DO NOT trust the Linux LiveCD menus to do the correct automatic configuration of partitions --- do all this manually. The Grub configuration is the last thing that the LiveCD installation does, it comes later. But if you got the assignment of Linux partitions wrong in Gparted, you are not going to get a successful Grub2 configuration.
Listen to that man ! Some distris have adopted the annoying Windows behaviour to take over the whole disc. Always do manual partitioning !
I'm running Linux since 1993 but I do dual boot, you do need to reboot after a kernel update anyway. 3 years ago I moved to a rolling distri, reinstalling to update every 6-12 months gets old quick.
I have my data on dual backups, and each backup is duplicated on separate machines, and I do periodic disc replacements. Last time I checked I had 6 TB of storage, only about half is actually used. Critical data is also duplicated off site. Yes, I am paranoid, but at least I don't have to worry too much about losing my data.
Everybody should switch to Linux. Yes sir, no doubt about it.
+1 for Mint. I use MATE instead of Cinnamon. The result is exactly what I would expect my PC should be, coming from a Windows XP background, except not so crappy.
Incidently, I've found Windows XP on a virtual machine runs better than natively on the same hardware. On its own, windows tends to choke itself, but under linux virtual machine, the cpu's only get up to 99%, so linux is in the background managing something. At least that's what I suspect, maybe I'm just over windows.
The only issue i had was getting my QNIX 2710 monitor running. A short visit to google found the EDID was not complete, and the xorg.config needed an edit, and that fixed it up.
yeas, and to add to that, i should have two drives with 500gig easch. There is one drive that shoes its a 600gig drive and ive got my new win7 and ubuntu installed their.... I must have split up the other drive as its now sayin gits only a 250 somthing gig HD.
I want to try mint when i have fixed this.
EDIT: I might even install XP and Mint on the drive when i have fixed it
I keep thinking about switching to Linux as well. Win7 isn't too bad but I haven't been able to warm up to Win8 and the Macintosh is becoming more annoying lately as well. I went to play a MIDI file the other day only to find out that Apple has taken that feature out of Mac OS X. Huh? I thought they had a reputation for being the platform of choice for musicians. Why remove MIDI support. Dumb.
I discovered that too on my last system update. Really frustrating... They did remove midi support from itunes, but I think quicktime may still work. I also discovered that my older version of quicktime that I had been saving no longer works and/or was automatically updated. Newer versions have less features. When I had a hard drive failure, I was really thinking about trying a new OS but Windows is worse and Linux is still too restricted in terms of the software I need. So I'm still a Mac user. I used to love Mac. Now I just tolerate it. Macintosh is such a different thing than it was 10 years ago.
I discovered that too on my last system update. Really frustrating... They did remove midi support from itunes, but I think quicktime may still work. I also discovered that my older version of quicktime that I had been saving no longer works and/or was automatically updated. Newer versions have less features. When I had a hard drive failure, I was really thinking about trying a new OS but Windows is worse and Linux is still too restricted in terms of the software I need. So I'm still a Mac user. I used to love Mac. Now I just tolerate it. Macintosh is such a different thing than it was 10 years ago.
I'm not sure if I'm a Mac lover or not. I like the hardware and I like the fact that their OS is based on Unix. I use the command line in the terminal app all the time. I used Win 9x until Mac OS X came out and then switched to Mac because of the underlying OS. I should like Linux but so far I've found the UI to be rather clunky and not very reliable. The command line is solid of course.
yeas, and to add to that, i should have two drives with 500gig easch. There is one drive that shoes its a 600gig drive and ive got my new win7 and ubuntu installed their.... I must have split up the other drive as its now sayin gits only a 250 somthing gig HD.
I want to try mint when i have fixed this.
EDIT: I might even install XP and Mint on the drive when i have fixed it
I installed Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon edition yesterday and everything is running pretty smoothly. This is an "Release Candidate" and the final version will be released perhaps in the next week or two.
It's been awhile since i have been to this thread/post and there's tons of interesting stuff now. I still haven't got around to installing Mint on a 500gig drive that had my corrupted/hacked win 7 on.
