I’m sorry for being late to the party, but I have suggestions of my own:
I recommend that you start by creating a full system image backup of your Windows 10 installation, and store it on a different/external drive/partition from the one containing Windows.
You can download Macrium Reflect (free edition) from OlderGeeks. Note that download links are always at the very bottom of the download page on their site. The advantage of using Macrium Reflect is that you can create a boot-able USB rescue disk, allowing you to recover your Windows system in the event of disaster.
With a full system image safely stored in a safe place, you can install LMDE6 along side of Windows. LMDE6 should offer that option when Windows exists on the drive where you’ll install it. When you get to the partitioning screen, you should see several options, one of which is “Install along side . . .”. With that option, the installer’ll resize your Windows partition, and create a new partition to install LMDE6 on the same drive with Windows. AFAIK, LMDE6 does support secure boot, so you can keep it enabled for Windows. There is no real advantage/disadvantage to enabling/disabling secure boot with any GNU/Linux distribution that supports it.
It does not always do that on install !
Better with cinnamon or mate they do ask, but been caught out with debian occasionally not asking and when multi tasking missed that stage.
By default it offered to erase disk and install LMDE.
If I just click “next-next-next” the HDD would be formatted.
Now if choose “Manual partitioning”, it shows the partition layout, and offer to launch Gparted - to make a place to install to.
So the caution was indeed serious and appropriate, as installing too inpatiently and acting too fast could lead to destroy an existing Windows installation.
I love mint, never understood why they continue to offer 4 products instead of one. And why cinnamon on debian version instead of mate, ok its not as smooth. But these little differences drive me crazy at times.
Thanks for all the suggestions!
I have completed steps 1-3 of the 4-step plan in my OP.
At this point I’m planning to follow the advice in the guide posted at Installing LMDE 6
I think it may also be a good idea to create another partition (I’ll call it “Data” or something similar) where I can put my Timeshift backups, to keep them out of my /home partition (is this necessary?)
Instead of mounting my /home at my existing Win10 F:\home as I indicated, I’ll take Neville’s advice to not do that, and set up a symlink somewhere (my desktop, perhaps) to allow easy access to my documents over on that drive.
Good on you.
The problem is, Linux writes dot files ( files whose names begin with dot and are hidden) in the /home directory… you dont want those in your Win10 F: space… they may even clash with Win10 files.
Not necessary. The default location is “/” root. I set up a separate partition for Timeshift called Time. Of course the size of the partition depends on the number of snapshots you decide to keep. One snapshot on my (non LMDE) Mint system is 13 GB. I also store a Clonezilla backup of root there. It is about 6 GB.
I keep a separate partition for backups, and I label it 'backups", so there is never any confusion about what’s stored there. I also have a “data” partition, where I store a variety of data files I don’t want to keep on my Windows or GNU/Linux partitions, but that’s to meet my own preferences.
To be clear, I use the free edition of Macrium Reflect in Windows. I use it to create full and differential system images (One full system image and six differential images per week to create a weekly backup set, keeping four backup sets so I can access versions of Windows files up to twenty-eight days old). I got Macrium Reflect Free from the Older Geeks website. All I had to do was use the search bar at the top of the landing page to find the installer.
Yes as far as i can see except the repository sometimes looks different but never tried them side by side just from memory. As now only have lmde or xfce on my desktop and they look different from the menu point of view. No big deal
As I understand, LMDE is a side-project, and its purpose is to continue Mint if Ubuntu can’t be used as a base. Cinnamon is the DE of Linux Mint, as it was invented by the Mint creators…
So I think, I understand why the Cinnamon on LMDE.
Other DE’s are in the repos too both for LMDE and “ordinary” Linux Mint, they are just the DE’s from Debian/Ubuntu, just themed to fit the look&feel of Linux Mint.
Its time someone setup an installer to ask which DE you want.
I remember some of the older non-graphic installers used to ask all sorts of questions about what you wanted to include. That seems to have been lost.
What happened to DE Freedom?
No, you have to download different versions mate or xfce the lmde only offers cinnamon, unless you install afterwards an other version which I have never tried to do. Always go with version downloaded mainly for ease on my part.
Xfce is a lighter version, but not sure if I did a lmde install then put xfce in place would it use same speed size advantage or just be more cumbersome…
