Using Linux?

paul1149 said:

Clonezilla comes with two caveats - it's probably the most convoluted interactive experience one can imagine, and it does not restore a disk image to a smaller drive than that which it was taken from.

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It will as long as the total amount of data is definitely smaller than the target disk size. I used to distribute Windows images from 500GB drives down to 120GB SSDs, you just tell it to ignore the disk size (which is one of the questions it asks in the process).

I get that it can be daunting the first few times you use it, and it's not a nice GUI, but it's not overly complicated as long as you read the steps and options; once you've done it two or three times it's pretty easy.

Wookiee said:

It will as long as the total amount of data is definitely smaller than the target disk size. I used to distribute Windows images from 500GB drives down to 120GB SSDs, you just tell it to ignore the disk size (which is one of the questions it asks in the process).

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Wow, I didn't know that. It's not in Beginner mode, which is where I operate, but that's great to know. Thanks!

nChrist said:

There are tons of games for Linux, and I've installed a few. If you use Linux, please tell me what your favorite games are.

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I play a lot of Warzone2100. I've always been a fan of real time strategy games

nChrist said:

There's a lot of things that I don't miss at all from Windows: crashes, lock-ups, problems with updates, and more. I haven't had a single problem with Linux yet.

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I was going to say that I haven't had many troubles with Windows, but, ironically, I wrote this post a few times on Internet Explorer, as it kept crashing or doing weird things while I was typing. I decided to wait until I got on a Linux computer to try again.

I know Windows gets a lot of complaints for bad updates, but I've never been hurt by one. I have, however, had two issues with Linux updates in the 1.5 years I've been using it. The first was an old Virtual Box package that caused the computer to fail at startup. The Linux Mint forums went wild over that one, and it was fixed within a day, but I wasted a weekend trying to figure it out.

The second update problem was a recent kernel update that got ahead of publication of its relevant Broadcom drivers, leaving me without WiFi. That one was trivial. I reverted the kernel and waited for the Broadcom drivers to appear in my updates and all was well.

Overall, though, I much prefer Linux. It runs very cleanly, without so many unwanted background processes, making it more responsive. It also doesn't come packed with bloatware. I have full control over updates.

I also played around with one Linux computer and one Windows computer, learning to get them to work together. I decided that it was a lot easier to use the Linux computer to hack into the Windows computer than vice versa. Maybe it's just me.

LaSorcia said:

I recently had to reinstall Ubuntu though, sadly. It messed up my virtual box and caused me a lot of hassle.

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I wonder if it was that guest account package for Vbox that conflicted with the login. Lots of people got stung on that one. I reinstalled several times that day, trying to figure out which update was the cause. When starting from that far back it was fairly impossible to narrow it down to one, because my handful of updates turned into a huge list, and I barely remembered the names of the things that got updated before the unexpected happened. I'm zealous about backing up my files, but that one scared me into leaving the Window open, so to speak.

Nevertheless, I'm on a Linux machine at the moment, and I have successfully posted without losing it to a crazy Internet Explorer.

paul1149 said:

Wow, I didn't know that. It's not in Beginner mode, which is where I operate, but that's great to know. Thanks!

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It's very possible I never looked in there; usually when I'm doing things that aren't straight disk-to-disk or disk-to-image I assume options I might want to look at aren't there by default. I used to use an antique copy of Norton Ghost for things like this, so when I moved to Clonezilla I just threw myself straight in to try and ensure everything would go smoothly.

I haven't had to do it in a while since I changed the way I was managing my images, but basically in Advanced you need to choose icds (labelled to the effect of "Ignore disk size") and choose k1 which sizes the partition table relative to the disk size. I only ever did this with W7 and 10, but I assume any recent versions should work.

Something else I always did was remove the pagefile and hiberfile (an options it offers in the process) which will ensure there's more space on the image. Windows will recreate them as it sees fit later on.

Wookiee said:

and choose k1 which sizes the partition table relative to the disk size.

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Do you know if doing this will break the factory recovery partition? I'm not sure why, but I think the manufacturer's recovery software - and sometimes this is hard-coded in the BIOS - looks for a specific sector on the disk for the FRP's partition boot loader, rather than for a unique partition ID (there would have to be a good reason for doing something that otherwise would be so dumb). In the early days, whenever I would resize a partition on disk, that would break the unit's ability to do a factory reset. This was a major problem until I learned how to boot to FRP manually (on an MBR disk, anyway). So it seems to me that resizing the partitions proportionally would break the FRP.