Maybe today, its 5:30 am Sat, im watching Good Morning America, reminds me of visiting the USA when i was 16 with my parents... we stayed in some huge tower in middle of NY and I remember of putting my face up to the glass and looking down at the big church steeple feeling a bit of vertigo and stepping away pretty quickly
One passing fad i am currently up to is making animations for (i tell myself) young nephews. Using a cardboard box complete with a green screen backing as a stage. Using heads of play dough with no body to them. I use the movie maker that was in windows Vista, called movie maker 6 because it has an easy to use green screen tool. you can make it look like the talking heads are anywhere. So now Ive got three MS movie makers, XP, Vista , Win 7 all a little different. I need to remove the XP version. The only reason I'll keep the Win 7 version is because it has an ability to choose how many frames a sec to play and that is really useful. If there is a Linux movie editor that can do everything Ive talked about, that would be good.
But i use Linux webcam software to take the pictures because it can be made to take a sot every 3 seconds giving me time to move the mouths and eyes, heads etc and get my hands out of the way then back again.over and over. Be nice to just stay in one OS but haven't been able to find windows webcam that does it(the timed software seems only to have large timer settings like 10 sec up to one hour, i need 3 sec.
And i haven't found Linux movie editor that is good for the job. Today ill try and install Mint. There is one issue i may need help on. I used the formatting and partitioning software in Win 7 to partition the drives when i wanted to install Ubuntu on a drive. That was completely unnecessary as the Ubuntu installer does that automatically. . Somehow the 500gig drive that had the hacked win 7 on it is now in a few separate partitions. 5 gig, 250gig etc..... obviously a little knowledge is dangerous. I don't know how i did this ??? but when its warm enough to get outa bed Haa, i'll try and rectify this before installing Mint. I might be posting a screen shot of the partitioning program so you can see what it looks like and maybe get a tip ?
Well i just posted the pic of what my win 7 partitioning program tells. It seems Ive made a mess. Somehow there are partitions everywhere but I'm only interested at the moment in Disk 1 which I need to restore to one 500gig drive.
Why disk 0 with Ubuntu/Win7 on it ended up with all those partitions is a mystery how i did that .
Ok, 5 minutes later and using same program Disk 1 is now formatted and no partitions. I got a warning saying Windows did not create the partitions and might become unreadable, which of course I ignore warning
edit; waiting for 64 bit Mint to download I Googled and found Openshot video editor for Mint, it says it does the whole lot, but there are lots of comments claiming its hard to use or easy to use, crashes a lot, some like, some having too much trouble. Guess Ill try it out.
Good luck! I like Mint a lot. On my virtual machine it works good but slow. You could put virtual box on it and run a windows virtual machine and still use your editing software.. Just an idea......
Well i just posted the pic of what my win 7 partitioning program tells. It seems Ive made a mess. Somehow there are partitions everywhere but I'm only interested at the moment in Disk 1 which I need to restore to one 500gig drive.
Why disk 0 with Ubuntu/Win7 on it ended up with all those partitions is a mystery how i did that .
I find that most Windows machines these days have created and used up the maximum four primary partitions(+ junk partitions), maybe this is an attempt to slow down any attempt to install Linux. Not deterred with this I boot up from a live CD/USB and I normally backup the "recovery" partition (or not, who cares) and then proceed to resize the partitions leaving very little to windows as I much prefer to have my important data on an ext4 partition instead. So once I have this new large blank partition I create an extended partition out of it with 2 or 3 partitions for Linux O/Ses of around 20G or so, one swap partition of around 10G, and the /home directory gets the rest.
I like to try different flavors of Linux so having these extra partitions makes it a very easy matter to install them plus when a new Linux Mint is released I install it in a partition so I can select either the old or new, the home directory and settings/history etc stay the same at /home.
So then I install Linux but I always do manual partitioning which is pretty easy once you have decided how to partition your drive or have done so already. The rest is a piece of cake and when the computer reboots it defaults to the latest Linux install. Yes, I can still select windows at boot time but that is very rare, once you have adjusted to Linux and set it up with your software etc there is no desire to go back to windows. The software manager works much like the App or Play store (without the account), you browse for the software you want and click to install.
