Gregg's Nearly Interminable Adventures in Linux Land

[avantman42]

Personally, I think this is a debate that gets very polarised, and a lot of people are either too blasé or overly paranoid.

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

A lot of (unthinking) people act like the internet is this thing that is beyond the human realm. It's not. People are hitting all those keystrokes that are making the algorithms that spy on your mail. And people are making those decisions to spy on your mail.

This, I think, is a good point. The government might not care about me, but certain individuals employed by them might. This case struck a chord with me at the time because (for long-winded and irrelevant reasons) it's a supermarket that I and lots of my friends have an attachment to.

Basically, someone with access to car registration records used them (illegally) to find out where someone else lived, so that his mate could go and throw a brick through the person's window. The issue there wasn't the government, it was an individual that had access to government data. I don't object to the government having that data, but they do need to ensure that individuals don't misuse their access to it.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks twowheels. Since I was figuring I was wanting to get rid of the data (on a computer I was taking to the recycle center) I never even considered the "wipe" option. I'll check into it.

If that is the case, I would consider a completely different option. Since it's being recycled, you really don't care to save anything on the drive. Many drives now have a secure erase option, which can wipe EVERYTHING, even the previously remapped bad sectors. I would look for a tool that exercises that option as it's your best bet in that case.

[Dngrsone]

Before things get too political, I'm going to hijack Gregg's thread a bit and talk about my latest project: dual-booting a brand-new Toshiba P55t-B5154 with Win 8.1 and Mint 17 KDE.

So far the going is easy, since I only did this with a Satellite S55t what, a year and a half ago. I've had to log into Windows so often these last couple days, I almost have the password memorized now. :/

So, anyway, I have got Windows up and running, created a Recovery drive ($9 16GB USB drive from Wal-mart), shrunk the primary volume, then restarted into the Toshiba Setup Utility for UEFI and turned off Secure Boot.

I have Mint 17.1 on a (mint colored, coincidentally) 4GB USB drive, and booted up. Since this is KDE, and the KDE Partition Manager is unfamiliar (and uncooperative), I opened up a terminal as root and installed my preferred tool:

apt-get install gparted

This is a Live iteration of the OS still, so that won't stick around after I reboot the machine. Sometimes that kind of thing can be convenient.

I used gparted to squeeze the Windows volume down even further (it's been my observation that Windows will only shrink down to half the capacity of the volume it started with), I don't need a 1TB volume, but gave it a generous 500GB (too generous, but I have plenty of space on a 2TB drive) and used the space I just freed up for a 500GB (NTFS) data volume to share between my two OSs.

I then created 200GB root and /home partitions (and swap-- don't forget swap) for my Mint install, and began the installation process.

The reason why I created the Recovery drive is insurance against me accidentally overwriting my Windows volume, because I do need to have that for work on occasion (or when I want to take a day off unexpectedly... damn you Silverlight). Also, shrinking a volume using gparted is not without risk...


So... this was the easy part. Next I am going to install rEFInd and try and make this dual-boot setup compatible with Secure Boot. Because I am both stupid and a glutton for punishment.

[eschwartz]

Secure boot. How fun.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Secure boot. How fun.

I reiterate: I am stupid, and I have a tendency to make things harder for myself...

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Personally, I think this is a debate that gets very polarised, and a lot of people are either too blasé or overly paranoid.



This, I think, is a good point. The government might not care about me, but certain individuals employed by them might. This case struck a chord with me at the time because (for long-winded and irrelevant reasons) it's a supermarket that I and lots of my friends have an attachment to.

Basically, someone with access to car registration records used them (illegally) to find out where someone else lived, so that his mate could go and throw a brick through the person's window. The issue there wasn't the government, it was an individual that had access to government data. I don't object to the government having that data, but they do need to ensure that individuals don't misuse their access to it.

Read that story. What a shame. And over a parking space.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by twowheels

If that is the case, I would consider a completely different option. Since it's being recycled, you really don't care to save anything on the drive. Many drives now have a secure erase option, which can wipe EVERYTHING, even the previously remapped bad sectors. I would look for a tool that exercises that option as it's your best bet in that case.

So, twowheels, where do I find that secure erase option? These are like 12 year old Dells I need to wipe the drives. Maybe I'd just be better off removing the drives and smashing them with a hammer? The green part of me would like to preserve the computer for whoever might want it but they are 12 years old.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Before things get too political, I'm going to hijack Gregg's thread a bit and talk about my latest project: dual-booting a brand-new Toshiba P55t-B5154 with Win 8.1 and Mint 17 KDE.

