Can I install Linux?

@Wilso,

There are two choices.

The easy choice is to search for "chromium" in the software manager and install it. Chromium is the open source version of Google Chrome... it is based on the same source.

The second choice is to google the file for the official Google Chrome and install it yourself. This isn't that difficult, there is a tool to do this from a .deb file and there are instructions on the internet.

I think most people just use Chromium. I use Chrome... I don't remember why.

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@Wilso,

If you only disable Secure Boot, there is no problem in some cases. You are only disabling the part that creates the most problem between Windows and Linux, which is the one that prevents Ubuntu from booting correctly. In either case, I encourage you to first try to install Ubuntu with UEFI/Secureboot, since in most cases it will work. if you disable any of them and install Ubuntu, you might not be able to boot to Windows 8 afterwards through the GRUB Boot Menu.

1 Reply

@albertofair34,

albertofair34 wrote:

If you only disable Secure Boot, there is no problem in some cases. You are only disabling the part that creates the most problem between Windows and Linux, which is the one that prevents Ubuntu from booting correctly. In either case, I encourage you to first try to install Ubuntu with UEFI/Secureboot, since in most cases it will work. if you disable any of them and install Ubuntu, you might not be able to boot to Windows 8 afterwards through the GRUB Boot Menu.

It had Windows 7. Which is now gone.

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Thank you all for a very interesting thread.

I read a couple of linux documents that say that one should check the MD5 hash, or signature, of the installation .iso file to make sure that the file isn't corrupt.

So, I downloaded a program that they recommended, winMd5Sum, to check the integrity of the MD5 of the .iso file.

I checked the linuxmint-17.1-xfce-32bit.iso (Linux Mint) that I downloaded and winMd5Sum said that the MD5 sum of that .iso file was different from what the MD5 sum should be (i.e.: 5b2d4eac9c0505ed36c2e50ecb9fcce0).

I thought that maybe the download went bad, so I downloaded it again, but winMdtSum said that the MD5 for that file was different as well.

I downloaded it three more times and all of them had MD5s that were different as well.

I then downloaded ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-i386.iso (Ubuntu) and ran it through winMd5Sum, but it also showed that its MD5 was different from what it should be (i.e.: a4fc15313ef2a516bfbf83ce44281535).

Does anyone know what's going on here?

Wilso, did you go through any of this when you installed Linux on your machine?

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Nope. I followed the instruction from the page rosbourne linked to. Used the thumb drive creator, booted from the thumb drive, then installed. Remember though, I was installing on an old netbook that didn't matter, so it wasn't going to be a problem if anything fucked up.

1 Reply

@Wilso,

Yeah, I'm looking to install it on an old Windows 98 machine that I use to play mp3s in one of my rooms and am thinking of skipping the .iso verification step and just installing it and see what happens. It won't be a great loss if something goes irreversibly wrong.

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Quote:

Make sure you have already backed up anything on your old drive that you want and then go to Pendrivelinux.com and follow one of their step by step methods. I recommend Linix Mint as a good version to use.

I followed these instructions. No checks. I just dived in head first.

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@InfraBlue,

hmmmm

The MD5 hash is really protection against hackers (because no one can change the file without changing the MD5). It should match although a great number of people don't bother checking it if they get it from the official site.

There are a couple of reasons it wouldn't match. I think the most likely is that WinMd5sum is wrong (or you might have made a mistake using it). You might want to try a different MD5sum tool.

I noticed you chose xfce, and 32-bit. I am curious how you made that decision (this has nothing to do with your MD5 issue).

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

Are you checking the md5 of the downloaded file or a burned DVD?

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@parados,

Good question parados! I forgot about that.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

hmmmm

The MD5 hash is really protection against hackers (because no one can change the file without changing the MD5). It should match although a great number of people don't bother checking it if they get it from the official site.

There are a couple of reasons it wouldn't match. I think the most likely is that WinMd5sum is wrong (or you might have made a mistake using it). You might want to try a different MD5sum tool.

I noticed you chose xfce, and 32-bit. I am curious how you made that decision (this has nothing to do with your MD5 issue).

Yeah, I'm thinking WinMd5Sum is wrong because it's been reporting that the hashes are bad for all of the .iso files that I've dowloaded from four different download mirrors (i.e. Advanced Network Computing Lab at the University of Hawaii, advancedhosters.com, Department of CS at Utah State University and James Madison University) from linuxmint.com. I even downloaded Ubuntu from the official website and got the same result from WinMd5Sum.