I wouldn't care for myself, but I refurb and sell laptops, and I prefer to send them out with the ability to Reset. Currently, when FRP is broken, I take an image, either with Aomei or Macrium, and maybe include a boot reset disk. That's why I was stunned when I discovered that Aomei breaks FRP, even on a clone to the same size disk. And it seems to be a problem they can't solve (maybe legalities are involved? I wouldn't doubt it.), because instead of solving it they've come up with their own "one key recovery" workaround (which actually is quite decent).

paul1149 said:

Do you know if doing this will break the factory recovery partition? I'm not sure why, but I think the manufacturer's recovery software - and sometimes this is hard-coded in the BIOS - looks for a specific sector on the disk for the FRP's partition boot loader, rather than for a unique partition ID (there would have to be a good reason for doing something that otherwise would be so dumb). In the early days, whenever I would resize a partition on disk, that would break the unit's ability to do a factory reset. This was a major problem until I learned how to boot to FRP manually (on an MBR disk, anyway). So it seems to me that resizing the partitions proportionally would break the FRP.

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It shouldn't, but it's hard to say for certain. But if you're doing stuff with Windows 10 now, I wouldn't be terribly worried since it's built into the install and the manufacturer images are generally loaded with rubbish.

I wouldn't care for myself, but I refurb and sell laptops, and I prefer to send them out with the ability to Reset. Currently, when FRP is broken, I take an image, either with Aomei or Macrium, and maybe include a boot reset disk. That's why I was stunned when I discovered that Aomei breaks FRP, even on a clone to the same size disk. And it seems to be a problem they can't solve (maybe legalities are involved? I wouldn't doubt it.), because instead of solving it they've come up with their own "one key recovery" workaround (which actually is quite decent).

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I've never used either of those, so it's possible they don't do something they're supposed to, like marking the right flags on the recovery partition. I've never experienced this cloning a full a disk using Norton Ghost, but I've never tried with Clonezilla.

nChrist said:

There are tons of games for Linux, and I've installed a few. If you use Linux, please tell me what your favorite games are.

There's a lot of things that I don't miss at all from Windows: crashes, lock-ups, problems with updates, and more. I haven't had a single problem with Linux yet.

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I'm not really a PC gamer, but use Ubuntu as my daily driver on my laptop. I like Linux Mint with Cinnamon as well, but my current "laptop" is a 2-1 and the Unity Dock in Ubuntu is helpful when running it as a tablet.

If you have an older computer that's running Windows XP but don't want to buy a new computer, you can consider installing Lubuntu (a Linux package designed to be installed on older, slower computers) on it to breath new life into it.

I use Firefox as my browser with Adblock Plus, HTTPS, Privacy Badger, and Disconnected enabled.

You're right...it's rock solid stable and you don't have to pay for antivirus software every year.

nChrist said:

I tried to set up a dual boot between Windows and Linux Ubuntu recently and made a mistake. I no longer have windows. I'm pleasantly surprised that Ubuntu is great.

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I think your Windows partition is gone, most likely it was erased at install.
Make the best of it and enjoy linux. Linux has come a long way.

So has come bitcoin, care to read about it > Information about Lifestyle wealth creation, virtual and real, find out more about Bitcoins, how is mined, how does it work bitcoin, VCC and more. Mining and critical information about bitcoin.

Getting used to linux is much easier than jumping from Windows 7 to 10 IHMO.
Try to get used to crypto currency like bitcoin and Ethereum, much more tricky.

nChrist said:

I tried to set up a dual boot between Windows and Linux Ubuntu recently and made a mistake. I no longer have windows. I'm pleasantly surprised that Ubuntu is great.

I chose Opera over Firefox for my browser, and I use Thunderbird for my email. They work great. I use Kate for a text editor and find it full-featured. I use digiKam for my pictures and am very happy with it. I use Krusader for a file manager and am happy with it.

There are tons of games for Linux, and I've installed a few. If you use Linux, please tell me what your favorite games are.

There's a lot of things that I don't miss at all from Windows: crashes, lock-ups, problems with updates, and more. I haven't had a single problem with Linux yet.

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RIP, Linux.

I use Suse, Ubuntu, Windows 7, and Windows 10 on 6 different machines. The BEST think I ever did was to buy a synology NAS, I moved all of my archive docs (pictures, moves, docs, and such) to it. it just works, and does everything I need. no more worry if one of my machines goes down.

nhaas11 said:

I use Suse, Ubuntu, Windows 7, and Windows 10 on 6 different machines. The BEST think I ever did was to buy a synology NAS, I moved all of my archive docs (pictures, moves, docs, and such) to it. it just works, and does everything I need. no more worry if one of my machines goes down.

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Although you'll be in trouble if all of the hard drives in your NAS fail.

Wookiee said:

Although you'll be in trouble if all of the hard drives in your NAS fail.

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that's why I have multiple drives