Linux?

[mattman91]

Just installed Linux Mint (18.2 Cinnamon) for the hell of it.

Anyone else use Linux?

Any tips for a first time user?

Should I just re-install Windows 10?

[YmoBeThere]

Should I just re-install Windows XP?

Do it! I still run it on one of my PCs.

[mattman91]

Do it! I still run it on one of my PCs.

Ha!

Windows 7 is still my favorite. IMO, Windows has sucked since 8.

[Indoor66]

What about Linox? I am considering it. Any of the techies out there willing to expound on the pros and con's? Please do. 😎

[grad_devil]

I've been using RedHat/Fedora for 20ish years, but I'm a CompSci professor - Linux isn't for everyone!

I'm not a big fan of the Debian based distros (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) but there's nothing terribly wrong with them - just a preference thing.

I wouldn't consider myself a *nix expert, but I'm pretty well-versed.

And I'm near Asheville if you need basic *nix info!

[mattman91]

I've been using RedHat/Fedora for 20ish years, but I'm a CompSci professor - Linux isn't for everyone!

I'm not a big fan of the Debian based distros (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) but there's nothing terribly wrong with them - just a preference thing.

I wouldn't consider myself a *nix expert, but I'm pretty well-versed.

And I'm near Asheville if you need basic *nix info!

I tried out a lot of versions but ultimately settled on Mint because of how user friendly it is ( it is simple for us Linux newbs).

[cspan37421]

I jumped into the Linux pool when Dell offered it pre-installed on a dirt cheap laptop that I determined would suit my travel needs just fine (I use a desktop tower at home). They had offered Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at the time. The most marvelous thing: it just worked, right out of the box. [I had previously good luck with Mint on a desktop that later died; years prior - in the days of dial-up modems - I tried a much earlier distribution of Linux and could not get it to recognize my modem - which was NOT a winmodem, so it wasn't that].

The only thing I had to really work on was getting wireless printing working. I found some steps online to do it, and although they were not many in number, the whole process took quite awhile as various things went on in the background. It finally finished, and worked as advertised.

I'm not a programmer. I'm a generalist user, using LibreOffice, Firefox/Thunderbird, and sometimes editing photos, video, and audio. That and downloading podcasts - that's what I use my computer to do. Ubuntu has been very good ... although, with this caveat: I have since upgraded LTS releases to 14.04 and 16.04 or whatever it is now. As I have done so, my hardware has stayed the same ... and I'm starting to occasionally get hesitations and delays, grinding usability to a halt. I wonder whether reverting to the earlier version will work better, but then I don't know if I'm giving up critical security updates etc.

So ... bottom line is that I've found Ubuntu to be easy and work really well. Mint is very good too.

If you want to get your hands a little more dirty, pick up a Raspberry Pi 3, which runs a version of Debian Linux called Raspbian. It's still a GUI, but there are more opportunities to work "under the hood". It's an amazing little machine - the tiny house of personal computers. Again, I am not a programmer or maker ... I just use it for ordinary stuff.

TIP: find an online forum for your distribution, where you can regularly search for issues that someone else has probably already encountered and solved. Or, if not, post your questions to that forum.

[mattman91]

Aaaaaand now I can't boot up my laptop.

So much for that experiment.

[fuse]

Mattman, sorry I am coming in on the tail end of the thread.

If you know what you are doing, Linux on the desktop can work pretty well.

If not, sticking with Windows is advisable.

[mattman91]

Mattman, sorry I am coming in on the tail end of the thread.

If you know what you are doing, Linux on the desktop can work pretty well.

If not, sticking with Windows is advisable.

I screwed the pooch on this one...

[mattman91]

I screwed the pooch on this one...

Reinstalling the OS now.

Not sure what caused the problem, but hopefully it doesn't happen again. If it does, I'll reinstall Windows (sigh)

[mattman91]

Reinstalling the OS now.

Not sure what caused the problem, but hopefully it doesn't happen again. If it does, I'll reinstall Windows (sigh)

We are back up and running.

Does anyone know what may have happened? It is working now, but I fear it will eventually give me the same problem again.

[cspan37421]

We are back up and running.

Does anyone know what may have happened? It is working now, but I fear it will eventually give me the same problem again.

