SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Updated: Linux Mint on an old laptop; future VM Desktop? Pg4 Blast from the Past :)
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quarter MOA visionary |
https://techcommunity.microsof...ndows-10/ba-p/267945 | |||
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Nullus Anxietas |
I've been 100% Unix/Linux for just about forever, but we of course had primarily MS-Win on the desktops at work (except the Engineers, who mostly preferred Linux) and my wife (who I've transitioned to Linux except for her TomTom GPS).
I have. Multiple times. It's trivial. The most difficult part is shrinking MS-Windows down to make room. For MS-Win XP and 7, you have to jump through some hoops or you'll end-up with a corrupted MS-Win. The laptop my ex-employer gave me dual-boots MS-Win 7 Pro and Linux Mint MATE. Used to triple-boot MS-Win XP Pro, MS-Win 7 Pro and Linux Mint MATE. (Holdover from when IT still had to support both MS-Win releases at work.) I deleted the XP, recently, and gave the disk space to one of the others. The only time I've ever booted it into MS-Windows was to update it. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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always with a hat or sunscreen |
Ouch....what hoops do I need to navigate on my old XP laptop then? This doesn't seem to indicate any major issues: https://easylinuxtipsproject.b.../p/install-mint.html Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
Duh. I finally asked myself why I wanted to retain / safeguard Windows XP on my old Dell laptop. There really is no reason. So my intent now is to go full bore and install Mint Mate on it. If it really floats my boat, I'll move towards modifying my Win10 desktop with a VM Mint installation. I've read more and yeah, this is the way to go vice dual boot. As for what VM client, I am not impressed with what I'm finding about the native Win10 Hyper-V. More likely would opt for either free home editions of VirtualBox or VMware... not sure which but that decision is quite a bit down the road.  Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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Member |
I'd suggest installing Mint while the laptop is hooked up directly to your modem (wired ethernet). With an older Dell laptop, the WiFi card may not be recognized. Such was the case when I was using an older Mint distro several years ago on my Dell Latitude D830 made in 2007. I was able to get the WiFi to work, but only after installing Mint and then installing wireless drivers and firmware. I still have Mint on that laptop but I upgraded to a wireless card that Mint recognizes and auto install necessary software. I don't use that laptop any more and it's stored in a closet. Works fine but all my computers are now more modern ... and fanless, so silent. Even the laptops I now have. | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
I didn't read your last until I had installed Mint 19.1 Mate. During installation I was able to access WiFi but after finishing and booting, no joy. Found I had to get a linux driver to make my old wifi card work again. Weird.  That's when I hooked up an ethernet connection. Doesn't seem to want to remember my wifi security password as I'm asked again every time I reboot. Initial snapshot too takes a long time. Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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Check your Bios and make sure WiFi is enabled, and if there in Bios, WiFi Hotkey is enabled and NOT set to "Disable on Boot". Try this too after Mint boot, if it applies to your hardware ... "function+F2" (the "WiFi key") EDIT: In Mint, also check "Control Center > Driver Manager" to see if there are any suggest proprietary drivers listed for installation. | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
Thats how I found I needed the linux driver for my wifi card. How do I kill this "authenticate" with password seemingly on everything I do? Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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HA !!! ... get used to it LOL. I've read from time to time of work arounds, but people DO get used to it when modifying system elements or installing software and it's a nice security feature for most but not all folks I guess. Once you get everything set up, it won't be so bad. But it is a little annoying. | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
Crap! Figured as a "superuser" aka "administrator" that it wouldn't be required. What a PITA during this process. What about that wifi password business? I filled out that VPN data. Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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I feel ya. You'd think huh !!! Danggit. You won't be messing with that stuff anymore once set up though. | |||
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Should connect automatically once set up. Make sure if there is a check box to connect to that (default) network each time and/or save password. Some versions of Mint did have the check box not sure about the latest version and I'm wired ethernet on my desktop (faster than WiFi), so not sure. But look around in the network icon in the system tray next to the update icon to see if there are any WiFi options ... also check around in Control Center > Network Connections. | |||
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^^^ ... Also, could it have anything to do with the way your WiFi router is setup for accepting connections? Like require password each time or something? | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
