Linux - Installing & using
#61
#62

Meanwhile back in Sony City, a known Windows stronghold.
Windows System Image creation spots three partitions and backs them up.
Good boy.
Next boot of gpartd via USB partition report on the main MBR drive shows:
/dev/sda1 as ntfs, label recovery, flag diag <== Sony's recovery partition
/dev/sda2 as ntfs, label system reserved, flag boot <=== Flag says it all, plus it's 100MB, the ultimate giveaway
/dev/sda3 as ntfs, no label, no flag, bloody huge <=== Ah, Windows, there you are
/dev/sda4 as ntfs, label recovery, flag diag <=== What? A cuckoo?
So, with the system secured, next steps will be to delete /dev/sda4, shrink /dev/sda3 a bit then try Mint back in for a side by side install.
I really thought that the Vaio would have been UEFI/GPT, it is only eleven years old.
Windows System Image creation spots three partitions and backs them up.
Good boy.

Next boot of gpartd via USB partition report on the main MBR drive shows:
/dev/sda1 as ntfs, label recovery, flag diag <== Sony's recovery partition
/dev/sda2 as ntfs, label system reserved, flag boot <=== Flag says it all, plus it's 100MB, the ultimate giveaway
/dev/sda3 as ntfs, no label, no flag, bloody huge <=== Ah, Windows, there you are
/dev/sda4 as ntfs, label recovery, flag diag <=== What? A cuckoo?
So, with the system secured, next steps will be to delete /dev/sda4, shrink /dev/sda3 a bit then try Mint back in for a side by side install.
I really thought that the Vaio would have been UEFI/GPT, it is only eleven years old.

#64

So, with the system secured, next steps will be to delete /dev/sda4, shrink /dev/sda3 a bit then try Mint back in for a side by side install.
And, it's allright. I have no life either.
#65


This post is brought to you courtesy of Firefox on Mint 19.2, now happily dual booting alongside Windows on the Vaio. It's a bit early for a beer.
@ caretaker During the Mint Install, one of the slideshow screens mentioned that Mint could run Wine and VirtualBox (if I spelled that correctly), might help on the security cams front?
Last edited by BuckinghamshireBoy; Oct 30th 2019 at 12:18 pm.
#66

I put Mint on an M2 sata and I don't think much of it; far prefer the good old 16.04 64 bit Ubuntu. Mint seems about the same as 18.04, which didn't take long to be rejected. Everything is just handier on the older system; tools, menus, etc. I see myself erasing it if I can figure out how, and reverting to my original plan of putting 16,04 on the M2 and slapping in a big hdd in the 2.5" bay like I did on my current #1 laptop. My friend says a lot of the things I don't like can be changed around, but I'm not going to faff about for a day trying to make something user friendly. I'll stick the disc in my work bag and say "Yeah, I have Mint.", same way I keep 1 or 2 machines with 18.04 around just in case I have to check something.
#67

I put Mint on an M2 sata and I don't think much of it; far prefer the good old 16.04 64 bit Ubuntu. Mint seems about the same as 18.04, which didn't take long to be rejected. Everything is just handier on the older system; tools, menus, etc. I see myself erasing it if I can figure out how, and reverting to my original plan of putting 16,04 on the M2 and slapping in a big hdd in the 2.5" bay like I did on my current #1 laptop. My friend says a lot of the things I don't like can be changed around, but I'm not going to faff about for a day trying to make something user friendly. I'll stick the disc in my work bag and say "Yeah, I have Mint.", same way I keep 1 or 2 machines with 18.04 around just in case I have to check something.
On my Windows machines I've completely gotten rid of the Microsoft idea of how we look at / access stuff, using a free (not sure if it is open source) offering. No idea if there's a Linux port for it, but I'll go looking and post back.
Last edited by BuckinghamshireBoy; Nov 1st 2019 at 12:52 am. Reason: Typo!
#68

