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Newbie experiences with Linux Mint 15 Xfce

 

I have been using Microsoft PC's since MS-Dos. When I heard that Microsoft will no longer support XP from April 2014 I decided to install Linux Mint 13 Xfce on my 14 year old Fujitsu/Siemens PIII / 550 PC. However because of the fact that this oldie does neither have a DVD-drive, nor can be booted from USB, I decided to have to let her go...

 

Ending October 2013 I bought a new PC consisting of:

 

- Asus H81M-Plus motherboard

- Kingston 120 GB V300 SSD

- Toshiba 1 TB HDD

- Intel I5-4440 CPU

- 4096 MB Kingston DDR3 / 1333 Memory

 

Because of the fact that installation etc. was not that straightforward for a retired newbie, I decided to put my experiences on “paper”. Maybe I can help other Windows (XP) people to conquer their fear for Linux.

I am convinced that installation and using Mint 15 Xfce can be an easy job when they do not make the faults I made...

I have been using Mint 15 Xfce for about 3 weeks now and appreciate the look and feel very much!

 

1. Pre-Installation

 

When I read about the possibility to create a Live-DVD with Linux Mint 15 Xfce and to play around with Mint 15 on my Windows Vista laptop without installing anything, I decided to give it a go.

I never burned any CD's nor DVD's. Most important thing here is that one burns the desired Linux .iso file containing the Linux software (called distributions) with the “create image” function of the several software packages that are available. Thus the .iso file is automatically extracted to a number of files and folders with the Linux software, resulting in a bootable DVD.

This process is rather straightforward, so no problems here. Don't forget to check the MD5 checksum before burning your .iso to a DVD.

 

One might also consider to write the .iso to an USB flash drive. I used Pen Drive Linux for this.

 

Remember that running your Linux distro from a live-DVD is very slow, so be patient...

Running your distro from a live Pen-Drive is somewhat faster.

 

2. Configuration

 

PC with UEFI Bios

 

sda: HDD 1 TB

sdb: SSD 120 GB

 

Note the sda and sdb thing!!!

(“sda” is probably for “storage device a”)

 

3. Installation

 

Installation of Mint 15 Xfce was pretty straightforward. Of course, as always, I did not read the installation manuals etc.

However after installing Xfce and a reboot of my PC it ended up in a disappointing blinking cursor in the left upper corner of my screen. What to do now?

 

- Secure boot issue

 

I started reading the different Internet forums and concluded that my PC could not boot because of the Secure boot function in my (new) hardware.

In the Xfce guidelines is stated that the “secure boot” function must be disabled (easy said).

So I restarted my PC while pressing F2 in order to enter my (UEFI) Bios.

In the Boot chapter I easily found the “secure boot” function which was enabled so peace of cake (I thought then). The point was that it was “greyed out” so there was no way to disable “secure boot”. What the heck. ..I was thinking and thinking and checking and checking...

After a while (and another while...I am retired, remember?) I saw there were things called PK's (Platform Keys) at the bottom of the “secure boot” page . Then I started thinking about encryption with public and private keys I learned ages ago. So maybe these keys were used for encryption and Secure boot.

Now I was in a do or don't situation and I eventually decided to clear/delete the PK's. To my relief the secure boot function immediately turned black and only then I could disable secure boot, phew...

I rebooted to start enjoying and exploring my new Linux environment and ended up with... a blinking cursor in my left upper corner (ca 1.00 at night).

To be continued...

 

- UEFI vs Legacy boot function

 

So again, I started reading and reading and thinking an thinking and found that there could be an issue with UEFI boot.

New systems come with this new extended BIOS function.

Some people stated one should use Legacy boot instead of UEFI for different devices so I put all my devices on Legacy rom boot. In my BIOS this is located under CSM (Compatibility Support Module) which I kept enabled.

After this I rebooted my system and guess what... I ended up with a blinking cursor in the left upper corner (ca 2.30 at night).

Again thinking and thinking, reading and reading (with square eyes now) and I decided to take a look at my boot priority.

To be continued...

Note: until now I am not sure whether my system would boot in UEFI mode. To investigate later.

 

- Boot priority

 

I did configure the following boot priority:

1. DVD/Bluray drive

2. SSD drive (containing my Mint software)

3. HDD drive (containing my Data)

 

While in the BIOS I played with Boot override (as a non-native English speaking guy I did not immediately comprehend the meaning of this function).

