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I tried to create a snapshot today but it got created on my hdd instead of my USB flash drive. When I selected the USB drive for the “destination  ” drive it said it didn’t have a Linux partition. I assumed it would format the drive for me. When I looked at the instructions to create a Snapshot it says that the  “destination” drive will NOT be formatted! My mistake. I’ll try to format the USB flash drive and try again.

Sorry for the delay in responding.  It seems I do have a swapfile that is 2GB in size.  If you type “free” without the quotes it will report a swapfile of 2GB.

I still haven’t had a chance to create a snapshot. Is a snapshot similar to making an image in Windows?  Will try to get at it in the next couple of days.

Just checking in. Installed Monterey 12.6.2 on my MBA 2017. It took about 40 minutes from download to login page. No issues to report. Will keep an eye on things and report back if anything should come up. Safari 12.6 will be installed in a little while.

I am just noticing that I don’t have a swap file (partition). Would it be beneficial to create a swap file or am I okay without one?

I am really happy with LM 21 since I’ve installed it. I still haven’t created a snapshot yet. Is it okay to use the same USB flash drive for snapshots and regular file backups?

 

 

DrBonzo, I just booted up my LM laptop and plugged in my USB flash drive. And it was recognized! I didn’t do anything special other than starting from “fresh”.

The gui for my Clamtk is still different from Software Manager preview. See below…

Firemind…When you say run Timeshift and set a restore point do you mean create a “snapshot”? Do you save these to an external drive or flash drive?

Still trying to get used to everything here in LM.  I noticed that LM 21.1 was released.  Do I need to upgrade to it or just stick with what I have?  What would the procedure be to update to a newer version of LM?

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DrBonzo

I had some time this weekend to work on my next steps in installing LM 21.

First, I updated all 138 updates using Update Manager. You were right DrBonzo, I don’t know where I came up with Package Manager. It took around 20 minutes to download and install those 138 updates. When I started FF it was running the latest version 108.0.1.

Next, I installed ClamTK using Software Manager. Again DrBonzo was right. But when I started it the gui was way different then what was shown in Software Manager.

I also enabled the firewall without issue.

Then I wanted to copy my FF bookmarks from a USB flash drive to my LM. But it seems that the USB drive was not recognized. I tried a different USB flash drive and it wasn’t recognized either. I am using a USB mouse could that be interfering somehow?

Thanks to all for the advice!

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DrBonzo

Short story…I finally got Linux Mint installed and working. It dual boots into Linux Mint 21 as well as Windows 7!

Long story…when installing Linux Mint I chose “Install alongside Windows 7”. It only gave me 140GB to my Linux partition so I used the “slider” between the Linux and Windows partition to increase the Linux partition to 220GB (according to Windows 7 I had 260GB free). I clicked on install and it took a good hour to get to the next steps. Finally I got to the point where it told me to remove my USB drive and restart my laptop. When it restarted I got the grub menu and Linux Mint Cinnamon was the first choice! It then booted and got the login screen. Entered my password and was given the LM desktop. Unfortunately I couldn’t connect to my wifi network.  I was stumped and shut down to sleep on it.

I thought I would try to see if I had wifi on my Windows 7 partition to determine if I had a hardware issue or software issue.  So I restarted my laptop and chose Windows 7 from the grub menu. Somehow it got into running chkdsk and 3 steps…verifying files, verifying indexes and verifying security descriptors. After about 1/2 hour it rebooted and I was able to login to Windows 7. Low and behold I didn’t have wifi access in Windows either! I was stumped until I remembered the last time I used my laptop, 2 years ago, I shut off the wifi “card” by clicking <fn><F2>. So I reclicked that key combination and voila I was back in business.  I had wifi!  I was anxious to see if this success would work in Linux and it did.

So I am currently running Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon on a dual boot with Windows 7. Thanks to all for the advice and encouragement. I have more questions but will start a new thread, or two.

 

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Fred, DrBonzo

Is it okay to resize the free space during “install along side”. It seems to give a lot of free space to Windows, I thought I’d give more room to Mint.

