Oh wait I do remember music Bee. I looked at it briefly back in 2014? When I was still using Windows. But I think I was too invested in my current workflow at the time to try to figure out if it could fill it. That and I remember some silliness when I added the full Tb worth of files from the NAS. Not sure if it was SMB or the hundreds of thousands of files. It could have been either honestly.
But definitely, foobar and creating your own layouts gets tricky fast. I created one about 15 years ago and saved it. That way I could just reapply it every time I had to reinstall over the years or upgraded to a new system. Because I didn’t want to have to mess with it again LOL
Seems like lately everyone’s been going Gaga about PewDiePie switching to Linux etc. But if you really want a reasonably unbiased and professional look at it. You can’t beat animator James Lee’s video. His love for fsck is justified. He goes over it warts and all from his perspective. And not that of a rabid Fanboy willing to ignore any flaws.
I’ve usually had at least one system running Linux since the mid-90s. In the late 90s when we got our first broadband I had an old Pentium system with 16 megabytes of RAM running a 24/7 stream. Damn that thing was a piece of work lol. I installed Gentoo Linux on it. Well well over 24 hours of operating system compilation with a stripped down kernel. All the music compressed down to 32 kbps mono mp3. Altered with a special noise shaping algorithm to help reduce compression artifacts. And not immediately saturate that sweet sweet 100 megabit connection. All this had to be done in advance. Because the 60 megahertz Pentium could never encode to MP3 in real time. The ice cast version 1 server would just serve it up raw from a semi random playlist.
The full switch back in 2014-2015 wasn’t coincidental. That was right around the year of the steam machines. When valve’s proton was getting pretty mature. That combined with the fact that as I’ve gotten older my gaming is generally limited to just a few specific games most of which aren’t multiplayer or compatibility issues. It really is just much nicer to not have to deal with your operating system telling you your five or six-year-old system is too old to run the latest and greatest. Or that you need one drive or co-pilot or any other of the BS Microsoft is pushing these days. And now in 2025 I will be switching my parents over as well finally. Their systems aren’t eligible for Windows 11. They could run it’s just fine. They’re just not eligible.
Recall is another Windows bloatware. I found an app called Winhance that allows you to remove the bloatware. Windows 11 didn’t like my processor, so I ended up giving that PC to my nephew. It has a lot of good hardware, Ripjaw ram, etc. I didn’t like Linux because of the commands, mind you this was 15 years back. I’ve read that Linux has come a long way.
Generally, modern distributions you don’t access the command line any more frequently than you would under windows. Basically everything that you would need to do on a normal basis is able to be done from the desktop.
But don’t make a laptop your first experience. Laptops are hard to get even Windows running correctly on. Because of how proprietary and bespoke things are. Tracking down the correct drivers for the correct version of Windows can still drive you mad.
If you really want to learn and have a good time. Go on to eBay and sink $100 into an old business E-Waste Tower. You can get sixth generation core i7 systems with 16 GB of RAM for that if you look around. I bought two last year for around that price. And run one of them heavily everyday myself the other I got for my father. In fact the picture was from it.
The only other solid sanity preserving advice I can give you with regards to all of that. Is that when it comes to Wi-Fi invest in an Intel chipset. I currently have a number of devices running with Realtek chipsets. As long as you get the right ones they will work without any effort. If you get one of the wrong ones though. You’ll pull your hair out. Intel works every time all the time.
And if you eventually want a laptop that runs it. Go framework, tuxedo, system 76, or similar. They’ve designed with it in mind. That or research comparability. I have a mid 2010’s HP elite book with an and CPU and Vega graphics. Everything works perfect but the finger print sensor. Those are always bespoke. Similarly I got an old Chromebook tablet that was compatible with postmarket Linux. The pen and touch screen works great. The camera sensor, because it’s a cell phone module however doesn’t currently. But my only real gripe is the 4gb of ram. Under KDE with Firefox and another couple apps I get close to using it all. But it’s not a big concern. Because it was supposed to be lightweight and minimal. And it’s already far better than any Android tablet I’ve ever owned.
Yes you absolutely can. I have a few like that. I have jelly fin running on a 4th generation i7 system serving all our movies and TV shows. It doesn’t have to be super powerful Etc
It handles large libraries well, and is user-friendly compared to FB 2000.
