My first days using Linux

Encrypted Existence

Encrypted Existence

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
87
Hello all. I wanted to post about my experience using Linux (Mint 12) so far. I have to say that I am beyond impressed! I have found it to be fairly easy to use and packed with functionality. The main reason that I gave Linux a shot was because I heard other techs around here speak very highly of it. I would like to say thanks for the motivation (PCX, coffee, and the others that I can't think of at the moment). I have installed Mint on two of my bench machines along with gsmartcontrol and ddrescue (I have a long way to go with this one :D). Now I can safely run a HDD diag ( I use front loader drive bays) or slave a drive to do a virus removal without having to worry about getting infected myself. I will be using Win 7 from within VB to run removal apps on slaved drives but if I happen to get infected, the fix is as simple as the click of a button (thank goodness for snapshots!). Anyways, I just wanted to express my gratitude to those who swayed me to give it a shot. The only question that is running through my mind at the moment is..."why did I wait so long to do this?" I certainly have a lot to learn but I am looking forward to it! Thanks.

Edit: Any tips or recommendations will be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Welcome to the club! Ddrescue will become your best friend with data recovery. I just had a failing 500gb drive that I saved using it. First pass showed 325mb of errored sectors by the final pass I only lost 18mb. It did take 2 days but the customer (mother-in-law in this case) was very happy.
 
Glad you decided to give it a shot. Mint is quite a O/S especially with their new cinaminn (sp?) desktop enviroment. On my systems I use lxde desktop as its lighter and runs faster. But its "each their own".

Keep in mind, If you want to skip the VB install of windows for virus scanning you can always install Avast for linux and just scan em with that. Works pretty good.

coffee
 
I really like Linux and have Mint as a second operating system on my service call laptop.My favorite Linux flavor is Puppy. It's just great and runs off Ram so if a clients hdd won't spin you just pop in a thumb drive or Puppy live cd and recover files, use gparted & ddrescue. My wife also thinks it's cute. You cant beat that!!
 
I think that there are a lot of variations of Puppy (if I am not mistaken), but once you really start to use Linux for diagnostics, repairs, and data recovery, you will find it to be limited.

As for advice, do not give up if something is hard, learn how to use it and then let it be your edge over your competition. The VB and Avast are both great ideas. I personally use KAS Rescue disk in many cases.

Finally, get friendly with the terminal. Its not that hard and once you learn it, you will find it to be easier and quicker then the GUI in many cases.
 
Congrats on coming over. So many fun distros to try, here is a good resource that lists quite a few,
http://distrowatch.com/

MINT is a great one to get your feet wet, also the popular Ubuntu, and PCLinuxOS...all great for first timers.

My usual one that I dual boot my lappies with is OpenSUSE.

Keeping trying different ones, you'll find some work better with your specific hardware than others.

Also...start getting into linux router distros....Smoothwall, IPCop, m0n0wall, PFSense, Untangle, Astaro, etc etc.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Congrats on coming over. So many fun distros to try, here is a good resource that lists quite a few,
http://distrowatch.com/

MINT is a great one to get your feet wet, also the popular Ubuntu, and PCLinuxOS...all great for first timers.

My usual one that I dual boot my lappies with is OpenSUSE.

Keeping trying different ones, you'll find some work better with your specific hardware than others.

Also...start getting into linux router distros....Smoothwall, IPCop, m0n0wall, PFSense, Untangle, Astaro, etc etc.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the suggestion! Thank you to everyone else for the replies as well. :) @PCX : one of my main Linux learning goals is to learn the terminal.
 
Trusted IT Solutions said:
Really not sure. Do you have a 64 bit processor? If so, I would recommend the 64 bit DVD download. That is what I am using.
Click to expand...

its 32 bit,

what about MBR conflicts? previous my experiments with Linux has turned me off dual booting due to conflicts,

some say use chainloading ,ie;
install Linux and Windows OSes in separate Hard disks. If any thing goes wrong with one, the other will boot up fine.
 
pcmac said:
its 32 bit,

what about MBR conflicts? previous my experiments with Linux has turned me off dual booting due to conflicts,

some say use chainloading ,ie;
install Linux and Windows OSes in separate Hard disks. If any thing goes wrong with one, the other will boot up fine.
Click to expand...

I am really not sure about dual booting as Linux is now the only OS on two of my bench machines. You could try dual booting to see if it works properly or just use VirtualBox and use Linux from within XP.
 
If you have Windows already installed, then it is very simple. Shrink down the Windows OS partition enough to install Linux with some breathing room, then install Linux on the open partition. Grub will take care of the rest. When you boot up the computer, you will have the choice to boot from Windows or Linux.
 
You do not need a Windows installer, that said, you should probably look up some tutorials on installing Linux next to Windows before you go through with this.
 
If your going to install a Ubuntu flavor of linux then its pretty straight forward. It will ask you how you want to install with a nice gui window. The thing to remember is that make sure you install windows first on the drive. If its already installed then just shrink the partition for windows.

Any boot problems can be easily overcome with a visit to either the Fedora forums or the Ubuntu forums and asking. Nice places to visit and get more information on your favorite flavor.

Fedora now uses the grub2 loader like Ubuntu flavors.
 
pcmac said:
its 32 bit,

what about MBR conflicts? previous my experiments with Linux has turned me off dual booting due to conflicts,

some say use chainloading ,ie;
install Linux and Windows OSes in separate Hard disks. If any thing goes wrong with one, the other will boot up fine.
Click to expand...

Generally, if you install Linux after you install Windows, you should have no problems with the bootloader. The major Linux distributions play nice if they find Windows pre-installed on the drive. Windows, on the other hand, will happily blow away your existing MBR and not check if you're trying to dual-boot another OS.

If you're not comfortable with it, why not fire up VirtualBox and install Linux in a virtual machine?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

GTP
Gridcoin Wallet
Replies
12
Views
468
GTP
GTP
GTP
Install Linux on an Old Macbook
Replies
19
Views
513
xrobwx71
xrobwx71
P
Any decent Linux distro for MacBook white 2007 or better switch to other hardware?
Replies
4
Views
711
Markverhyden
Markverhyden
Diggs
Upgrading Linux is messy
2 3
Replies
59
Views
4K
GTP
GTP
LordX
Can't get Bitlocker to work - Path specified in BCD is incorrect
Replies
10
Views
258
Philippe
Philippe
Back
Top