I got a Dell Vostro 3300 for a bargain price and it works just fine after a few upgrades.

 A charity I used to volunteer from put a Dell Vostro 3300 on their eBay and idly just put the minimum bid on, 20 quid, thinking I would probably not get it, got outbid once, but then put a bid on an hour before it ended, won it with that 22 quid bid, absolute bargain! It's got a 2.27Ghz i3 CPU, and arrived with a single 2GB RAM stick and 320GB HDD installed. 

There's just two screws to remove to release the bottom panel to access Memory and hard drive and two screws to release the HDD. There's a Windows 7 COA under the battery but I doubt I will ever need that. I run Linux on all my laptops.

I then did a bit of musical chairs with parts in my other laptops. I took 8GB of RAM from a poorly Thinkpad X201 and put that in my 2012 Macbook Pro (been meaning to do that for a while) and put the MBP's original 4GB in the Vostro. Then I replaced the 320GB hard drive in the Vostro with the SSD from my Dell Latitude E6500, which has Manjaro KDE on. The E6500 is one of the oldest laptops I have in use and is a bit tatty, so the Vostro makes a good replacement for it. I won't bin the E6500, it'll go on the spares shelf. Once the SSD was in and everything put back properly, it booted up the Manjaro KDE install with no issues.      

The only slightly annoying downgrade from my other laptops, but particularly the E6500, is it only has VGA out rather than DisplayPort. There's an eSATA port which I doubt I will ever use, 2 USB 2.0 ports (one either side) and an Ethernet port. The trackpad is good, just as good as the one on my ThinkPad T430s and the keyboard is decent (though has no back light, like the Thinkpad does, though Dell did have one as an option on a slightly better spec model). 

The Vostro has a reasonably decent 13.3 inch anti-glare screen with a default resolution of 1366x768, which is a bit low compared to the 14 inch on the Thinkpad T430s, which runs at a very nice 1600x900 resolution. The Vostro was basically a midway point between the consumer garbage Inspiron range and the Latitude business range, so this laptop doesn't quite have the best components compared to Latitudes but is still a solid machine. In terms of other specs, it has a slightly slower i3 M350 CPU than the i5-3320M in the Thinkpad and a few less ports, and no USB 3. There's an SD card slot but no Express Card slot to add more ports. Overall, it's a handy little laptop, especially for just 20 quid! It runs Manjaro KDE perfectly fine, and is a useful replacement for the E6500, so I am pleased with it.

Linuxiversary... One Year With LinuxMint.

Time flies when you are having fun and it certainly seems this year has been a great one for me in terms of computing. Exactly a year ago today I decided enough was enough and I left the Apple world behind after being an avid fan for over 20 years.

The build up had been coming for a few months – actually a few years previous I had ditched my iPhone for an Android handset - and the 13th July 2020 marked my first full day using Linux as my main operating system. 

I had dabbled for many years on and off, having an admiration for Linux. Early 2020 saw me switch to Linux Mint on my MacBook Air as a main OS, but that glowing fruit logo bugged me.

So I sold my beautiful slim and lightweight 11” MacBook Air and replaced with a rather large and chunky Dell Latitude E5410. Specification wise both laptops were similar – especially after upping the RAM in the Dell and swapping out the old hard drive for an SSD. My road to full time Linux and the final nail in leaving the Apple ecosystem had began.

It has been an amazing year. I have really gotten to grips with Linux. It is hard to learn a new way of doing things after 20 years but it soon felt natural. I am by no means a Linux expert, but I had enough knowledge to get me going and each day I learnt more and the last year has been fun.

It has been a fairly easy ride with only a few minor hiccups along the way which required me to learn how to overcome these - but at least it gave me even more knowledge.

In February 2021 I swapped my large Dell for a slimmer ThinkPad X201 – once again similar specs, just smaller.

I have never been happier. Linux is a great alternative. The mid 90s saw me venture into Windows which I didn't enjoy and I very quickly swapped to MacOS. I have never been a fan of Windows (to put it lightly), so there really was only one way out of the Apple world for me and that was via Linux.

I have modest needs when it comes to computing. I don't play games on my computer and only use it for web browsing, writing and  as well as picture, music and minor video editing and my 11 year old ThinkPad more than copes with my needs.