Oh wait I do remember music Bee. I looked at it briefly back in 2014? When I was still using Windows. But I think I was too invested in my current workflow at the time to try to figure out if it could fill it. That and I remember some silliness when I added the full Tb worth of files from the NAS. Not sure if it was SMB or the hundreds of thousands of files. It could have been either honestly.
But definitely, foobar and creating your own layouts gets tricky fast. I created one about 15 years ago and saved it. That way I could just reapply it every time I had to reinstall over the years or upgraded to a new system. Because I didn’t want to have to mess with it again LOL
I tried Linux on an old laptop about 15 years ago but I didn’t like it. Why did you stop using Windows for Linux.
Seems like lately everyone’s been going Gaga about PewDiePie switching to Linux etc. But if you really want a reasonably unbiased and professional look at it. You can’t beat animator James Lee’s video. His love for fsck is justified. He goes over it warts and all from his perspective. And not that of a rabid Fanboy willing to ignore any flaws.
Thanks, I will take a look.
I’ve usually had at least one system running Linux since the mid-90s. In the late 90s when we got our first broadband I had an old Pentium system with 16 megabytes of RAM running a 24/7 stream. Damn that thing was a piece of work lol. I installed Gentoo Linux on it. Well well over 24 hours of operating system compilation with a stripped down kernel. All the music compressed down to 32 kbps mono mp3. Altered with a special noise shaping algorithm to help reduce compression artifacts. And not immediately saturate that sweet sweet 100 megabit connection. All this had to be done in advance. Because the 60 megahertz Pentium could never encode to MP3 in real time. The ice cast version 1 server would just serve it up raw from a semi random playlist.
The full switch back in 2014-2015 wasn’t coincidental. That was right around the year of the steam machines. When valve’s proton was getting pretty mature. That combined with the fact that as I’ve gotten older my gaming is generally limited to just a few specific games most of which aren’t multiplayer or compatibility issues. It really is just much nicer to not have to deal with your operating system telling you your five or six-year-old system is too old to run the latest and greatest. Or that you need one drive or co-pilot or any other of the BS Microsoft is pushing these days. And now in 2025 I will be switching my parents over as well finally. Their systems aren’t eligible for Windows 11. They could run it’s just fine. They’re just not eligible.
Recall is another Windows bloatware. I found an app called Winhance that allows you to remove the bloatware. Windows 11 didn’t like my processor, so I ended up giving that PC to my nephew. It has a lot of good hardware, Ripjaw ram, etc. I didn’t like Linux because of the commands, mind you this was 15 years back. I’ve read that Linux has come a long way.
Generally, modern distributions you don’t access the command line any more frequently than you would under windows. Basically everything that you would need to do on a normal basis is able to be done from the desktop.
But don’t make a laptop your first experience. Laptops are hard to get even Windows running correctly on. Because of how proprietary and bespoke things are. Tracking down the correct drivers for the correct version of Windows can still drive you mad.
If you really want to learn and have a good time. Go on to eBay and sink $100 into an old business E-Waste Tower. You can get sixth generation core i7 systems with 16 GB of RAM for that if you look around. I bought two last year for around that price. And run one of them heavily everyday myself the other I got for my father. In fact the picture was from it.
The only other solid sanity preserving advice I can give you with regards to all of that. Is that when it comes to Wi-Fi invest in an Intel chipset. I currently have a number of devices running with Realtek chipsets. As long as you get the right ones they will work without any effort. If you get one of the wrong ones though. You’ll pull your hair out. Intel works every time all the time.
And if you eventually want a laptop that runs it. Go framework, tuxedo, system 76, or similar. They’ve designed with it in mind. That or research comparability. I have a mid 2010’s HP elite book with an and CPU and Vega graphics. Everything works perfect but the finger print sensor. Those are always bespoke. Similarly I got an old Chromebook tablet that was compatible with postmarket Linux. The pen and touch screen works great. The camera sensor, because it’s a cell phone module however doesn’t currently. But my only real gripe is the 4gb of ram. Under KDE with Firefox and another couple apps I get close to using it all. But it’s not a big concern. Because it was supposed to be lightweight and minimal. And it’s already far better than any Android tablet I’ve ever owned.
I could make a server out of that for my video files.
Thanks for the info on Linux.
Yes you absolutely can. I have a few like that. I have jelly fin running on a 4th generation i7 system serving all our movies and TV shows. It doesn’t have to be super powerful Etc
I have used Jelly Fin a few times, last time I couldn’t get my network to agree with me. I use Plex to stream my videos.