PC/OpenSystems LLC Linux Support

The purpose of this site is to report issues that customers and users have had with Linspire (or any distribution for that matter) along with a fix, workaround or to at least get some other commentary on the reported issue. If you would like to report an issue or leave a comment for us you can e-mail us at support@pc-opensystems.com

Friday, March 25, 2022

Installing Linspire, Freespire, PC/OS and Kubuntu

 When it comes to Linux it is very different from a Windows or MacOS install.  Some users get confused about the install and sometimes some give up.  So we are going to walk through a fairly simple and straightforward install of our products.  Now these instructions apply to Linspire, Freespire and PC/OS as well as our mother distribution Kubuntu.

When you first boot your system you will be greeted by the "checking integrity" dialog and what this does is makes sure that the install media is good and that there are no errors or mistakes in the media itself


Next, you are greeted with a screen that asks you if you want to try the distribution in live mode, which runs the OS from the USB stick or install the OS.  Now, when you try the OS none of the work you do will be saved.  Live mode is good in case you have issues booting, or if you have an issue with your install afterwards such as you forgot your password and need an important document from the computer for work or whatever.  It also gives you a chance to make sure that your hardware works with the distribution.  Since we do include a lot more hardware drivers in Linspire, Freespire and PC/OS you will notice more hardware is supported then Kubuntu.


The next screen is your keyboard and language selection.  If you speak any other language than English, this is where you would choose it.  If your keyboard is anything other than the standard US layout, this is where you would choose it.


The next screen you will choose a normal install or a minimal install.  On a normal install you have all the features and applications that are listed in the release statement and on the product description page such as office suites, multimedia tools, games etc.  This of course takes up a lot more space than a minimal install which only includes the web browser as well as multimedia players.  The minimal install is adequate is you need to deploy a special type of desktop or if you are installing a "chrome OS" or web based desktop or if you are installing the system on a machine that may have limited resources and storage space.


Next, you choose how to format your drive for usage.  The most simple and straightforward path is to use the entire disk.  If you want to get into dual booting or partition your drive for whatever reason make sure you know what you are doing.  For a beginner, I would highly recommend to use the entire disk.


When you get done it will ask you if you are sure this is what you want to do.


On the next screen it allows you to choose your country as well as your timezone.


Next screen, you put in your credentials.  You put in your real name, username, password as well as the computer name.  Make sure your password is strong and complicated for system security.  You can also choose to automatically login but we do not recommend that option if multiple people will be using the same system.


After that is done, the install starts.


After the system is installed you can go ahead and restart the system.  Note:  With PC/OS you will see this error when the system starts to reboot:


This is safe to ignore and after a few moments you will be prompted to remove the install media.



Monday, December 20, 2021

No UEFI Boot on 2015 or older UEFI capable systems


Issue:  No UEFI Boot on 2015 or older UEFI capable systems

Status:  Confirmed and Resolved with Workaround

Distributions Affected: Linspire, Xandros, Red Hat Engerprise Linux, Oracle Linux and SUSE Enterprise Linux

Issue:

Customer contact reported that their Lenovo Thinkpad T450 system (8gb of RAM and 256 gb SSD) stopped booting in UEFI mode with the release of Linspire 10 SP2.  Customer sent us the system for repair and we were able to confirm the situation.  We tested with various Linux distributions and Windows 10 and while Windows 10 did not share that same issue we could not get any of the Linux distributions to boot.  We reset the BIOS defaults and were able to boot RHEL but were not able to get the various other distributions to boot whether we reset the BIOS to default or not this condition was also present if Secure Boot was disabled or enabled.

Workaround

Disable UEFI and secure boot and install the OS using the legacy CSM or Install the OS and install an alternative boot manager such as rEFInd.  

Saturday, December 18, 2021

Intel HD Graphics and Chromium based Browsers locks up System

 Issue:  When users deploy Chromium based browsers (Edge, Vivaldi, Google Chrome, Opera and Vivaldi) after 15 minutes the system locks up requiring a hard reboot.

Status: CONFIRMED and Resolved with a workaround

Distributions Affected:  Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, OpenSUSE, Linspire, Freespire

Details:

We had a customer contact that when installing various distributions on his ACER Aspire 700 G AIO (All In One)  with 8 gb of RAM / 500 gb HDD when she would launch Chrome and after 15 minutes of browsing the distribution would lock up completely and she would have to do a hard restart.  She tested various other distributions and Chromium based browsers and she had the same issue.  I asked her for photos and a short video and was able to confirm the issue she was having.  While we do not posess that exact system we do have a couple of systems in the lab that match that exact chipset and we were able to replicate the issue on Linspire, Xandros and Freespire.  While working on the issue we tested various other browsers including Firefox, Falkon and Epiphany and those browsers did NOT share the same problem.  We also tested Windows and macOS and were not able to replicate the issue on those operating systems.  We also tested other systems that used different graphic chipsets.  Nvidia and AMD specifically and were not able to replicate the issue on those systems either.  After further testing we determined that the cause of the issue is hardware acceleration in Chromium based browsers and the Intel HD Graphics Chipset.

Workaround or Fix

After trying various distributions ourselves we determined the best course of action is to disable the Hardware Acceleration within Chrome.  After we disabled the Hardware acceleration within the browser itself the issues have seemed to resolve.  On our systems we went several days without having to hard reboot and according to the customer she no longer has this issue.

To disable hardware acceleration open Chrome or Chromium based browsers and click on the menu, enter settings, click on advanced, system and click on the following options in the screenshot, reboot your system.