Update:

I finally had some time to try to install Linux Mint but got confused. My objective is to have dual boot, Windows 7 and Linux Mint as well as partitions / (root), /home (data ), /swap.  On the Installation Type if I choose “something else” how do I resize the Windows partition and will it give me an option to dual boot.

If on the Installation Type if I choose “Install Linux Mint alongside ” will it give me the partitions I am looking for?

Maybe I am being to picky and should just let Mint do its thing.

Thank you Paul T and DrBonzo for your advice about Linux partitions. So from what I gather, the Mint installation will automatically create the partitions I need? In my case I have 260GB free on my Windows partition, which is the only partition right now, how does the Mint installer know how much to “shrink” the Windows partition or do I do that manually?

I finally had time to try my Linux USB drive on my Dell and it worked! Here is what happened. I fired up my Dell for the first time in about 2 years. I had a couple of “sticky” keys, one being the enter key. I plugged in the Linux USB drive and Explorer recognized it. Although it said it needed to be formatted. This gave me some hope that I would be able to boot into Linux Mint. I rebooted and hit the <F12> key, selected boot USB device and I got the Grub loader and Mint came up pretty quickly.

My first impressions of Mint is its very similar to Windows 7. It has a lot of “preloaded” software including Libreoffice, FF and Thunderbird. I played around a little but didn’t get online because I was worried not having an AV/AM or firewall running, I did notice a firewall app is this good? Is there a recommended AV/AM for Mint? I guess i should start a new thread with these questions.

Thanks to all for the advice and encouragement. I look forward to the next steps to actually installing Mint on my Dell.

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DrBonzo

I finally had some time to try to create a Linux bootable USB drive. And here are the results….

First I downloaded the Linux Mint 21 .iso file and sha256sum.txt I ran the shasum command in a terminal window and it matched the one in the sha256sum.txt

I then downloaded balenaEtcher that would create the bootable USB drive. I selected the iso file, then selected my Lexar flash drive and finally clicked flash.  I then got a pop up asking for a password.  It didn’t say what password but I assumed it was looking for my admin password.  But after entering my admin password it just kept asking for a password.

I went back to the balenaEtcher website and in there forums figured out I needed to run it in an admin account. I was using a standard account. So I repeated my steps from above in my admin account and this time when I clicked flash it proceeded.

In about 10 minutes it claimed that the flashing completed. Unfortunately,  my USB drive was not recognized! I went in finder and there was no Lexar USB reported. I rebooted and went back to my standard account and still it wasn’t recognized. I tried a different USB drive to make sure my USB port was okay and I was able to view it.

The only thing I didn’t try was to actually try the USB drive on my Dell. Perhaps there is something in the “flashing process” that makes it unrecognized in my Mac. I will try this when I have some more free time.

 

 

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DrBonzo

Just a little more info on my Dell Inspiron.  It was bought in 2011, has an Intel i5 processor, 8GB of ram and a 650GB hdd.

The latest version of Mint is 21 “Vanessa”. Are there any issues I should be aware of this build?

Also in the Mint installation guide, it says to verify both the integrity and authenticity of the ISO image.  The integrity is performed by doing a check sum of the ISO. The authenticity is performed by using “gpg”. Are both of these necessary? Are these commands built in the macOS?

I am pretty busy these days so not sure when I’ll have an opportunity to create the Linux installation USB. I will keep you posted.

Thanks for all the advice. It’s much appreciated!

Since it’s been almost 2 weeks since Monterey 12.6.1 was released I decided to upgrade my MBA.

It took about 2 minutes to download, 20 minutes to prepare and another 20 minutes to install. After about 5 reboots into a black screen with apple logo it finally gave me the login screen.

So far things look good and will report back if something comes up. Still need to install Safari but will wait a few more days.

 

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DrBonzo

So yesterday I upgraded my iPhone 11 to 15.7.1. No issues to report. I know sooner or later will have to upgrade to 16.x. For now I am happy with 15.7.1

Anybody upgrade to Monterey 12.6.1 + Safari 16.1 yet?