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ThaCrip

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Everything posted by ThaCrip

  1. So what I was saying does not really apply to you or you to me since yours are from a random manufacturer as they might only overburn a minute or so over the usual 80min limit, but it's hard to say for sure without testing as we only know you can't do '82:26:49'. because I imagine with the 'CMC Magnetics Corp' how far one can actually overburn will probably vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. so in that case only way I can know the rough cut off point of mine in particular is to waste a CD-R and say try burning 82minute30sec or more just to see if it works or not as if not as when playing I can get a rough idea of where the cut off point is. but thanks for the info as I did not expect to get a reply given the age of this post and you only had one post until now
  2. My guess is I won't get a reply from this user given the age of the post. but I am curious as to whats the specific brand those CD-R's? ; because if they are Verbatim I am reasonably confident you can go to at least 82:14:66 (82min15sec) and have a successful overburn and music will play without the clicking issue you experienced at the end of the standard music CD-R as I noticed in the past when I overburn too far on other random CD-R's they react the same, at least in some of my CD players if I recall correctly. but the Verbatim (CMC Magnetics Corp) 80min CD-R I have are easily the furthest I overburned successfully as I would guesstimate on any random brand of CD-R's nowadays you can probably get at least 30sec to maybe a minute or so over the 80min mark, but much beyond that your rolling-the-dice and it could easily fail. so when I got 2min15sec over successfully I was a little surprised since prior to that happening I figured 1min15sec to 1min30sec was pushing it really hard on any random CD-R brand. but if yours is Verbatim brand that probably means I am very close to the failure point (from my best guess without knowing the exact cut off point) as 82:14:66 works but your 82:26:49 fails, which probably means the overburn failure point is somewhere between 2min15sec to 2min26sec over the usual 80min normal limit. it's possible I could try pushing over the 2min15sec limit to maybe 2min20sec at some point in the future but I only burn standard Audio CD's occasionally and getting a CD-R to very close to say 2min20sec over the 80min limit might not always occur as I mainly use overburning so if I go a little over the 80min limit I don't have to remove any songs. who knows, if I did not mind wasting a CD-R I could say try burning 2min30sec over the usual 80min limit (so about 82min30sec), and assuming it fails, I could probably put it into a CD player and watch the time on the last song and see at what seconds left in that song it fails and from there I should be able to get a very close estimate as to the true limit of it by subtracting the time difference of when it failed to where it should have finished and then be slightly conservative from there. so for example... say the song playing failed at the 82min23sec mark (as the CD player starts the clicking and gets out of whack), which if it was 82min30sec that means it would have failed with about 7 seconds to go on the last song before it stopped normally, which that probably means I would have to have it so it's even less than that for the CD-R to close etc from a rough guess so the CD player does not do the clicking issue and will stop like is normally expected in a normally functioning CD-R. p.s. I never tried the truncate option though since in my case ill always either overburn (like if it's a bit past 80min) or make sure it will fit within the usual 80min limit by removing song(s).
  3. There are other methods to but that one seems to be the easiest/quickest. but looking online a moment ago I see... https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account ; 'Method 1' is what I used months ago. but there 'Method 2' is pretty much same example I used but they just typed in 'admin' instead of the 'no at thankyou dot com' stuff I used. but you can see the pictures there on what it looks like as that's basically what it looked like when I did it. so I am starting to think if you can pretty much type anything there besides a real account and it will error out and allow local account creation given they used 'admin'.
  4. Sorry for the late reply as I just noticed your post here a week later. anyways, I took a quick look online and I think I found the Reddit post you mentioned which is about 5 months ago. when I did my HWID stuff it was late October 2023. so less than 5 months ago when I did the HWID activation. but for kicks I installed Windows 10 in a fresh QEMU/KVM VM a moment ago. then checked activation status, which is not activated as expected, then I tried that HWID method and... it worked ; you can clearly see it's activated... 'Activation Windows is activated with a digital license'. before that it was in red saying it was not activated etc. but just to make sure the HWID activation method also still works on Win11, I tried Windows 11 on a fresh VM a moment ago and checked activation status and said not activated. then I ran the HWID method and it shows 'Windows is activated with a digital license'. just to do one last test to confirm it lasts... I completely deleted the VM's virtual hard drive and created one fresh, but used the same UUID when it was activated a moment ago on the previous VM's virtual hard drive, and... it still worked as you install Win11, skip over the activation part when it asks, then once you reach the desktop I checked activation status and it's activated with no further action needed on my end. so in short... that HWID still works on Win10/11. TIP: to dodge Microsoft's 'forced' Microsoft account junk just type in 'no at thankyou dot com' (with 'at' being '@' and 'dot' being '.') and then enter any random password (it does not matter what it is and you don't even need to remember it) and it will error shortly after that and allow a local account instead (which you then create with your own password like usual which you want to remember) as I saw that on another site and heard it worked but I never tried that until now and it worked exactly as they said.
  5. That must be a older Windows 10 ISO as they have been too big to fit onto a standard 4.7GB for years now. you are better off setting up a bootable USB stick, 8GB will work. then just get the latest official ISO from Microsoft's website or use the Media Creation Tool etc.
