Help Me Test Drive Mint Please

[logan01]

I'm chomping at the bit. So I can enter sudo dd if=/home/richard/ Downloads/linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bitof=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sudo sync then I'm off to the races? One more thing. The original reason behind doing a live Mint is so that I can run alsamixer in Konsole and compare it to alsamixer ran in my Kubuntu Konsole. Since this will be a live version, will it allow me to screenshot the results (it's kind of a graph) and save to my "live" downloads folder? Seems like I recall when using a live version that I couldn't download material but I may be dreaming. Up kind of early out there aren't you?

[logan01]

First draft of the tutorial is available at my long unused blog. If you have any questions or need let me know and I can improve the post.

Oh that's a nice tutorial. When creating the virtual disk, is the 20GB, etc coming out of the space that my Kubuntu partitions are in, my computer, really dumb question, etc? The reason I ask is the Kubuntu side of my pc is a bit small as compared to the Windows side.

[GreyGeek]

Yes! And from my experience using VB your choice of 20GB is rather small if you plan to install a lot of apps or save videos, etc, in other words, give the distro a thorough shake down. Making the virtual drive dynamic will not help if there is no space for the drive to expand into. I usually started my Virtual Drives out at 60GB.

[elijathegold]

Yes. But it wouldn't be 20GB unless you have 20GB of stuff on it. I have just spun up a clean install of Kubuntu 14.04 and that takes just over 5GB. If you want to do is compare two alsa mixers running but not to install mint, then you can give the machine a small 1 or 2 GB hard disk.

[logan01]

Looking at Dolphin, Do I have enough space (lower left)? Ya'll don't want me to risk the dd method?

[elijathegold]

Yes! And from my experience using VB your choice of 20GB is rather small if you plan to install a lot of apps or save videos, etc, in other words, give the distro a thorough shake down. Making the virtual drive dynamic will not help if there is no space for the drive to expand into. I usually started my Virtual Drives out at 60GB.

I usually find 20GB plenty as my use case is for testing distros or experimenting with something before doing it for real.

[elijathegold]

It's easier to see with the output from df -h.

Using dd to create a usb and booting that is fine, but you won't see both alsamixers at the same time whereas with a virtual machine you will.

[logan01]

If I do the VB, how do I get to Mint immediately and say later on if my computer is off, turned back on? Will it be another boot selection in my boot manager, black grub scree, whatever it's called?

[logan01]

It's easier to see with the output from df -h.

Using dd to create a usb and booting that is fine, but you won't see both alsamixers at the same time whereas with a virtual machine you will.

I don't need to see them at the same time. I have a screen shot of it from Kubuntu.

[elijathegold]

If I do the VB, how do I get to Mint immediately and say later on if my computer is off, turned back on? Will it be another boot selection in my boot manager, black grub scree, whatever it's called?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here but I'll have a go anyway...

A virtual machine will not appear on the grub menu as it is not installed on your computer. Virtual Box is basically an emulator and a virtual machine runs inside that emulator. You have to boot to Kubuntu, and then run the emulator to boot Mint. This means both operating systems are running at the same time

[logan01]

I'm ready, ready ready. This is the vb I have. Same?

[logan01]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here but I'll have a go anyway...

A virtual machine will not appear on the grub menu as it is not installed on your computer. Virtual Box is basically an emulator and a virtual machine runs inside that emulator. You have to boot to Kubuntu, and then run the emulator to boot Mint.

Oh, so I boot to Kubuntu and then it's like an app in Kubuntu? Just find it, click it, and go? Alsamixer generated my desire for another Linux however since I'm doing the work to make it happen, I would like to experience Mint et al.

[elijathegold]

Yep. That's one. Just click new and away you go!

[logan01]

Ok. here we go with your tutorial.

[GreyGeek]

I've installed VB from both the repository and from Oracle. Oracle's latest release is usually newer but the repository version is easier to install and is already customized and vetted for Kubuntu.

Since you are installing from outside the repository you will also have to download and install the VB extensions package for the version of VB that you downloaded. That process is more complicated than merely selecting VB and VB utilities from the repository and installing them. The necessary includes will also be installed automatically. The utilities/extensions allow VB to use your full display instead of just a 1024X780 window, if that big. It also includes other features. And, the repository packages have been tested and vetted to work with Kubuntu, like I said.
General rule for new Linux users: stay with the repository until you get a year or two of experience under your belt.