Linux is truly where I want to be and it is hard to believe I have been using it full time for a year already. Here is to many more happy years as a Linux user.

Check out my YouTube channel for portable and older gaming as well as tech videos, including ThinkPad X201 running Linux video.

Also check out my review of the ThinkPad X201.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Revitalising a Dell Latitude E5410 with an SSD

I have had my Latitude E5410 for a few months and I love it. It's a real workhorse and despite its age it performs amazingly. It's an i5 2.4Ghz machine with 8GB DDR3 and Intel HD Graphics.

However, the ageing hard drive is its only downside. Boot times were very slow and apps could be a bit sluggish to open. I think I noticed this more as my previous computer was a MacBook Air with an SSD.

So I bit the bullet after weeks of deliberation and ordered an SSD. The original 5400rpm Western Digital Blue 320GB SATA hard drive was to be replaced with a Kingston A400 240GB SATA SSD.

The thing I love about this Latitude is its ease of upgradability. Simply pop the bottom off and you have access to the RAM and hard drive. A few screws hold in the drive caddy and a further two screws attach the drive to the caddy. Swapping them over was easy and within 5 minutes the SSD was installed.

Next step was to reinstall Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon 64-bit. I have my trusty USB stick, so installing was easy. I can't say if this was any quicker because I was downloading multimedia codecs at the same time.

However, once installed there was an instantly noticeable speed increase across the whole machine. The next task was to put back all my apps – via Synaptic Package Manager – and it stormed through them. System updates were next and then a few apps that needed to be found online (such as Chrome, Reaper and Geekbench).

Before removing the older hard drive, I did some timed tests to see if this SSD upgrade would make the huge improvement that everyone had said would happen. I then redid those tests with the SSD installed.

As you can see from the table below the upgrade did the trick. Boot time went from a rather slow 150 seconds down to 37 seconds, and apps opening time have halved.

The whole machine feels so much snappier. An added bonus is the laptop is whisper quiet, with the SSD it makes no noise except the occasional whirr of the system fan.

I am extremely happy. It has breathed new life in to my beloved Latitude E5410. Its a chunky machine that I was very happy with and now I am super impressed with the upgrade.

I now have a spare 320GB hard drive that I am not sure what to do with. I could replace the internal DVD-RW in this Dell with it via a converter caddy giving me two internal drives, but I do like having an optical drive even if it only used occasionally.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Further reading:

17/11/2020 - Revitalising a Dell Latitude E6500 with an SSD

A Month Since I Switched To Linux

Four weeks ago I made the full switch from Mac to Linux. I have played with Linux on and off for years but had always gone back to using macOS. I think some of this was because I had the hardware to do it. However this time I made the big leap. I sold my Mac and bought a Dell laptop. There was no going back. Breaking free from Apple's walled garden approach has been a breath of fresh air in my tech life, but how has the transition from a platform I had used for 20+ years to uncharted waters gone?

Hardware wise, everything went fine. I’ve had no issues setting up and using Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon on my Dell Latitude E5410. All internal hardware works perfectly, any external drives or USB attachments work too – such as USB 3D audio stick, Bluetooth adaptor and spare WiFi adaptors – all work without having to fish around for additional drivers or services. I had one Bluetooth adaptor that was recognised by the system but failed to work. Not a huge problem just a small annoyance, but this was due to the chipset in it. My other works fine, so I am OK. Even my wireless printer – which I hadn’t give much thought about – just was there ready to be used.

One issue I had when I first started was keyboard shortcuts. My hands had gotten so used to Apple+Q etc that I had to keep reminding myself to use the Ctrl and Alt key instead, something that happened very quickly to my surprise.

A side point, I did take off the Windows key on my keyboard and remove the Windows logo from it. It bugged me seeing that little flag there each day.

Software wise, everything went fine. I checked software before I transitioned and minus a few Apple only apps I was already using cross platform tools, which I carried on using in Linux. I have had no issues day-to-day getting what I need done, which is mainly browsing, emailing, social media, music conversion, image editing and transferring files to and from my Android phone and to external backup drives.