At a certain moment I clicked my HDD (data drive) in Boot override and, wonder oh wonder, within a few moments my PC booted and showed the long desired Mint Xfce welcome screen.

I did not understand why my PC started up while I was using my data HDD to boot.

 

 

Then I of course configured the following boot priority (which did not seem logical to me):

1. DVD/Bluray drive

2. HDD drive (containing my Data)

2. SSD drive (containing my Mint software)

 

From that time my system was fine and I could start my journey through the wonderful world of Linux. However I could not figure out what was the logic of this (besides it was 4.00 in the morning and I was seeing stars right now, however not in the sky). During the night and the next few days I still could not figure out why my system was booting with this non-logical boot priority so I took it for granted. After all my system did great, so why bother?

(Tip of the veil: remember the sda and sdb thing...)

To be continued...

 

- The sda and sdb thing

 

About 2 weeks later I was making a backup image with a live-DVD containing Redo backup software. After the creation of a successful backup I played around with the Redo disk tools. There I noticed that there was an align issue with my HDD data drive (I remembered I had to re-align a new HDD which I installed on my Vista laptop several months ago; something with advanced storage technology. Besides I had to install an MS hotfix and new IRST drivers which were hard to find. Took me weeks but this was on Vista, so forget it). 12.00 at midnight now..

 

Because of the fact that my system was still relatively empty I decided to format my HDD data drive in order to solve the align problem. After some reading I decided that Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) could do the trick. I burned a live-DVD with “Gparted” and formatted my HDD data drive (I still had a backup of my data on an USB disk).

Then I rebooted my system and... my system was dead, really dead. Again that damned blinking cursor in the left upper corner. What the heck.

I really could not get my PC to live. Besides I had also issues booting from my live-DVD drive

Thinking and thinking and reading and reading and more reading... phew. I blamed myself and was thinking of a wise English saying “Why fix if it ain't broke?”

At 4.00 in the morning I decided to take some sleep because of the fact that my DVD player refused to load my live-DVD version of Linux. In the BIOS I disabled the Fast Boot option but that did not help to get my PC alive. So I was stuck.

 

The next morning I tested several Live-DVD's on 2 other DVD drives where they loaded perfectly, although slow. I still have to go back to the shop to get me a new DVD/Bluray drive.

 

In the mean time I was reading and reading, thinking and thinking, even started drinking! I also thought of bringing my brick back to the shop. But, like men don't ask for the way if they are lost it would also be something of a defeat to bring The Thing back to the shop and ask the youngsters to install Mint 15 or even worse Windows 8.1 on it.

 

Then in one of my reading sessions thousands of KBytes I read a tiny little sentence:

 

******** By default the bootloader is installed in sda! *********

 

Oops, I had done a default installation, so all bells started to tinkle.

I checked my config again and saw that my HDD data drive was on sda.

During this default installation I specified that my software should of course be installed on my SSD which is on sdb!

In short: my Mint software was on my SSD and the bootloader was on my HDD.

Finally it was clear to me why I had to have my HDD above my SSD drive in the boot priority list.

And while having formatted my HDD I also deleted my bootloader. This together with a defective DVD drive gave me the feeling I had bricked my PC.

 

But now I had seen the light and I got courage again. So I created a bootable USB stick with Pen Drive Linux containing my Mint 15 Xfce distro. In the mean time I noticed that there was an option in the BIOS to, partially (only mouse and keyboard) and fully initialize USB. I switched this to fully initialize, plugged in my USB stick, rebooted and prayed. My prayers were heard and my PC was “unbricked” again via my Live-Pen Drive Linux

 

Some earlier in the reading process I saw the following article on tecmint.com including screen shots: “Linux Mint 15 XFCE Desktop Edition Step by Step Installation Guide”

 

I decided to give it a closer look and saw there was an option “Something else” on the “Installation type” screen. And more important to me was the fact that it gave me the possibility to install my bootloader on my SSD! By means of the given options I created a boot partition, swap partition and data partition on my SSD located on sdb. Then I defined that my bootloader should be installed in the boot partition of my SSD and also on sdb and clicked install.

 

Everything installed smoothly. Then I gave my SSD boot priority over my HDD and restarted. Now my system did boot perfectly which was a major relief.

 

- SSD optimizing

 

You can find lots of pages on the Internet with hints how to expand lifetime of your SSD.

I decided to use 2 of them. One hint is to partition your SSD with some unallocated space for instance 10 GB for my 128 GB SSD.