Install wine and dosbox as these are very handy to run some older windows programs.
I run WinXP in VirtualBox but it is possible to run your physical installed windows through VB although I've never bothered to do so.
As for movie makers I know there are a stack of them available but can't tell you much about them. I just use the editors such as avidemux, winff, etc.
EDIT: always use gparted from a live CD/USB for partitioning
BTW, when you resize partitions there is sometimes some very small "offcuts" but don't worry about them
I wonder how you're getting all those partitions. I have three Windows 7 systems and all of them just have the 100MB "system reserved" partition with the rest of the disk as the C drive partition.
Two partitions only. That's all I've ever seen, and I've installed Windows 7 at least 20 times on multiple computers in the last few years.
Are you not reformatting when you reinstall? Maybe those are dregs left from previous installations. It's very odd.
i just restarted my computer and its all gone wrong, its just sitting there saying ERROR;
grub rescue>
I'm actually toying with the idea of taking it to a repair shop...but what a waste of money. too silly really. i could get a boe bot nearly for the money !!!
A few things come to mind. You should really never install Windows while there is more than one drive connected. Disconnect the data cable (or power) to all internal drives except the one you want to install it on. Unplug any flash drives or external USB drives (unless you're using one to install from). You should also not install with the internet connected. Turn off the automatic activation and Windows Update garbage until it's working right. You really want to get Windows installed and running correctly by itself before messing with anything else.
You could also have a hardware problem, such as a bad or marginal disc drive, etc.
A few things come to mind. You should really never install Windows while there is more than one drive connected. Disconnect the data cable (or power) to all internal drives except the one you want to install it on. Unplug any flash drives or external USB drives (unless you're using one to install from). You should also not install with the internet connected. Turn off the automatic activation and Windows Update garbage until it's working right. You really want to get Windows installed and running correctly by itself before messing with anything else.
You could also have a hardware problem, such as a bad or marginal disc drive, etc.
I've heard a number of people say this but I've installed Windows on a dual drive machine without having the second drive trashed? However, I did install Windows on the boot drive. Maybe that makes a difference. Also, after installing Windows I had to reinstall the Linux boot loader before I could boot Linux again as well as Windows. I once even convinced the Windows boot loader to boot either Windows or Linux.
I'd like to install Mint Linux on a small laptop, probably with a 13.3" screen. Has anyone purchased a laptop for Linux recently that has worked out well for them? What brands are best? I've heard that Asus and Lenovo are Linux-friendly. Any particular models?
well today my plans have changed. i will disconnect drives to install . i know there is a way to get things back , ive got ubuntu running live off the DvD but i think ill just reinstall everything but disconnect drives as suggested thx.
I've heard a number of people say this but I've installed Windows on a dual drive machine without having the second drive trashed?
It's more or less just a precaution. It's an easy way to make sure Windows (or you) can't accidentally wipe out the data on any of your other drives.
It's also best to install to an empty drive. If it's a previously used drive, then make a copy of anything you want to keep and reformat the drive during the installation.
It's possible this is why whiteoxe is getting all those multiple partitions.
Ive tried twice to install linux, on both drives, i disconnect the drive i am not wanting before i do an install. its failed both times. This has taken a couple of hours as ununtu takes a long time installing before i get an error. It says either my DVD is the problem or my HD. As its a fresh iso the dvd looks fine. it was too nice a day to try and look for other linux disks and start again so ive left home and just checking out the city. and maybe a movie
Ive just ducked into an internet cafe, the keyboard is almost Chinese, very hard to see the alphabet. All Asians in here, that's OK but their keyboards suck !
Im going to install Qin win 7 when i go home because i know that disk is in perfect order. by the way there are two plugs in a HD, I only have to trmove one don't i whether itds\s the data or power does not matter right ?
PS Peter I hopr i have this fixed if you do come around, if not maybe u can have quick look if not in a hurry.
When trying to install win onto the formatted disk it failed saying ntfs wrong file system, cant install windows ????
