TN.Frank

You found a Trojan in a download of Linux Mint? Wow, never heard of that before. Did you download from the home page of the Distro or from someplace like Source Forge? If you're not running Bluetooth and want something that's kind of "Mac'ish" then give the new Ubuntu 14.04 a try but be sure to install Synaptic to download your packages because the Ubuntu Software Center will totally drive you crazy. Also, if you don't mind learning a bit of pacman(as opposed to apt-get that Ubuntu, Mint and Debian would use) then by all means give Manjaro a try. You can get it with the Xfce desktop or GNOME or KDE if you really want to dig into your desktop settings. The Manjaro Team are really awesome folks and found a bug that I reported that was messing up Bluetooth in just a couple hours. IIRC there's only 9 or 10 folks on the Team but they really have made up a great Arch based Distro. Anyway, keep us posted.

Still, from what I've read if you send your hard drive out for data recovery it can run in the hundreds of dollars to get the data pulled from it so really, $89 isn't too bad to save your data. I keep all my important stuff on a couple external hard drives and for no more then they're run they should last for quite a while. If I did have a hard drive crash on my one laptop or an SSD failure on one of the other two it's just a matter of getting a new HDD or SSD and doing a reinstall of Manjaro then setting things back up since there's no real data that I'd lose.

Check out the latest Tekzilla, they talk to Steve about SpinRite and it looks like it's a pretty decent tool if you have the $89 bucks to drop on it.

Ditto, never use IE, too many other and better options out there. Of course Chromium is having problems with the way it's handling Certs. so it may not be the best choice right now either. Firefox seems to be pretty solid, even 29 once you add the menu bar back in.

So any updates as to which Distro you went with and if you got it installed ok or not?

"It was a raw clip from a news helicopter filming a police chase in Kansas City, Missouri." News helicopter, not PD.

Also, I might add that some Distros work better with Apple products then others. You might do a Startpage search to see if any certain Distros are a bit better at working with your Mac then other ones. Also, as for Ubuntu I'm speaking from experience here. I came over to Linux when my 2001 iMac died in early 2013 and started with Ubuntu but quickly found that even though it was comfortable to move to from my Mac it was limited as to what you could do on the desktop and you couldn't add anything to panel(not that I found anyway) so it wasn't very customizable. I then moved to Linux Mint MATE which was a lot better and I actually got use to and prefer having drop down menus for my apps. It makes it a lot easier to see what you have installed. From MATE I've moved to Xfce which is very customizable and is a bit lighter weight then MATE. There's quite a few Distros that use the Xfce DE and if you like you can get Xubuntu and have your Ubuntu with an Xfce DE too. Just remember, once you start to get into Linux you'll end up using the Terminal quite a bit to install stuff and do things on your computer and IMHO pacman as used in Arch and it's off shoots is a more powerful package manager then Aptitude i.e. apt-get as used in Debian and it's off shoot Ubuntu and Mint. So choose wisely because it was harder for me to move from apt-get to pacman(really not all that hard but still it's better to learn the one you're going to use from the get go) then just starting with pacman in the first place.

Small aircraft use a different freq. then the larger ones. Something like 960MHz or around there, can't really remember off the top of my head but I or you could look it up.

Which CPU do you have PPC or Intel? Also, 2008 could be a 64 bit chip since Apple tends to be "cutting edge" with their stuff and my HP/Compaq NC4400 from 2008 has a Core2 Duo 2.0GHz 64 bit CPU. Only real way to know for sure is to download both 32 bit and 64 bit and see if the 64 bit will boot via Live USB or DVD. If it does then you've got a 64 bit CPU, if it doesn't then the 32 bit is what you'll want. Also, if you're running 4GB of RAM or less then you can run the 32 bit Distro on either a 32 bit or 64 bit CPU. I'm running a 32 bit Manjaro/Xfce install on my NC4400 with 2GB of RAM and it runs fine. Ubuntu would be a good place to start but just speaking from expirence(I started with Ubuntu 12.04) the Unity Desktop will get old really fast. Plus Unity eats up a lot of RAM. If you have normal needs then give Point Linux 2.3 a try or if you want a larger package sellection then take a look at Manjaro, it's Arch based and you can not only use the Manjaro Repos but also the Arch User Repository(AUR) as well so there's a ton of stuff. Good luck and if you get a chance post up more info. Also, just throwing this out there. You can Make up a Live USB and boot to it and run your system in order to get more info from it even with a bad hard drive. P.S. I also found this: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp501 So it looks like you've got a Core2 Duo, 64 bit processor. So any good 64 bit Distro should work fine.

Wouldn't Wifi headphones and speakers work at the 2.4GHz range thought?

I'd surf EBay for a decent laptop for around $100-$150 and with the rest I'd set it up with some RAM and maybe a small 64GB SSD. Then I'd install Manjaro on it and have some fun surfing the web.

Since I switched to Manjaro (Arch based Distro) getting Gqrx is a non-issue. I just go into Octopi and check for "gqrx" in yaourt and it'll use cmake and whatever else it needs to to configure and set up Gqrx for me. Easy as pie.

In Arch and off shoots of Arch like Manjaro, Bridge or ArchBang you can get Gqrx from the AUR. I used Octopi to install Gqrx and it compiled it and installed all dependencies that were needed. The Arch Package manager is "magic", LOL.

