Dark Screen on Linux Laptop

[Mike Watterson]

** If you have the skills, you can rebuild it from the ground up, changing things as you go along should you wish. All the source code is freely available.  I'm not going anywhere near there.

I discovered that Joyce, the Amstrad PCW8256 / PCW8512 / PCW9512 emulator for CP/M or Locoscript is a ready to go .exe for Windows, but for Linux you had to build it from source. Not fun. However I was eventually able to read some 3.5" CP/M floppies from a modified PCW8256 and then write a program in Perl to convert the old 7 bit + 1 Wordstar files to ASCII. Older Wordstar used the eighth bit for soft carriage returns and other features.

Gentoo Linux fans are famous for build from scratch. I've done it years ago for Linux. For 99.9% of people there is no need. Even for Gentoo, because current Chromebooks now use it and can run regular Linux programs, unlike earlier ChromeOS. Also Android only uses a custom Linux Kernel.

[Murphyv310]

Hi
I always use mint based systems. Now heading for nearly 20 years with Linux so pretty well know the massive advantages but also the disadvantages.
Building programs is not for the casual user and support was dreadful for long and weary.
USB not working on some amateur radio programmes was often difficult to get to work and so many had long winded explanations and lines of text to be inserted into the terminal. I eventually got a simple answer with one line of text that sorted all USB issues in a flash. Some seem to rattle on and on which is not helpful especially when you need a quick fix.

[BusyBee]

Hi
I always use mint based systems. Now heading for nearly 20 years with Linux so pretty well know the massive advantages but also the disadvantages.
Building programs is not for the casual user and support was dreadful for long and weary.
USB not working on some amateur radio programmes was often difficult to get to work and so many had long winded explanations and lines of text to be inserted into the terminal. I eventually got a simple answer with one line of text that sorted all USB issues in a flash. Some seem to rattle on and on which is not helpful especially when you need a quick fix.

It's what I have often found Trevor. If the suggestions for an answer to a problem goes on and on and seem to go round the houses then they don't have the answer. Mostly I have found that the answers to Linux problems seem to be pretty straightforward when you find the right person.

Tracy