Sorry for the moment by moment state of my activities but i found another new Ubuntu install disk and ive successfully installed Ubuntu 14 on the drive ive connected, almost 500gig free space so it was the right Hard Drive.
Now Im not sure what i will or should do next. Disconnect this drive and reconnect the other. Then install Mint or Win 7. or try and instal Virtual box into ubuntu now and instal win 7 to that. Ill try and see how far i get
Edit: Virtualbox was available in the ubuntu software center so it looks like a one click installation, fingers crossed.
Edit: Stuff it, if it dosent work. Ill use my PC as a linux machine and Ill program the scribbler and other things with my win 7 laptop, until i figure out installing and using BST.
Sorry for the moment by moment state of my activities but i found another new Ubuntu install disk and ive successfully installed Ubuntu 14 on the drive ive connected, almost 500gig free space so it was the right Hard Drive.
Now Im not sure what i will or should do next. Disconnect this drive and reconnect the other. Then install Mint or Win 7. or try and instal Virtual box into ubuntu now and instal win 7 to that. Ill try and see how far i get
Edit: Virtualbox was available in the ubuntu software center so it looks like a one click installation, fingers crossed.
Edit: Stuff it, if it dosent work. Ill use my PC as a linux machine and Ill program the scribbler and other things with my win 7 laptop, until i figure out installing and using BST.
I might even try to get over to you tomorrow with a flash drive loaded with LM17 and parts!
@PJ Cool..... I have been getting 200kb/sec download speed. rang my provider, apparently ive used up my monthly 75 gig limit, for another 10 bucks i get 500gig plus unlimited phone calls, go figure but it doesnt start till end of month. Unless i wait till 1am then i get 1.5 meg a sec . i'll pass, rather sleep
@PJ Cool..... I have been getting 200kb/sec download speed. rang my provider, apparently ive used up my monthly 75 gig limit, for another 10 bucks i get 500gig plus unlimited phone calls, go figure but it doesnt start till end of month. Unless i wait till 1am then i get 1.5 meg a sec . i'll pass, rather sleep
I get at least 30Mbit and I think 70Mbit plus all these distro downloads aren't counted if I grab them from aarnet although that mirror isn't up-to-date so I grabbed LM17 from internode. I prefer using unetbootin to copy the distro image to flash or SD as I have tons of those and it's much faster booting and not likely to have a bad read plus CD/DVDs are so last century anyway.
Ive got virtualbox installed in Ubuntu, it was in its software center so was a one click install. now win 7 64 bit is almost installed. None of that dual booting again. Ive always had problems with it !
Are you going to use Unity or replace it with XFCE?
Rick
I am not sure what XFCE is ? havent even Googled it, i will. The Win7 in VB is running most things, ive downloaded programs to the BS2 using the USB to serial adapter. Great that worked out. I am having trouble getting window2s movie maker working in VB. It tells me the video card is the problem. No doubt there will be some tweak i hope.
I am about to unplug this drive and plug in the other. The idea was to install Mint and VirtualBox again. But I may have to partition and Install Win 7 directly if i really want windows movie maker 6 from vista. I just am not sure but PJ from these forums may be over today, he has a lot of knowledge on these installations so I'll see later.
edit: XFCE looks good. maybe, what are your reasons for preferring it ?
Comments
I'm running Linux since 1993 but I do dual boot, you do need to reboot after a kernel update anyway. 3 years ago I moved to a rolling distri, reinstalling to update every 6-12 months gets old quick.
Yep, it will be a learning curve but I like what I see!!!
Oh wait...
... never mind.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Never trust your data to "it" whatever it is.
If your data important I hope it's on multiple redundant machines or spread around the "cloud". Perhaps with some backup system going on as well.
I was just kidding.
I have my data on dual backups, and each backup is duplicated on separate machines, and I do periodic disc replacements. Last time I checked I had 6 TB of storage, only about half is actually used. Critical data is also duplicated off site. Yes, I am paranoid, but at least I don't have to worry too much about losing my data.