  6. Here is the OP's log.txt for those who don't want to download it... I 20:50:22 ImgBurn Version 2.5.8.0 started! I 20:50:22 Microsoft Windows 8 Core x64 Edition (6.2, Build 9200) I 20:50:22 Total Physical Memory: 33,480,684 KiB - Available: 23,953,008 KiB I 20:50:22 Initialising SPTI... I 20:50:22 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... I 20:50:22 -> Drive 1 - Info: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BP60NB10 1.02 (F:) (USB 2.0) I 20:50:22 -> Drive 2 - Info: ELBY CLONEDRIVE 1.4 (E:) (SCSI) I 20:50:22 Found 1 BD-ROM/HD DVD-ROM and 1 BD-RE XL! I 20:51:55 Operation Started! I 20:51:55 Source Device: [0:0:0] HL-DT-ST BD-RE BP60NB10 1.02 (F:) (USB) I 20:51:55 Source Media Type: CD-ROM I 20:51:55 Source Media Supported Read Speeds: 4x, 10x, 16x, 20x, 24x I 20:51:55 Source Media Supported Write Speeds: 24x I 20:51:55 Source Media Sectors: 333,000 I 20:51:55 Source Media Size: 783,216,000 bytes I 20:51:55 Source Media Volume Identifier: AIR_ALL_ORANGE I 20:51:55 Source Media File System(s): ISO9660 (Bootable), Joliet I 20:51:55 Read Speed (Data/Audio): MAX / 8x I 20:51:55 Destination File: D:\AIR_ALL_ORANGE.BIN I 20:51:55 Destination Free Space: 861,445,029,888 Bytes (841,254,912.00 KiB) (821,538.00 MiB) (802.28 GiB) I 20:51:55 Destination File System: EXFAT I 20:51:55 File Splitting: Auto I think I had a similar issue in the past with ImgBurn hanging on the analyzing tracks part. but in my case it was when reading a CD-RW disc, which those discs were pretty much faulty as once I got different ones it seemed to be okay after that on same drive. off the top of my head... try another CD/DVD reader if possible on that same CD as it could be possible your current reader has trouble reading it and may work okay on other drives.
  7. Windows 10 is officially supported until Oct 2025. Windows 11 will run on hardware that's not officially supported but requires a bit of extra effort to install. I also run Linux Mint (currently 21.2-Xfce) on my machines. in fact, I even run Windows 11 (and it's "activated" (the method I used to activate ('massgrave github' ; using 'HWID', which is the best) works on Win10/Win11)) in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine on my i5-3550 CPU which is not even officially supported and it works fine using official Windows 11 ISO straight from Microsoft. you can see QEMU/KVM emulates TPM v2.0. but I agree QEMU/KVM feels lighter than VirtualBox. side note: I noticed the 'activation' of Win10/11 using certain software seems to tie the activation to the QEMU/KVM's UUID of the virtual machines virtual HDD setup. because I noticed if I wipe it and start fresh, the activation is disabled. but if I restore the same UUID when I activated it, the activation is automatic with no further interaction needed as you just install Windows like usual and skip the key part etc during setup and once on the desktop you will notice it's automatically activated. but if I change the UUID of the virtual machine, like when you start a fresh one, the previous activation will no longer work. so it's easy enough to just use the same UUID in the future. on a real machine you would not have to worry about that UUID stuff if you installed Win11 directly on real hardware and activated it. even when it comes to file sharing between my real PC and the QEMU/KVM virtual machine I just setup a Samba share on my main Mint machine and then you can access it from the Win11 virtual machine etc. but at least on my i5-3550 CPU, you can't really expect native level performance when using a virtual machine (but performance is passable, especially if you don't plan on using it too much). but I generally don't use Windows, but it's nice to have on the rarer occasion where I need it in which case I use the VM. but generally the small amount of Windows software and limited amount of games I play all work on Linux Mint like Foobar2000/ImgBurn etc. also, you mentioned 'GPU passthrough'. while I never used this personally, from what I read, it seems you can only use it if you have a spare GPU that you are currently not using on Mint, which I can't imagine most people have (I don't). but given the direction things are going with Windows with Windows 11 etc I am glad I dumped Windows for Linux a little over 5 years ago now on my primary desktop PC as Mint is just more snappy without all of the bloat that runs on Windows. this is especially obvious the less CPU power your computer has as on a backup laptop I have with a under powered CPU (AMD E-300) Mint becomes usable noticeably faster than Windows does after booting up and installing updates on Mint is quicker to and you don't have to deal with forced reboots etc on Mint as with Mint you generally don't have to reboot after updates short of pretty much kernel ones or, if you have a NVIDIA GPU using the proper proprietary NVIDIA driver. even then it lets you choose when to reboot. in fact, on Linux Mint 21.2-Xfce I currently have my all-time record uptime of 180 days and counting (as I have not rebooted in over 180 days now on my primary use PC). so basically it will be a half of year without a reboot in about 3 days from now. p.s. I was reading articles recently that shows that, with Win11 24H2 in the near future, will REQUIRE a certain CPU instruction, which on Intel CPU's basically means you need a CPU that supports 'SSE4.2' otherwise it flat out won't work. still, unless your CPU is fairly ancient it will still work as my i5-3550 should work as it supports SSE4.2 and it's from the year 2012 and I think Intel CPU's older than mine still have SSE4.2. on the AMD side of things I think they go back even further to something like 2006-2007 etc. basically, in short, as long as your CPU is not too old Win11 should continue to work for the foreseeable future.
