General Linux install question

[tinpanalley]

I have an aging Windows laptop. It has, naturally, its Windows license attached to it. I'm thinking I'll probably get a smoother experience if it's just Linux on there instead of the current setup of running Linux virtuall over Windows. If I wipe everything on the laptop and install Linux fresh but ever want to return to Windows, will a fresh Windows install of the same flavour (Pro 10) always recognise the machine and let me reactivate the license? Or does wiping for Linux effectively make Microsoft forget it was ever a Windows machine?

[LloydLynx]

The license stays attached to the hardware. Even if the computer has been running Linux for years, a fresh Windows installation will recognize that the hardware has a license attached to it once it connect to the internet and can talk to Microsoft's activation servers.

[RollyShed]

14 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

I have an aging Windows laptop.... I'm thinking I'll probably get a smoother experience if it's just Linux on there instead of the current setup of running Linux virtuall over Windows.

I have done dozens of laptops from old to not quite so old. For most of them I get the owner to buy an SSD (usually 250GB) and I install Linux Mint on it. I then copy across via a USB - SATA cable, all their files and folders. They can then put the Windows disk on the shelf as a backup if ever needed.

 

The SSD decreases the boot time, usually from 2 - 8 minutes boot with Windows to about 25 - 40 seconds with Linux on the SSD.

 

What is the laptop, make, model, date?

[tinpanalley]

8 hours ago, RollyShed said:

I have done dozens of laptops from old to not quite so old. For most of them I get the owner to buy an SSD (usually 250GB) and I install Linux Mint on it. I then copy across via a USB - SATA cable, all their files and folders. They can then put the Windows disk on the shelf as a backup if ever needed.

 

The SSD decreases the boot time, usually from 2 - 8 minutes boot with Windows to about 25 - 40 seconds with Linux on the SSD.

 

What is the laptop, make, model, date?

That's a great idea just installing to an extra SSD. That way you can test without breaking anything.

This laptop is a Lenovo Y580.

[RollyShed]

2 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

That's a great idea just installing to an extra SSD. That way you can test without breaking anything.

This laptop is a Lenovo Y580.

Not an extra, a replacement.

Lenovo Y580.
Supposedly originally 1TB of disk. Do you actually need that? 250GB is usually enough for a simple travelling laptop. 500GB if you want to spend the money.
4GB of RAM, enough for most things.

2014, a reasonable age for making the installation simple.

 

How to do it -

After removing the battery, not a bad idea, it is 2 screws to get into it. One of the better and simpler laptops.

 

The worst laptop I had to do was 20 screws on the underside, 5 under the keyboard and a "crowbar" to leaver it apart enough to get at the disk.

 

What you also need to do is download a Linux Mint Cinnamon iso and burn the iso on to a USB stick. With Windows, Rufus is often suggested to use to do it.

With a Linux Mint system it is really easy as a right click on an iso file and about third the way down the menu is "Make Bootable USB Stick".

[tinpanalley]

51 minutes ago, RollyShed said:

Not an extra, a replacement.

 

What I meant was I can keep the Windows install as is and use my extra SSD to test a Linux distro. But it won't by mint, I can't stand the way it looks.

[RollyShed]

2 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

What I meant was I can keep the Windows install as is and use my extra SSD to test a Linux distro. But it won't by mint, I can't stand the way it looks.

If you want to just test, a USB stick would allow that. It depends how "deeply" you want to test.

 

Mint comes with an office suite, web browser and a lot of other useful items by default. Then there are a lot of other items you might want and simply install.

 

Do you want to always have to use a password when you boot up? No. If no, then tell it when installing, no password on boot up. The same for the Screensave.

 

As for Mint looks, do you mean the black desktop with M in the middle? If so I never have that. About the closest "looks" to the whole thing would be Windows 7. I do set things to my preferences, the folders down the left side are Home (= C:), and links to folders in Home - Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos.

The Task Bar (Panel) has the usual things on it that you'd have in Windows.

My screen / desktop background is a picture of an evening scene. You can put what ever you want there.

Folders on the desktop are green but you can easily change those colours, easy to set up what you want.

 

Basically if you can't stand Mint, as you want it, you can't stand any desktop and should probably give up computer use.