The only stumbling block was finding a video editing tool that was easy to use that could take on the small tasks I needed to edit my YouTube videos before uploading. I have an intro I needed to drop in about 10 seconds in to my videos and I liked to snip sections out through videos, just to make them tidy (I have a habit of saying ‘um’ and rambling a bit off topic). I had intended to use OpenShot, but it is a highly unstable piece of software that also caused audio artefacts. So I switched to Kdenlive, which was much more sprightly, stable and no audio issues. Within an hour of installing it, I had gotten used to it and performed the editing I needed.

A small niggle with emailing, though more Thunderbird's fault than Linux itself. I used to use Thunderbird a lot and didn’t realise it was officially retired and only community supported. I had issues with it connecting to my Google mail servers and not wanting to send emails at times. However, using the Gmail web interface is a great alternative until I find a better email client.

Overall I am loving Linux. It is a strange feeling not to know an OS inside out. After using a Mac for 20+ years there wasn’t anything I didn’t know how to do, but with Linux its a huge learning curve, and I have had to ask my Linux guru friend more times than I would have liked or Google a few ‘how to’ issues. This will pass with more using and I am already feeling quite confident in Terminal.

Linux is far more newbie friendly than it has ever been. It is a clean, easy to use, bloat free OS that doesn’t get in the way of what you need to do. Even updates just sit patiently waiting for you to install them when it is convenient rather than popping up and getting in the way of work or waiting til you want to shut down and then installing.

I am embracing my new direction and my new non-Apple hardware. It is the best move I made since ditching my iPhone for Android a few years back. 

I can only look forward to using my computer how I want and learning Linux more and more each day.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Upgradeable Laptops... A Thing Of The Past?

Upgradeability seems to be a thing of the past when it comes to modern computers. The obsession with ultra thin ‘everything on the board’ is a problem for technology and the end user. Perhaps that's why I prefer older machines.

Switching from a MacBook Air with zero upgrade options, to a Dell Latitude E5410 laptop recently I was surprised by the upgrade options and the ease of accessibility to do it on this 10 year old laptop.

OK, so the MacBook Air might have been stylish, light and super thin, but that comes at a cost. This Dell Latitude might be chunky, boxy and won't win any beauty awards, but it has bags of upgradeability.

Turn the laptop over and there is an access panel, which is opened via one screw. Open that and you have access to the hard drive, the RAM, the wi-fi PCIe card, the CPU cooling pipe, the CMOS battery and even the system fan. All of which are super easy to take out, clean or replace.

Even on the top of the machine, more complicated repairs are still easier to do than on most hardware. Above the keyboard is a plastic strip where the power button is, it has a small hole which you can easily get a screwdriver or spudger under and pop it off, this gives you access to the screen hinges. While I had it off, I tightened them up, which solved the slight wobble I was seeing.

But the biggest surprise was the keyboard. According to the maintenance manual, undo two screws to release the keyboard and simply pull the tap (which is now visible) above the keyboard and you can just pull it out. I was expecting some kind of ribbon cable attaching it to the motherboard – from my experience these can be tricky to detach and reattach. However, this was different, the keyboard connector is a thick plastic tab that is hidden under the top casing and you just pull out the keyboard. I took mine out and gave it a good clean. Putting the keyboard back was super easy, simple slide it back down, put in the screws and keyboard is replaced.

This is an excellent idea. Imagine spilling something on your keyboard. You can remove that from your machine within seconds, wash it, dry it and put it back. Or worse case, you could just buy another one and put it in.

Add this to the fact the battery is replaceable in seconds by simply pushing a tab and pulling it out, this makes this a fantastic machine for those who like to do things to their computers.

Not only that I like to open up kit and give it a good clean, blow out all that dust and dirt and you can really get in to this machine.

The official service manual has a great strip down guide for most parts – some such as the screen is a bit more complex, but that is to be expected. But everything is far more accessible than anything I have used before and the fact that Dell give you instructions and almost permission to do it is an amazing thing.

I think the only thing that isn't replaceable on this laptop is the CPU.

Companies these days don't want you to be able to upgrade. They want you to replace it with a newer model or send it in to them for an overpriced repair.

But for me, I like the idea of upgradeability and repairability. It's my property, I want to be able to do what I want to it. I want to keep it going for as long as possible.

