[QUOTE=jvang;493692]
So I’ll have 2 distros running, and I’ve used Debian and CentOS in the past. Are there any others I should try for variety?[/QUOTE]

Have you tried elementary yet?

[QUOTE=masser;493695]Have you tried elementary yet?[/QUOTE]

I should; I took a look at it a while back and decided to go with some other distros but I'll look into it again. From what I could tell it visually resembles MacOS, and is good for Mac users to start with. It also looks nice! Although IIRC it uses non-free software and the GUI has very limited customizability; a third-party program is required to "unlock" that.

Kubuntu is up and running smoothly, though the boot sequence takes several minutes. The 12-yr-old HDD is almost less than worthless :max:

Edit: The power did go out last night, which cut the power to my PC without warning. So perhaps that's why this boot took so long...

Other Edit: I decided to reboot the system to time it; roughly 1 minute and 30 seconds, with 15 seconds to get through the proprietary BIOS. Pretty slow!

How old is your computer?

What filesystem are you using?

Maybe run this command? [C]man fsck[/C]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;493748]How old is your computer?

What filesystem are you using?

Maybe run this command? [C]man fsck[/C][/QUOTE]

Other than the hard drive, it's about 7 years old. We bought it in 2012 and replaced the RAM (2 or 4 to 16) and power supply, and installed a dedicated video card (an insane 660ti that caused the whole case to heat up to over 70 degrees Celcius! :unsure: this was why we had to up the power supply, it takes so much electricity!). Recently we decided that the 660ti is not worth the heat it puts out, so we've replaced it with some silly little passively cooled Radeon that does more than enough :whee:

Filesystem? I can't remember, but I should note that I know next to nothing about filesystem types and really need to learn about them; there's a lot of different ones in use and whatnot.

[C]fsck[/C] seems convenient, but so far the system seems fine. I'd consider running it if the computer was doing something important but it's doing nothing but P-1 factorizations (yay, 16 GB of RAM!), and I have a backup from a couple of days ago with its progress.

First day of school was neat, but mostly just filling out paperwork. I'll attend the second half of my schedule tomorrow, which has the real classes, Physics and Calculus!

[QUOTE=jvang;493737]Kubuntu is up and running smoothly, though the boot sequence takes several minutes. The 12-yr-old HDD is almost less than worthless :max:

Edit: The power did go out last night, which cut the power to my PC without warning. So perhaps that's why this boot took so long...[/QUOTE][QUOTE=jvang;493843][C]fsck[/C] seems convenient, but so far the system seems fine.[/QUOTE]Maybe the reason the computer took a long time to boot after the power failure is because it had to [C]fsck[/C] the hard drive?

:mike:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;493875]Maybe the reason the computer took a long time to boot after the power failure is because it had to [C]fsck[/C] the hard drive?

:mike:[/QUOTE]

Perhaps; I’m not sure if Kubuntu automatically does that sort of thing.

Given that the desktop installation of Kubuntu worked out I tried putting it on my laptop, but it wouldn’t boot properly (almost exactly like the OpenSUSE installation). Turns out the BIOS wanted to do “secure boot,” of which I know very little. Checkmarking the box in the Kubuntu installer allowed everything to work as expected, so now my laptop works!

It’s clear that the developers of Kubuntu and KDE put a lot of work into the visuals of the OS, because everything is very polished. I’d almost consider keeping it installed! :devil:

I’ve got a little system going with the school library so that I can stick around when I have no scheduled classes, which accounts for a lot of time. I’m looking into an alternative for the Architecture CAD class; we got a new software suite last year that is completely different from the old program, our teacher has incorporated a significant amount of “reading comprehension” busywork into her curriculum (in past classes our readings focused on technical applications, but this new stuff is not related to CAD or architecture in any way), and I won’t get a special thingy on my transcript/diploma or something. The last thing is a “completer's” recognition, means that you took all possible classes in a given elective topic (i.e. all 3 years of a foreign language). I’m 90% sure it means nothing but oh well :buddy:

On the topic of special diploma seals and whatnot, there’s a special “community service” one for completing 25 hours of community service per year of high school. Obviously one hour of volunteering at a nonprofit counts as an hour, but there is another way to fulfill the 25 hours: donate $125 per year ($5 to 1 hour) to charity... if I thought it mattered in any way I would definitely go the P2W route :ermm:

[QUOTE=jvang;493930]
On the topic of special diploma seals and whatnot, there’s a special “community service” one for completing 25 hours of community service per year of high school. Obviously one hour of volunteering at a nonprofit counts as an hour, but there is another way to fulfill the 25 hours: donate $125 per year ($5 to 1 hour) to charity... if I thought it mattered in any way I would definitely go the P2W route :ermm:[/QUOTE]

Are there any interesting local community service opportunities?

[QUOTE=masser;493959]Are there any interesting local community service opportunities?[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately not (at least that which is known to me). All we really have is the library (put away books for an hour) and random school events, to which volunteering is generally for parents.

Calculus is going to be interesting. Our teacher is mostly teaching by the AP test, with some extra stuff thrown in for “college preparedness.” According to scores from past students of our high school, we do reasonably well on calculus subjects and very poorly (subscore? total averaged at 1.3) on no-calculator sections involving basic algebra/trig concepts. So our teacher will be incorporating a lot of conceptual ideas and whatnot into what we learn, so that we get comfortable with math without a calculator. Apparently kids nowadays are so reliant on calculators that the 10th graders in Geometry are unable to reduce common fractions without one :ermm:

I’ll make a separate thread for calculus discussion, since it seems I’ll have quite a bit of content to talk about.

I came across a discussion on 0.999... = 1, for which the Wikipedia article was very interesting. Many of the arguments proving/supporting the equality were understandable, but I did see one based on infinitesimals that argued that they were separate numbers. However, I think the infinitesimal argument was A) very complicated/abstract and B) used a number set that was not strictly real numbers (IIRC it was hyperreals? AKA real numbers plus infinitely large and small quantities).

[QUOTE=jvang;493930]I’m looking into an alternative for the Architecture CAD class; we got a new software suite last year...[/QUOTE]

One thing you might find is an interesting "driving problem" is architectural visualization.

It takes a bit of serious kit, but wrapping your head around Blender is well worth the effort (despite the nearly vertical initial learning curve).

[QUOTE=chalsall;494050]It takes a bit of serious kit, but wrapping your head around Blender is well worth the effort (despite the nearly vertical initial learning curve).[/QUOTE]

Aren't there much better 3D design suites out there? I was under the impression that Blender was for character modeling (movies and video games?).

A quick Google search shows software that is completely dedicated to architectural design and 3D rendering of buildings. Chief Architect (our new suite) is indeed mentioned, but others seem much more popular, better designed, and sleeker/better graphically.