Which Linux???????

Hello All. This is my first post here. I am worse than a newbie; I'm a PC dinosaur! Not joking either.
Recently got a Dell Inspiron 3048 with Windows 8.1 pre installed. As I am a die hard XP user (my other PC is a Dell Dimension 2400), and seeing that PC's days may be numbered, I want to start using Linux, and decided Mint 17.1 would be first on the list.
Ordered a Linux Mint 17.1 boot disk and went to install it. At the option for a dual boot with Windows, I got lost, and did not understand the "other" choice versus making Linux the only OS on the PC. I wound up wiping my HDD and lost contact with Windows 8.1. Fortunately, the Dell Tech I got at Dell Support was able to walk me through getting Windows back up, but the only way I can now access Mint 17.1 is with the boot disk, but there is no set up options as it is already set up, even though incorrectly for a dual boot.
How do I wipe out Linux without losing Windows 8.1 as well so I can re install Linux and this time make the correct selection for a dual boot?
Anyone willing to respond please do so small and slow so I can follow.
TIA.
BTW, I have tried installing Zorin OS 9 Ultimate on my XP machine via DVD and USB, but I can't get past the f1/f2 loop, even though I have reconfigured my boot sequence according to the drive I'm installing from. Zorin support has been MIA on this. Anyone having a similar problem?
Cheers

I've just started tinkering with Linux and have a question about installing it to my current machine.

I'm running Win 7 Pro and have installed Oracle VM Virtual Box on the C:\ drive which is a 256 GB SSD. I want to create a 15 GB virtual hard drive on a second internal hard drive that has more space on it, and install Zorin 9.1 to it. Currently my C: drive is about 60% full and I'd rather not fill it up past that.

So my question is: Can I run Zorin off of a hard drive other than the C: drive?

Thanks for your consideration.

Dave

Hi everybody!

I have visited this forum a lot in the last years to learn information about Linux, so above all thank you very much to the linuxquestions.org community for building this valuable resource!

Now my question:

I have a brand new Nvidia GTX750 graphics card. Nouveau does not work correctly with this card (very low resolution and red dots all around the screen appear), so I need to install propietary drivers.

I have coped with this when installing distros in my hard drive, I just install the propietary drivers following the reccomended user guidelines and that's all, but I'm now starting to work with Tails (amnesic Linux distribution) and 'unfortunately' as it's an amnesic system I'll have to install them everytime I boot.

I was wondering if there's a way to install them permanently on my Live CD/USB so I am ready to work as soon as I boot. I have not really any clue on how a LiveUSB is composed, and as far as I have searched on the Internet I have not found any information about this matter.

Sorry for the bad grammatics, I have a pretty bad level of English

TL;DR: How can I permanently install Nvidia propietary drivers on an amnesic Linux Live CD/USB?

Regards,

tete7

I'm having trouble getting OS installs to work on this low-end laptop. I've tried Linux Mint, OpenSuse, Manjaro, Zorin OS Core 9 (32bit, 64bit and lite versions). My problem is that once installed, the graphics aren't rendered correctly or (with Zorin) the system would freeze right after logging in. Manjaro did install and work, but the screen was so dark it was unusable, even after adjusting the brightness levels. With Linux Mint, the compatibility mode worked perfectly using the live cd, but the graphics were too distorted once installed. OpenSuse also had distorted graphics. I just want to put the laptop to use until it dies on my.

I've tested the hard drive with the on board diagnostics and I've checked the memory. Neither of those tests gave any errors.

The specs a

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core TK-55
2 gigs of DDR2 memory
Nvidia GeForce Go 6100 graphics card.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm not an expert, so be gentle with the help and recommendations.

Hi,

Before installing Linux Mint 17 to the entire HDD of my HP p2 1317cb desktop, it was running a preinstalled windows 8 OEM UEFI. After several failed attempts of dual booting(no grub menu and boots directly to the windows 8) i then decided to do a erase all and install Linux option. Now i have Linux Mint 17.1 working flawlessly, so far. What i want to now do is, dual boot a windows 7 installation alongside my Linux. Please advise on the best way to do this.
Thank You.

Note: Before doing a clean install of Linux i disabled secure boot,enabled legacy, and disabled fast boot.

