Now that Ubuntu 24.04 is stable (ie: on version 24.04.01), it’s time to upgrade my Ubuntu 22.04 servers.
This one is a 3D-mapping server that I use for drone stuff. It’s running Kubuntu, which is overkill for a server. But I’m loving KDE these days. Most of my servers have no GUI at all.
It’s been many years since I’ve run Ubuntu on a bare metal install. Probably back when you had Ubuntu running in your highschool computer lab(cool). I really like Ubuntu 24.04 on my Thinkpad. Everything has a real premium vibe and everything just works well. Even though it’s running Gnome the unit feels snappy.
That’s my fave on my Pi4, Ubuntu 240.04 w KDE Plasma. one day I’ll get a Pi5 but it runs pretty damn good on the 4.Good as or better than WinDohs does on most of my customers’ PCs.
Hey a quick question for you guys. How’s the stability of Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu? I have no complaints of Ubuntu other than it uses 1.3 GB of RAM just to run. I’m assuming KDE will be less.
I think it will be close to the same. I’m seeing 1.2 GB of RAM on a Kubuntu server running VPN and torrent software, for example:
Thanks for the reply, MiG! I’ll leave well enough alone then as the Ubuntu Thinkpad is running well. 
Boo! Where’s the ubuntu arm64s?
been running Debian w KDE Plasma over a year on the Pi4
and no one wanting Mint? That;s what I install on old amd64 machines. One lady always used Firefox and Thinderbird I don’t think she’s noticed in a year she’s not been using Windows!
24.04’s been on my toy server a while.
Nice!!! I’m maintaining Debian 12 on two units that my wife runs. I’m running Slackware64-current on two desktops and I put Void Linux on my new Thinkpad. Running like a top!
The trick is to install the base Arm64 version (server) and then build a GUI on top of it. I have the Arm version of Kubuntu running.
Basically, just get the Arm version running, and then
sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop
or kde-standard, or kde-plasma-desktop meta packages.
Sorry, forgot the obligatory neofetch
Tried using nala instead of apt?
Yeah, I like all these new “visual” terminal apps. TUIs are back, it seems.
I’m loving btop these days too. Using it in a Operating Systems class, as it demonstrates how an OS can prioritize resource use by different processes.
I fairly recently needed to wipe a SSDs in the field in Saudi but didn’t have the ability to remove the drives from the laptop, so I decided to try a USB bootable Ubuntu to use hdparm. I don’t recall the issue I ran into, but I wasn’t able to get the Lenovos to boot from the Ubuntu stick and ended up using Debian Live for the all of them.
If I ever need to do this again, is there a smaller distribution that would make a good utility bootable OS to carry around in my bag for random task like this? IIRC, Debian Live was around 3GB with whatever GUI that was packaged with it and it didn’t have hdparm so I needed to tether it to my phone, etc.
I should mention there was also some doubt whether or not either method of security key delete or secure erase was even wiping the drive so I wrote over it several times before finally running it through dban and installing windows. My main concern was with that TRIM, not 100% of the drive is necessarily written over when using conventional disk wipe utilities.
My understanding is SSD drives either need to use their manufacturers windows utility (which wasn’t an option in a single drive device with an OEM drive), or using linux to run a secure erase or enhanced secure erase to voltage spike the modules, or encryption security key delete. The crypro erase wasn’t getting me anywhere.
Any advice on a bootable linux utility or disto to keep in my bag for this kind of purpose? Essentially we occasional get a ‘retired’ laptop that’s still perfectly good, so management approves us to give it away to an employees family member or someone in the cleaning staff, etc. I just prefer to wipe it before handing it over since we don’t have a viable IT dept in country.
I have a USB SSD like this:
That I installed Ventoy on… then it can boot from anything, and you can have as many ISOs as you want on it.
It has enough room to have a bunch of linux ISOs, Windows, ChromeOS, recovery utilities, and plenty of room for images too. So I can re-image computers in a few minutes if needed.