  8. Yeah, I get eventually drives that read optical media will be more difficult to come by. but at least currently I would say we should be safe for at least another 10+ years from now. because I figure as long as the SATA connection standard remains common in desktop computers we should be safe for a while because even if they say stopped making optical drives in 5-10 years time, it will be a quite a while after that before finding a optical drive will be a problem. but for more general backup... yeah, quicker storage is preferable like HDD's etc as that's what I do for most of my data backup. DVD backup would be largely for family photos/videos and the like, which is much more limited. Fair enough as there are definitely some advantages there. I would say my main thing is DVD's are a bit more time proven and it's much easier to find a drive that can read DVD's unlike BluRay and drives are much cheaper that can read DVD to. even with longevity... quality DVD recordable discs will most likely last atleast decades given I have some around 15 years old with no real signs of degradation as I figure if they are still pretty much like how when I burned them after 15 years or so, they will likely remain reliable for decades to come. because when it comes to disc longevity... the main thing is as long as they can last a large portion of someones life span or so as if they pass this standard, I think one could argue that's what matters most. so if, for example, a DVD lasts 50-100 years and Bluray say lasts say double that, while good in paper, in real world it probably won't matter and this assume we still have drives that can read this stuff in 50-100+ years etc, which I figure by then this stuff might be much harder to come by. but purely from discs point of view... I get your point with $1 each at 25GB for BD-R vs $0.20-0.30 for DVD's 4.7GB (so roughly 14.1GB to 23.5GB per $1 or so) and it's more convenient/faster transfer speeds on BluRay. I guess a lot of it comes back to how much higher importance data one has to backup and how much up front costs someone is willing to pay. because if one has many TB's then DVD's really start to lose their appeal just from a practical point of view. but if you only have say hundreds of GB's or so, then it's a option.
  9. While not bad, personally I would not rely on that too much as since SSD is basically a memory chip. so if it does fail, it can be sudden. that's why I prefer regular hard drives over SSD for long term storage for general backup purposes of most things. another bonus with optical media is one can't accidentally delete anything. I use CD-R's for creating standard Audio CD's (maybe for a very small amount of data backup in addition to DVD-R/+R). so I guess I should have said CD-R for standard Audio CD's and DVD for a smaller amount of higher importance data backup is my general thing.
  10. I use optical media for backup purposes, not for general usage. helps keep wear on the drive less this way and it's not like one really need to use CD/DVD etc much nowadays besides data backup anyways given one can get plenty of hard drive space for reasonably cheap for quite some time now. p.s. if you wanted you could say make a single uncompressed rar/zip file with a bunch of smaller files if you wanted. but I guess it depends on how small and how many as to whether it might be worth doing that or not. like if it's a bunch of smaller txt files, I would probably create a single '.7z' file with compression here. but if the files are not too small and you don't have tons of them, just burn them to CD/DVD straight up.
  11. ??? ; I am not using Steam Deck (which I am aware is Linux based). I have a standard desktop PC (ones that normally run Windows) and simply installed Linux to it (in my case Mint 21.2-Xfce as I wiped the boot drive and I only run Mint now as I have been on Mint for nearly 5 years now as in Jan 2024 it will be 5 years since I dumped Windows for Linux (I pretty much don't use Windows anymore)) which is completely free and a small tweak to ImgBurn and it can see my standard desktop sized CD/DVD burners without issue (but it should work fine with a external USB burner to I would assume, although the general word is desktop burners are better than laptop sized burners).
  12. From a quick look it appears that's pretty much using 'Wine', which is basically Linux software that allows some Windows program to run on it Linux based OS's. Wine (winehq.org ; although I got my ImgBurn setup through PlayOnLinux but it's still using a Wine variation) is basically what I am using on my desktop Linux computers to get ImgBurn working. but I still got to adjust some options in ImgBurn for it to see my CD/DVD burners. but connecting a DVD burner (in your first link) to a smart phone actually works? ; because if yours works without any further configuration of Wine it must be different from desktop Linux as that requires changes to ImgBurn settings for it to see ones DVD burner etc. but thanks for the info
  13. Personally... I think desktop PC's are far better than smart phones as everything is superior on those besides portability. even if I were to go with portability on some level, I would still default to a laptop since at least it's a proper computer where as smart phones are watered down online experience as smart phones are okay for quick/limited use, but if I am going to be online for any length of time, which is typically the case for me, a desktop is my preferred way by-far. but I guess if a persons primary concern is social media (or the like), and is heavily into portability/less weight, a smart phone is probably good enough for these kinds of users. which probably accounts for a lot of people nowadays as desktop/laptops ain't as popular as they used to be. but I definitely won't be dumping a desktop as it's just the best way to experience the internet and typing is much faster on these as on a smart phone/laptop it's a bit of a chore. just some thoughts
  14. If you are trying to burn a standard Audio CD with ImgBurn, I suggest doing what I do, which is to temporarily convert your FLAC back to standard WAV files (i.e. 16/44.1) with Foobar2000 (or whatever software you prefer), burn your Audio CD like usual through ImgBurn using these standard WAV files, and then delete the WAV files once done and keep your FLAC for long term storage like usual. that might not be super convenient but unless you are burning a lot of CD's it's a good enough work-around and then you don't have to worry about any random errors like that. p.s. that's what I have been doing on Linux when using ImgBurn to burn standard Audio CD's once in a while.
