Geezer considering Linux

I played with Linux back in the 1990s. Shortly after it first came out. I think Red Hat was the only "distro" available...for a while...anyway, I found it too cumbersome and clunky. It was fun to learn about computing at that level (not very well).

Anyhow now, with Windows 10 here, I have decided to revisit Linux, and oh my! The choices have grown like Topsy!

I am thinking of trying either Ubuntu or Mint. I am incapable of tweaking "under the hood" very much if at all at my age (69 Aug 7!) so of these two choices, which would you prefer? And if you say Mint, they have like 4 versions to choose from (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, Xfce), so which of these? Or is it all just a matter of personal preference, and if so, what is yours? (Based on experience.) TIA!

 

Yes there are lots of choices these days. Be sure to visit DistroWatch.com to find more information and current popularity rankings. With that being said, Ubuntu and Mint are both fine choices. Mint is based off of Ubuntu and comes with all the tweaks and media codecs installed, so I would recommend Mint.

If you told us more about your current computer hardware (ie; windows 7, dual core, 2ghz, 4gb ram, etc..) we could probably suggest a desktop style (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, Xfce, ...) that would run good on your hardware. In windows if you click on the start menu and right click on "computer" then select properties, it should give you some hardware info.

Cinnamon is Mint's flagship version with all the bells and whistles, but might run a little slower on an older computer. You can't go wrong with XFCE. It runs pretty light and fast, and is very popular. I would suggest downloading the Mint .iso file of your choice and using linux live usb software to put the .iso on a 4gb (or bigger) flash drive, which you can then boot from to check out linux without making any changes to your PC. or you can just burn the .iso to DVD and boot that - but dvd's run slower during testing.

 

Dell Optiplex 780 bought used
Windows 7 Home Premium SP 1
64 bit
Intel Core i5 2400 CPU 3.1 GHz
Intel graphics (no separate card)

 

Looks good, give Cinnamon a try.

 

Will do. I'll put the Iso on a usb stick

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

 

Well I got it to boot from the USB stick...looks nice, maybe too "extensible" for me...many things to tinker with though most are not that hard to figure out. Anyhow, can anyone explain this: I got video and sound working in Youtube but when I try to play a clip shared on Facebook from YouTube, or VEVO or anywhere else, no sound or video comes through. ?? Also, is it slow because I'm running it from USB? And finally (for now) do I need to create separate root and user accounts even though it's on USB?

 

Linux Mint has been my go to Distro for the past several years but I recently switched to Ubuntu. The main reason was performance on older equipment. Ubuntu flies on my 2009 Dell laptop whereas things are not as smooth with Mint. Both Ubuntu and Mint offer a full fledged OS experience.

 

I'm not sure how old my Dell Optiplex 780 desktop is...and I'm not sure what you mean by "older." My machine info is in the third post above...S. Prime thinks Cinnamon should run on my machine...I did download the Ubuntu distro before I dl'ed the Mint but I haven't tried it yet. There's room on the stick...can I put more than one distro on the stick at the same time? Without screwing anything up?

 

I got video and sound working in Youtube but when I try to play a clip shared on Facebook from YouTube, or VEVO or anywhere else, no sound or video comes through. ??

• Hmm, not sure. Maybe because flash is not installed.

Also, is it slow because I'm running it from USB?

• If you mean when booting and opening programs then Yes. If the screen seems laggy then the GUI (cinnamon) might be too much of a load for your video card.

do I need to create separate root and user accounts even though it's on USB?

• I would say no, with the explanation being - running from "Live USB" is meant to just be a test bed to try out the distro, it's not meant for permanent usage unless your running Puppy Linux, Tails, LPS, etc..

I put more than one distro on the stick at the same time? Without screwing anything up?

• I've never tried, but I think there is a way. Besides, you can get 8gb flash drives for $5 at your local office supply store.

Oh and if you do try out Ubuntu, you can install all the media codecs by opening a terminal window and typing: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Some other distributions to try: PCLinuxOS, Zorin and elementary.

 

Your hardware is fine. Don't worry about it.

You can put as many partitions and OS installs as you like onto either your stick or your HDD/SSD. However you would need to tell the bootloader where those OSes are so they can be booted, which requires a bit of configuration.

Distros are just... distros. In the end the basic software set is basicly the same. If you don't like what they provide by default you can re-install whatever you want.

 

I've had a chance to run both Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon LTS on a 2010 Dell Vostro 1520. My thoughts are that Ubuntu is the quicker of the two. The Ubuntu UI and app loading appears much quicker than Mint's. I adjust the swappiness on Mint to about 10 to compensate and it's better.

My fans seem to run a lot more under Mint vs Ubuntu. The things in favor of Mint are that it looks more modern and there is more community support and input for add ons built into the OS whereas you have to search and find it on Ubuntu. You can find it for Ubuntu but with Mint they thrown the kitchen sink at the OS.

One last thing and not sure what is causing it but with Ubuntu running either side by side with Windows 8.1 or in a separate partitions (logical or physical doesn't matter) but it corrupts my Windows 8.1 partition where Win 8.1 tells me to run scandisk for errors and sure enough it finds them. On one occasion, Windows Defrag from the command prompt stopped working until I ran scandisk.

No such problems with Mint. And it's nice to load up some of the Steam games i've purchased for Windows to run in Mint.

 

Is fast boot of your Win8 turned on?

 

Nope, Fastboot wasn't a feature on my Vostro 1520. It shipped with Vista Basic.

One annoying feature of Mint that could be disabled in Ubuntu was not asking for a password when coming out of suspend. I've searched on Google and it all applies to Mint 13 and below.

 

Not that fast boot. Windows 8 hybrid boot. This feature can lead to data corruption if multiple OSes are present on the same machine. Even multiple Windows installs can cause trouble.

 

Thanks for the clarity!

 

The only two options I have are sleep and lock.

 

Interesting. I've been scratching my head trying to figure out why my T100TA hyrid with win 8.1 will show an extended system uptime (ie: 6 days, etc..) even when I select shutdown and then restart the laptop later. I'm guessing now that it's from that hybrid boot.