So hats of to Dell – who I have to admit I haven’t had a good word to say about before I got this laptop – for creating such an easily repairable machine.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Dell Latitude E5410 Review… Ten Years On

It may seem odd to review a ten year old laptop, but I have recently acquired a Dell Latitude E5410 and want to express my thoughts about it and using it.

Any followers of me on Twitter or readers of this blog will know I have switched from using macOS to using Linux, meaning I ditched my 2012 MacBook Air for a 2010/2011 Dell Latitude E5410.



That may sound an odd move but I needed to step away from Apple kit.

The E5410 is a first gen i5 device at 2.5Ghz. It has 4GB DDR3 RAM (upgradeable up to 8GB) and features a 320GB hard drive and DVDRW drive. The 14” screen features a 1280 x  800 resolution.

The E5 range is basically a plastic version of the E6 which has a mag alloy casing instead. Apart from that the are pretty much identical. That being said this is a 10 year old laptop and it has no cracks or damage (apart from some scratches on the lid), so is a pretty sturdy machine – even the screen hinges are still solid.

It is packed with ports. It has 4x USB 2.0 ports, 1394 port, VGA, PCMCIA, SD slot and ethernet. It also has built in N wireless. This particular model doesn't have bluetooth although there is a light on the casing for it. There are volume buttons above the keyboard. Some of the models have a webcam too, but this one doesn’t – but I never use one so it isn’t a problem.

That's the specs out of the way. How does it fair 10 years on?

In short this thing is a powerful workhorse even today. Mine came with Windows 10 64-bit installed, which I quickly wiped and installed Linux Mint Cinnamon which is also 64-bit.

Installation via USB was very quick, recognising all my hardware out-of-the-box, and adding my apps via Synaptic Package Manager was quick and easy. Once it was set up, I started using it and boy was I surprised. Booting was a little slower than my MacBook Air – but that isn’t surprising as it had an SSD in it – and I have a feeling this is the original hard drive, but once it is booted this machine flies along. Apps open quick and nothing seems to stress it out too much.

I have yet to do anything heavy on it, but for general browsing, video streaming, basic image editing, writing and light apps this thing is great. At some point I will need to do heavier work such as video and audio editing and then we will see how it goes, but an i5 processor (even an early one) and enough RAM should cope with most work – even if it isn’t the quickest.

One thing I was impressed with was the sound out of this machine. It is very loud and clear and the speakers are perfectly situated down either side of the keyboard.

On the subject of the keyboard it was one area I needed to be comfortable with. I do a lot of typing and had gotten used to soft touch chiclet keys, however I am loving the older style keyboard. It is extremely comfortable to type on and even at speed there is no bounce in the keys with just a perfect amount of spring.

The trackpad has quite a small surface area, but it does support multi touch. The mouse buttons are quite close to the front of the laptop which has taken a little while to get used to, but that is just a small niggle.

This might sound like a strange thing to be pleased about but I love activity lights. Something found less and less on modern computers. So I like the fact that the hard drive and wifi lights flash in the top left.

It's a chunky, boxey beast and definitely won't win any beauty awards. Coming from an 11” MacBook Air it sure is noticeable, but it does have the added bonus of built in DVD burning drive, a multitude of ports and an easy access panel on the bottom that allows you to upgrade RAM, hard drive, wifi card and give it a good clean inside.

The battery can be easily replaced - something modern design doesn't allow for much these days. But with the slide of a switch the battery pulls out and can be replaced in seconds. Mine has the standard 6 cell battery - but a 9 cell extended battery is also available. Mine is a genuine Dell battery (although it might not be the original one that came with it) and it still offers nearly two hours of battery life which is very impressive (for a laptop of its age).

From a looks point of view, it looks like it is built with durability rather than style in mind. It has a retro square look to it with clean lines all over it.