  15. When burning standard audio CD's I would not worry too much about the quality of the CD-R media itself. I would be more concerned with using a lossless audio source (i.e. FLAC). if you are burning from MP3's to standard Audio CD, all the more reason not to worry about the quality of the CD-R media. like you generally want a lossless audio source to burn a standard audio CD. so FLAC etc is optimal and just keep the FLAC files as this way even if your standard Audio CD acts up in the future it's really easy to re-burn to CD-R. p.s. personally... I pretty much only use CD-R media for burning a occasional standard Audio CD as I rarely use it for general data backup as for general data backup I use DVD recordable media (Verbatim/TY(Taiyo Yuden)).
  16. Unless things changed, back when I overburned XBox360 games to Verbatim DVD+R DL discs I had to have a special firmware. I still have that drive and the firmware flashed to it (Liteon iHAS-324B) as it's the reason I bought that drive in the first place (although I use it for general burning nowadays). I 'think' there are some newer drives than what I have that can overburn though, although I can't tell you what they are off the top of my head. but my XBox360 collects dust for years now as I don't think I have used that on a semi-regular basis in probably around 10 years. I still have about eight Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL discs from those days collecting dust. p.s. some XBox360 games can be played on a PC using the 'Xenia' emulator.
  17. I would say Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden are the two best options in general. Verbatim tend to be a bit cheaper then TY though, which probably makes it the best all-around choice. but outside of those two you start to gamble a bit more as you might find other decent brands of discs with decent quality, but maybe not. but between DVD+R vs DVD-R, I doubt it matters much, but DVD-R does hold slightly more data, maybe 5-10MB more off the top of my head. I generally stick with the following as they are probably safe bets... -DVD = 16x (or 8x or 12x) -CD = 16x while some might say as long as a disc burns okay and then verifies with ImgBurn is 'good enough', at least with DVD recordable discs, I tend to prefer checking it with programs like KProbe as this gives you a better ball-park indication of burn quality (which is a good idea to do in my opinion for anything you really care about long term). because if you start off with good burn quality, even as the disc degrades slowly over time, I figure, at least in theory, it will buy you more time before the disc is unreadable, especially assuming discs degrade slowly and not slowly and then suddenly a lot all at once (my Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden discs, the last I knew, seem to still hold strong even after 10-15+ years which is why I expect these discs to last decades at least). I guess main thing is you don't want initial burn quality running too close to the edge as in my estimations good discs with decent initial burn quality will probably last decades (at least 10-20+ years for a conservative estimate, especially with Verbatim/TY) before any failure to read them occurs. p.s. if I recall correctly, there was only one time where burning slow (I want to say 4x or less burning was required(but it's been a while since I did this so I can't recall exact details)) actually mattered on DVD. which was creating a boot DVD for a original XBox console that was moded. but for general data backup etc this probably is not going to matter for most people.
  18. I suspect someone will say that's likely the problem since it appears when it comes to laptop burners they are so-so compared to proper desktop burners and I think it's especially true given you are apparently using quality DVD media (i.e. "DVD-R (Disc ID: MCC 03RG20)"), assuming those are the real Verbatim media. If it's pretty much just the movie itself, off the top of my head, 1.8GB seems a bit too small as for a 3hr movie you would generally want it to take up as much of that space as possible which could increase video quality. p.s. but personally with today's tech, it's more optimal to 'find' that movie in a decent bit rate 720p/1080p x264 variation as the quality will be better and if you got say a computer or laptop with a HDMI port, you can play it from there to your TV in HD quality which is hands down better than DVD at this point in time. but considering how old DVD tech is, it's not bad for SD video. because when I play my movies it's typically from my computer etc to the TV using the HDMI connection. just make sure the TV connection is using the TV's 1080p (1920x1080) res as on Linux, by default it seems to select a lower res, but I can fix it easily enough so it's using 1920x1080 to get max image quality, otherwise it looks noticeably worse.
  19. This post should cut through the BS since here is the MD5/SHA-1/SHA-256 hashes of a CLEAN ImgBurn v2.5.8.0 installer ( SetupImgBurn_2.5.8.0.exe ; "3.0 MiB (3,101,913 bytes)")... MD5 = 4bf2b8f4b46385bfda4d65e423cfb868 SHA-1 = 6a3d20796e1fcd4169d5d339af6e491dcea3367c SHA-256 = 49aa06eaffe431f05687109fee25f66781abbe1108f3f8ca78c79bdec8753420 on a side note... there are a fair amount of stuff people post this kind of info for random program, but I suspect it's largely ignored as people just assume what they download is safe. NOTE: you only need to match to one of those as if it matches one, it will match the rest. I just posted more there as people can use whatever they prefer. but what Lightning UK basically said is correct, he only has so much control over things whether he likes it or not (same would basically apply to myself and the next random person). it's nothing against anyone, as like he said, it's just a fact of life. one has to take reasonable measures to ensure they don't install any program on their computer that could potentially be including unwanted junk in it. p.s. https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/imgburn.html (I checked both links here and they are good as ImgBurn has been downloaded there over 9.2 million times and even says on that site "ImgBurn on MajorGeeks is a clean installer without OpenCandy distributed with permission.")) ; they have the same one from a download I got years ago as it's the same hashes as what I am using (on my Linux system). but, as usual, if you want to be 100% sure run a hash check on it to make sure it matches what I posted above and then you can be sure it's clean basically.
