can find a way to run x-0 twice. 

If its just web browsing try chrome os or android x86. It will be just as light and more web geared. It may not support 4k nor vnc though, just dig around. 

If the laptop doesn't have hdmi you can always run sounds from the 3.5mm out. 

Looking at Zorin now... think I'm going to have to try it even if I only just got Lubuntu on the box. No idea about x-sessions and all that, but you reminded me of a problem I had when previously attempting linux. I want VNC to work exactly like it does on Windows. If I VNC into another box, I want to see and act on the existing desktop as if I were at that machine. I don't want a new virtual desktop of any sort which is totally useless for me.

 

Also the box is a nettop, not laptop. Well, pretty much the same thing I guess, apart from lack of built in screen and controls. It does have HDMI, which I know can output sound as it was working fine under Win10.

 

Lubuntu is really annoying me now. I told it to boot up without asking for a password, and disabled the screensaver and power save/sleep modes. Or did I? It is still turning off the display and asks for a password to unlock. Why? I already told it I don't care about security on it. Seriously, this is making Win10 look positively friendly. At least I know when I turn crap off on that, it stays off (at least until the next major update).

[RedWulf]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

No idea about x-sessions and all that, but you reminded me of a problem I had when previously attempting linux. I want VNC to work exactly like it does on Windows. If I VNC into another box, I want to see and act on the existing desktop as if I were at that machine. I don't want a new virtual desktop of any sort which is totally useless for me.

Lubuntu is really annoying me now. I told it to boot up without asking for a password, and disabled the screensaver and power save/sleep modes. Or did I? It is still turning off the display and asks for a password to unlock. Why? I already told it I don't care about security on it. Seriously, this is making Win10 look positively friendly. At least I know when I turn crap off on that, it stays off (at least until the next major update).

To turn of sleep mode and power saving in most linux systems you'll end up having to change some config files with nano or vi but lubuntu may have some on deck options since its laptop based.

As for the password its most likely either an empty password or you weren't root/su when you changed settings.

An x-session is the screen you see basically, the screen on the device/tv would be x-0, then vnc from one device is x-1, another is x-2 etc. You should be able to run x-0 on the tx and remote device but I had allloottt of trouble with it. 

[porina]

Lubuntu off, Zorin on. Even if the default desktop takes some inspiration from Windows, it feels ok so far. Not sure it is as good performing as Lubuntu was, in that it was struggling to even play a full screen youtube video at 720p, where Lubuntu managed 1440p ok and Windows 10 was just about coping with 4k.

 

Need to tinker with it more, but at least I found the options quickly to disable monitor and system sleep and passwords, and they seem to be working. Just forced a software update after it crashed the first time I tried it (got a totally white screen and couldn't do anything).