Tag: Windows

More Nonsense – Obsolete Webcams

So, from a few years ago I have a couple of Logitech Webcams. I’d report the model number but they leave that off the device. On a little tag on the cord one says M/N V-U0016 and the other one says M/N-U0023. Embossed into the body of the webcams – which look identical – it says they support a microphone, auto focus and 720p. They are missing a shutter to block the camera which all new models have, but a piece of black tape solves that problem if you care. These webcams are perfectly great for Discord or Zoom calls. Here’s one web cam taking a portrait of the other in Discord, running on Linux Mint 22.2.

You might argue that it is not sharp but for a discord or zoom call its just great. I’ll not show my face here, but it was perfectly reasonable for 720p. Sure the new ones are 1080 or 4k, but who cares? If you really need that, then you don’t care about saving this old webcam.

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System Upgrade for Windows 11

I am looking forward to the demise of Windows 10. Just kidding. I am doing the last conversion of my systems to prepare for the demise of Windows 10 in October 2025 – No more updates to Windows 10, esp security updates, after that time. And while Microsoft says stuff about being able to install Windows 11 on “any system” recently, they are not walking back this end date for security updates on Windows 10. Yep there are other ways. But they have an end date too, and cost a few bucks a year. Not sure I want to pay for home-grown security updates. So I’m going to move all my systems to Windows 11, or Linux Mint. Linux never said anything about not supporting older processors.

To review:

  • The new machine upgrade I did a while ago, when a power supply died, went straight to Windows 11.
  • Two more recent systems, upgraded in-place, which no glitches, from Windows 10 to Windows 11. No problems.
  • One machine – my “mail machine” – runs Thunderbird to support about a dozen email addresses. I moved that machine to Linux Mint.
  • This last machine is my Network Backup machine which runs Carbonite. Linux is notoriously finicky about file sharing with Windows. This machine serves as a dumping ground for important things from all the other Windows systems and then backs them up to Carbonite. I decided that I needed to buy a less than bleeding edge system that would run Windows 11.
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Linux Mint Muddy Text

Linux Mint 21.2 Sharp Text

I use Linux Mint in Virtual Box virtual machines on Windows Hosts. I’ve been using Linux Mint 21.2 on a Windows 10 machine for some months now and it’s all fine.

After the nightmare struggle with disabling the Hyper-V on Windows 11 to get the performance back, I’m now running both LM21 and LM22 on Windows 11.

Notice the following examples of text in the windows:

Notice how sharp this text is. My monitor size is QHD [2560×1440]. I use Nvidia GPUs. This first example is on Windows 11 host with a Linux Mint 21.2 client on VirtualBox 7.1, no guest extensions [or not recently anyway]. GPU is a Nvidia RTX 3060. This text looks the same sharpness on Windows 10 host with earlier VirtualBox releases. It looks great.

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