71 replies to this topic

[Peter1]

Hello

I have been using Windows 10 on my pc and Android on my phone for quite a while and Windows seems to need tending like a baby.

Is it hard to learn to use Linux and is it more stable and secure?

I tried and liked Zorin but I don't understand how to use commands to open and close a firewall for example.

So could you please refer me to an easy to use Linux OS if you feel it is easy to use without learning a new language.

I have a 16 GB stick and wondered if it would work on it?

TY

Peter

[terry1966]

if you tried and liked zorin why not carry on using it and get more familiar with it.

 

i don't suppose it's going to be any easier or harder using that than any other linux os to be honest.

 

will it work installed onto a 16GB stick then yes it will but my experience with installing and using a linux os from a usb stick wasn't great (way to slow.), you may have a better experience, so now i only use a usb stick for doing the install onto a hard drive or running a live linux os which just runs in a pc's memory.

 

[Peter1]

Hi terry

I think your advice is good about Zorin and practise.

I also noticed the functionality and speed on a 16 GB stick. I wonder if  bigger drive like one of my external ones would do?

Or there is a larger stick I could get.

I am not good with VM's or I would use it.

 

I have Macrium images on my external drives. One is 2TB's and the other 1 TB. I could install Zorin there.

Is that a functional idea as I could delete it when i wanted to. I just did not want to foul up any  image.

Good taking with you.

Peter

[terry1966]

seeing how you have a complete drive backup image of your laptop peter (if not create one.), for best results i'd recommend installing the os to your hard drive and have a dual boot system so you can boot into either zorin or windows depending on what you wanted to do.

 

if you decide you don't really want zorin later you can restore your backup image or just manually delete it.

 

if you want to experiment with a few different linux os though, then maybe installing something like virtualbox and running them in vm's would be a better solution for you to start with, or just run live os of the different distro's from the usb stick.

 

have a think about what you really want to do and i'm sure we can help you get up and running with whatever solution you think is best for you at the moment.

 

for a permanent solution i'd recommend installing to the hard drive inside the laptop.

for a temporary solution or testing a few distro's i'd recommend virtualbox and vm's.

 

Edited by terry1966, 01 June 2016 - 11:08 PM.

[Peter1]

I am going to watch some more tutorials with virtual box. It sounds like the best way to go.

Thank you once again.

[terry1966]

i think you'll find virtualbox is really quite easy to use once you do actually start to use it, and if needed i can give you step by step instructions with images for you to follow, for anything you may be having difficulty with.

 

[Peter1]

I always had trouble when I got to the step to create a hard drive yet have watched numerous tutorials.

I put the laptop next to the desktop and use it as a guide. I did have a VM up and running but it did not function well due to my limiter knowledge with settings.

The tutorials always deviated away from the original plan and left me guessing.

 

1-  I will be in a better position  to consider a build in the fall when my treatment ends - I have not forgotten and i want to but have not been able to.

 

2- If you have the time and patience I would appreciate learning the VM.

 

3- My machine is an XPS 8300 around 6 years old. I have put a power supply in which had 50 more watts than the original and installed a new WD harddrive. The rest is vintage. I have read that VM's take a toll [stress] on the PC and they have to be installed into the PC. Only the guest can be removed not uninstalled.

Do you have one to run different OS's and trying new programs? I think that is the purpose, correct?

I thought Oracles Virtual Box was the easiest. What do you think?

Please clarify any errors.

[terry1966]

ok here's a guide for the basics and all you really need to start with, i'm using linux but the install should be straight forward in win 10, and actually using virtualbox is going to be the same.

 

go here and download virtualbox :- https://www.virtualb.../wiki/Downloads

click on the VirtualBox 5.0.20 for Windows hosts  x86/amd64 link and click on save file to download virtualbox to your pc.

then download the 64bit iso's for any linux distro's you may want to try out.

i downloaded

opensuse leap42 :- https://software.opensuse.org/421/en

zorin 9.1 :- http://zorinos.com/download.html

mint 17.3 kde :- https://www.linuxmin...tion.php?id=216

ubuntu 16.4 :- http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

 

now go into your downloads folder and double click on virtualbox then in the popup click on run.

then just click on next next next and install for any popups you may get.

 

now virtualbox is installed to your pc, it will start automatically the first time if you didn't uncheck the start virtualbox during the install.

any time later you just need to double click on the desktop shortcut to start it.

 

now comes the guide to create and run different vm's.

this is the first screen you see.