  20. Alternatively... IMGBurn works on Linux, which if you are still using a old OS like WinXP/Win7 online, unless you must use those OS's for whatever reason, it's best to switch to Linux if you can't use Windows 10 or newer since you will have a secure internet machine.
  21. I suspect if you try to install non-standard kernels in Mint it 'may' act up (which I would avoid as a general rule) but the stuff I mentioned is officially acknowledged by the Mint team (as I have seen mods there on their forums suggest that sort of stuff to people here and there with newer hardware). with 'apt install linux-oem-22.04c' and they even have a one with less support, which is newer than the LTS(5.15) but not as new as the one I mentioned(6.1), in the 'Update Manager > View > Linux Kernels' of 5.19 kernel, which they only support to Aug 2023. but soon they will probably have a newer one than 5.19 offered in the Update Manager for those who want it (it does not install by default as those who are on 5.15 will stay on that kernel series unless they install a newer kernel). but I also heard the Mint team say that's it's best to stick with the LTS kernel unless you have a real reason to use a newer one, like you need it for support of newer hardware etc. so I guess a 'safer bet' would be if your system is supported by 5.15 (Nov 2021 released) it's probably best. still, I would be confident newer kernels (the ones Mint supports) will be okay on Mint 21.x series to. but like you said, 'there's a distro out there for everyone'. Fair enough. but one thing about lighter DE's, less stuff to act up, high end hardware or not, it will run well. I am more of the mindset once the interface looks 'good enough', which I feel Xfce and other similar ones are, I prefer to side with speed/reliability over a fancier interface. but I get there is no definitive answer here as it's still mostly preference. but I guess with certain hardware, it might easily handle the more fancy interfaces. but what I like about Mint's DE's (Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce) is they have a traditional Windows like feel to them, which I think is always a safe bet. but in terms of RAM... I suspect it's generally not much either way with DE's, at least in regards to Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce (or the like) variations. so it's pretty much a non-issue from the RAM aspect. but short of lighter users (who may be able to get by with 4GB of RAM), 8GB of RAM is pretty much a minimum nowadays. I got 16GB of RAM (I had 8GB from May 2012 until 2020 when I bought some used DDR3 ram (2x 8GB) for my main PC, which it's now at the limit of the motherboard). I would probably say 8GB or 16GB is the sweet-spot for most people (and probably makes up a large portion of computers still in use, with some 4GB of RAM PC's as PC's that don't have at least 4GB of RAM are probably straight up ancient) and more than 32GB of RAM is probably overkill for the vast majority of people. Yep. it's showing it's age ; but it's still usable as I tend to roughly use a measuring stick of when doing fairly basic tasks if it's routinely pegging the CPU to 100% or thereabouts then you know it's truly ancient hardware and it's pretty much time to move on (like pretty much a underpowered laptop I have HP2000 with a AMD E-300, but I mainly use this (which has Mint 21.1-Xfce on it) for playing movies on TV's from .mkv files). but just browsing internet etc, CPU usage is not too high on that ASUS A8N32-SLI board. it's also limited to 4GB of RAM MAX, which is what's in it (4x 1GB DDR 400Mhz) as I would say the RAM would be more of a issue than CPU will be for general usage, 'if' I had to use that on a regular basis like I do my main PC. but I only use it once in a while, so it's still passable. but with that motherboard I got in early 2006 (the high end 2005 tech) is a ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (socket 939) and originally had a single core CPU in it but I upgraded it to a dual core back in 2010, which at the time was still my main PC until May 2012 (which is when I got my current main PC). that old 2006 board currently has a AMD Athlon X2 3600+ dual-core 2.0GHz, but I got it overclocked to 2.3GHz. but this setup is a backup desktop, which I generally don't use much but it's nice to hang around for older hardware as while it has SATA II ports, it does have some IDE connections to so I can use my old CD/DVD burners that have IDE connections on them (and a small amount of old IDE hard drives I got if I need to). AMD was better than Intel at the time (like early 2006), but shortly after I got that, Intel came out with the Core 2 Duo CPU's and, to my knowledge, Intel has been ahead of AMD ever since in terms of performance per core. but prior to that AMD was ahead of Intel for probably around 5 years (like with gaming etc). my primary PC has a i5-3550 (runs at 3.5GHz under full load) as that's 11 year old CPU tech (although I had a i3-2120 CPU (2-core/4-thread) in that from when I got it until the year 2020 when I got a near dirt cheap ($20) used i5-3550 (4-core/4-thread) which was a solid upgrade for barely any money). in fact, my current main PC (ASUS board etc) is the longest I ever owned a primary PC as it just crossed the 11 year mark last month (my previous record high was 6 years and 2 months (March 2006 until May 2012)) and still works well although the on-board sound on it died back in 2020 but I just got one of those cheap USB sound cards with a 3.5mm jack on it to restore the sound and then just disabled the on-board sound in the BIOS/UEFI. I plan on sticking with this setup for the foreseeable future since it does pretty much everything I need. but I see your point with USB 2.0 given it's limited to about 30MB/s transfers where as a typical USB3 (or SATAII/III (probably even SATA I on some level)) will allow the hard drive to work at maximum speed which, unless one has a small capacity hard drive it can probably do around 80-100MB/s+ (even on smaller capacity HDD's 50-60MB/s or so)). I think the USB3 connection itself can do up to 300MB/s at least, or maybe up-to 500-600MB/s, as I know SATA II is limited to 300MB/s and SATA III can do up-to 500-600MB/s. but good point about the older hardware for gaming machine as once they are setup you don't have to mess with them, especially if it's pretty much a offline machine.
