[AT] OT- Computer help please

[bloomis at charter.net]

Good point Spencer. I had a difficult time getting my Asus laptop to boot off the thumb even after setting USB as the primary boot. Google led me to the need to also enter ESC to bring up a boot menu choice. Jeez. I’m going to run Linux on that machine but for some odd reason I want to keep the factory rescue partition. Heck I think it’s Vista. I don’t think I can ever restore it to even W7 without the original Vista so… I’ll probably image that partition. 
I’ve looked thru the manual and the forums on how to avoid erasing the rescue partition, but as Charlie said the verbiage of Linux is, different. 
Also someone mentioned defragging. SSDs don’t need it. I’m hoping to put Linux on my desktop, same situation, 12 yo Dell Vista, now W7, on an SSD, but this one I don’t really care about the partition. It’s I’m just not ready to pull the trigger fully just yet. A lot of years invested in Outlook as far as email, calendar, tasks, etc. hence the learning on the laptop. 

Brad

 

From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> On Behalf Of Spencer Yost
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 6:41 AM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: Re: [AT] OT- Computer help please

 

Just some thumb drive ramblings:

 

Making thumb drives bootable is generally trivial.   Most distributions of Linux have great documentation on this.





As others have mentioned, you need to have/borrow a second machine to create it if you are doing this because your machine is in the fritz.

 

Setting your bios to boot off the drive and having it actually work can be challenging for some older makes/bios.

 

To state the obvious:  Bootable thumb drives to rescue files don’t work for ransomware and drive failures.   So no substitute for backups.

 

micro SD cards  an be handy for this too.   Making your machine boot off them is about the same in terms of difficulty and success rate.  

 

Some retail bootable solutions contain more than an operating system:   Many have scan/repair tools and may be worth the $35.  Replicating those capabilities in your bootable USB drive is not trivial.

 

To ease some concerns:  Linux is open source and most (all probably??) distributions of Linux have a free open source version in addition to the paid “better” distribution that would include support.   So all of this 100% legal.   Obviously you can steal and install software for any OS so whether your additional installs are legal is up to you.

 

 

Spencer

 

Sent from my iPhone





On Feb 17, 2020, at 7:27 AM, cgs <oxygenfarm at gmail.com <mailto:oxygenfarm at gmail.com> > wrote:

 Most versions of Linux are free and legal to download; some charge for a prepared thumb drive and/or a phone help service.
I have several computers that age which will run the lighter Linux versions. A new solid state drive (120 GB) can be found online or at MicroCenter for $25 (be sure your old iron has SATA connectors!)

 

 

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