Everybody should switch to Linux. Yes sir, no doubt about it.
Incidently, I've found Windows XP on a virtual machine runs better than natively on the same hardware. On its own, windows tends to choke itself, but under linux virtual machine, the cpu's only get up to 99%, so linux is in the background managing something. At least that's what I suspect, maybe I'm just over windows.
The only issue i had was getting my QNIX 2710 monitor running. A short visit to google found the EDID was not complete, and the xorg.config needed an edit, and that fixed it up.
I want to try mint when i have fixed this.
EDIT: I might even install XP and Mint on the drive when i have fixed it
I discovered that too on my last system update. Really frustrating... They did remove midi support from itunes, but I think quicktime may still work. I also discovered that my older version of quicktime that I had been saving no longer works and/or was automatically updated. Newer versions have less features. When I had a hard drive failure, I was really thinking about trying a new OS but Windows is worse and Linux is still too restricted in terms of the software I need. So I'm still a Mac user. I used to love Mac. Now I just tolerate it. Macintosh is such a different thing than it was 10 years ago.
I installed Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon edition yesterday and everything is running pretty smoothly. This is an "Release Candidate" and the final version will be released perhaps in the next week or two.
Maybe today, its 5:30 am Sat, im watching Good Morning America, reminds me of visiting the USA when i was 16 with my parents... we stayed in some huge tower in middle of NY and I remember of putting my face up to the glass and looking down at the big church steeple feeling a bit of vertigo and stepping away pretty quickly
One passing fad i am currently up to is making animations for (i tell myself) young nephews. Using a cardboard box complete with a green screen backing as a stage. Using heads of play dough with no body to them. I use the movie maker that was in windows Vista, called movie maker 6 because it has an easy to use green screen tool. you can make it look like the talking heads are anywhere. So now Ive got three MS movie makers, XP, Vista , Win 7 all a little different. I need to remove the XP version. The only reason I'll keep the Win 7 version is because it has an ability to choose how many frames a sec to play and that is really useful. If there is a Linux movie editor that can do everything Ive talked about, that would be good.
But i use Linux webcam software to take the pictures because it can be made to take a sot every 3 seconds giving me time to move the mouths and eyes, heads etc and get my hands out of the way then back again.over and over. Be nice to just stay in one OS but haven't been able to find windows webcam that does it(the timed software seems only to have large timer settings like 10 sec up to one hour, i need 3 sec.
And i haven't found Linux movie editor that is good for the job. Today ill try and install Mint. There is one issue i may need help on. I used the formatting and partitioning software in Win 7 to partition the drives when i wanted to install Ubuntu on a drive. That was completely unnecessary as the Ubuntu installer does that automatically. . Somehow the 500gig drive that had the hacked win 7 on it is now in a few separate partitions. 5 gig, 250gig etc..... obviously a little knowledge is dangerous. I don't know how i did this ??? but when its warm enough to get outa bed Haa, i'll try and rectify this before installing Mint. I might be posting a screen shot of the partitioning program so you can see what it looks like and maybe get a tip ?
Well i just posted the pic of what my win 7 partitioning program tells. It seems Ive made a mess. Somehow there are partitions everywhere but I'm only interested at the moment in Disk 1 which I need to restore to one 500gig drive.
Why disk 0 with Ubuntu/Win7 on it ended up with all those partitions is a mystery how i did that .
Ok, 5 minutes later and using same program Disk 1 is now formatted and no partitions. I got a warning saying Windows did not create the partitions and might become unreadable, which of course I ignore warning
edit; waiting for 64 bit Mint to download I Googled and found Openshot video editor for Mint, it says it does the whole lot, but there are lots of comments claiming its hard to use or easy to use, crashes a lot, some like, some having too much trouble. Guess Ill try it out.
Good luck! I like Mint a lot. On my virtual machine it works good but slow. You could put virtual box on it and run a windows virtual machine and still use your editing software.. Just an idea......