  22. Yeah, even on the newest Mint 21.x series, the default kernel is 5.15 which that kernel was released in Nov 2021 (first Mint 21.x series release was about mid-2022), so it's got a little age on it. but one can install a bit more recent kernels to it if needed. so I guess it depends on how new ones hardware is. but if one needs a bit newer kernel, the newest one I see available in it is 6.1 which appears to be from Dec 2022 ( apt install linux-oem-22.04c ), so roughly a half year ago. While 'Cinnamon' is sort of their main version, Cinnamon/MATE had a issue on at least two out of the three computers I have in regards to video playback (720p/1080p x264 and the like) with Celluloid paired with MPV for hardware accelerated video playback. but Xfce works without issue which is why at this point and for quite a while now I settled on Xfce. it's especially noticeable on a slower laptop I have etc. even my main PC has the issue but it's not as obvious and I can temporarily fix it by restarting Cinnamon, but then the issue returns roughly a day later (I generally leave my primary PC on all of the time). but with Xfce I simply don't have the issue, even after a lot of time passes. currently my system up time on my main PC running Mint 21.1-Xfce is 74 days and counting. even in terms of basic interface... while the three offered by Mint (Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce) are similar, I never cared for MATE's interface as I think Cinnamon/Xfce are more similar/better, but ultimately I had to side with Xfce as I think it's a safer bet across a wider range of hardware. but I suspect with Linux variations in general... there are probably quirks and preferences etc. so it's hard to definitely say one is 'the best', but I would guesstimate Mint (Xfce) is probably one of the better choices for users coming from Windows to Linux (assuming their hardware works on it). but from what you say, it appears you prefer a interface that's a bit more fancy at the tradeoff of being more resource hungry. personally I think DE's like Xfce look good enough and are on the lighter side as it does the important stuff well enough with a simple/clean interface. I forgot to mention... on that backup computer with Mint/Win7, it cannot run any Windows newer than Windows 7 as while Win10 32-bit installs, it's unstable, and Win10 64-bit outright won't install as it complains about lack of nx-bit. but I am not too surprised as the motherboard is basically high-end tech from 2005 (I built it in early 2006). Yeah, I already did over 3 years ago now at this point. it was only some odd months ago I did the Linux(120GB SSD SATA)/Win7(on 80GB IDE HDD) on my backup computer setup. but it boots to Linux (Mint) by default.
  23. Well when it comes to general audio playback, I just always have Foobar2000 open and you can change songs easily enough through it's GUI. as for playing back songs, I always load the main Foobar2000 and then drag-and-drop songs into whatever tab you want and play. even in regards to general playback, through Foobar2000's settings, I made it so you can rewind/fast forward with the arrow keys. spacebar is play/pause etc. but the Foobar2000 program needs to be the active window for it to work. I even have the 'right click (like right click a file(s) in Foobar2000) > Convert' section setup with shortcuts which makes it easier to convert from FLAC to MP3 etc in the future. this is actually pretty easy once it's setup as you open Foobar2000, drag-and-drop files into it's own tab etc, then select them all (or whatever you want to convert, right click and select Convert etc. also, after setting up Foobar2000 through PlayOnLinux, through my Mint 21.1-Xfce installation on the 'Keyboard > Application Shortcuts' section I setup a keyboard shortcut to load Foobar2000 by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F. this is not straight forward/easy but it's not too difficult. but I just generally have PlayOnLinux create a desktop shortcut to whatever Windows program I want to use as then it's simple enough. I noticed on some Wine installations, like through the standard system install itself, that sometimes it does not affiliate double clicking a exe to run it (so I got to use terminal etc) but I noticed installing it from the official Wine website (winehq.org) seems to automatically affiliate exe's with Wine to where it acts a bit more like Windows where you just double click to run a exe. but even with the official WineHQ site install, I also suggest installing the 'apt install wine-desktop-files' as this creates shortcuts on your start menu for easier access to 'Configure Wine' (instead of having to do 'winecfg' from terminal) etc. so while Foobar2000 does not have a fancy looking interface, it's practical function is where it shines as it does the basics well (maybe some slight tweaking needed) if you don't mind loading up the program to play your music. p.s. but with FSTAB I mainly did that so that hard drives are always mounted to the same location regardless of whether the /dev/sda changes or not (which it might on random reboots). Yeah, I am not much of a fan of dual-booting in general as it's a safer bet to either run Windows or Linux exclusively. even on the rare occasion I need to play with Windows on my Linux machine, I just run it through a virtual machine (QEMU/KVM etc) but with virtual machine, while it will probably be okay, I suspect there are some instances where ones has to be running Windows on the actual machine for it to work. but I imagine this generally won't be the case (I have one thing that requires the real Windows though, but fortunately I rarely use that device that requires Windows). p.s. the only dual-boot system I do have of the three computers I got is my backup desktop where Linux Mint runs from a 120GB SSD and Windows 7 is on a 80GB IDE. the Windows 7 I do have installed was installed from a custom/updated to Jan 2023 ISO I made with a 'Integrate7' script by a user on another forum called 'wkeller'. it's about 2.1GB larger than the official stock Win7 SP1 from Microsoft which I think was from 2011 or so. I know Windows 7 support was officially gone as of Jan 2020, but it did get updates until pretty much Jan 2023 but was not easy to do etc. but I only have that installed on what will likely be a rare use occasion where I have to run a very limited amount of Windows games on that old computer since, in short, they