Problem W10 and Ubuntu 18.4 Dual Boot Help needed

@RetiredGuy… I have no idea where you live but I have two old desktop PC’s that I would send to you with Linux installed. One is running XP Pro and the other is running Vista Home Basic. All you would have to do is find a compatible printer and monitor and keyboard/mouse. Please do not destroy W10, in the process of wanting to install Ubuntu on your laptop, their are other alternatives.

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Hi hrudyusa,

I’ve downloaded both and have vim all set up to try.

But after downloading and setup of cygwin, I’m confused. I thought after running that set up and choosing all of the programs, I’d see at least a list of programs and descriptions. Instead, when I click on the icon in windows 10, I get a black screen with a $ prompt as the command line for this program. Have I missed something? Is there some list to click on or a simple description of all of the choices I said to select “ALL” to?

Thanks,
Pat

Hi 4dandl4,

Thank you for that most generous offer, but the cost would be a bunch I’m sure.

There is one idea though: I don’ think I know XP Pro, nor that it could run Ubuntu.
I just gave my old XP PC to my daughter to offer her son who is taking college level computer classes to work on. It’s been sitting here since I got my new one before I retired.

Anyway, after 14 years of daily use the hard drive had to be start & shut off power until all the lights lit at boot up and the 3 1/2 disk drive died. I could perhaps get a new hard disk and DVD-WR drive with just Ubuntu on it for a small reasonable price. Would I also have to have some version of Windows on it?
I have a printer, keyboard and mouse and printer I used on the XP system. I guess I’d need a new motherboard to speed the thing up. Compared to my Win 10, that old XP was sloooow!

Pat

Welcome to “It Foss” @hrudyusa and thanks for your insight and opinion. I must strongly disagree with you on running Linux as a dual boot system. Yes, dual boot is a bit of a learning process (like anything that’s new), but once it’s set up there is no problems. Desktop or laptop, dual booting is very convenient.

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Hi @RetiredGuy,

I have 3 questions for you. 1) And most important - Do you have a backup - restore procedure that you are comfortable with? ------ 2) Do you have a spare disk drive? --------> and 3) Do you know how to remove and replace your disk drive?
If you don’t have a spare disk drive, just curious what size HDD do you have?
Thanks.

Hi- Sorry for the late response. In order to verify my response I installed cygwin on one of my windows VMs. What you have when you get a terminal is the good old UNIX prompt. It is running the bash shell.
Assuming that you have installed all components you can launch the desktop environment by doing the following: (N.B. the $ is just a prompt, do not type $ , what you should type is in bold)
$ cd /usr/bin
$ ls mate-session
mate-session
$ echo “/usr/bin/dbus-launch mate-session” > ~/.xinitrc
$ startx

At this point the system will go into a mate desktop. This will be similar to running mate on an Ubuntu workstation.

If you want to run xfce it is similar. Detailed instructions follow:
$ cd /usr/bin
$ mv .xinitrc .xinitrc.mate
$ echo “/usr/bin/dbus-launch xfce4-session” > ~/.xinitrc
$ startx

I’ve picked my two favorite Linux Desktop Environments,(DE) MATE and XFCE. I like them b/c they are simple. But there are many DEs in Linux.

Hi easy150
You are certainly entitled to your opinion and if it works for you so much the better! When I teach Linux classes I start with "There is more than 1 way to do it. by Larry Wall , who invented Perl. Another aphorism is "I go the extra mile to be Lazy from one of my colleagues. Frankly, I am too lazy to figure out the proper way to dual boot Windows and Linux. If I have to use Windows, means that I have my hardware developer hat on and I don’t want to spend any time figuring out how to get this or that CAD program to work in Linux. But if it works for you, by all means keep doing it.

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Hmm I wonder how crappy a system has to be not to run a Linux distro in a VM. Perhaps it is still running rotating disks. I am currently running an embedded app on a Raspberry PI Zero W. That device set me back $10 but runs Linux fine.

You do know that most server applications run in VMs or even better in the cloud. The exceptions are getting fewer and fewer.

I am currently working in that area, so yeah I know.

VMs are extremely demanding. If you have anything below 16GB RAM on your host and 4 cores for the VM, I wouldn’t even try setting up a VM.

To avoid misunderstanding: yes, you MAY run a VM with lower specs. It works. But you cannot tell anyone that running a VM with such low specs can be even remotely close to running a native installation for example in a dual boot setup.
Actually, because I have to work a lot with VMs, I had to upgrade my RAM from 32GB to 48GB. Because, as already mentioned, VMs are extremely demanding.