No, but I do know that I decided long ago that if I had to buy a windows machine again, I'd take extra care when setting up a dual-boot because of things called UEFI and Secure Boot. IIRC you have to get into the bios to disable secure boot, and I can't remember the UEFI issue or if it was the same thing. Point is, WIndows started making it tougher to dual-boot to Linux, and frankly I'm not even sure all windows machines can dual-boot anymore. I think some OEMs may prevent you from monkeying with Secure Boot. Anyway, I recommend you find a good step-by-step tutorial that takes into account the Windows version you're otherwise running.

Another option - not sure if it's still available - is what was known as a Linux Live CD. Perhaps it can be done via stick now. But basically it runs the Linux OS as a "program", as it were, so you can get a feel for it and decide if you want to actually do a partition, install, etc. Try before you commit, basically.

Good luck. You may find it less stressful to do a Linux install on a Windows machine that you're about to give up on - i.e., with little at stake. That's what I did when I first tried Mint, and it effectively extended the life of that tower PC for nearly 2 years. If you're eager to try Linux but don't want to risk ruin of a Windows PC to do it, consider buying a PC with Linux pre-installed. Dell may have a couple models; there are other OEMs that will sell you one. (System76 is well-known for Linux, IIRC). Cgallery.com is another one (towers). Good luck.

[mattman91]

No, but I do know that I decided long ago that if I had to buy a windows machine again, I'd take extra care when setting up a dual-boot because of things called UEFI and Secure Boot. IIRC you have to get into the bios to disable secure boot, and I can't remember the UEFI issue or if it was the same thing. Point is, WIndows started making it tougher to dual-boot to Linux, and frankly I'm not even sure all windows machines can dual-boot anymore. I think some OEMs may prevent you from monkeying with Secure Boot. Anyway, I recommend you find a good step-by-step tutorial that takes into account the Windows version you're otherwise running.

Another option - not sure if it's still available - is what was known as a Linux Live CD. Perhaps it can be done via stick now. But basically it runs the Linux OS as a "program", as it were, so you can get a feel for it and decide if you want to actually do a partition, install, etc. Try before you commit, basically.

Good luck. You may find it less stressful to do a Linux install on a Windows machine that you're about to give up on - i.e., with little at stake. That's what I did when I first tried Mint, and it effectively extended the life of that tower PC for nearly 2 years. If you're eager to try Linux but don't want to risk ruin of a Windows PC to do it, consider buying a PC with Linux pre-installed. Dell may have a couple models; there are other OEMs that will sell you one. (System76 is well-known for Linux, IIRC). Cgallery.com is another one (towers). Good luck.

Yep, I did have to disable secure boot. I am not running a dual boot. I completely wiped out Windows (but I do have a copy if I want to go back).

This is actually a secondary computer, so I have nothing really to lose.

[Indoor66]

That overall discussion is enough to keep me in Windows 7. 😎

[cspan37421]

That overall discussion is enough to keep me in Windows 7. 😎

Kudos to you for being savvy enough to prevent Windows 7 being overwritten by Windows 10. I too run Win 7 on my desktop tower machine.

But both of us will eventually face failing hardware and/or demands on system resources that will outstrip our old machines ... and we will have a decision to make. I would really like to move to Linux full time, for a wide variety of reasons. My preference would be to find a machine with Linux pre-installed, and a strong preference that said machine be (at worst) no more expensive than its Windows counterpart. Both were true of my Dell laptop purchase from a few years ago. But it's my understanding that bloatware subsidizes computer costs, and adding that to economies of scale, I may have to pay a premium of some sort.

At that point I'll evaluate buying Windows machine and either doing dual-boot or wiping it entirely. Generally I have been pleased with the ability of drivers in Ubuntu Linux. But not entirely. My flatbed scanner (Epson Perfection) has been a workhorse through the years and I believe is only compatible with Windows & Mac. In general, it seems that scanners are less widely and less fully supported in Linux than, say, printers. But printers used to be difficult in Linux but they've improved a great deal. Scanners - well, I don't know that they'll follow the same trajectory. More people need printers to work than scanners.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

[grad_devil]

...is to install it in a virtual machine. I recommend VirtualBox, if you have enough "horsepower" in your current machine and want to try a new OS.

You get to keep your original OS - no dual-booting and messing up MBRs or fooling with UEFI - and get to run the guest OS as an application within your host OS. Don't like that version of Linux? Delete the VM or simply re-install over top of the old distribution. Just like installing/running an application within Windows.

Since VirtualBox exists for Linux hosts, mattman91 could use it and install Windows as a guest OS inside Linux for those tasks that require Windows. Of course, I find most things that need doing can be done from Linux using FOSS applications, but sometimes a crutch is handy when you're getting started.