I find that most Windows machines these days have created and used up the maximum four primary partitions(+ junk partitions), maybe this is an attempt to slow down any attempt to install Linux. Not deterred with this I boot up from a live CD/USB and I normally backup the "recovery" partition (or not, who cares) and then proceed to resize the partitions leaving very little to windows as I much prefer to have my important data on an ext4 partition instead. So once I have this new large blank partition I create an extended partition out of it with 2 or 3 partitions for Linux O/Ses of around 20G or so, one swap partition of around 10G, and the /home directory gets the rest.
I like to try different flavors of Linux so having these extra partitions makes it a very easy matter to install them plus when a new Linux Mint is released I install it in a partition so I can select either the old or new, the home directory and settings/history etc stay the same at /home.
So then I install Linux but I always do manual partitioning which is pretty easy once you have decided how to partition your drive or have done so already. The rest is a piece of cake and when the computer reboots it defaults to the latest Linux install. Yes, I can still select windows at boot time but that is very rare, once you have adjusted to Linux and set it up with your software etc there is no desire to go back to windows. The software manager works much like the App or Play store (without the account), you browse for the software you want and click to install.
Install wine and dosbox as these are very handy to run some older windows programs.
I run WinXP in VirtualBox but it is possible to run your physical installed windows through VB although I've never bothered to do so.
As for movie makers I know there are a stack of them available but can't tell you much about them. I just use the editors such as avidemux, winff, etc.
EDIT: always use gparted from a live CD/USB for partitioning
BTW, when you resize partitions there is sometimes some very small "offcuts" but don't worry about them
Two partitions only. That's all I've ever seen, and I've installed Windows 7 at least 20 times on multiple computers in the last few years.
Are you not reformatting when you reinstall? Maybe those are dregs left from previous installations. It's very odd.
grub rescue>
I'm actually toying with the idea of taking it to a repair shop...but what a waste of money. too silly really. i could get a boe bot nearly for the money !!!
You could also have a hardware problem, such as a bad or marginal disc drive, etc.
This is the one I'm considering: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-vivobook-13-3-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i5-6gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-silver/2990013.p?id=1219085427753&skuId=2990013
It's more or less just a precaution. It's an easy way to make sure Windows (or you) can't accidentally wipe out the data on any of your other drives.
It's also best to install to an empty drive. If it's a previously used drive, then make a copy of anything you want to keep and reformat the drive during the installation.
It's possible this is why whiteoxe is getting all those multiple partitions.
Ive just ducked into an internet cafe, the keyboard is almost Chinese, very hard to see the alphabet. All Asians in here, that's OK but their keyboards suck !
Im going to install Qin win 7 when i go home because i know that disk is in perfect order. by the way there are two plugs in a HD, I only have to trmove one don't i whether itds\s the data or power does not matter right ?
PS Peter I hopr i have this fixed if you do come around, if not maybe u can have quick look if not in a hurry.
When trying to install win onto the formatted disk it failed saying ntfs wrong file system, cant install windows ????
Now Im not sure what i will or should do next. Disconnect this drive and reconnect the other. Then install Mint or Win 7. or try and instal Virtual box into ubuntu now and instal win 7 to that. Ill try and see how far i get
Edit: Virtualbox was available in the ubuntu software center so it looks like a one click installation, fingers crossed.
Edit: Stuff it, if it dosent work. Ill use my PC as a linux machine and Ill program the scribbler and other things with my win 7 laptop, until i figure out installing and using BST.
I get at least 30Mbit and I think 70Mbit plus all these distro downloads aren't counted if I grab them from aarnet although that mirror isn't up-to-date so I grabbed LM17 from internode. I prefer using unetbootin to copy the distro image to flash or SD as I have tons of those and it's much faster booting and not likely to have a bad read plus CD/DVDs are so last century anyway.
Happy days.
Are you going to use Unity or replace it with XFCE?
Rick
I am about to unplug this drive and plug in the other. The idea was to install Mint and VirtualBox again. But I may have to partition and Install Win 7 directly if i really want windows movie maker 6 from vista. I just am not sure but PJ from these forums may be over today, he has a lot of knowledge on these installations so I'll see later.
edit: XFCE looks good. maybe, what are your reasons for preferring it ?