Bulbagarden Conversational Chat Thread Vol.5

[Princess Viola]

Spoiler

an excellent test for age.

don't test me

Spoiler

i went and got one of my floppies for this pic

 

[JollyYoshi]

Spoiler

an excellent test for age.

I knew it was a floppy disk mainly because I’m familiar with the Famicom Disk system.

 

[Princess Viola]

does anyone else know what ps/2 ports are

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

does anyone else know what ps/2 ports are

The two ports in front of a PS2 while you plug in your controllers?

/jk I've actually seen some brand new motherboards that still have PS/2 ports, funny enough. Do they even still sell keyboards or mice with PS/2 ports?

Spoiler

an excellent test for age.

I actually used a floppy disk drive to scan some old documents as recent as about three years ago, haha. The sounds it made were... valiant for such ancient tech with such little data that you can store on it. The transfer speeds, on the other hand, were not quite as much so.

Some fun trivia for the super-youngins' here: that 1.44 MiB floppy disk was one of the most common sizes for that technology. A CD, in comparison, can hold up to 700 MiB which is 486 times more data. Meanwhile, a dual-layer Blu-ray disc is around 46 GiB which is over 30,000 times more data than a floppy disk, while a 256 GB microSD card that's smaller than a fingernail can hold over 169,000 times more! We won't even get into how much faster even a CD is compared to a floppy disk, haha, let alone the later technologies. As they say around here, technology is incredible, right?

 

[toastghost]

Like IDK I guess it's just because having a landline was (obviously) a thing every house had and, to this day, a lot of things you have to fill out and give your phone number for will include separate options for your home phone, cellphone, and work phone I just assume that you just get a landline for free (I know not literally free but you know what I mean) with a house or apartment and you're stuck with it for life lol.

i have a landline but it's basically useless now, nobody uses it except for calls from pharmacies, weirdly enough. for a while i was the only one who used it to call my friends before i got my own phone.

 

[mastermind lissi]

I don’t know if my house has a landline… i don’t know when it was built but it’s not very old but not new either…

 

[Princess Viola]

The two ports in front of a PS2 while you plug in your controllers?

/jk I've actually seen some brand new motherboards that still have PS/2 ports, funny enough. Do they even still sell keyboards or mice with PS/2 ports?

Yup.

Hell until recently you could still buy new Model M keyboards with PS/2 connectors, although the company that makes them has since switched over entirely to USB.

 

[colours]

goodness, haven't seen ps/2 ports in years.... @_@ so used to usb mice/keyboards that i haven't really given thought as to how they sorta... i dont want to say "vanished" because they still exist, but how... less common they are.

 

[Princess Viola]

GOD one of these days I'm really gonna need to clean up that old PC at my other home and see if it still works and, if it doesn't work, what needs to be replaced (or upgraded)

Get that all set up as a late 90s gaming PC. Pretty sure it's from 1999 and has Windows 98 on it.

 

[Princess of Lumas]

Based in regards to the old PCs from the late 90s. Windows 98 has the best startup sound.

Do you remember wireless LAN cards? In my family, we used to fight over who got to use the card in their laptop...fun times.

 

[Princess Viola]

Based in regards to the old PCs from the late 90s. Windows 98 has the best startup sound.

Do you remember wireless LAN cards? In my family, we used to fight over who got to use the card in their laptop...fun times.

I hear that noise every time I boot into Linux.

 

[Princess of Lumas]

I hear that noise every time I boot into Linux.

Interesting, I never grew up with Linux so I wouldn't know. I used Linux once or twice in college. Either way, Windows 98 has the most soothing sound palette to me.

 

[Princess Viola]

Interesting, I never grew up with Linux so I wouldn't know. I used Linux once or twice in college. Either way, Windows 98 has the most soothing sound palette to me.

Well I mean I set it to play that sound when I login.

Mostly because, uh, my Linux Mint desktop looks like this:

Spoiler

 

[toastghost]

genuinely how does one use linux

 

[Itsjustmudkipz]

What is Linux

 

[Princess of Lumas]

It's an operating system like say, Windows, or MacOS. In my circles, it used to be used by some computer programmers or people who preferred the user interface. I've only used it a few times.

