youtube-viewer won't play videos
I could enter ctrl+alt+F1, but when I got there it was just ouputting lines and lines and lines of text
Those lines are errors that must have been written in /var/log/syslog. They may be informative. On the contrary, reinstalling at every problem does not teach you anything and the same problem occurs.
Trisquel's default desktop includes "GNOME System Log" to read/search the logs. Trisquel Mini probably has nothing alike. However, you can use any text editor (I believe Leafpad is Trisquel Mini's default) to "open" /var/log/syslog.
By the way, the first text session being unusable, you could have switched to the second text session with Alt+F2 (once you are in another text session, Ctrl+Alt+F2 from the graphical session).
You seem to have many obscure problems. I wonder if your hardware is defective. If I were you I would install "memtests86+" (in Trisquel's repository) and let it test you RAM during one full night. Memtest86+ is to be launched from the menu of GRUB, the bootloader, that lists the installed operating system right after the computer switches on. You may have to keep the Shift key pressed to have GRUB's menu appear. If memtest86+'s blue screen turns red, your RAM is defective. Instead of installing memtest86+, you can test your RAM with any live ISO that includes memtest86+. I do not remember whether Trisquel's ISOs have it.
You can self-test your hard drives with SMART too. The regular edition of Trisquel has "Disks" in its "System Settings". I do not think Trisquel Mini has anything alike. As a consequence, you would either need to install "gnome-disk-utility" (in Trisquel's repository) or to run that utility from Trisquel (not Mini)'s live system or to run the tests from a terminal. But start with the RAM.
We are recommending he install the default Trisquel DE because the learning curve is more gentle and more people can help him.
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Trisquel-users] Re : youtube-viewer won't play videos
> Local Time: December 30, 2017 8:32 AM
> UTC Time: December 30, 2017 1:32 PM
> From: name at domain
> To: name at domain
>
> I could enter ctrl+alt+F1, but when I got there it was just ouputting lines
> and lines and lines of text
>
> Those lines are errors that must have been written in /var/log/syslog. They
> may be informative. On the contrary, reinstalling at every problem does not
> teach you anything and the same problem occurs.
>
> Trisquel's default desktop includes "GNOME System Log" to read/search the
> logs. Trisquel Mini probably has nothing alike. However, you can use any
> text editor (I believe Leafpad is Trisquel Mini's default) to "open"
> /var/log/syslog.
>
> By the way, the first text session being unusable, you could have switched to
> the second text session with Alt+F2 (once you are in another text session,
> Ctrl+Alt+F2 from the graphical session).
>
> You seem to have many obscure problems. I wonder if your hardware is
> defective. If I were you I would install "memtests86+" (in Trisquel's
> repository) and let it test you RAM during one full night. Memtest86+ is run
> from the menu of GRUB, the bootloader, that lists the installed operating
> system. If its blue screen turns red, your RAM is defective.
>
> You can self-test your hard drives with SMART too. The regular edition of
> Trisquel has "Disks" in its "System Settings". I do not think Trisquel Mini
> has anything alike. As a consequence, you would either need to install
> "gnome-disk-utility" (in Trisquel's repository) or to run the tests from a
> terminal. But start with the RAM.
For some strange reason I was not able to install regular Trisquel, but Trisquel Mini worked :/
If you are new to GNU/Linux it is easy to be confused about the difference between the operating system and the desktop environment, because Window$ and macOS don't offer multiple desktop environments. You can think of the DE as the graphical interface over the underlying OS.
LXDE (the default DE in Trisquel Mini) and Gnome Classic (the default in Trisquel) are both included in the Trisquel repository, along with XFCE, KDE Plasma, Gnome 3, Enlightenment, and many others. You can install and use whichever one you want, regardless of which one is installed by default.
If you want to try Trisquel's default DE, as some here have suggested, there is no need to install regular Trisquel. Within Trisquel Mini, you can install the DE with
$ sudo apt install trisquel trisquel-recommended
To try it out, log out, click on the little icon near your name, select the DE you want to use, and log in.
I see.
How do I "open /var/log/syslog" in leafpad? :)
I didn't quite understand what you meant by your text session tips. I tried alt+F2, but that didn't work. The screen was all semi-frozen, I could move the mouse, but it was moving slowly and laggy.
And when I did the ctrl+alt+F1 I got just texts and texts and texts (I could've read the text perhaps and I might have found something, but I didn't do that unfortunately). I could exit back to the desktop, but it was all frozen again.
ctrl+alt+F2 does the exact same thing as ctrl+altF1 though, doesn't it?
Yeah, sure, maybe I'll try the memtests86+ tonight or tomorrow, that sounds like a good idea. I'm using a MacBook Pro 9.1, so I would not be surprised if many issues can be sourced to that.
What is "self-testing" hard drives? :) what am I testing for?
How do I "open /var/log/syslog" in leafpad? :)
With the menu "File/Open..." or with Ctrl+O.
I tried alt+F2, but that didn't work. The screen was all semi-frozen, I could move the mouse, but it was moving slowly and laggy.
Like I wrote: "you could have switched to the second text session with Alt+F2 (once you are in another text session, Ctrl+Alt+F2 from the graphical session)". Since you talk about a mouse, you were in the graphical session.
ctrl+alt+F2 does the exact same thing as ctrl+altF1 though, doesn't it?
They are two separate text sessions. The error messages only appear in the first one.
What is "self-testing" hard drives? :) what am I testing for?
Wikipedia says "S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) that detects and reports on various indicators of drive reliability, with the intent of enabling the anticipation of hardware failures."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
See, e.g., https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/disk-check.html for its use with GNOME Disks and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools for the command-line interface. But, again, I would first test the RAM.
I'm fairly sure I tried to spam all the F combos that exist in desperate attempt to achieve something at all, but I'll keep that in mind till next time.
Allright, gonna be AFK this evening and possible tomorrow also, but I'll try to get to this SMART stuff in reasonable near future, cheers and thank you! :)