Hello! I have recently moved from Windows to a dual-boot of Windows and Linux Ubuntu (although my Windows part is no longer working at all – may be because it’s only Windows 7 and the pc wasn’t allowing updates, even before Windows 7 became no longer supported).
The things that are puzzling me are:
How to get my emails to work in Ubuntu? I was using Opera Mail in Windows. (Currently having to use my older pc, which has Windows, for emails).
How to get videos of tutorials to play directly from the website where I’m doing a course? Currently, I have to download the mp4s; then I can play them. (.movs and mp3s play fine as well).
How to open an image, that is in the Storage area, in Gimp? (I currently have to copy it across into Ubuntu Documents area to open it).
What’s the best software to edit video in Ubuntu?
How to increase the space in Ubuntu Documents? (For when I eventually want to move all my files from the Storage area, into Documents, and if it’s advisable to do that?)
Have a look at the following information to get you started:
These sites give a lots of information about better alternatives to popular software, which you are used to.
For example, to answer your first question, I would strongly recommend Thunderbird.
I think, you would need to elaborate that issue further, as it is not clear why it wouldn’t work in the browser.
You would need to elaborate that issue further by providing screenshots of where exactly the image is you try to open. It would be best to show a screenshot of what happens, before it is opened and another screenshot of what is shown, after attempting to open it.
That can usually be only answered with opinions, as there are many different available and it depends on your taste, as it’s important which one works best for you, personally. I personally like Shotcut a lot.
You would need to elaborate that issue further by providing screenshots and explaining in much more detail, what you want to achieve, as in, what your actual goal is.
Greetings Akito. Thank you for your replies. That’s a useful page showing open source alternatives. I’ll look into getting Thunderbird for emails. I first need to check I’ll be able to keep my ntlworld.com email address and that it won’t affect the emails I’ve currently got on my older computer in Opera Mail. For my other questions, I’ll add some more details for each one, as you suggest.
Instead of the video showing, let-alone playing, on the tutorial page, there’s just a white space. I think the video uses Flash Player as I’ve looked at the html code for that part of the website, which includes the words ‘/flash/embed_player_v2.0.swf?2017’. Maybe I haven’t got Flash Player? How can I test to see if I have Flash Player? If I haven’t got it, how can I get it?
The images that won’t open directly in Gimp are at: Other Locations > Storage (That is where all my files are that I saved onto my ‘D drive’ when I was working in Windows – when I had a C and a D drive). See first screenshot.
When I try to open an image in Gimp by right clicking on it and choosing ‘Open with other application’ then selecting ‘GNU Image manipulation Program’, I get the message saying that it failed: 'Could not open ‘/media/ubuntu/Storage/cgboost/Testures/Penguin_.jpg for reading: Permission denied’. See second screenshot.
If I copy that image to the Unbuntu > Home > Documents folder, it can be opened in Gimp, no problem.
I currently have a dual-boot system. Most of the space where I can save files is in the ‘Storage’ area (as described above with screenshot). The space in Ubuntu’s Documents is much less. I’m not sure if it’s OK to continue saving files to the Storage area or if there are any reasons why it might be better to save them all into the Ubuntu Documents area (which is currently too small for them all due to where the partition between the old Windows space and the space for the Ubuntu was put by the technicians who set up the dual-boot system for me). IF I ever find it would be better to move all my files into My Documents, I wonder how that could be done? (Apologies: I have some difficulty explaining this one). I guess I may never have to do this, so long as the Storage area continues to be accessible. Just a bit concerned as the computer no longer works in Windows (it just crashes). Yet I am currently able to use the same storage space. Here’s a screenshot of how I access the Documents area.
Welcome, Alison. Akito has laid out a number of very valuable tips. I would add a couple of things: back up/copy all the files you need to keep and/or use from Storage to an external location. This could be a USB stick or a cloud storage location (like Dropbox) or even a writable CD/DVD, since your computer is old enough to have used Windows 7. Once everything is safely stored in external storage, away from your computer, you are free to make changes. I have used Opera in Ubuntu, so maybe just installing Opera will allow you to reconnect with your Opera emails if they are stored on the Opera server. Thunderbird will also import them, I think.
Back up your important stuff before you do anything else.