don't work on that computer since the Linux driver is using the older 'radeon' driver instead of what more modern gaming on Linux uses on the AMD side of things, which is 'amdgpu' driver. but those old games I got on that work fine on Linux on my primary PC but it's using a proper NVIDIA driver etc. Yeah, I see. I don't use much Windows software, mainly just Foobar2000/ImgBurn and maybe a little bit beyond this (along with some games), but the Windows software I do use, there just ain't a good Linux equivalent (maybe with burning software on some level, but even with that ImgBurn is more optimal), especially with Foobar2000. I see. but since you are still fairly heavily using Windows, I totally understand with keeping NTFS. in fact, when I made the switch to Linux in Jan 2019 full-time I held off about 1 full year after that (so to around Jan 2020) before changing pretty much all of my hard drives from NTFS to EXT4 just to make sure I was going to stick with Linux in the long term. but I did notice some issues on Linux with NTFS hard drives, like with torrents it would download to 100% but there was fairly often a tiny bit of that data I had to pause, do a 'force recheck' and then it would find a bit of missing data and then when I started download again it would finish and generally be okay. but on EXT4 I never experienced that issue once. so while I think 'NTFS' on Linux is 'mostly okay', there can potentially be weird quirks like this and what you experience etc. anyways... while I get there is a lot of Linux distro's out there, so it might be difficult to find one to settle on for some people, I never had a real reason to dump Linux Mint as it's been around a long time, is based on Ubuntu (which is one of the more used Linux distros as while there might not be strictly any 'standard' when it comes to Linux, I would say Debian/Ubuntu (both can use '.deb' files) based ones are probably as close as it gets) and has support for nearly 5 years each major release as it seems a fair amount of others might be in the 2-3 years of support cycle. also, while I get many Linux OS's can claim to be 'stable', I would be willing to bet with Linux Mint things are more likely to just continue working vs some other variations.
  24. No. but ill make it clearer (and with much less words)... -DVD9(8.5GB) to DVD5(4.7GB) (movies) using Devede works as expected (no stutter. works well) (with the libdvdcss2 installed of course). -720p/1080p x264 (movies) using Devede to convert to standard DVD (4.7GB) video format has a little stutter like I was saying. p.s. the original 720p/1080p x264 movies I have work perfect (no stutter). so the stutter issue occurs during the conversion with Devede (source file being 720p/1080p x264) to standard DVD format. For all of my general audio playback/conversion I use Foobar2000 (paired with the Encoder Pack... https://www.foobar2000.org/encoderpack ) on Linux as that's simply better than any native Linux program. I heard of Mp3Tag but I never bothered with software like that since once I setup my FLAC files, which I can do in Foobar2000, everything works well after that during say FLAC to MP3 etc conversions (with a little tweaking in Foobar2000 itself depending on how you like things setup with file names it creates etc). but I noticed occasionally, in regards to 'accessing drives and what not', you may have to tweak things. like on a game (Windows game running on Linux) I am running a graphics enhancement mode on, in the ini configuration files, it has Windows drive letters (say D:\Games\GameNameHere\ etc) and by default it won't be setup correctly. so I open 'Configure Wine (or winecfg from terminal) > Drives' section as this can be corrected here (along with some tweaks in the ini so it's looking for the mod files in the proper directory). even in regards to my save state in Foobar2000 with all of my music loaded with different tabs etc, like even if I backup that data, say format my system (or wipe the wine profile to start clean) etc, and restore the Foobar2000 profile save state, since drive letters will likely change in Wine, if you try playing music (from the previous profile data that you restored) it will probably fail since the drive letter won't match, but this can be corrected on that 'Drives' tab in Wine basically and then all of your tabs in Foobar2000 that you restored from your profile are working once again as expected. I got my additional hard drives mounted to the same point upon boot up (through '/etc/fstab' file using UUID etc)... like say '/media/1TBHDD' for example. so if my music is in some general folder on that hard drive and Foobar2000 can't see it, I just go to Wine's 'Drives' tab and select the proper drive letter Foobar2000 is expecting to see that music on (which you will know the drive letter that's needed by the error screen Foobar2000 shows when you try to play the music and it's not in the location Foobar2000 expects). so say Foobar2000 after profile restoration expects some music you are trying to play in a tab at D:\ etc etc, on the Configure Wine section on 'Drives', for 'Letter' you put "D:" and for target folder I put something like "/media/1TBHDD" (so to Wine it see's that 1TB HDD as the 'D' drive now) and then apply and now all of the tabs/music folder I had previously configured work well once again instead of having to redo it from scratch which can be a little time consuming. I setup the limited amount of Windows programs I use on Linux through PlayOnLinux as this keeps things separated from the standard system installed wine which I generally use for games. basically the system installed wine stores stuff in the default ".wine" folder in ones Home directory. with PlayOnLinux all of it's stuff goes to a different location... in ones home folder it's more easily accessed through 'PlayOnLinux's virtual drives' shortcut it creates. but it's basically stored more precisely at "~/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/" p.s. that Foobar2000 'encoder pack' is only needed if you plan on converting from say FLAC to MP3/AAC/Opus etc. but for proper Apple AAC conversion through Foobar2000 (which is the best AAC (AAC-LC)) you need to take additional steps for it to work (you need additional files) as it won't work simply by installing Foobar2000 and the Encoders Pack. but if you don't use AAC (AAC-LC) and just MP3 etc, a default install of Foobar2000 and the Encoders Pack will work.