I am very impressed. It doesn’t feel like a 10 year old machine when using, but it certainly looks like one.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

Kubuntu 15.04 on a Dell Latitude D520

I've been following the progress of KDE 5 since it was in beta stages and possibly before and it looked good. I had been trying the Plasma 5 desktop demo ISOs in a virtual machine for awhile and when Kubuntu 15.04 was released recently, with KDE 5 Plasma desktop, I had to install it on something. I've been meaning to get round to it for a bit and since Kubuntu 14.04 wasn't feeling that great on one of my Dell Latitudes, I decided to try a fresh install of 15.04. Installation doesn't take long with a modern Live installer, taking something like 15 mins. Once done and rebooted everything works fine, unsurprisingly with this hardware, it works well with Linux. It has a 1.6ghz Centrino Duo (32bit) CPU, 60GB SATA hard drive and 3GB of RAM. The screenshot above shows the default look of the Kubuntu 15.04 desktop that is, in my opinion, much improved look to previous releases. It feels smoother and lighter on resources but still just as customizable as KDE 4, and it's actually the first time I have not wanted to change the default theme in Kubuntu! As with every time I install an Ubuntu derivative, I always ending up doing a bunch of updates even though I always select "install updates during install" or whatever.

The only minor complaint I have is the wallpaper downloader still does not find any wallpapers, complaining of a network error, despite the network being very much alive. I ended up downloading one of my own photos and manually setting that as my wallpaper.

Also, the Plasma desktop did crash once or twice and I had to kill Xorg and restart KDE...

 
Muon is KDE's default software manager these days, but I'm not really that keen on it, and I often use the command line or Synaptic. It's purely personal taste. I installed kubuntu-restricted-extras and VLC as per usual for the extra codecs and VLC's advanced features. I also installed Filezilla and downloaded and installed Chrome.

All Ubuntu derivatives have a Restricted Driver Manager for proprietary drivers, on this Latitude D520 there's one for the Intel CPU microcode firmware.

Overall performance wise it is not too bad on this machine, definitely feels quicker than KDE 4 did on Kubuntu 14.04.  However, this low end machine is not really quick enough for KDE and Chrome even with 3GB RAM! Probably best to use Firefox instead if you can or install a lighter weight derivative such as Xubuntu that uses the lighter weight XFCE desktop. KDE Plasma 5 though is shaping up to be a great desktop. I shall try other distros with it, to see if they have less bugs than Kubuntu does and hopefully it should be well polished by the time the next long term release of Mint comes along since that is what I run my main workstation on.      

Living With KDE on Kubuntu 14.04

First a little background. Most of the first Linux distros I ever used had a KDE 3 desktop or had it as an option, and I preferred it to Gnome 2 at the time,  regularly used Mepis, Vector, Fedora, Slax amongst others. I was a regular distro hopper back then, but I stuck with KDE 3 until just before KDE 4.x then I switched to Gnome 2 on Ubuntu 7.10 (on my desktop) and XFCE on Xubuntu (on my laptop). Late KDE 3 got a bit buggy for me and once i started using Gnome 2 regularly, I started to prefer it, and I used it right up until Ubuntu switched to using Unity by default. I did briefly try Gnome Classic but it was never the same, so I switched to Xubuntu on desktops and laptops, and then recently Mint Cinnamon (desktop and 2 laptops) and Xubuntu (lower end laptops).
 
So I have not really thoroughly tried Kubuntu or any KDE desktop for a while and every time I did I found it a little annoying to use, and the default themes distros generally use do not help either, especially Kubuntu. Even the default KDE theme on Fedora isn't very nice and besides I always end up going back to *buntu or Debian based distros as that is what I am used to and know how to use and tweak. Just recently though, since 14.04 came out, I decided to try using Kubuntu on one of my laptops and really try to use it every day, to see if I could get it the way I want it. Here's how Kubuntu looks by default:

First thing I had to do, was change that hideous default look somehow and remove that shiny folder thing! KDE has lots of settings to customize the entire desktop environment. At first KDE was also quite sluggish on this Dell Latitude D520 which has a 1.6ghz Core Duo CPU integrated Intel graphics and 4GB of RAM. It ran much better once I had disabled all the snazzy desktop effects. This actually makes KDE more bearable for me as I cannot stand the horrible shiny bling and great big drop shadows under windows, always reminds me of Ja Ja Binks in the Robot Chicken Star Wars special, by default KDE is all "Me-sa all sparkly glowy!" - and equally annoying!

Me-sa  all sparkly glowy!