So I recently(today in fact) took the plundge and moved to an Arch based Distro called Manjaro. After install I checked the AUR(Arch Users Repository) and low and behold Gqrx was there so I installed it and it worked like a charm. I think moving to an Arch based Distro is going to be a pretty fun ride and even though I've been afraid to make the move it's really not all that different from any other Linux Distro once you get use to using pacman instead of apt-get. Anyway, if anyone wants Gqrx support and also wants to run Linux give Manjaro a try.

Never had a problem with Kali 1.0.6 seeing the dongle. Make sure you plug it in before you launch Gqrx(I'm sure you're doing that I just had to say it just in case) and now that Debian Testing has Gqrx in it's Repos I'm moving off of Kali which eats up 16GB of SSD space(only have a 32GB SSD, need all the space I can free up on it) and going with Point Linux 3.0b1 which is in Beta and is Debian Testing with a MATE DE. Only "problem" is I have to launch Gqrx from Terminal but that's not really a huge deal IMHO. Anyway, I never notice my SDR dongle getting hot and never have had a problem with Gqrx in Kali launching. Wonder if you got a bad dongle?

Quick update. Gqrx for SDR is now available in Debian Testing Repos. There's no GUI like there is in Kali BUT you can still go into Terminal and type in "gqrx" and it'll bring it up after install from Synaptic(or whatever package manager you're using) and then you'll have all that Gqrx SDR goodness in any Debian Testing install that you're running. Good bye Kali, Hello Point Linux 3.0b1. Looks like I'll be saving some of my SSD space.

I gave up on trying to install any SDR stuff and went with Kali Linux 1.0.6 for my main OS. It has a lot of SDR stuff pre-installed and most of it works right out of the box. Still can't get the ADS-B stuff going but Gqrx works like a champ.

Just installed a couple 32GB Kingston 2.5" SSD's in my #1 and Jr. and want to make sure I have things working as well as possible. I read through this web page: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/01/enable-trim-on-ssd-solid-state-drives.html and did the following: Partitioned a 3GB section and left it "Unallocated". Checked to see if I had TRIM with: sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "TRIM supported" and I looks like I do have it(but the 32GB KingSpec 1.8" ZIF SSD that I put into my Acer Aspire ZG5 Netbook doesn't seem to have TRIM, go figure.) so I've done this: gksu gedit /etc/cron.daily/trim and put this into the file that opened up. #!/bin/sh LOG=/var/log/trim.log echo "*** $(date -R) ***" >> $LOG fstrim -v / >> $LOG fstrim -v /home >> $LOG I also added this in Terminal sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/trim but I really have no way of knowing if it's working or not so I also manual do a TRIM with sudo fstrim -v / and sudo fstrim -v /home to make sure blocks are being cleaned up and are ready for new info. I've also set the cache in Firefox to 0MB so Firefox won't be writting to the SSD all the time. Anyway, any other tips or tricks ya'll have that are running SSD's in your systems?

I was born at night but it wasn't last night, LOL Trying to get me to bork my system, well, not fallin' for it. ;) Also, to remove the metapackages would it be a simple sudo apt-get remove or do I dare use purge to remove all of the metapackage? I'd be afraid that purge would also remove dependencies that other stuff might need.

Nothing really. I don't store any pics or movies on my laptop, I have external storage for stuff like that and I'm even storing my .iso's in the external storage so as long as the SSD is large enough to house the Op System and I can set aside 10% as Unallocated to keep it running quickly(look up why you need to do this) then it really doesn't matter. It's just something that I'm willing to live with since it gets me all that SDR/Gqrx goodness that I want/need to play with my SDR dongle and who knows, maybe I'll learn to use some of the other tools someday. I really would like to learn how to use WireShark or some of the MetaSploit stuff someday, if for no other reason just to have the knowledge. ;)

It's a HUGE Op System. With all my little extras installed it's taking up over 13GB of my limited 32GB of SSD space. Point Linux 2.3 and SolydX only used up around 5GB after I installed all my extra stuff like Clementine, Clam, LibreOffice, Cheese, ect. I guess my SSD will be ok as long as there's more then half of it free but dang, I wish there was a way to uninstall some of the stuff I'll never use without fear of borking my system. Still, I guess in the end it's worth it to get a Distro that works like you want it to work and does things the way they're suppose to be done. Couldn't run Kino under SolydX and even OpenShot crashed all the time. Gnome Disk Utility looks strange under SolydX too. Things look and work like I expect them to under Kali so I guess I'm just stuck with 13+GB's of SSD space taken up to get what I need. Of course someone who uses Windows would think I'm nuts since it takes up a whole lot more space and needs a lot more RAM to run right but still, in the Linux World Kali is kind of a Hog. LOL.

I got the ol' "Account Suspended" window just a bit ago. Kind of scared me because it's the 2nd and not the 1st and I don't post anything crazy here to get suspended for. Glad I'm back in.

Windows 9 will be Free and Open Source................................April Fools. LOL. Now do ya' feel better. ;)

My wife likes to play Freecell but I've kind of gotten over games on my computer. Better things to do like hang out here and chat,LOL

Either way come April 15th I'll be able to dump Kali and move to SolydX completely and still get my SDR/Gqrx on while not taking up extra drive space with all those little "extras" that Kali has that I don't really need. ;)