Thank you for hijacking it! (Was not into the privacy debate!) (And this is a Linux thread, after all.)

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Before things get too political, I'm going to hijack Gregg's thread a bit and talk about my latest project: dual-booting a brand-new Toshiba P55t-B5154 with Win 8.1 and Mint 17 KDE.

So far the going is easy, since I only did this with a Satellite S55t what, a year and a half ago. I've had to log into Windows so often these last couple days, I almost have the password memorized now. :/

So, anyway, I have got Windows up and running, created a Recovery drive ($9 16GB USB drive from Wal-mart), shrunk the primary volume, then restarted into the Toshiba Setup Utility for UEFI and turned off Secure Boot.

I have Mint 17.1 on a (mint colored, coincidentally) 4GB USB drive, and booted up. Since this is KDE, and the KDE Partition Manager is unfamiliar (and uncooperative), I opened up a terminal as root and installed my preferred tool:

apt-get install gparted

This is a Live iteration of the OS still, so that won't stick around after I reboot the machine. Sometimes that kind of thing can be convenient.

I used gparted to squeeze the Windows volume down even further (it's been my observation that Windows will only shrink down to half the capacity of the volume it started with), I don't need a 1TB volume, but gave it a generous 500GB (too generous, but I have plenty of space on a 2TB drive) and used the space I just freed up for a 500GB (NTFS) data volume to share between my two OSs.

I then created 200GB root and /home partitions (and swap-- don't forget swap) for my Mint install, and began the installation process.

The reason why I created the Recovery drive is insurance against me accidentally overwriting my Windows volume, because I do need to have that for work on occasion (or when I want to take a day off unexpectedly... damn you Silverlight). Also, shrinking a volume using gparted is not without risk...


So... this was the easy part. Next I am going to install rEFInd and try and make this dual-boot setup compatible with Secure Boot. Because I am both stupid and a glutton for punishment.

Question: I was thinking of getting a new computer with Windows 7 on it and dual booting. I have very little of your technical capability. Should I even be thinking of giving it a whirl or am I asking for trouble?

[Gregg Bell]

I have a Dell Latitude D505 laptop that I compose on. I like it. It's fast. It's got an older (4.2 something) LO on it but I'm comfortable using it and you guys have assured me that the transference from the 4.2 to the 4.4 (on Xubuntu 15.04) is not problematic.

So here's the deal. The laptop only has like 12.04 on it. It will NOT upgrade. I'm thinking because it's so slow. In fact, I wanted to put Dropbox on there, and it wouldn't even open the Ubuntu Software Center.

So can I put a lighter distro on there and perhaps make it work faster? (I don't know why it's so slow. It is wired and had 15GB space available.) Or should I be thinking of getting a new laptop?

And I would really like to keep the laptop on the same distro as my desktops.

And back to Dropbox. I was able to install it on the laptop via the command line. The icon showed up in the toolbar, but then it did not sync with the other computers and the icon disappeared.

When I check in the command line if Dropbox is there, it says it isn't. So then I follow the command line's instructions for installing it and after I'm done, it still says it isn't there.

Any ideas?

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Question: I was thinking of getting a new computer with Windows 7 on it and dual booting. I have very little of your technical capability. Should I even be thinking of giving it a whirl or am I asking for trouble?

It's not that difficult. I have more detailed instructions here. YMMV, but for the most part everything should be similar for most machines.

My problem right now is changing the default boot to something other than Windows.

... of course, I am doing things the hard way.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

It's not that difficult. I have more detailed instructions url=http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=194775&sid=70a57959af5baee16b c70f31581e1de7]here[/url]. YMMV, but for the most part everything should be similar for most machines.

My problem right now is changing the default boot to something other than Windows.

... of course, I am doing things the hard way.

Thanks Dngrsone. Ugh. Maybe some day. Thanks for the link. I saved it.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

My problem right now is changing the default boot to something other than Windows.

Can't you edit GRUB? Grub Customizer is a good GUI.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Can't you edit GRUB? Grub Customizer is a good GUI.

Ummm...

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

My problem right now is changing the default boot to something other than Windows.

... of course, I am doing things the hard way.

Context is a wonderful thing.

Further backtracking to the top of the page reveals dngrsone is attempting to get rEFInd+Secure Boot working, for the sheer masochistic delight.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Ummm...

Context is a wonderful thing.

Further backtracking to the top of the page reveals dngrsone is attempting to get rEFInd+Secure Boot working, for the sheer masochistic delight.

Oh, I get it. Like juggling, only with chainsaws to make it interesting.-)