Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Another year has gone. It was a nice year. A year when I returned to blogging. A year when many troubles went away. A year of hope. A year of love.

Let me wish to all of my readers

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

I wish you all the best in the coming year!

See you all in 2016!

Stay tuned to Linux notes from DarkDuck.

How-to video: Removing old kernels in Ubuntu

Once new kernel passes the test system, Ubuntu offers you to install it through its update system.
At the same time, old kernel remains in the system. It means that after some time of using Ubuntu, you may have a number of old kernels. They take your disk space and also may clutter the GRUB menu, although the latter issue is resolved in newer versions of Ubuntu.

This video shows you the way to remove old obsolete kernels from your Ubuntu installation.

The same approach is valid for whole Ubuntu family and derivatives: Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Zorin OS, Linux Mint and so on.

Please remember that the "best practice" is to keep at least two kernels in the system: the current and the previous one. This is to ensure the fallback solution if current kernel fails for whatever reason.

How many old kernels do you have in your system? How often do you remove the obsolete kernels?

DarkDuck is looking for the hosting provider change

Hello to all my subscribers.

Let me use this blog post for my personal rather than Linux-oriented need. I promise we will come back to Linux very soon.

You may be aware that I run this blog along with some other sites, one of them being buylinuxcds.co.uk. That's why I need a hosting provider. My current one is Awardspace.

I cannot recommend them high enough for their quality of service. Their technical support is exceptional. Their uptime and bandwidth are very good.

However, their price is no longer competitive. I feel like I can find a better price to host my sites. Maybe that is what you can help me with?

So, what do I need?

• I have 3 different domains to host (one .com and two .co.uk), some of them having sub-domains of 3rd and 4th levels. None of these sub-domains should be lost, but not all of them will be hosted by my new potential hosting provider. For example, this blog will remain on Blogger.
• Worpress installation and all surrounding infrastructure (PHP, MySQL and so on)
• My current provider says I use 1.2Gb of disk space and 25Gb of monthly traffic. I think it is an overestimation, but let's stick to these numbers.
• It should not necessarily be a free hosting. I am OK to pay a reasonable amount if that's lower than my Awardspace renewal offer.

Can you recommend any hosting provider who can meet my requirements? If yes, please leave a comment here or email me: darkduck at darkduck dot com.

PS. I will honour affiliate links, if you provide them.

Manjaro Linux 15.09: the user-friendly Arch

There are several distributions in the Linux world that many users have heard of, but are scared to try. Examples? Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, maybe even Debian. They all have a geeky aura. They have a reputation of being less user-friendly. Too many people prefer to stick to Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora or Mageia.

However, there are attempts to make these "hardcore" distributions more user-friendly through their derivatives. One of these derivatives is Manjaro Linux that I am going to try today. It is the Arch's derivative.

To be honest, the idea of trying Manjaro was in my head for quite a long time, but it was an order from BuyLinuxCDs.co.uk site that made it real.

You can download Manjaro Linux from their official Sourceforge page. There are KDE, Xfce and NetInstall versions that are supported officially, plus a dozen more flavours from the Community.

Manjaro also offers torrent downloads, but the number of available torrents on their page is much less than the number of flavours. Xfce flavour isn't available in particular. I had to download it directly using one of the Sourceforge mirrors.

The Manjaro 15.09 Xfce 32-bit ISO image is about 1.4 GB in size. I burnt it onto the DVD-R.
The DVD-R is in the tray of my Toshiba Satellite L500-19X laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from DVD. Let's go.

Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon quick screenshot tour

With the newest version of Linux Mint 17.3 released just few days ago, it is no wonder a big part of Linux community is interested in it.

Let me give you a quick screenshot tour through the Cinnamon edition of this distribution.

(attention: graphics)

Christmas gift ideas for Linux fans

Are you a Linux fan? Or maybe you have some friends who prefer Linux to any other operating systems? Or maybe both?

You know that Christmas and New Year are not too far away from now. This is the time when people usually exchange presents. I would like to give you some ideas of presents that you may give to your friends from the Linux community, or may be request for yourself.

Let's start with some fun

Let's pretend you don't know what Ubuntu is. Then, this is for you: Ubuntu haircare accessories. You can buy them from Amazon in the UK or worldwide.

If you pretend that you don't know what Fedora is, then why not give your friends a fedora or two? Again, Amazon UK and worldwide sites may help.

Sabayon fans will be happy to get some pans to cook their favourite dish. Do they live in the UK or the rest of the world? The help is near!

Forever classic

If you don't want to play fool with your friends, then there are some classic gifts to your rescue:

• Apron: UK and worldwide
• T-shirt: UK and worldwide
• Mug: UK and worldwide
• Key ring: UK and worldwide
• Toys: UK and worldwide

Books

Still unsure? Then choose a book! That's always a good present! There are many books about Linux available on either Amazon UK or global sites.

The links in this text are affiliated and Linux notes from DarkDuck will get commissions if you make purchases through them.