Of course I forgot to define the unallocated space during installation so I was wondering how to proceed. Then I read that “Gparted” does have the possibility to shrink and expand partitions.

I expected it would take some time. However in a split second Gparted gave me the desired unallocated space (I did run “Gparted” from Live-DVD because my SSD contains my Mint OS files)

 

The second hint is to “TRIM” your SSD on a frequent basis for good performance. Loads of command line examples are given to “TRIM” automatically at certain intervals. However this is to complicated for me.

 

I tested a simple command which did the job perfectly within a few minutes:

 

sudo fstrim -v /

 

After some time it returns something like:

 

/: 23634587901 bytes were trimmed

 

So when I use this command one time a week I will be fine.

 

For details and background on “TRIM” and unallocated space for SSD's: just check the Internet.

 

 

 

4. Tools Used

 

I created the following tools from .iso files that can be found on the Internet:

 

- Linux Mint 15 Xfce 64 bit Live-DVD

- Redo backup/restore Live-DVD

- Gparted Live-DVD

- Linux Mint 15 Xfce 64 bit Live-Pen Drive Linux (because I have a defective DVD/Bluray drive)

 

More info on how to create Live-DVD's and Live-Pendrive Linux can easily be found on the Internet. Make sure you burn your DVD's at low speed for best results (4* or 6* or alike)

 

5. Issue with a newly created partition on my HDD

 

I decided to create 1 large partition on my 1 TB HDD. I used Gparted and created the partition with the newer GUID (Globally Unique Identifiers) Partition Table aka as GPT (in stead of the older MBR (Master Boot Record)) together with NTFS file system (I thought).

 

However after this I noticed a lot of activity on my Disk drive led while my PC was doing literally nothing. I was used to a blink once and a while so this was “a bit” annoying.

After this I took another close look at the created 1 TB partition and noticed that it was unintentionally configured with ext2 file system (and GPT).

Therefore I again created the 1 TB partition with the old school MBR partition table and NTFS file system.

After this my system was quiet again (as I was used to)

Don't know whether it was GPT, ext2 or the combination of the two that caused all the activity but I decided to keep it as is now with NTFS and MBR.

 

6. Conclusion (Lessons learned...)

 

- Within BIOS: First clear/delete the PK's; only after this it is possible to disable the secure boot function.

 

- Within BIOS: I configured all my devices with Legacy rom.

(I have no idea whether it is possible to use UEFI...)

 

- When you notice strange things with your boot priority remember the sda and sdb thing as stated above. And: **** By default the bootloader is installed in sda ****

This can be overruled by using the “Something else” option in the “Installation type” screen.

 

- Within BIOS: When booting from USB remember to use the “USB: Fully initialize” option.

 

- When using an SSD: Create some unallocated space using the “Something else” option in the “Installation type” screen (some say 10 % others say 30 %).

Once and a while you could “TRIM” your SSD using:

sudo fstrim -v /

 

- Gparted is an easy to use and very powerful tool for partitioning, shrinking, expanding etc

 

- When creating non Linux data partitions using MBR partition table with NTFS file system is probably the safe way to go.

 

- First read: “Linux Mint 15 Xfce Desktop Edition Step by Step Installation Guide” including screen shots on tecmint.com !!

 

- When a certain (even new) hardware device (like my DVD/Bluray drive) is suspect, try to run tests on alternative devices to rule out the defective device. Otherwise the combination of all failures will drive you crazy.

 

After all I ended up with a beautifully lean and mean Linux Mint 15 Xfce machine.

My boot time is ca 12 seconds, so fasten seat belts :-)

 

As a normal end user it does not take much time to get used to Thunderbird email, Chromium browser, Libre office for creating documents etc.

And for playing FLAC hifi files I use Audacious with Jack output together with Qjackctl. The output is sent over USB to my external DAC resulting in very good hifi audio quality in my work room.

I already consider to replace Vista on my Vaio laptop (which is my hifi music machine with external USB DAC in my sitting room) with Audiophile Linux. Could be a nice project for winter times.

I use PAN as a News reader and Spotlite for spotting posts.

 

I'll give a copy of this post to my wife. She was wondering what I have been doing in the night and early mornings and already considered me to be a grooming old man ;-)

 

Finally I would like to say thanks to all Linux developers!

 

Linux, for the people by the people!

 

PS: as a Linux newbie I could be wrong in several areas so feel free to comment!