  25. I did play around with that libdvdcss not all that long ago (roughly a year or two ago) and it did work for removing copy protection from a older movie DVD I had when playing around with it. I think I used it in combination with 'Devede' software when converting to standard 4.7GB DVD if I recall correctly. that Devede (apt install devede) is decent software but the only real problem I had with it is... when converting actual movie DVD's it worked as expected, but when converting from 720p/1080p x264 (h264) video files, while it worked, the final video on the DVD side of things had a bit of stutter in the final DVD output during playback and I could never figure out how to fix it (the source 720p/1080p x264 files worked perfectly (no stutter) as expected. so the stutter on the DVD side must have been some weird glitch during conversion). not that it was a big deal, since I don't use DVD for video playback anymore in general (maybe rarely), but it would have been nice to figure out just in case since while the final disc is watchable, there is consistent stutter throughout the video. like it plays fine, slight stutter, plays fine, stutter and continues to end of video file. off the top of my head, I want to say the very slight stutter occurred once every few seconds or so. but I suspect some people it might not bother, but that sort of stuff bothers me as it's noticeable instead of working perfectly like it's supposed to (like I say, the DVD9 to DVD5 worked perfectly though with no stutter). sort of that stutter issue I was happy with Devede as it even creates a ISO for you to burn/use. but if you are converting from say DVD9 (8.5GB) to DVD5 (4.7GB), I think Devede will work well for you, as like I said, when I converted from a real DVD, there was no stutter in the final video output by Devede. I just used the main movie file with a basic menu created by Devede in my testing. a moment ago (on Mint 21.1-Xfce which is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) when issuing 'apt install libdvdcss' it shows (as I already installed it a while ago)... Note, selecting 'libdvdcss2' instead of 'libdvdcss' libdvdcss2 is already the newest version (1.4.2-dmo1). p.s. I use ImgBurn on Linux for all my general CD/DVD burning. it works once setup properly as you have to tweak a couple of things for it to work on Linux. like it has to run in WinXP mode on Wine and, off the top of my head, I think on Wine versions newer than v4 series or so, you have to change from ImgBurn's default ASPI driver to SPTI etc in ImgBurn's options otherwise it won't see your CD/DVD drives. but once you do this, it works well. I would avoid storing WAV for long term storage as FLAC is better and is about half of the storage space with identical sound quality since it's a lossless audio format. personally I don't worry too much about super precise audio CD backup, like people get with 'Exact Audio Copy' software (it's good software, as I am not dissing it, but it's probably a little overkill for most people), as the main thing is getting the song data from original CD (which is basically WAV) to FLAC format and then from there one always has a high quality source to convert to lossy formats (MP3/AAC/Opus etc) when needed. because the way I see it... as long as there is no obvious read errors when getting the basic song (WAV) data from the CD to ones hard drive, even if 'Exact Audio Copy' is technically a tiny bit better, in the real world, I highly doubt a person would be able to audibly detect any differences. like for example (especially if your audio CD don't have any obvious scratches etc)... Exact Audio Copy vs just copying the audio file(s) from ones file manager to hard drive. I am willing to bet they are pretty much the same in real world sound quality (assuming no obvious read errors). because CD audio already exceeds human hearing. because even decent bit rate lossy files people struggle to notice the difference between the lossless and lossy file and after a certain point they basically can't tell the difference and if they can't tell the difference between lossy to lossless it's pretty much guaranteed they ain't going to notice anything from Exact Audio Copy vs a standard copy/paste of WAV files from ones CD to hard drive (assuming no obvious read errors occur). so while I don't fault people using programs like Exact Audio Copy, as it's still good stuff at the end of the day, I think it's almost a obsession with people after a certain point with sound quality etc. like for example... standard audio CD's vs "HD" audio. it's totally pointless to waste space with HD audio because us humans can't tell the difference outright since standard Audio CD's that have been around since the 1980's already exceed our hearing ability. point being, it's basically impossible to improve on sound quality of standard Audio CD's to a difference that would actually matter to us humans.
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