That said, while this is more or less true, this is becoming a legacy approach for the cloud. Now with Docker, Kubernetes, etc. the cloud is based less and less von VMs. So your statement may still be correct at the moment, but soon won’t be anymore.

P.S.:
I haven’t even started talking about compatability and setup issues regarding VMs. This is an entire huge story for itself. In so many ways it is just so much easier to run a dual boot setup, than torturing yourself with setting up a proper and serious VM. Of course, this is not always the case, but it happened to me and others I know often enough, that I consider VMs problematic, as soon as you are trying to do something more advanced/special.
Right now I am not even able to run VirtualBox, because it has technical limitations, that are basically unfixable right now. It just does not work. So even if I would be of your opinion, I wouldn’t even be able to run VirtualBox, which is one of the most popular and most supported VM platforms.

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I don’t know if anyone has mention it already but you could run Ubuntu live off of a standard flash drive.
It would run a lot faster then Linux under VM and there is little to no danger of messing up your Windows system. If you have 2 USB ports, you could boot Linux from one and save any work to the other. Just a thought. :smiley:

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Hi easy50

We tried that with Rufus and got no where. I’ve now down loaded UNetbootin and tried it myself with out my Daughters helping and got to a point where< I think, it put everything on one of my hard drives, but not on the on the stick drive. The instructions said I need to reformat that stick to a Fat 32??? I have to wait for my daughter to come over Thursday or Friday to figure that one out.

Yours is a good thought and shows Great Minds working together!!! >

Pat

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Hi again easy,

Booting from the flash drive is really what I want to do. As I said previously, we had problems with “Rufus”.
I have UNetbootin and tried it by myself and it didn’t go well. It ended up telling me I needed to reformat the flash stick to a “FAT32” which I know nothing about. Also, with it’s default setting, it did not put the Linux on the flash stick, but put it on my 2nd hard disk. (???)

What do you suggest as the method to set up a flash drive to run Ubuntu? I have this 16gig flash stick I intended to use that is still installed in the USB port. When my daughter can get free and come over we could try Unetbootin again, or if you have a suggestion, I’ll get it and try it with or without her. We’ve been at this for over 3 weeks now and I still don’t have it set up.

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Hi Pat,

I went thru a test run using Windows 10 and a 16 GB flash drive and was able to boot Ubuntu 20.04.

  1. Google Ubuntu 20.04 and d/l the 64 bit PC AMD64 Ubuntu.
  2. Google Rufus and from site sourceforge.net d/l Rufus 3.11.exe
  3. On the desktop at “This PC”, I double click and then on top of the letter drive that had the flash drive, I right clicked.
  4. Selected format, file system Fat32 (default), click start and when finish click close.
  5. Find where rufus was d/l and double click it which should start it.
  6. At boot selection, select and find where Ubuntu 20.04.iso was d/l and double click it.
  7. DD or iso mode - select DD and click start. If asked to d/l other software reply yes.
  8. Close when finish and re-start your PC.
  9. At boot time (on my HP desktop it is F9 key) press the key on your PC that will bring up the boot menu. Some PC’s, it’s the ESC key, others F10, but bring up the boot menu.
  10. Select your flash drive and hit enter. Mine was a Kingston DataTravler 16 GB
  11. Flash drives are slow and it took a good 3 minutes to boot.
  12. Screen comes up with “Try” or “Install” Click Try

Get this to work and then we can go to the next phase.
-----> Remember, nothing can be saved onto the flash drive. Good Luck :grinning:

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Thanks easy.

Would this also be the same exact steps for Ubuntu18.4 which is the one that I down loaded?

We were a good bit gun shy after the problems with that virtual box and 20.?? But If you think we should give it a retry, we will go grab it, but I think I have the 64 bit Intel in my Dell PC Inspiron, not positive till I check it out.

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Is the better site.

You welcome RetiredGuy. What is the model number of your Dell?
Yes! Ubuntu 18.4 will work the same way.

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Thanks Akito, I have just downloaded from the site you recommended.

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Hi easy,

My Dell is an Inspiron 3670. I’ve got Rufus now so we will have a “Go” at it.

Is a 16g flash drive stick big enough for the Ubuntu 18.4? or do I need a bigger one?

that should be plenty of space to give ubuntu a test run :slight_smile:

Hi easy,

I’ve dl Rufus and 18.4 and hope my daughter will be able to come over, maybe this weekend.

I’m sort of confused about your last two sentences: “Get this to work and then we can go to the next phase.” What is the “next phase”? Just a brief description

And this:
-----> “Remember, nothing can be saved onto the flash drive.” Do you mean anthing other than the Ubuntu iso and set up by Rufus?

Thanks
Pat