Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 May 20

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May 20

Migrating from Fedora 17 to Fedora 20

I have now succeeded in installing Fedora 20 on the second hard drive I bought for the Windows 8 computer my company gave me and getting it to dual-boot into either Fedora or Windows. Now I have some practical questions about Fedora 20. I am planning to put my existing Fedora 17 hard drive into a USB drive case, plug it in to the new computer, and then just use cp -r to copy my entire home directory from the old drive to the new one. Questions:

1. Will all my old files from Evolution and Firefox work straight out of the box, or will I have to somehow migrate them, or in the worst case, start all-new profiles?
2. When installing Fedora 20, the installation process didn't even ask me for a hostname. The hostname ended up being something like "123.456.789.internetprovider.fi" which I rather don't like. I'd like to change it manually to "teletran-1" after the Transformers computer. How do I do this?
3. I rather like the Gilouche window theme on Cinnamon (installing Cinnamon was the first thing I did on both systems, as I can't stand the new GNOME Panel). I haven't found it in Fedora 20. Is it there, or is there a similar one? And besides, way back in the early 2000s, Red Hat Linux allowed me to change the colours the theme used. Fedora hasn't done that for several years now. Is there some way, or do I have to make a whole new theme on my own?
4. Are the packages xine-lib-extras-nonfree and libdvdcss, which I need to actually play the DVDs I have bought fully legally, thanks to the entertainment industry's greed and paranoia, available in the standard package repositories or do I have to add new ones? In that case, which ones? What about FS-UAE, which I have to found to be the best (and the only really usable one) Amiga emulator on Linux?

JIP | Talk 18:30, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

At the very least, use cp -a, as it will handle symlinks and other special files correctly. --Tardis (talk) 06:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

You will have to migrate the firefox info through an annoying process. I don't know about Evolution. You can change the hostname with one of the gnome preference tools or with the hostname command. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 17:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Which annoying process is this? When I originally upgraded from Fedora 14 to Fedora 17, I was able to export and import all my e-mails in archive files. I'll have to see if I can do it again. JIP | Talk 18:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

"Legitimate" spam

Hi,

I know there is a word for "legitimate spam", like endless marketing emails from my credit card, home improvement stores, etc. Is there a special term for this? I swear I read it once.

Thanks --108.210.6.223 (talk) 23:26, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Mass marketing. --Mark viking (talk) 00:06, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Graymail (email). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:45, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was looking for. Thanks! --108.210.6.223 (talk) 21:27, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Direct_marketing 196.214.78.114 (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

A recent neologism I've heard for this is bacn. Just google for more info. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I had this problem myself. For example, I do restaurant reviews at TripAdvisor.com, and they send me legit emails about my reviews like "Your review has been posted", but they also started sending my ads, so I had to unsubscribe. StuRat (talk) 14:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Years ago, I read that people were calling e-mails forwarded ad nauseum by friends and family (e.g. inspirational quotes, cat pictures) "meatloaf". The idea was that unlike spam, meatloaf was made at home. OldTimeNESter (talk) 15:03, 22 May 2014 (UTC)