[cspan37421]

...is to install it in a virtual machine. I recommend VirtualBox, if you have enough "horsepower" in your current machine and want to try a new OS.

You get to keep your original OS - no dual-booting and messing up MBRs or fooling with UEFI - and get to run the guest OS as an application within your host OS. Don't like that version of Linux? Delete the VM or simply re-install over top of the old distribution. Just like installing/running an application within Windows.

Since VirtualBox exists for Linux hosts, mattman91 could use it and install Windows as a guest OS inside Linux for those tasks that require Windows. Of course, I find most things that need doing can be done from Linux using FOSS applications, but sometimes a crutch is handy when you're getting started.

The VM approach sounds similar to the "Live CD" of yesteryear that I mentioned above.

As to running windows inside Linux, that does often present a financial burden on the user, in that a windows license would have to be obtained (they're usually non-transferrable between machines, according to the EULA). What's more, a standalone license is often much more costly than one that comes preinstalled by an OEM on a retail-sold Windows machine. In Mattman's case, he may benefit from the fact that he's converting a machine that had a license, so presumably there'd be no contravention of the terms of the license.

I do agree with the "crutch" notion and that's why a dual-boot is often a good solution for transitioning.

[cspan37421]

Yesterday I set up my tower desktop as dual boot with Linux Mint, and as of today I'm doing 95% of my work in Mint, including 99% of internet-connected stuff. Three reasons:

• Windows 7 support ended earlier this month. But even if I felt I'd be OK with it as is ...
• My antivirus company was reported to be engaged in massive data harvesting ("Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site") & resale [1]
• my email client is slated to be "monetized" - yet remain free, so I suspect that means it'll serve ads and/or harvest private info as well [2]

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/q...-investigation
[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozill...ew-subsidiary/

I've set up a dual boot before, but not in over 10 years. The installer does all the heavy lifting. Most of the work on my end was configuring my new email client (Claws) and the browsers (Chromium and Firefox - not sure who will win out).

Software-wise, my packages were about evenly split between 3 categories: 1) stuff I was already using in Windows, like LibreOffice, Keepass2, and Firefox, 2) stuff that I got a little bit familiar with through playing around with the Raspberry Pi, such as Claws, Chromium, and Clementine, and 3) stuff that is new to me, whether or not it was included with or available on the Pi, like Gnome Calendar, Xsane for scanning, and VLC media player.

I've always valued privacy and security, but as I get older, I'm starting to also feel sensitive about having my time and attention stolen. I am so weary of pop-ups, upselling, banner ads, robocalls, and the whole lot. Even if the Avast story in Vice hadn't broken, they were driving me nuts with their own pop-ups while I was working. (not for genuine warnings - this was constant upselling). Gah!

Every time I get a new computer I find that porting my email (which I keep on my own machine, not in the cloud) is a pain and never really works right. Even after successfully importing some stuff to Thunderbird when I first got this computer, it never indexed (perhaps b/c it was created under a different "profile"), so wasn't keyword searchable. Going to Claws now, it'll import mbox format, and Thunderbird can - with an add-on - export to mbox. But reports from the field are mixed success, esp. if you have a highly organized folder tree.

One thing that might put some people off Claws is that it is text-only email (you can have file attachments though). So no embedded photos or comic sans fonts. It's my understanding that this prevents things like web beacons (monitoring pixels), adding some privacy from data harvesting. But a side benefit is that each email is a separate little text file. Very portable, easily searchable. And I can still have my tree structure of folders, But I'll likely be starting from scratch, again.

P.S. that dirt-cheap laptop of mine running Ubuntu eventually became a paperweight. Its meager hardware (Celeron processor and 2 GB RAM) could not handle the full LTS version of Ubuntu. However, just before I was ready to restore it to factory settings and recycle it, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released the awkwardly-named "Raspberry Pi Desktop for x86" ... it's basically a lightweight Debian Linux, with a Raspbian wrapper. Anyway, it gave new life to my laptop - it was zippy again! It's now over 7 years old and still running well.

I considered using RPD for x86 for my dual boot, but it's really a 32-bit OS, and I was advised to use 64-bit since my chipset supports it. Even that old laptop was 64-bit, but I came across RPD before any lightweight linux distros. Probably Mint xfce would run OK on it, but RPD may be hard to beat for lightweight, and I really haven't seen any issues with software. Maybe it's smart enough to only load 32-bit packages.

[PackMan97]

My only question is why not Fedora or CentOS?