MadModder

Andrew:

If you haven't already discovered it, when you're putting an insert into a blind hole you need to make the hole a couple mm deeper than the insert.  The hot insert will push molten plastic ahead of it as it is inserted and if you don't leave a place for that to go, it WILL fill the insert's threads - DAMHIK. 

If you're setting the inserts by hand, a trick I picked up from Clough42 is to take the heat away while the insert is still a little proud of the surface.  Then quickly flip the part over and press it down on a flat surface.  The insert will retain heat for a while and pressing it on a flat surface does 2 things, it sets the insert flush with the surface and it also wicks some of the heat out of the insert. 

When I was installing the inserts for the track drive motor plates into the frame for my Terramac RT7R I discovered that the idiot who put the 6 heat-set inserts between the frame rails never considered how it would be possible to fit over 150mm of soldering iron into an 80mm gap.  What I finally did was to set the insert into the hole, I used the soldering iron to get the insert hot - but not try to seat it in the hole, then I used a piece of flat bar to seat the insert flush with the surface.  The flat bar I used was a 6" piece of 1//4" x 3/4" HRS, I set the 6 inserts in less than 5 minutes and it barely got warm.

Don

Presently using EasyOS, Barry Kauler's latest, based on Devuan Excalibur. Very happy with it.

If you want to try it, Barry has a simple installer called EasyDD which will write an image file of EasyOS to a USB thumbdrive. That will be a fully operational live build, not requiring installation to HD. Runs fine that way.

Of course a quality thumbdrive will start up noticeably faster and better than a bargain basement one. Actually, during the initial write installation it will tell you just how fast your usb drive is, comparatively.

EasyOS has containers so you can run stuff in sandboxes if you want. And it encrypts your data files and any customizations or applications you add. It does come with a large number of apps already, but is only about 1 gig in size. It runs in RAM so is very fast. It has an easy upgrade button, and also takes snapshots of your system, if desired so you can return to an earlier state.

Frankly, the best Linux OS I've tried re. small size and efficiency for a DIY type. I like it anyway.

Linux and NVIDIA have a strange relationship. I'm not sure why but there always seems to be issues with NVIDIA chip-sets and Linux installs .  The popular distros like Ubuntu seem to handle it a bit better than the others

I'm currently using kubuntu with an  AMD saffire GPU that at least works with most things . My previous NVIDIA card have some strange behavior with Wayland .

I have win11 on another drive and hate having to use it . Microsoft have really F'ed it up and I cant see it recovering - kids these days don't seem to be able to write solid working software and concentrate on wizz-bang  animation rather than operability .  And don't get me started about phones.......

The last time I tried the undo button thing She slapped me!

I've been using Pop Os for a few months, and quite like it as a step to see how things work in Linux world. 

I've also looked for a lighter distro for my 2011 laptop to replace Win7. Yes, there are plenty of them, but still, they tend to include way too much stuff, that I'll never use.

Make a custom Linux iso then? Meh, I tried that using Cubic, but don't know how much can be removed until something breaks. Dependencies I guess.

How about even lighter distro, where it's possible to install only needed apps?

Lately I've been testing server versions of Ubuntu and Debian in VM. In other words, 'headless' ones that doesn't have elements like desktop (or actually anything that uses GUI) as a default.

Anyway, there are tech guys on Youtube, who show the steps how to make a minimal Linux installation with desktop using server distro.

What comes to desktop environments, I've tried Xfce, Lxqt, and Mate.

At this point, Mate seems to be the closest to what I'm looking for, for its lightness and customization options. It even allows using window borders in its themes without the need to mess with css files. An example of classic Window-ish GUI:

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Ubuntu Mate uses Snap (which is a service running at background) to install and handle apps like Firefox. Like with Windows, I don't like such unnecessary services hanging around, and Snapd is one of them. Obviously, disabling that breaks some things.   

Debian Mate doesn't seem to use Snap out of the box, so I'll stick to it for now. 

So, this is about finding out how usable, reliable and perhaps snappy such a minimal system can be, when compared to 'full' distros like Mint and Pop Os.

In the end, bit of a rant:

Pop Os that I use on my pc, is quite resource heavy. When having something like Virtualbox and two web browsers running, it occasionally freezes the host system, VM or both.

I have 8Gb of ram on my pc, and don't remember having that kind of issues with Win7. From what I've read, it's about different memory management/allocation. There probably isn't much that can be done about it, except adding more RAM.

Some points about the subject at https://wartimeconsigliere.substack.com/p/why-windows-is-superior-at-memory?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web