Got it fixed... not sure how but...  Installed Variety to auto change background images. Nice. Had to give up using a Logitech Marble Mouse as there really isn't a good way of controlling the scroll ball and the forward/back buttons. Did read where the Logitech M570 wireless trackball works much better so I'll try that out tomorrow. Had both of these in storage in favor of my refurbished 10+ year old Microsoft Trackball Explorer. It's been quite a week and a half. Thought I'd had my Desktop Win7 fixed but it turned to crap refusing to restart. Turned out it was badly corrupted. So I opted to go Win10. Changed the BIOS boot scheme to support SSD *after* installation. OMG what a crapfest to fix. Then very disappointed in the "dumbing down" that was done with a lot of former user options crippled in Win10 like setting your own choices for default programs. They made it very difficult if what you wanted wasn't in their list or in their store. Latest nit was with the background slideshow. No longer could you check or uncheck the upper right corner of a picture in your folder. Noooo... now instead of files, the background is controlled by folders which means you have to add / delete individual pictures. Yeah I love MS not. That said I'm still not going to Apple. And now dumping Win XP in favor of Linux Mint 19.1 Mate on an old laptop. Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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Great Linux Mint news bald1. Glad you got it sorted. Have fun with the old laptop and messing around with Linux Mint. I love the simplicity and security of it. Love it. Microsoft and Apple get zero (0) love LOL. | |||
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OH ... and one other thing. If you have Intel graphics for your video (lots of Dells and others do), you will likely experience screen "tearing" and slightly herky jerky display when scrolling. Test for tearing here ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceX18O9pvLs Try this solitaire game to see how smooth your graphics are ... https://solitaire.frvr.com/?s=website THE FIX that works for me with my Intel graphics ... Create a Intel graphics-specific configuration file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d, and title it "20-intel.conf". Here's simple instructions on how to do this: Step 1: Open your terminal emulator (the icon in your system tray that when you hover over it says "Terminal - Use the command line"), and enter the following command:
Note: You'll have to enter your password for any "sudo" command. As you type your password, it will not appear in the terminal, just type it and hit enter. Step 2: Copy the following five lines of code in its entirety from here and paste into nano,
NOTE: Control + V will not work for paste in Nano. You have to right click and paste. Step 3: Exit nano, saving changes: [CTRL] + [X], and enter y for "Yes, save changes", and [ENTER] again, to execute this yes save changes command. Step 4: Type "exit" [ENTER] to close the terminal window. Step 5: Restart your computer. Post concerning this found here ... https://forums.linuxmint.com/v...08&t=224942#p1197049 ADDITIONALLY in about:config in Firefox ... 1 Launch Firefox 2 Type < about:config > without the brackets - It will warn 'Here Be Dragons' - click 'I'll Be Careful, I Promise! 3 In the Search Bar enter < layers.acceleration.force-enabled > without the brackets 4 It will state 'false' - double click it to change to 'true' and close the Firefox Tab 5 Restart Firefox AND LASTLY ... I get best results when "use hardware acceleration when available" is disabled in Firefox preferences under General > Performance (uncheck "Use recommended performance settings" to see the hardware acceleration option). You could try both with and without hardware acceleration to see what works best for you. EDIT: If you don't have Intel graphics ... nevermind This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hobbs, | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
The Dell Vostro 1000 runs an ATI Radeon Express 1150 (256Mb) graphics card. The Logitech wireless M570 trackball mouse works great. Shut down doesn't work. It just sits there with no drive activity and a lit up blank screen. I have to do it manually with the power button... again weird.This message has been edited. Last edited by: bald1, Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
You see where that HowTo says
The problem arises where there is no free space. Then you have to make some. Because MS-Win XP and beyond don't use disk from the "bottom" up, but stash things at the end of the disk space allocated to it, you have to turn off a couple things, then defragment the disk (perhaps more than once), then use a partitioner to shrink MS-Win's disk space. We had docs at work. (Looks around...) Looks like I did not save myself a copy. (Drums fingers... searches...) All I'm coming up with are tools that claim to be able to do it easily. Maybe smschulz knows. I'm not an MS-Win guy. If you don't have an answer by after the 1st of the year and you still want to pursue this, I'm sure my ex-colleagues at work will forward to me a copy of the doc. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
ensigmatic, Thanks but I've moved on from the dual-boot strategy. Made my old Dell Vostro 1000 a dedicated Linux Mint 19.1 Mate laptop. Should I decide to run Mint on my Dell 3847 Win10 desktop I'll be going the VM route with most likely either VirtualBox or VMware. Found this helpful after installing Mint v19.1: https://fossbytes.com/things-t...stalling-linux-mint/This message has been edited. Last edited by: bald1, Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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| always with a hat or sunscreen |
From what I've been able to gleen, my shutdown hangup is likely tied to drivers employed by my ATI Raedon Express 1150 integrated graphics. And the possibility exists that this isn't the cause for the laptop to not execute shutdown either through the GUI button or via terminal sudo shutdown command. But I'll be $%&# if I can figure out how to update / correct the driver. Running the Driver Manager doesn't help a whit. I'm used to Windoze Device Manager and haven't broken the code for the Linux Mint approach. <sigh> Searching the Linux forums hasn't helped.  This message has been edited. Last edited by: bald1, Certifiable member of the gun toting, septuagenarian, bucket list workin', crazed retiree, bald is beautiful club! USN (RET), COTEP #192 | |||
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SIGforum.com Main Page The Lounge Updated: Linux Mint on an old laptop; future VM Desktop? Pg4 Blast from the Past :)
Main Page The Lounge Updated: Linux Mint on an old laptop; future VM Desktop? Pg4 Blast from the Past :)© SIGforum 2024