As in title

Linux mint Rebecca cinnamon 64bit. 2 different WiFi adapters both work on old pc setup . WiFi connects no problem when running from USB. Install to SSD and network shows up but just keeps trying to connect. Tried other versions of mint and lubuntu (same distro as old pc). Will try install to my other HDD later on and try 32bit versions but its a new setup so cant see that helping

Any suggestions please?
Thanks

Did it again!

Last week, with help from this forum, I was able to install Linux Mint 17.1 dual boot with Windows 8.1. It worked so well, I decided to explore other Linux distros recommended by forum members as some I wanted to check out.

I was using Unetbootin to download and install these as live sessions on my Windows 8.1 partition.

On my last such download, something went wrong, and no doubt I caused the error, but no clue as to how.

When I opened up this PC, I got the normal dual boot option for Windows and Mint. When I selected Windows, I found an additional dual boot option between it and Unetbootin! Somehow I created a partition (?) on my C Drive for Unetbootin (see Thumbnail below).
This Unetbootin option only goes to a page for me to choose another OS. Further, when I rebooted, the Windows/Mint dual boot option no longer existed, just the Windows/Unetbootin one.

Been checking out various articles and websites about BCD/MBR repair, but nothing definitive (that I can understand) about modifying these to delete the Unetbootin partition and restoring the Windows/linux dual boot.

Naturally, this is a newbie land mine area, so I'm very reluctant to try anything I can't fully understand, which is the category everything I've Googled on this topic falls into.

Anyone know how I can resolve this short of a complete start over
installation based on steps that basically a PC fence post can follow?

TIA
Cheers!

i am very new to linux but i wanted to try it out, my main windows drive is tiny so i decided to format my usb hard drive and use that, first i tried to install ubuntu but i got a normal.mod not found error, so after some reserch and a grub reinstallation it booted once,

the next day however i got another error so i decided to switch to mint to see if it would work any better, but i'm still getting the normal.mod not found error.

i've tried a whole bunch of things like reinstalling mint and grub, boot repair, but nothing works, i'm kinda frustrated because i know it works because it booted up before but i just can't figure out how to fix it.

Hi,

I am new to the installation of Linux, and wish to install 3 different distro's on the same hard disk.

I have installed Centos 7 successfully as follows :

The /boot is /dev/sda2

/dev/sda1 is listed as unknown so i assume it is the Master Boot Record with Grub installed. I do obtain the option to boot to the various kernels after updating the OS.

/dev/sda3 is a Linux LVM with the various partitions i required.

When i installed the CentOS 7 the installer stated an error about the bootable partition - which was effectively /boot, so i moved this to /dev/sda2.

What i am not sure about is that if i want to install 2 other Linux OS's will i run out of /dev/sdaX assignments ?.

I read somewhere that there are 4 maximum that can be used a /boot (SDA1, SDA2, SDA3, SDA4), so does this mean i can only install one other OS ?.

Any guidance gratefully received. Thanks.

Regards,

Richard.

I've made a couple attempts at installing these OS's on my machine and am still not getting it. I've actually been using AVLinux for about the past nine months, and it's working fairly well. And, yes, I know XP is down for the count, but for the moment it's the only MS option available to me - and I *need* to get it running for some work related web stuff...

This is all on a 32 bit AMD system btw.

What I've tried: Everything on one SATA drive. Partition one formatted to NTFS (about 20GB) for XP. Partitions 2 and 3 are Root and Home for AVLinux, Partition 4 at the end of the drive as the /swap for AVL.

All the how-to's and guides I've been able to come across point to (usually) Mint or Ubuntu's install dialog, and to select "something else" - which, by the way, is not a function of AVLinux's installation procedure. During install you can install GRUB to the MBR *or* root partition..

So, just to clarify to procedure (as I might have it now, but am very unsure) XP gets installed first (which is done at this point...) then my Linux distro *to the MBR* (?) then I need to add a stanza to GRUB telling it where XP lives? XP is not showing up on GRUB as I'm doing it, but I'm not too sure if installing Linux to the MBR (on the same physical drive as XP) actually wipes out the Windows bootloader....and if so, how chainloading would actually work...

So, any help appreciated, thanks.