Linux versions - Mint, Ubuntu - whatever ....

[James Wonnacott]

Personally I'm a Debian fan.

[Dave2002]

Personally I'm a Debian fan.

Maybe!

I'm finding Linux more confusing than I'd hoped - with so many different systems, file managers etc. It's not until one starts to use the system (this post is being done from Mint 15) that one begins to catch on to the various options, and also the sometimes irritating quirks. I've still not beaten the small text size for the menu items in the menu bar - though I have resized the panel, and put it at the top of the screen. I also tried Autohide, which worked fine for a while, but this morning it just went into "hide" mode, so I had to reset things - and now I've got it back to being on all the while why I (con)figure the system more. I use the Cairo dock too, but that doesn't always start, so I do need the main menu to be always available and visible. I couldn't even get a browser working a while back, but eventually kicked things back into life by getting up a terminal window and then typing in $ firefox - so some tools work directly from terminal, which is good to know.

One thing which seems very relevant for R3 is the use of Flash (Adobe). If I try to access the Radio 3 live stream I get a message in Firefox that I need to install Flash. I thought that currently Flash is being deprecated more and more, so it seems odd that this is still needed. I tried installing Opera, and after a few hiccups got that working too, but the R3 page still insists on wanting to have Flash.

Is this really necessary? Even Windows users seem to be moving away from relying on Flash, and it really does seem to be a bad idea to have systems based on Flash. Can I avoid it, if I want to listen to R3 via the web on Linux?

If not, what do I do to get things working - say in Firefox or Opera?

[Quarky]

Maybe!

One thing which seems very relevant for R3 is the use of Flash (Adobe). If I try to access the Radio 3 live stream I get a message in Firefox that I need to install Flash. I thought that currently Flash is being deprecated more and more, so it seems odd that this is still needed. I tried installing Opera, and after a few hiccups got that working too, but the R3 page still insists on wanting to have Flash.

Is this really necessary? Even Windows users seem to be moving away from relying on Flash, and it really does seem to be a bad idea to have systems based on Flash. Can I avoid it, if I want to listen to R3 via the web on Linux?

If not, what do I do to get things working - say in Firefox or Opera?

Not having any problems accessing iPlayer via Firefox. I can't recall installing Flash Player, and I can't find it in the Linux file system - but that is not to say it is not there. There is a Linux multimedia player - forgot the name of it now - something like VLC media player.

I usually access iPlayer via the R3 Schedules page - may be this is more tolerant of other media players?

[Quarky]

WINE (which comes ready packaged for Mint) runs older versions of MS stuff fine tho libre office is fine for reading + producing docx etc - if you are only using outlook for email then switch to Thunderbird - I suspect that the AMRadio stuff would work under wine unless it has specific hardware interfaces - the more usual problem is hardware especially scanners from Canon (good quality but they refuse to release info for Linux drivers under SANE tho you may be lucky and have a supported model based on other users hacking)

Thanks for advice re. WINE, Frances. I have not actually downloaded it yet - just too many other jobs to do - but I noted that Mint is in the same category as Ubuntu for download version.

in fact I have the impression that Mint is actually based on Ubuntu, and that the differences 'twixt the two may be mainly in look and feel of GUI. But I stand to be corrected.

[Frances_iom]

in fact I have the impression that Mint is actually based on Ubuntu, and that the differences 'twixt the two may be mainly in look and feel of GUI. But I stand to be corrected.

It was originally but has now mostly moved to Debian (which was of course the base for Ubuntu) - the GUI wars were over Ubuntu's Unity GUI (a tile like interface supposedly aimed at touch screens (a la Win 8)) and the original Gnome 3 which departed too much from Gnome 2 which led to development of MATE and Cinnamon as alternative GUIs - one of the Linux mags last month had a cover CD allowing you to try out many of the GUIs available for MINT