 

click on new (i'll create a zorin vm first) so in the popup i name the vm zorin and it filled in the rest.

 

click next, here you will set the amount of memory you'd like the vm to use, depending on the amount of memory in your pc i usually set this to a 1/3 to 1/2 of my machines memory, never going over the green line.

here i set this to 2GB (2048mb and my pc has 6Gb of memory.)

 

next you create the hard drive,

no need to alter anything here and just click create.

 

again no need to change anything here, vdi is fine so just click next.

 

again dynamic is fine so just click next.

 

again default 12GB is fine so just click create.

 

now your machine is created, we can change anything to do with the machine in the settings but for now the defaults will do.

 

ok now comes the task of actually installing an os onto our machine, so we click on start. and now a new window appears which is the actual vm.

the window with the start button (virtualbox program) can be ignored now.

 

the location for our install media are the iso's in the downloads folder, zorin being the one to use for this machine, so click on the folder with the green arrow and a new window will open so you can navigate to where your iso's are, on my machine it looks like this, but yours maybe different seeing how your using a different os.

 

once you've navigated to where your iso's are just click on the iso your currently wanting to install which will take you back to the below image where you can see the iso is now loaded.

 

click start and the machine will now boot up and go through the install process for zorin.

 

i won't go through the step by step for that, just follow zorins install process until it's installed to the vm and says restart.

mine seemed to freeze at this point,

 

so i clicked the x to close the window, whenever you close or shut down the vm without doing it from inside the running os you will get a popup asking if you want to save, shutdown or power off the machine, usually this doesn't really matter which you choose, personally i choose power off.

 

now you only have the virtualbox program window open, and you can choose either to create new vm's for the other os or click start to run the highlighted vm. or close it and just use your windows os.

 

here's a screenshot of the virtualbox program with all 4 separate vm's. (of course i could have installed all 4 on 1 vm for a multi boot machine too.)

 

here's a screenshot of all 4 vm's running at the same time on my pc (not recommended for actual use especially seeing how much memory was allocated to each machine.)

personally i think you'll like using the kde desktop of mint or suse the best. but there are lots of other desktops you can test, like mate or cinnamon for mint.

 

anyway that's just the basic setup guide and there is much more you can do with virtualbox and vm's that you might want to get into later.

changing view, sharing files between your windows os and the os running in the vm's, etc. etc.

 

hope that helps you a little to start with.

 

 

you can easily delete any vm and all it's files at any time too.

just right click on the vm you want to get rid of and in the popup click remove, and in the next popup click on delete all files, and that's it completely removed from your pc.

Edited by terry1966, 02 June 2016 - 09:52 PM.

[Peter1]

terry

I feel terrible that after all your work I failed.

I am going to have to run a Macrium recovery. I hope the attachment gives you an idea of what went wrong.

It occured at the step when you saud to disregard the black screen so I x'd it and it was downlhill fro there.

I tried deleting the folders in the path and rebooting. I did spend about 4 hours on it.

i realy am sorry but I will have a clean machine after Macrium.

I really wished I could have had some fun with it but I think i have leveled out. Off to TV.

On the bright side, and there always has to be, someone else may have better luck playing with it..

Peter

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[terry1966]

don't see why you need to do a macrium recovery peter.

 

all you need to do is go into uninstall programs and delete virtualbox program and your back to where you were to begin with.

 

if you were actually partitioning your hard drive to do an install of linux then yes restoring an image would probably work out easier for you than manually resetting things.

 

virtualbox is just a program like any other program on windows and can easily be deleted.

 

now that screen shot looks like the problem it had is when trying to create a suse vm there was already a suse vm created at an earlier time and why the error, so you could either rename the one your creating or go into the virtualbox folder and delete or rename the previous suse vm that way.

 

this is what is in my virtualbox vm folder, each one is a separate vm, if you looked in your virtualbox vm folder you'd have probably seen a suse folder already in there.

 

it's completely up to you if you want to carry on and try to get things working or just want to give up, i don't mind either way, and am more than willing to run through things a step at a time as often as you like until it clicks in your mind what your doing and understanding things better.

 

main thing is if something is different than what you expected just stop and ask a question, there's no rush after all.

 

just remember virtualbox is just a windows program, and as such you remove it in exactly the same way as any other windows program, also it does not make any changes to your partitions or hard drives in any way that would need you to restore an image of your drive. all files and vm's it creates can easily be removed at any time.

