Notes for running Linux on a formerly Windows laptop
Linux boot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ivmtt-kF_A&t=483s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7xe8qYs32A
LINUX MINT site to download Cinnamon:
Rufus site to download disk image creator:
https://rufus.ie/en/#google_vignette
Can also go here for the Rufus Download: https://rufus.ie/en/#download
BE CAREFUL - there is a VERY persistent banner to download a different browser! ONLY download the RUFUS tool, from the downloads section (and select which version of Rufus to download).
NOTES:
The Rufus tool is an executable. You only need the rufus-4.6p.exe file to be able to run Rufus.
HOWEVER, note that the ISO image can ONLY be picked up by Rufus from the Downloads directory! (seems broken...) The ISO file is BIG (2.9G?)
IMPORTANT - Look for the "Persistence partition size" slider, and increase the size of the persistence disk to something bigger than zero (8G?). This allows settings to be saved.
Web site on Ubuntu - using Apache2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6-RH4PAFkc
Very clunky demo, but he eventually gets there...
I ended up going with the recommendation from one of the videos below. I downloaded the "Cinnamon Edition" of the Linux ISO file from Linux Mint. There was another version that was smaller, but this one includes the desktop, and might be nicer to use.
I used "rufus" to create the bootable drive.
The weird trick here that seemed undocumented and (bad form) was that Rufus seems to only look in your "downloads" folder for ISO files to use to create the drive. I had downloaded the *.iso file, and moved it to a flash drive so that it wouldn't take up space on my laptop (3G) - but could never figure out how to get Rufus to find the file. When I left it in my download folder, bingo - it was there...
For my Asus laptop, it turns out "Esc" is the magic key to get it to go to BIOS and eventually boot from the flash drive.
The final key was that yes - it has to be a USB Flash Drive. It doesn't seem to be able to boot off a SD card slot (even though both show up in the file browser as just differently labeled drives).
If this gets me reliably into Linux, then I'll be able to play with that a bit. I'll have to google a bit to see how to deal with Laptop stuff in Linux (first question - I think there's a way to figure out what the paths are to other mounted flash drives, the C: drive, etc..., but I need to look that up again...). Perl exists already, as does VI, but I'm MUCH more familiar with Emacs, and will need to download that...
Lots to play with...
See this web site for basic unix admin commands:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/beginners-guide-to-linux-system-administration/
Set the Time Zone:
Move to /usr/share/zoneinfo/your_zone and then link the zone file with /etc/localtime to set the time zone.
sudo ln -sf Kolkata /etc/localtime
Add an account
Accounts can be altered through the MINT menu. MINT icon -> settings icon -> Administration section -> Users and Groups
Frog:
Root password: playtime
Dan Roberts
droberts
Password: 8timewin
Boot password for secure boot on Linux Mint install on laptop: Bits2boot
Laptop setup:
Admin user: Dan
Pass: Not$numb