I chose xfce 32-bit because I didn’t think the computer-- it's running Windows XP, not Windows 98--could handle 64-bit, and xfce seems to be a very small OS.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

Are you checking the md5 of the downloaded file or a burned DVD?

I'm checking the .iso files that I downloaded from the mirror sites to my hard drive.

The Linux Mint documentation says this:

Quote:

Check the MD5

You’ve read the release notes, you just can’t wait to play with the new features or try
Linux Mint, and your download just finished successfully. You’re ready to burn a DVD
and to boot on it… but hey! Wait for a second!

If that DVD is faulty you will experience weird bugs and will have a lot of trouble finding help. The two most common reasons for a DVD to be faulty are:

An issue with the download causing problems in your ISO file

An error during the burn process that alters the contents of your burned liveDVD

The MD5 signature, which is present on the download page, provides a quick way for you to make sure that your ISO file is exactly like it should be. So, let’s check the ISO file you just downloaded before we burn it and save ourselves from a lot of potential problems.

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I just tried another method of checking the MD5 hash that was explained in the Linux Mint documentation, and voila! the MD5 hash on my .iso file matches the MD5 hash listed on the Linux Mint website.

I'm going to burn an installation disc and install Linux Mint on the machine.

I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks for all of your replies, guys.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

Yeah!

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By the way, if anyone wants to try a Linux install without risking or disturbing your existing MSWindows environments, then just install VirtualBox ( https://www.virtualbox.org/ ), create a Virtual Machine, and install whatever version of Linux you like into it. You will still need to download the Linux .ISO files but you can mount them into VirtualBox like a CD and then just run the standard installation process.

Once the Virtual Linux machine is running the interface is pretty small, but you can run xrdp and use remote RDP sessions to access the virtual machine. That way you can play with Linux all you want and still keep your MSWindows environment as well (without risk of any overlap or corruption).

Note that the RDP window required a 2D Linux desktop like "MATE". There are a number of good YouTube tutorials for installing all this...

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

Once the Virtual Linux machine is running the interface is pretty small

I am not sure you mean by the interface being small. You can run VirtualBox in full screen mode. The interface takes up the whole screen and looks and runs as if Linux is on your machine.

The downside to a virtual machine is that it takes a lot of resources. Programs run slower and you will have access to less RAM. I would also not recommend running VirtualBox on an old machine without many resources (i.e. RAM and multiple cores). It will be agravatingly slow.

If you have a newer, fast machine with multiple cores and lots of RAM, VirtualBox runs really well.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

I guess I mean that the resolution is low (which it makes it very hard to work with). In any case, the xRDP remote window is beautiful and quick.

I'm running VirtualBox and Ubuntu on a 4yr old HP Laptop with a single i5 and 8Gig of RAM and it's easily fast enough for normal usage (but I don't do any graphics manipulation or gaming).

In general, I find these VirtualBoxes extremely useful for testing and exposure to multiple OS versions. If I need real speed I stick with the base OS, whatever that happens to be. But the emulation layers have become extremely efficient in more recent years (VMWare and Citrix are even better), so any virtualization lag is almost invisible (assuming you have a relatively new machine with at least 8Gig of RAM as a baseline).

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@rosborne979,

I have never had an issue with VirtualBox resolution being low. I use Virtual Box at work on a pretty powerful machine. You can configure the virtual hardware for the display on the Virtual machine, that might be the issue. Of course this might not be viable on a four year old machine.

In full screen mode with sufficient resources it looks just the same as Linux installed natively on the machine. Of course if the host machine is not powerful enough, there is going to be problems.

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@rosborne979,

You can also run linux from a live CD.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/try-ubuntu-before-you-install
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_CD_installation_for_11.4

Most of the major linux distros have that option. It allows you to look at the interface and check if the distro recognizes most of your hardware. I have found in the past that Ubuntu wouldn't work with some hardware but SUSE would and vice versa. Live CD won't let you install programs and keep them but it will allow you to play around with linux before you install.

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@rosborne979,

Check your virtualbox settings. You should be able to get 128mb for video, 256mb if you enable 2d/3d settings. That should give you true color. Aero doesn't like to run when running Windows in virtualbox but the graphic resolution shouldn't be low.

1 Reply

Can I install Linux?

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