BTW, the tool I’d use is something like ABAN:
https://aban.derobert.net (previously we used dean: https://dban.org )
Which does one thing – erases drives. Be sure to load it into RAM, then disconnect your Ventoy drive. It will try to erase that too! Luckily Ventoy has a bunch of booting options, including “boot from RAM” where it copies the ISO to RAM and then boots it.
But if you’re recycling the laptop, it’s a good idea to just re-image it. I have a basic image of Windows 11 on that drive as well, and I use Macrium Reflect (also on the drive) to image things.
By any chance is the Macrium copy one of the OEM freebies that came with the drive you’re using in your portable enclosure? I think I’ve got Macrium Reflect, Acronis True Image and a couple of other applications that came with an SSD purchase, but they’re often limited to imaging only a drive belonging to that OEM.
Is ABAN just doing what DBAN did, but with current support? SSD’s shouldn’t be wiped with DBAN since the trim function prevents it from writing to the entirety of the disk, as I understand. Essentially, you could run DBAN on a drive and then pull files off the “sectors” (whatever they’re called on an SSD (blocks?), since TRIM may have been balancing writes to those, keeping them from being written over by DBAN… something along those lines anyway. This is why there are now utilities for these drives for MacOS and Windows that can “sanitize” an SSD instantaneously, and possibly why utilities like hdparm secure erase exist on linux.
If you’re re-imaging a 256GB SSD with an image from a 128GB SSD, are additional 128GB worth of blocks written over, or is the data still theoretically there would you say?
SSDs do Logical Block Addresses, and the controller handles where on the drive it actually stores things. It’s perfectly fine for 99.9% of people to just erase the catalog / directory of where stuff is stored, and it’s unrecoverable. To be sure, you can overwrite, but then you’re adding wear and tear on the SSD, which has a finite number of writes.
If you’re re-imaging, yes, it’s writing every block over existing blocks. It’s abstracted away by the SSD itself, so it’s not always the same physical blocks. But that’s been the case with physical spinning drives for a while too.
That’s an oversimplification, but yeah, don’t worry about it. If you’re really concerned about recovery of data, then pull the SSD out and drill through the chips, then grind them up. And replace the SSD with a $30 one.
The Macrium bootable version I have is the “recovery” ISO you can make in the free version. At least you could a couple of years ago. It’s a bootable version of Windows PE, and lets you image drives. I can send you the ISO if you want. But you should be able to make your own using the free version of Macrium Reflect.
Here are photos of it booting this morning (we’re doing a “install Windows” lab in class today, so I need to image a bunch of computers)
I use either a Ventoy stick with bootable tools like HBCD, BartPE, Macrium, Mint, latest ISOs of Win10 & 11.
Also have a stick with MediCat, lots of tools on there too.
Normally I just do a fresh Windows install with Rufus and delete all the existing partitions.
I’ve run into the same, distro X won’t boot from USB but distro Y will on a system. Some where I used DVD when the stick failed during install.
Was questioned in a shop today that was still using Win7. The guy sh*t himself over the cost of Win 11 Pro, double diapered when told the old computers won’t do 11. Curled into a knot when I suggested a miniPC and get back your shelf space. They don’t even have a CD how can I install anything!
Thanks MiG, I’ll check it out. That Reflect 8 loading screen looks familiar so I may already have a copy of that somewhere, but will check out the free version to see if it still allows for a bootable copy creation.
Herbie, thanks for the follow up. I’ll definitely look keeping a Ventoy stick on hand in the future. Regarding the DVD option, I haven’t has an optic drive in a laptop since the one I purchased around ~2007. I never widely accepted optic disc aside from music in my car, but even then I usually ran an external HDD instead of CD/DVD. This laptop has four USB-C, and only two USB-A SS ports beyond the HDMI, power and ethernet for example. My last Razer Blade and Aero 15X both were absent of optic drives too.
