Linux advice?

[tommag]

Sometime back, I installed ubuntu on my laptop in a dual boot with windows. Some one suggested mint and I tried that. Unfortunately, mint wiped out whatever version of windows I had. I paid a guy to fix it for me and he installed windows 7 pro.
Now, I have a scanner that works with linux and I want to go back to ubuntu for online stuff and keep windows 7 for quick load. I don't intend to be online when using ql.
Any do's or don'ts would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone has suggestions of another version of linux that plays nice with windows for dual boot?

[pworley1]

I use ubuntu, and have not had any issues with it in dual boot. Just be sure to check to use duel boot during installation and every thing should be fine. If you haven't already you might want to download the latest LTS version before installing it.

[tommag]

Thank you. I had to read up a bit on the LTS thing. It looks like 18.04 is the newest LTS version.

[1911sw45]

I use cinnamon mint. It plays nice with windows in a dual boot system. I have been using it for a couple years, done up grades with no issues. Must of been how it was told to install.

[tommag]

Maybe I need to look at mint again. I'm a computer ignoramus and probably installed it wrong.

[WebMonkey]

Ubuntu-mate is a good choice.
Ubuntu release but with a lightweight interface, mate.

Xubuntu is nice also.

Dual, multi-boot, works well either way.

[nueces5]

Lubuntu It was a good system, light and fast
now I have ubuntu mate and I think it's very good
I have it as the only program, I do not use more win

[rancher1913]

why do you dual boot. just had my brother fix some old lap tops and he put linux as the only op system, havent done much with it yet but what little i have used it for it seamed to work just fine.

[tommag]

Nueces5, that is my goal, to get away from windows when I can make it work. Also, nice to see you over there.

[tommag]

Rancher1913, I had problems with wine running ql and my old scanner. The Brother scanner I have now works directly with linux, so I only need to make ql work with linux and I can't see a need for windows.

[GhostHawk]

I have a win 8 laptop that upgraded itself while in sleep mode to win 10. By the time we discovered it we were too late to roll back.

I had some issues learning to install mint but eventually I learned enough to get the job done. I don't miss win 10, although like you I prefer dual boot.

That system has been stable, does all I need it to do for a year. Including running wine and a few windows applications.

I have managed to make it look and act a bit more windows like in that time.

I have another win 10 tablet I am working on but tablets are a bit tougher. No dvd drive. What I need to do is make a bootable USB drive with the Mint ISO on it.

Just have not got around to doing so. And getting into BIOS is a pain and there is no boot from USB option.

I did try to download and install a boot to grub software but it keeps coming back with some strange error about partitions. So I have kind of shelved it for now. One of these days I'll get bored and tinker with it some more.

I will say the difference between win 10 on an older laptop and Mint is night and day.

Mint ROCKS compared to win 10. But there is a learning curve, and a few tricks that you can do that helps a lot. Google is your friend.

[DougGuy]

QL runs very smoothly in every flavor of linux I have used it in. Install Linux Mint, Cinnamon version, install Wine which lets you install and run Windows programs and games, then install QL with the Wine windows program loader. You might get an error saying it can't find a certain Windows font, so you can choose another font in that dialog box that will then let you finish the QL install.

Ubuntu 19.0.4 released just a couple of days ago, expect all the ubuntu forks will be updated to 19.0.4 very soon.



I have another win 10 tablet I am working on but tablets are a bit tougher. No dvd drive. What I need to do is make a bootable USB drive with the Mint ISO on it.

Just have not got around to doing so. And getting into BIOS is a pain and there is no boot from USB option.

Get a free program called Etcher, is makes bootable usb out of the .iso then you have to figure out a workaround to boot to it.

[Mal Paso]

I installed Mint as a second OS on a win7 machine. Linux didn't like the windows bootmanager and fixed it by installing it's own bootmanager on a swap partition Linux created then win7 would no longer boot. I fixed that but never found anything that compares to photoshop or quickbooks that will run on Linux. When I pulled the plug on Linux it took 2 days of hacking to get the hard drive formatted again. There were 9 partitions 4 different kinds.

I'm now on the last Toughbook that has win7 drivers with a 1 TB Solid State Drive. Boot time is under 20 seconds including log in and no annoying gal hanging on the taskbar sucking down clock cycles.

