I have Foxit installed and can usually use that, but am forced to have Adobe Reader installed for other reasons.

Adobe Reader will now never be updated on my machine. It’s a small price to pay. And Foxit is great for most pdf tasks.

There was a point not so long ago where Adobe Collaboration Sync got so bad on my Windows 10 box it wouldn’t let me close any pdfs that were open. “File in use” error, even if all Adobe programs were closed except for that pdf. I’d have to go into Task Manager and manually kill it. Between that and Adobe Updater I couldn’t get rid of it by any known means, and it was choking the shit out of my machine.

I’m transitioning to Linux but not there yet, still need the Windows box for now, so I had to do something. But I’m old school, so it was a DOS batch file to the rescue. I call it “kiladobe.bat”:

taskkill /f /im armsvc.exe       
del "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\armsvc.exe"      
taskkill /f /im AdobeCollabSync.exe     
del "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\AdobeCollabSync.exe"      

It’s now a scheduled task in taskschd.msc. I put kiladobe.bat in the main Adobe program folder (heh) and run that task as administrator at startup and every four hours or so, give or take an hour.

No more problems.

Now, all that remains is that every so often I see the command window flash up for a split second because this batch file is killing Adobe shit, and it just makes me smile. (I could probably make it stop flashing up the CLI, but I genuinely enjoy the reminder of how I’m fucking Adobe’s virus-like install and lock endeavors up the ass.)

EDITED TO ADD a simple “@echo off” by itself as the first line would probably turn off any appearance of the CLI, if anyone wants to use this text for their own batch file. If that didn’t work I’d probably throw a space and a “>nul” at the end of each line to grab the output and throw it into neverneverland.

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It was mandatory but essentially had to be done on your own time.

In the US, if you are an hourly non-exempt employee, that is overt wage theft in all 50 states. If a task is made mandatory by an employer, they must pay you for the time you spent on it.

I know this doesn’t help you now, of course, but it’s good to know in case you run into it again and feel like pushing back with a report to the Dept of Labor.

Eventually it started slipping

If you still have the printer (you may not but I’m going to put this out there for others too) that sounds like a simple roller replacement, and rollers/pickup pads are usually considered “consumables” instead of “parts” because they all wear out over time. This is true for most if not all consumer printers, ink and laser alike.

Replacements should be pretty easy to find for even old printers, and the installation is usually pretty straightforward. Last year I was still able to buy a roller replacement set for a 19 year old HP, and it took me ten minutes and one Phillips head screwdriver to replace them all.

You can also just take out and clean the hell out of anything rubber with isopropyl alcohol, letting it dry thoroughly and then putting it back in, or if possible rotate the rubber on it to present an unused side, I’ve done all that a few times too.

For pretty much any model printer, search on the printer model number and “maintenance kit” to find available roller/pickup pad replacements for sale, and printer model number plus “service manual” to get replacement instructions if you need them.

Awesome. Joined. Thank you.

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Holy shit. I hadn’t seen that one. Thanks for the link.

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted; out of curiosity I just now tried it on Windows myself (Google Chrome 120.0.6099.130 Official Build 64-bit) by typing mozilla.org, clicking “Firefox downloads” at the top, and selecting the one for Windows. It sailed through almost instantly.

BUT - just because it worked for me personally on a completely different machine, OS, and installer doesn’t mean OP is misrepresenting what happened to him; competitive app blocking has certainly happened with Edge. For all we know it’s some Google A/B trial bullshit, no telling at this point.

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I’m not homeless, I’m not hungry, but it enrages me on behalf of those who are.

It’s one thing to throw food away, especially multiple meals’ worth – which is kind of shitty in itself when you could give or donate it away, even fast food at the end of a night shift – but legally it’s just property. The owner can do what they want with it. No harm, no foul.

But it’s quite another to make a show of throwing food away AND going out of your way to be an asshole about it (licking it and making it uneatable, as a pointed message) in the declining world we live in right now.

These employees that are doing this clearly are not going without food today, but give it a few years. Even in the best of lives, shit happens.

New to Linux, this is fantastic. Thank you.

This is an issue on my 14 year old laptop today.

I believe a USB WiFi dongle will be a better idea than modifying live images of various distros

Yeah, you and me both. But I’d be willing to do it for one or two, just to be able to prove that THIS laptop can and will run Linux with its current hardware, should he choose install it.

Also, the only thing lost by modifying LiveUSB trials is my time. If I corrupt the image, or it doesn’t work, or I make it crap out somehow – all of which is likely, lol – I still have done no harm at all. It’s just a USB stick. And I will also have learned a few things along the way, like how Linux distros install and use drivers.

you would be installing the firmware on the Linux system, not onto the WiFi module.

Then technically (not that I personally have the chops to do it) this “firmware” could also be something plugged into the distro on the LiveUSB stick along with the wl driver. That distro is getting its current drivers from somewhere on that USB already, so I’m not reinventing the wheel, just adding to what is already there.

I guess I just have to read up more. Thanks for letting me know the difference.

Sir, do you have a minute to talk about our lord and savior Linux?

Okay, yeah. This makes much more sense now. I really appreciate it. I’ve been seeing the GRUB menu in LiveUSB boots but didn’t understand that it was part of the initial boot process for general Linux systems (for whatever reason I had it stuck in my head that it was just for USB booting). And you’ve placed systemd exactly where it makes sense to me as the init process for that OS.

That is extremely helpful. Thank you so much for taking the time to write the entire boot order, because it just got crystal clear for me. Much appreciated!

This was an excellent listen, thank you for the link. I had no idea what was involved in it when I started, nor the roles of initd and launchd before it and what systemd was trying to replace.

The funny thing is that the guy giving the talk, Benno Rice, is primarily FreeBSD/openRC and not Linux, so he seemed fairly agnostic in presenting the various sides, not just from Unix and then Linux but also from the Apple viewpoint, who have also been playing a kind of parallel but separate role in this.

Very cool. Not a beginner level talk, definitely, but there was nothing I couldn’t figure out coming from Windows/Mac tech. Really informative, thank you again.

Thank you, Callyral. I didn’t know either. But now I’m trying to learn Linux again after 30 years of not touching it, so this is helpful.

If I may ask an additional possibly stupid question (coming from Windows/Mac): as an init system in Linux, after you get past BIOS and POST at power up, is systemd also responsible for the initial OS software boot process (the “bootstrap” or Boot Manager in DOS/Windows) or is that another process altogether?

Or, asked another way, does systemd load the Linux kernel, and if not, what does?

Just so you know, I have no real skin in this game yet; I’m just trying to figure out where systemd starts and stops so that I can follow the [endless] debate, lol.