 

[colours]

genuinely how does one use linux

the same way one would use windows or mac, presumably. i've used linux a fair few times (linux mint, elementary os, ubuntu, zorin), but the distros i've used were similarish enough to windows to not feel too offputting.

the only thing that made me feel kinda out of place was that i feel that in order to get the most out of linux, you need to learn shell commands, and that's... not something i'm ready for, yet. there isn't really a reason for me to use linux anyway, i'm perfectly fine with windows as it is, for now. @_@

 

[Princess Viola]

yeah linux is literally just an operating system

well family of operating systems, typically packaged as a distribution or distro

i use linux mint myself (although i dual-boot with windows. got windows 11 on my 1 TB M.2 SSD and linux mint on my 512 GB M.2 and i also have a 2 TB SATA SSD for more storage)

and let me tell you something, i know for a fact that i've mentioned this before here i believe, but holy fucking shit was the install process for linux mint 10000000000 times easier than the install process for windows 11

just for some clarification here: the SSD that my current laptop (that i got as a christmas present for myself back in december) came with was the 512 GB SSD and that originally had windows 11 on it. in addition to the M.2 slot occupied by the preinstalled SSD, this laptop has a second M.2 slot and space for a 2.5 inch SATA drive (and it included the cable, bracket, and screws to install such a drive).

thanks to me having gotten this laptop to replace my old gaming laptop that died, i obviously had that 1 TB SSD from my previous laptop and i wanted windows on that drive and linux on the 512 GB drive.

so here's what i had to do to get that done and exactly WHY i fucking hate windows so goddamn much linux needs to take over i swear to god:
okay so let's start out with what i had to do before i actually began the install process(es)
- FIRST. i backed up my files. didn't really have much on the 512 GB SSD (since i'd only had the laptop for a few weeks before i managed to get the time to do this stuff) but i still backed up what little i did have that i wanted to keep and from my 1 TB SSD, i backed up my entire user folder (since that's, you know, where my personal files and shit are all saved in), as well as my steam installs, my EA installs (READ: the sims 4), my civilization 4 install, my retroarch install, and my paint.net install (mostly so i could just readd all the plugins i'd downloaded to my new install once i got windows reinstalled and paint.net downloaded again). as you probably figured, i backed all these files up to the 2 TB SATA drive

- SECOND. i needed to create installable media. for windows 11, it was easy. went to the microsoft website, downloaded the media creation tool, plugged in one of my usb drives, and let it create a bootable windows 11 usb stick. then for linux mint...it was also easy. downloaded rufus, went to the linux mint website, downloaded the then-latest linux mint ISO, plugged in a different usb drive (because doing this whole thing wipes the flash drive you use), used rufus to create a bootable linux mint usb stick

NOW WE GET TO THE WINDOWS INSTALL PART OF THE STORY:
- i didn't want anything to go wrong here so, to be extra safe, i made the decision that i will only have the drive that i am going to be installing each operating system onto installed in my laptop during the install process. so that meant that, for the windows 11 install, i completely removed the 512 GB M.2 drive and just disconnected the 2 TB SATA drive's cable, so only the 1 TB M.2 drive was connected

- i plug in my windows 11 usb, turn my laptop on, and mash f12 until i get to the boot menu. the boot menu confirms that the only two boot options i've got are: the 1 TB SSD and the USB drive. obviously as i am going to be installing windows 11, i select the USB drive to boot from it

- the windows 11 installer starts up, i go through the first few things just fine. select the language, currency and date format, and keyboard layout i wanna install, agree to the license agreement, say that i don't have a product key (since i logged-in to my microsoft account, it'll just automatically use the key that way) choose that i want to just install windows (and not move over my files, programs, etc. with it) and then i have to choose the drive where i'll be installing windows on to and....it's not there. my 1 TB SSD isn't showing up. the installer isn't detecting any drives at all. what the fuck.

- i think 'well i previously had this 1 TB SSD in the second M.2 slot but moved it to the first one, maybe i should move it back and see if that fixes it? nope. and the drive shows up in the boot menu and, after i put the 512 GB SSD back in (so i could login to windows and try and figure out what the hell is going on + also the 1 TB drive was still showing up there too), it turns out that i need to get the intel rapid storage technology drivers. THANKFULLY i had a third usb drive so i downloaded the drivers, put them on that flash drive, turned off my laptop, removed the 512 GB SSD, and restarted the install process

- i get to the 'choose where you want to install windows option' again, select 'load driver', install the intel rapid storage technology drivers, click 'refresh' and hooray the drive and its partitions shows up!! so i delete the partitions, select to install it on the (now blank) 1 TB drive, and go on my merry way installing windows 11!