[tommag]

I have to use my laptop for sending scanned files, so I bought a used Toshiba satellite laptop to experiment with until I get everything up and running. You guys have gotten my confidence level up! I'll try it in the morning. Thanks all!

[nueces5]

Thanks Tom, a friend installs me linux on all my computers except my notebook, which I use to work
You will not come back:p

[DougGuy]

Ok, time for old tricks let out of the bag..

Even back in the Win98 days I was multi booting machines with BeOS, FreeBSD, OS/2, NT4, and learned there is more than one way to use a boot manager. In fact, the majority of boot managers, when installed as intended, were more problematic than they were worth!

Windows fights with everything, even M$ own products, I think they installed this feature from Windows 3.1 all the way through Windows 10. It wants to take over. It will HOSE other partitions and operating systems if and when it can see them at install. It does not play well with other OSes if and when it can see the partitions. Windows does not read Linux file systems and therefore linux is much safer this way, but it can hose the master boot record, and if grub (the linux bootloader) is installed there, you can confidently kiss it goodbye.

So........ With years of experience tricking windows into behaving, I have found a few sure fire ways to keep it from being ugly to the other kids on the playground.

First and foremost, even for windows, I use a small boot drive and I keep the OS and all of it's installed applications on that drive, and I don't download pictures or music to it, I do NOT use the default path where M$ wants to save everything including the dust bunnies under your bed, to the C: drive. I manually make SURE that they get stored on a separate drive, or at least a separate partition because eventually your boot drive containing your OS will get hosed and it will need to be reinstalled, formatted, etc, which erases everything. BUT... Since you kept all your music, all your photos, all your documents in places of YOUR choosing on different partitions, lucky you, you get to keep them! They aren't lost in the crash or the reinstall!! This is very important. I have been doing this for years and years and years. I have lost very little data over the years, and most of that wasn't important enough to keep copies of on cdr, or on another drive stashed somewhere. I cannot stress enough, using one drive for the OS and another one for file storage. Stuff breaks. Stuff gets corrupted. Viruses rename all your files, yada yada....

Now, FF to today when Linux is very user friendly and very accessible to even the most novice users, I applaud the ease of access to installing and running and learning Linux. It has never been a better or easier time to migrate. Easy migration techniques go like this..

First rule, AVOID dual booting if possible. It just works better to keep Windows on one drive, and Linux on another drive, and you use the alt+F12 keys at boot, to choose which drive to boot from. Your own machine's boot sequence can be used as a boot menu/boot manager. SSD (Solid State Drive) are so inexpensive these days, you can get one and use it to install Linux on. If you have a desktop, disconnect the drive that has windows on it, put the SSD in there and connect it, run the linux install on that drive, then when finished installing, reconnect the windows drive, and you have two independent OSes ready to run, each not fighting with the other, not corrupting the master boot record, you can simply disconnect the linux drive and remove it, and your PC will be exactly as it was before, with NO evidence that Linux was ever even near the machine.

If you have a laptop, these are a little trickier to use multiple boot drive with, but you can get a cable adapter that connects an internal SSD to your USB ports and you can use an external drive in this fashion, although now it may be necessary to use a boot manager, if you can't get to cmos settings and turn off the drive with windows on it. These installs are a bit tricker to do and even harder to back out of, which is why I don't recommend the dual boot method for a newbie. Things can get hosed really fast and in some cases, they can be impossible to recover from without a fresh reinstall.

I have a Dell laptop, it has one internal bay for a 2.5" SATA drive, it has a DVD drive bay which I took the DVD drive out and ordered a caddy from ebay for $7 that lets you put a 2.5" SSD in there in place of your DVD drive, This is where I put the drive that i keep all the pics and music on. I could easily multi-boot this setup with Windows and Linux, you can swap out the DVD caddy with the DVD drive if you want to burn a cd, etc.. It makes life with two OSes much easier. Also there is an M.2 port inside my Dell that I attach a 256gb M.2 SSD and this gives me yet a 3rd drive inside the laptop to use for whatever I want, and yes I could set the boot sequence to boot from this drive if I wanted to install Linux on here, and keep my DVD drive as it was shipped from Dell.

The possibilities are there for using more than one drive, anyone who wants to take advantage of how easy it is to learn and run Linux could do so without much trouble, laptops and SSD drives are cheap and plentiful these days, it has never been easier to get away from the horrors of Windows as it is today.