[RollyShed]

11 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

But it won't by mint, I can't stand the way it looks.

How does Mint look? OK, check this out, 12 pages worth of desktops and that's for just half a year -

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=214&t=364479

[tinpanalley]

6 hours ago, RollyShed said:

How does Mint look? OK, check this out, 12 pages worth of desktops and that's for just half a year -

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=214&t=364479

Wow... you really took this personally. 
When I say "the look" I mean that in the short time I've spent with it, and watching videos online I don't like the UI, basic menu layouts, toolbars, windows... I'm aware that you can skin or theme any distro. I just haven't liked the UI and UX. And before you get upset with me about that, the very REASON there are various distros, as everyone with Linux on forums has been very quick to tell me is so that anyone with any preference can have something they like. I can also line you up a whole bunch of people online and that I know personally who tell me that jumping to mint as a first time user isn't something they agree with. I think the point of linux is do what you want.
Anyway, this thread wasn't about this, so thank you for the input but we've gotten off topic and that drives me nuts as a reader on forums.

[Ralphred]

3 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

and that drives me nuts as a reader on forums.

Indeed. Forum rules prevent me from going into minute detail, but there are 3rd party tools that will extract all your "windows licenses" from installed software and present them in such a way as to be able to let you reuse them, but they often fall into the category of "malware" as far is windows defender is concerned. If you want to just swap out the HDD, then yeah, when you put it back and as far as doze is concerned you just haven't booted in a while.

 

On 9/18/2022 at 8:43 PM, tinpanalley said:

an aging Windows laptop

If looks could kill, my X220 just committed homicide. That aside, I've breathed life into apparently ageing hardware using Linux many times, my server is an old (and it's only just starting to show) 2.6G Xeon r200 with (originally) 2Gig of ram, but it's headless so it's very insulated from "modern desktop bloat".

As your machine ages, if you are mindful of what software you use under Linux, it does so like a fine wine and just gets faster as software becomes more optimised and updated.

21 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

I can't stand the way it looks.

Last bit of advice; function over form: You have to go very deep into the "minimalist" rabbit hole before you don't have the tools to make any Linux based desktop look aesthetically pleasing to you, but it is a consideration, as post major upgrade you may find yourself having to make it "look nice" again. So if you found that XDE and YDE were both good for your workflow, and you found them both intuitive enough that your little sister/niece could use it to show your her holiday videos, but YDE looked nicer, that's a fair choice. Conversely to swim upstream into a DE you don't find friendly just because the alternates don't float your aesthetic boat is a bit short sighted. Read: Making it look nice is normally easier than adding functionality.

 

Fortunately your machine is of an age you can expect hardware to be "it just works" levels of supported (especially from that mfgr too!) that you could slap Debian on it, and install almost all the desktop environments on offer to see which is the best fit FOR YOU. Personally, I think gnome sucks huge putrefied donkey b*lls, but I'd never malign someone for running and using it (well, not much), because that's the choice they have made and their reasons behind that choice are not going to be the same as mine. Just play around with different desktop environments in Debian without the committal to running it "full time", then once you have narrowed it down to "X or Y", find some distro that focuses on that and maybe benefit from the "latest and greatest" upgrades offered for that DE, or don't because again the choice is yours.

 

EDIT: Don't equate live CD/USB "performance" with live system performance, they aren't always correlative, in fact some "lagging" during LiveCD boot is normally indicative of distro devs "covering all the angles" instead of just dumping you to an error prompt if/when things go wrong. In this vein, reinstalling isn't usually the way to fix things in Linux, it's just a way of kicking the can down the road until the issue re-emerges, learn what the problem is and learn how to fix it, then continue your journey, don't start again...

[RollyShed]

4 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

I can also line you up a whole bunch of people online and that I know personally who tell me that jumping to mint as a first time user isn't something they agree with.

Do they live with someone who did that?

That was after MS destroyed her Windows 10 computer, wiped it. Someone who uses her computer to do things with, not play games. Does accounts, documents, emails, learns the violin from, etc. etc.

Have any of them done 50+ Linux Mint installations?

 

OK, that's my personal experience with Linux Mint users.