I think I have lost the plot here. All this talk of 8-inch floppies, and look and feel; I have gone into linear regression.
Time to man up and adopt a command-line only interface.
Time to man up and adopt a command-line only interface.
#69



#71

I've become a bit side-tracked, I'm now down to getting to grips with grub before moving on.
I thought I'd trashed the Vaio last Friday (having messed a tiny bit with grub), turns out the the poor old Vaio had overheated and just shut off at the very moment that the splash Mint screen appeared on the nth restart. There has to be a better boot-loader than grub out there FFS!
I have ISOs of Manjaro and MX Linux ready to go, but I need to work out a decent boot strategy.
I found an article on t'Internet dating from goodness knows how long ago giving a 'new look' to multi-booting, and after one skip-read, the logic made sense, if not the technical stuff.
Next step is to trash the Vaio, then recover it back to as it was about 10 minutes ago, both Windows and Mint.

That's a neat plate. What do the authorities charge for vanity plates in CA?
I thought I'd trashed the Vaio last Friday (having messed a tiny bit with grub), turns out the the poor old Vaio had overheated and just shut off at the very moment that the splash Mint screen appeared on the nth restart. There has to be a better boot-loader than grub out there FFS!
I have ISOs of Manjaro and MX Linux ready to go, but I need to work out a decent boot strategy.
I found an article on t'Internet dating from goodness knows how long ago giving a 'new look' to multi-booting, and after one skip-read, the logic made sense, if not the technical stuff.
Next step is to trash the Vaio, then recover it back to as it was about 10 minutes ago, both Windows and Mint.

That's a neat plate. What do the authorities charge for vanity plates in CA?
#72

That isn't a Sask Government Insurance plate, we only require rear plates here so he just bought that somewhere and slapped it on. A real vanity plate used to be $75 additional to your annual fee, now I don't know how much they are.
Last edited by caretaker; Nov 3rd 2019 at 10:48 pm.
#73

I find the difference challenging enough that functionality is a faint hope. I like the desktop to have my menus handy, and the browser menu up top when I just nudge the cursor up there. My IT friend says that Mint is probably designed to be reminiscent of Windows and so appeal to that demographic (he loaded it and said it seems fine to him, but he uses 18.04 almost exclusively). The 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) seems similar to Mint , whereas 16.04 is like the 14.whatever the preceding Ubuntu free source system was that I used before. I might just be a bit of a crank.
I find the difference challenging enough that functionality is a faint hope. I like the desktop to have my menus handy, and the browser menu up top when I just nudge the cursor up there. My IT friend says that Mint is probably designed to be reminiscent of Windows and so appeal to that demographic (he loaded it and said it seems fine to him, but he uses 18.04 almost exclusively). The 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) seems similar to Mint , whereas 16.04 is like the 14.whatever the preceding Ubuntu free source system was that I used before. I might just be a bit of a crank.
EOF
#74

cat <<'EOF' | sed 's/might just be/am almost certainly/g' | sed 's/I am almost certainly a bit of a crank/I almost certainly have no life, like the rest of the posters on this thread/g'
I find the difference challenging enough that functionality is a faint hope. I like the desktop to have my menus handy, and the browser menu up top when I just nudge the cursor up there. My IT friend says that Mint is probably designed to be reminiscent of Windows and so appeal to that demographic (he loaded it and said it seems fine to him, but he uses 18.04 almost exclusively). The 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) seems similar to Mint , whereas 16.04 is like the 14.whatever the preceding Ubuntu free source system was that I used before. I might just be a bit of a crank.
EOF
I find the difference challenging enough that functionality is a faint hope. I like the desktop to have my menus handy, and the browser menu up top when I just nudge the cursor up there. My IT friend says that Mint is probably designed to be reminiscent of Windows and so appeal to that demographic (he loaded it and said it seems fine to him, but he uses 18.04 almost exclusively). The 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) seems similar to Mint , whereas 16.04 is like the 14.whatever the preceding Ubuntu free source system was that I used before. I might just be a bit of a crank.
EOF

#75