I tried various themes and icons and finally settled on Moka icon theme, Chrome Dark window decorations, and Opaquity Desktop theme. I also set the Splash Screen to Minimalistic and also set the desktop wallpaper and Login screen to the same image.  I've also tweaked the colours too.

Layout-wise, I have moved the main panel to the top, made it smaller to give me more desktop space, and I think it also looks much nicer. Instead of a lower panel I always like to have a dock. My favourite is Cairo Dock but it merely crashed out in KDE on this laptop, so I installed Plank (aka Docky) instead and gave it permanent shortcuts for all my most used apps. I found this little list of stuff to do after installing Kubuntu quite handy. I stuck with Firefox as my default browser, though I might install Chrome too at some point. I also installed Yakuake drop-down Quake-style terminal, similar to Guake that I usually use.

One thing that I found a little annoying is KDE uses an "Activities" thing that I don't really like, and I found it took a bit of digging to work out how to add another workspace and set the default shortcuts for switching between them using Ctrl + Alt + left/right cursor, which is default in pretty much every major DE I have used.

KDE is pretty much a tinkerers paradise and although I used to enjoy that part, these days I prefer to actually use my desktop after no more than 30 minutes or so of configuration. I have spent a lot more time than that just trying to get KDE to look and work how I like it. With my main desktop I use Mint Cinnamon and all I usually do, appearance-wise, on that is move the panel, install Cairo Dock and change the icons, that's all I need to do. KDE needs a lot more tinkering to get it how I want it. Here's how my KDE desktop now looks after I login, as you can see I like a nice clean desktop with no icons or clutter, just a panel and dock. I shall keep using Kubuntu on this laptop for awhile and see how things go.

LXLE on a Dell Latitude D430

Until a few days ago, my Dell Latitude D430 was running Elementary OS, but I was getting frustrated at it's layout and decided to have a change of distro. A friend of mine recommended a distro called LXLE. It's a lightweight distro always based off the LTS release of Lubuntu, the LXDE desktop flavour of Ubuntu. It has various PPAs added and extra software, (useful codecs, applets etc) added. I've tried Lubuntu before but I didn't really like it for some reason. However, upon trying LXLE as a virtual machine in Virtualbox, I found LXLE to have a much better out-of-the-box experience than Lubuntu, so I decided it would be ideal for my D430.

LXLE feels more more consistent and overall neater than Lubuntu. Also Firefox is the default browser rather than Chromium. My only real criticism is I can't seem to find the shortcuts for switching desktops, which is usually Ctrl + Alt + Cursor keys for Lubuntu. I also think there are too many little games installed by default though that's only a minor point. Oh and there's no battery applet installed by default. Out the box, there's a panel at the bottom like Windows and a dock-style panel on the left that is set to auto-hide. I have changed the layout slightly, moving the lower panel to the top and the side one to the bottom, (keeping the lower panel in auto-hide mode). I have also installed Guake terminal and Dropbox.

LXLE has lots of tweaks and add-ons by default than Lubuntu like Aero Snap, Quick Launch, and there are "Four familiar desktop layout paradigms" though I stick with the XP paradigm, these can be chosen at the login screen under Sessions. The desktop system monitor and weather applet are neat touches too.

My Dell Latitude D430 has a 1.33Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU with 2GB of RAM which is the maximum supported, which I have found previously to struggle with "full fat" desktop OS and lots of browser tabs open, but it really flies on LXLE! Much like all *buntu flavours, it uses the same familiar installer and all the hardware works out the box. It feels even faster than Xubuntu 12.04 and Elementary OS, and I shall keep LXLE on it for now, I'd definitely recommend it for low end laptops and desktops and ideal to replace the recently unsupported Windows XP.

Ubuntu 11.10 On Dell Latitude XT (video)

I recorded a little demo video of Ubuntu 11.10 64bit running on my XT tablet/laptop, showing Google Earth, Fennec (Firefox Mobile) browser, drawing in GIMP using the stylus, and Nautilus showing Compiz' wobbly windows effect. I used a Trust webcam hooked up to my Ubuntu desktop and recorded using Cheese which can be found in Ubuntu's repositories. Blogger won't let me embed the video so here's the Google+ link.