SkullHex2Windows 10 keeps bugging me to use a Microsoft account
djtechwww.debian.org
WashedOverIs there a newbie way to install it? It looks pretty convoluted…
The best way to install is to use a LIVE edition. This is useful beacuse you have a nice installer intergrated and you can try it before you have to install the OS on the computer.
For download of this edition, see www.debian.org/CD/live
From there, if you come from Windows, I would raccomend KDE, as it is stable and customizable. Search “KDE screenshot” to see what it looks like, and if you like it.
If you want this, here the direct URL to download: …debian.org/…/debian-live-12.2.0-amd64-kde.iso
Debian should also be lite enough for older machines, and it is the most stable distro I’ve tried. With this OS, there are already web browser, media player, office suite,… but you can also download Steam, emulators and lots of software
For help you can DM me.
From experience, this is a stable streamlined process that is now easier than installing Windows.
Been some times since I installed Windows, but Calamares is a great tool
Thanks! I’ve installed, Ubuntu, KDE, a real old Red Hat, and most recently Linux Mint. Usually dual boot with Windows with either separate SSDs or on the same SSD. Thankfully they have come along ways and you don’t need to rebuild the GRUB every time windows did a update.
I’ve seen Debian is the king of Linux Distros but whenever I’ve looked into a install it seems like a beast. I’ll check out these links!
It’s easier than installing Windows. The problem is that someone hasn’t already done it for you.
ChaoticNeutralCzechYes. Did you know that you cannot partition disks in a GUI while installing Windows? You can only select partition to install to or format the entire disk, all advanced actions must be done with
diskpart commands in Command Prompt (Ctrl+F10).
BypassNRO is actually an NT command script, not a DOS batch file. It’s actually a .cmd, which actually sets a registry value and reboots the system (probably the only bit of Windows I am aware of that is open source).
Also the Panther (the codename for the boot.wim installer) Setup has some really basic partitioning tools. You can create a smaller partition, delete, format, and that’s it. You have to use DiskPart or Disk Management to do more.
BypassNRO is actually an NT command script, not a DOS batch file. It’s actually a .cmd, which actually sets a registry value and reboots the system (probably the only bit of the Windows core I am aware of that is open source).
Also the Panther (the codename for the boot.wim installer) Setup has some really basic partitioning tools. You can create a smaller partition, delete, format, and that’s it. You have to use DiskPart or Disk Management to do more.
(accidentally deleted this)
Thanks. Your earlier comment is still visible to me, please try deleting it again.
Anyway, I installed both Windows 10 and 11 last month on clean drives and I remember not being able to create multiple partitions in the GUI. Is there a difference between editions perhaps?
Or just wait until you are booted into Windows and use the Diskmanager.
Honestly, these complains from you Linuxians are always just so dumb and not the big arguments you think they are.
Nope nope nope. This is actually more pain.
Why? Shrinking the C: drive is difficult or damn near impossible when Windows is installed on it, which is why I always install Windows to a smaller partition (120 GiB if I don’t want to install modern games) and move user folders to D:, and then leave some space for E: or Linux.
Disk Management will only let you shrink the disk by a very small amount. This is because Windows has a lot of “unmoveable files”. You need to disable recovery, virtual memory and hibernation to get a chance at shrinking that partition, and you may need to run all kinds of defrag commands. I did this on 4 PCs and the first 3 times, this was enough.
In the 4th case, just this week, I became sick and got stuck at my grandma’s place far from home. I needed a Linux installation badly, but there was only a laptop with 40 out of 220 GiB free after cleanup, and just a single partition (with Windows preinstalled, of course). It did not want to budge and reported 0 MB shrinkable space. I tried every trick mentioned online before resorting to buying Aomei Partition Assistant. It queued the action of shrinking the drive by 20 GiB (alleged minimum for Mint) and estimated 18 minutes to complete the operation. It told me it cannot do that while Windows was running so it gave me the option to use WinPE or PreOS mode. WinPE did not work so I retried with PreOS. The computer booted into VGA text mode and this appeared on the screen:
============== AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode ============== The program is executing, please wait... Operation 1 of 1 Resizing Partition Hard Disk: 1 Drive Letter: C: File System: NTFS Partition Label: OS Size: 220.46GB => 200.45GB Total:0 %, Current:0 %This was on the screen for about an hour, and the PC was apparently under load with fans spinning. The program might be stuck but could how could I tell? I eventually forced the computer to shut down. I hadn’t made a backup because I did not have an external drive (would have installed Linux on that, instead). Was my grandma’s only computer ruined? Would I be stuck for 2 weeks without a computer?
Luckily, the PreOS program ultimately had no effect on the drive, and I managed to negotiate a refund from Aomei. Then I realized I could boot into Recovery Mode and try diskpart from Command Prompt there, which miraculously worked. Also pretty tense because it did not give any indication of progress, just threw control back to me when it finished. I was relieved when I successfully booted into Windows on that shrunk partition. Other than having to enter Windows Safe Mode to disable RAID storage in BIOS, the Linux installation went fine.
Or you just don’t partition at all.
Never had a problem with it in the last 15 years on Windows. You can usually fix the OS with some command lines. And if you can’t, you just reinstall and Windows will move all your files into a Windows.old folder.
That’s not good use of space, storage is still expensive where I live (partly because of piracy tax). A simple copy to “Windows.old” will not save the bootloader so it won’t really work as a backup – it’s dead space now. Your OS partition (and the EFI one) must be copied bitwise if you need to back them up (but as you correctly mentioned, you probably don’t).
It makes a lot of sense to separate installation and data, especially when the PC will get used by old people (who are more likely to screw up something badly) or power users. And making backups of data is as easy as robocopy D: F:\Backup /mir. Yes, I also have lots of experience using and managing Windows PCs in my family and work.
Check out ubuntu if you want something thats easy to install. It’s very popular, it’s based on Debian and it has corporate backing but no spyware
It is Linux, so no
q47txlinuxmint.com or fedoraproject.org