- HAHAHAHAHA just kidding, i fucking wish it were that simple. a little bit later in the install process, microsoft wanted me to connect my laptop to the internet to continue the install process. and guess who's laptop didn't have any wifi network adapter drivers installed so she couldn't connect to the wifi?

- AND HOO BOY THIS WHOLE RIGAMAROLE. microsoft actually have instructions on how to (re)install these drivers during the install process if they're missing (which they mark as being for 'advanced users' because this is very much not anything some random dipshit with a PC is going to understand what the fuck to do).

- so what i had to do was this:
-- on my tablet, go to acer's website, enter in my laptop model number, and download the wifi drivers i needed and put them on my usb drive, making sure the .inf file was on the root of the drive
-- plug the usb drive into my laptop
-- press shift-f10 to open command prompt
-- type 'diskpart' and hit enter
-- in the diskpart window, type 'list volume' and hit enter, making note of the letter that was assigned to the usb drive
-- press shift-f10 again to open a new command prompt window
-- type 'pnputil /add-driver (the usb drive letter):\*inf' and hit enter
-- type 'pnputil /scan-devices' and hit enter
- and then i'd have wifi and be able to continue the install!!!

- ONLY THAT'S NOT WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED. that whole process did jack and shit. sure it said that the drivers were installed but still no wifi. AND command prompt would fuck with my keyboard as well. i could press shift-f10 to open up a command prompt window and then none of my keys would work. well none of the keys i'd use actually type with (kind of important when this whole process required me to type in commands). i could still press shift-f10 to open up MORE command prompt windows and press tab to select options (did i also mention i couldn't use my trackpad because i didn't have drivers for that either?)

- i do some searching and i find the solution to fix command prompt not accepting keyboard inputs during the install process: alt-tabbing. yup, that fixes it. BUT I STILL DON'T HAVE WIFI DRIVERS.

- i do some more searching and i find a youtube guide and holy fucking shit this random ass guide i find works and holy fucking shit what i had to do is just like holy fucking shit

- here's what i ultimately had to do to fix this issue:
-- shift-f10 to open command prompt (and then alt-tabbing so i could actually type commands)
-- type in 'taskmgr' and hit enter, which opens up the task manager
-- in the task manager, i right-clicked the windows install process (at this point, i'd plugged in a usb gaming mouse that came with my laptop to make it easier for me) and chose 'open file location'
-- this opened up where the installer was located in windows explorer
-- since i was now in file explorer, i could then navigate directly to 'devices and drives', click to browse the files in my usb drive, and manually install the wifi drivers

- thankfully doing this gave me wifi and i connected to the internet and was able to finish installing this trash operating system.

- oh and then after i installed some updates and was restarting the PC, it was hanging on the 'updates are in progress please keep your PC on' screen for like 15 minutes and it turns out that i had to remove the usb that had the windows 11 installer on it (after forcibly shutting the laptop off since it was hanging) but even still you know

NOW THE LINUX MINT INSTALL PART OF THE STORY:
- i turn off the laptop, remove the 1 TB SSD, connect my 512 GB SDD, and plug in my linux installer usb drive

- i turn the laptop on, mash f12, get to the boot menu, boot from the usb drive, and load into the linux live installer

- while i could fuck around and test out linux mint in the live test enviroment, i decide 'nope' and just go right for the 'install linux mint' option

- i go through the whole setup process without any issues whatsoever. don't need to install any drivers to get it to detect the SSD or be able to connect to my wifi network. IT. JUST. WORKS.

 

[colours]

good grief you sure went through an ordeal with that windows 11 install @__@

this is why i'm reluctant to upgrade to 11, myself.

 

[MelodicCharm]

christ, yeah. microsoft can make me “upgrade” once i’m dead and buried….. though i probably will end up being forced to before then :P. i’ll probably have to end up becoming a linux user too whenever that happens