Help Me Test Drive Mint Please

[logan01]

I'd like to take it for a little cruise around the block if possible.

Is there a "Live" version?

I see there are several Mint versions; is there a nicely featured stable one?

I'm assuming this is a task I perform in Windows with this tool: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/univers...easy-as-1-2-3/

Does anyone know if that tool offers assorted Mint builds from its Linux Distribution list?

Using the link as an example, do I first insert a flash drive, download the installer, launch the .exe and follow the bouncing ball? In the link's first screenshot at step 4, it calls for setting a "Persistent file size for storing changes" as an option. Do you advise to do that? If so, what size?

Thanks

[elijathegold]

I believe all the Linux Mint distros will run live and have a built in installer.

If your computer is good enough, I would download your chosen iso in Linux and run it in VirtualBox which should be in the Kubuntu repository. You can find out by running apt-cache policy virtualbox and if it's there install it with sudo apt install virtualbox. If you really want to make bootable usb key then plug it in and run sudo fdisk -l and identify which device it is, sda, sdb or sdc etc. When you are sure that you have the correct drive identified, run sudo dd if=/PATH/TO/THE/ISO/FILE.iso of=/dev/sd? bs=4M && sudo sync. Your replace the ? with the device identifier.

Once you press enter, there is no going back and if you have chosen the wrong output device, you can hose your data or system. It's why I call dd Data Destroyer. I've been doing that for years and still panic for a while after pressing enter; then the key flashes and I relax

[edit]
This is a wrapper script I threw together to give myself a second chance with dd and keep forgetting to use.

#!/bin/bash
## =============================================================================
##  Copyright 2014 Richard Gladman
##      Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
## =============================================================================
##  This file is part of make-key.
##  make-key is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
##  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
##  the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
##  (at your option) any later version.
##
##  make-key is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
##  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
##  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
##  GNU General Public License for more details.
##
##  As it is a single file, I haven't included a copy of the GNU General Public
##  License along with make-key.  See .
## =============================================================================
 
##  Produce help message on help switch
if [ "$1" == "--help" ]
then
    echo "Must be run as root"
    echo "Usage: make-key file_name to_device"
    echo "Example: sudo make-key linux.iso sdh"
    exit
fi
 
##  Must be run as root
if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]
then
    echo "Error: Should be run as root."
    exit
fi
 
 
##  Get and validate command line parameters
##    If not valid then error and exit
if [ ! -f "$1" ]
then
    error="Error: Input file "
    error+="$1"
    error+=" not found."
    echo $error
    exit
fi
 
if [ ! -b "/dev/$2" ]
then
    error="Error: "
    error+="$2"
    error+=" is not a block device."
    echo $error
    exit
fi
 
##  Confirm input and destination drive with scary message
##    If confirmed then continue
device="/dev/"
device+="$2"
 
message="Copying "
message+="$1"
message+=" to "
message+="$device"
message+="."
echo "$message"
message="This will destroy the data on the device. Are you sure you want to continue? "
read -p "$message" yn
case $yn in
    [Yy]* )
        ##  Check for existence of pv and use if found
        if hash pv 2>/dev/null
        then
            pv "$1" | sudo dd bs=1M of="$device"
 
        ##  Otherwise inform and use dd only
        else
            echo "You should consider installing pv to get a nice progress bar!"
            echo "Working... Please wait..."
            sudo dd if="$1" of="$device" bs=1M
        fi
        echo "Done."
        ;;
    [Nn]* )
        exit
        ;;
esac
 
exit

[/edit]

[Qqmike]

and if you do make that live USB using dd, after you enter that command elijathegold gave you, you will see NOTHING happening, except perhaps drive lights flashing. dd will take awhile to finish, it will not tell you what it is doing, do not give up and pull the plug, wait until it sends you a message/short report indicating it is over with. (There are ways to get progress reports, but we needn't go there for this.) It might take 10 or 15 or even 30 minutes, who knows. dd is the way to go, though.

[logan01]

I truly appreciate your time and effort to help me. Though I would only be copying / pasting what you posted (for I know not what I'm doing), the DD deal was a show stopper. I went outside and had a smoke.

[logan01]

Ok, I'm back now. I have no idea if my pc is good enough. Just a basic little cheaparse notebook. Here's some specs below:
Upon getting to the usb step, how do I determine "sda, sdb or sdc etc"? And then run sudo dd if=/PATH/TO/THE/ISO/FILE.iso of=/dev/sd? bs=4M && sudo sync exactly as seen here with the exception of the ?. The "wrapper script is not required, right? I'll actually download Mint while in Kubuntu; Windows not needed? Any preferred Mint?