 

 

 

It occured at the step when you saud to disregard the black screen so I x'd it and it was downlhill fro there.

your problem was probably because when you x'd out when suse failed to restart after installing suse, the vm was already created and all you needed to do was to hit start in the main virtualbox window with the suse vm highlighted on the left (or if it was the only vm created so far just hit start) and it would have started and booted to the suse vm but instead i think when you x'd out of it you thought it must have failed (but it hadn't really.) so you tried to create it again and it was during this second attempt that things went wrong and flumuxed you.

see i get the same error when i tried to create another vm named suse.

 

Edited by terry1966, 03 June 2016 - 04:19 PM.

[Peter1]

terry

When I was stuck, so to speak, I clicked on every button on the screen, but pop ups kept coming up.

I also went to the path of the VM's, found 2 and deleted both.

I do not doubt that you could have fixed my error before I created 2 of them. Even AFTER removing both VMs I got the same error indicting there were two .

I guess originally I should have removed the first at programs and features.

I think I may wait till things level off and especially if I have an older practice pc, I would try it on that one not my main computer. My wfe's laptop is off bounds.

The concept fascinates me and I may still give it a shot now that I have an updated image. I never realized how many updates had taken place since April. Free editions of MR don't allow for scheduling but are very reliable. I should image more often.

If I do this again, I will pick out Mint or SUSE and if that black screen pops up will click START as you say.

You must know how much I appreciate all your efforts and am sorry none has worked out yet but I am still willing to try when I can.

TY

Peter

 

[terry1966]

no problems peter, and any time your bored and want to experiment with virtualbox and vms again we'll be here to help if you need it. 

 

 

 

if that black screen pops up will click START as you say.

not 100% sure what black screen you got peter, but in my guide where i said it froze and that's where i just closed the vm.

that happened after it had run through the complete zorin install and should have shut down and restarted itself but didn't and froze for some unknown reason, (think it happened with one other os install too but can't remember which one, might have been suse.)

but i knew the vm had been created and the os installed onto it. so just closing it and then starting it up again would run the vm and get me to the zorin desktop, as shown in one of the screenshots somewhere.

 

Even AFTER removing both VMs I got the same error indicting there were two .

that might have been because they were still stored in virtualboxs program memory and you needed to shut down virtualbox and then start it up again before it will notice you've manually deleted the vm's already created and not complain when you try and create a new one with the same name.

Edited by terry1966, 04 June 2016 - 11:04 AM.

[Peter1]

Your efforts are not in vain. I am oprtimistic I will be in good shape to do all we hve discused pretty soon.

When my wife's laptop expires we will get a Chromebook for her which satisfies her needs and I am tired of maintain two of them.

I have plans which time will fix.

I need some ooomph!

What would you say is the smallest yet least troublesome of all the distros to use with least trouble in a VM?

Edited by Peter1, 04 June 2016 - 04:45 PM.

[terry1966]

that's the thing with using vm's you can try them all, not only can you try different distro's you can also try the different types of desktop that each distro offers, then decide for yourself which is the least trouble or best for you, everyone has their own favourite and of course because i use suse with a kde desktop then i'm biased towards that and of course any you don't like you can simple delete.

 

another good thing about using vm's is you can take snapshots of it's current state, then make any changes you want and if things go wrong or you don't like the changes, you can easily and quickly restore the machine to a previous state exactly like using backup images, but a lot quicker and easier.

 

as for size, the four i have installed use up about 24GB of total drive space at the moment.

so for a basic install these are their sizes.

 

mint 5.8GB

suse 6.1GB

ubuntu 5.2GB

zorin 7GB

 

Edited by terry1966, 04 June 2016 - 07:07 PM.

[Peter1]

I understand. Is KDE a type of OS other than Windows, for example, making the installation of a VM more compatible with Linux?

 

Zorin which I once installed in a VM was much like Windows. I would try mint for size and have to learn terms like SUDO before you can see whether the firewall is on or off, for example.

However, for some reasons, many people use Ubuntu or one like it. Is there an advantage to Ubuntu that comes to mind?

I notice in tutorials that after installing the box and  with the distro in download, they click storage. Then the click empty then CD and enter the distro ISO from download.

 

Is this because they are just doing it differently and your way is sufficient or is a step yet to come?

 

>>This your equivalent but the green arrow eludes me," so click on the folder with the green arrow and a new window will open so you can navigate to where your ISO's are."

 

Are you and they doing the same thing just two different ways of installing?

 

*If this is tedious, just speak up, please.

Edited by Peter1, 05 June 2016 - 09:52 AM.