As you also can see in the screenshot, you are denied permission, if Gimp tries to access the file. Permission issues with mounted storage media aren’t uncommon. There are different fixes for such a situation. One would be to remount the drive in question with proper permissions.
There are also other ways. I recommend you check out the following sources for your information.
Could you please post a screenshot of how all your drives look in gParted?
Thank you Berninghausen. I have most of my files backed up … Some are on a usb stick. Most are on a Network Accessible Storage. But that is about as old as my computer… which is only a few years old
I hope it will continue working forever but don’t know what the realistic expectations are for how long it will be reliable. Maybe I should buy another USB stick. It would need to be about 100 GB. I’ll have to look into that…
I would recommend to go the proper way and get an actual hard drive. The problem with USB sticks is that they are very unreliable and break easily, compared to a hard drive or SSD. To produce USB sticks, you basically take the trash that is not good enough for SSDs and just sell it as USB sticks, to make some money of said garbage. Therefore, USB sticks are fine for quickly sharing things, but are not a good target for important backups of any type. Additionally, if you buy a cheap one, it will be extremely slow and it will take forever to transfer 100GB. If you want to have faster speeds, you need to pay much more and then it does not make sense to buy a USB stick anymore, because for that price you might as well get a proper external hard drive.
So, I strongly recommend you get a proper external hard drive with at the very least 1TB of storage. If you have at least 500GB of data at your hands, I would recommend at least 2TB of storage. This way, you can always have more than enough space for future data.
Externals are the way to go–props to Akito. My last one happens to be a 1T SSD, boxed in an enclosure from Amazon with a USB pigtail. I can plug it into any of my computers because it’s formatted in FAT32. And every component was on sale, if you can believe it. I’m a firm believer in complete external backups and clean installs every time. I have another SSD in my desktop sandbox with all the setup files (calendar, address books, printer driver) so that I can quickly customize any distro I want to try for a while. Took me 20 minutes to install the Mint 20.3 Beta and move all my ‘furniture’ into it on my sdc device last night. One distro per hard drive, no sweat.
I bought a 2 TB ‘spinny disc drive’ a few years ago to make backups since I’ve had issues with flash drives just ‘stopping working for no apparent reason’ (although a couple I bought in 2000 still work fine, but they were $100 for 1 GB back then)
Been using VLC media player pretty much since it first came out and haven’t had many problems with a file format it doesn’t support (even on Win XP)
I don’t really trust Microsoft to ‘do the right thing’ and haven’t used Windows since a failed update in 2017 on Win 10. I had to remove hard drive from laptop, put it in enclosure with external power to recover stuff saved (refuses to boot into Windows and can’t be accessed directly from Mint)
I doubt this will be much use to you but needed to reply
Thank you Akito. It looks as if I have Thunderbird on my computer; just not actually installed, I think. (I really am a complete beginner). Here is a screenshot of what comes up when I click on Show Applications:
Thanks Icrazypj. Wow, I imagine that would have been extremely stressful, not being able to access your files from Mint! I’m extremely glad I can still access my files from Ubuntu since Windows failed to boot on my desktop pc.
Thanks Akito. Gparted looks too complicated for me to do at present.
Technicians in the computer repair shop set up the Windows/Ubuntu partition for me. I don’t know how to show you how all my drives look in gParted, and I’m not yet ready to attempt to make any changes to the partition. Too afraid I might lock up my computer … (and I can’t use my older computer for my recent 3D Blender files as they are too heavy for it). To access Storage I click on ‘Other Locations’ then Storage Space:
Looks like there’s still plenty of space there at least.
Plus, another little obstacle, on How to use Gparted on Ubuntu: The video called ‘My latest videos’ will not currently play on this computer with Ubuntu. I get the error message: This video file cannot be played. (Error code: 102630).
Alison, you have Thunderbird and VLC installed. You don’t have to download them, just click and run them. Thunderbird should be easy to set up with your email account. I’d be surprised if VLC couldn’t run your videos–it seems to run everything I throw at it. You might want to copy a video from Storage to the folder in Home named Videos, then try running the video in VLC.
but don’t know what the realistic expectations are for how long it will be reliable. Maybe I should buy another USB stick. It would need to be about 100 GB. I’ll have to look into that…