System: Host: richard-HP-15-Notebook-PC Kernel: 3.19.0-61-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.4)
Desktop: KDE 4.13.3 (Qt 4.8.6) Distro: Ubuntu 14.04 trusty
Machine: System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP 15 Notebook PC version: 096A100003405F00050660180
Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 233F version: 06.16 Bios: Insyde version: F.23 date: 08/05/2015
CPU: Dual core Intel Celeron CPU N2830 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 8652.8
Clock Speeds: 1: 499.741 MHz 2: 499.741 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display bus-ID: 00:02.0
X.Org: 1.17.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Bay Trail GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.5.9 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series High Definition Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.19.0-61-generic
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 1000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: d0:bf:9c:86:55:c6
Card-2: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless Network Adapter driver: rtl8188ee port: 2000 bus-ID: 02:00.0
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 74:29:af:63:7b:70
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (3.8% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: ST500LT012 size: 500.1GB temp: 39C
Partition: ID: / size: 28G used: 12G (45%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 55G used: 6.1G (12%) fs: ext4
ID: swap-1 size: 8.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
RAID: No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 199 Uptime: 11:37 Memory: 2074.9/7874.7MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: N/A
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.11) inxi: 1.9.17
richard@richard-HP-15-Notebook-PC:~$

[logan01]

So I've been reading. Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa w/ Cinnamon 2.8 sounds nice. My needs are small.

Assorted forums participation
Googling merchandise and research of several subject matters
Download images, schematics, etc. Be able to size, crop, minor manipulation
View videos, mostly youtube of music and howto material
Basic text writing
Email

That's my short list of basic daily computing needs.

[Qqmike]

elijathegold: If you really want to make bootable usb key then plug it in and run sudo fdisk -l and identify which device it is, sda, sdb or sdc etc. When you are sure that you have the correct drive identified, run sudo dd if=/PATH/TO/THE/ISO/FILE.iso of=/dev/sd? bs=4M && sudo sync. Your replace the ? with the device identifier.

Or, you can try running

lsblk

to see your drives and identify the USB.

[logan01]

Or, you can try running

lsblk

to see your drives and identify the USB.

Ok. Looks like I didn't read the other closely enough. Both methods will provide identification. Just replace the ? correctly. Thanks.

[Qqmike]

Yeah, so, like this, using gparted as an example iso file instead of a Mint:

sudo dd if=/home/mike/downloads/gparted-live-0.22.0-2-amd64.iso   of=/dev/sd? bs=4M  && sudo sync

bs is block size, so dd will work with blocks of 4 million bytes at a time as it does its copy work; sync will keep things clean and make sure dd finishes safely and buffers are clear. " if" is the input file; "of" is output file (= your USB).

Btw, I don't keep up with Mint, but I tried Mint KDE and liked it once (a year ago) -- but, I'm not sure if Mint KDE is maintained well -- if may be OK.

Replace the ? with the right drive for the USB, sda or sdb or sdc or sdd or etc.

[logan01]

Thanks. The primary reason for Mint is due to another thread I have about an audio issue. The primary member helping with that want's me to use another version other than Kubuntu 14.04 to compare a particular alsamixer line which appears to indicate something about HDMI which he feels shouldn't be there (HDMI). This line: Chip: Intel Valleyview2 HDMI. I thought while I was doing that I'd take it for a test drive.

[Qqmike]

Makes sense. I'm definitely not a sound guy here, all Greek to me, just glad that mine works in 14.04.

[GreyGeek]

Mint 17.3 KDE is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to Kubuntu 14.04 featuring KDE 4.8. It's a well made, stable distro. I ran it for about three months at the beginning of the year. My big complaint with it was that Btrfs was treated as an after thought and didn't appear to be well thought out. To use Btrfs during the install one has to install Btrfs-utils while running the LiveUSB so that it will be available during the install. I switched to Btrfs two 1/2 years ago and won't switch back to EXT4.

Cinnimon is nice once you get used to it but KDE has more power, IMO.

Your laptop may be under powered. It's a dual core with a max CPU speed of 500 MHz per core. Mint may be laggy unless all you do is browse the web, watch videos and email.

[elijathegold]

and if you do make that live USB using dd, after you enter that command elijathegold gave you, you will see NOTHING happening

You get a progress bar if you install pv

[elijathegold]

Or, you can try running

lsblk

to see your drives and identify the USB.

That's new to me and so much nicer than fdisk

[logan01]

That's new to me and so much nicer than fdisk

So sdb1 is my usb (Lexar)?

richard@richard-HP-15-Notebook-PC:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   650M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0 296.4G  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0   860M  0 part 
├─sda6   8:6    0  21.1G  0 part 
├─sda7   8:7    0   7.5G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda8   8:8    0    28G  0 part /
└─sda9   8:9    0  55.9G  0 part /home
sdb      8:16   1   7.5G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   7.5G  0 part /media/richard/Lexar
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
richard@richard-HP-15-Notebook-PC:~$