Can't install linux

[lsemmens]

Your comment has me smiling, nomeat. Lack of nVidia support was what kept me away from Linux for too long. It was fine with one monitor, but the moment you'd plug in a monitor that had a different resolution, it went downhill very fast. That said, Mint 18.3 works fine, no matter what I throw at it. One of my computers has a wide screen monitor coupled with an old 4:3 monitor, another has A wide screen and a TV working side by side now. They just worked "out of the box". So nVidia support has come a long way since Jaunty Jackalope (I think was the last Ubuntu variant I tried)

I'm with you though, Linux has matured in the last couple of years and the only time you have trouble is if you stray off the "straight and narrow" and ask the program to do something that man others have not needed. Like buying a bus ticket and hoping to catch a plane with it. Like other operating systems, support for older hardware is also problematic, however Linux has the enviable reputation of not being as fussy as another OS I could name, and performs more than adequately on waaaay underspecced machines for the alternative.

[Uncle Fester]

Ha ha ha ha Shirley you jest ?

Not at all.

The last three installs I did with Kubuntu 18.04 did not require the slightest bit of tweaking.

That was on a Dell Laptop(yes, Dell is very Linux friendly), a very exotic Chinese mini PC and an ancient Apple Mac mini. All three have dual boot layouts.

The Extreme Tux Racer game runs smooth on all three (that is how I test the graphic card's functionality), sound perfect, Wifi flawless, everything works out of the box.

Important when you install is to tick the option to download and install third party drivers and propriety software and of course be connected to net at that time.

Maybe you have an old harddrive lying around to swap with what you have right now and give it a try. After all the work you have gone through, that 20-30 minutes(which happens mostly unattended) is not going to hurt.

Of course that will not change much about your attempts to force Linux to run Windows applications. Wine is VERY hit and miss. Better use Virtual Box.

[loopyloo]

Not at all.

The last three installs I did with Kubuntu 18.04 did not require the slightest bit of tweaking.

That was on a Dell Laptop(yes, Dell is very Linux friendly), a very exotic Chinese mini PC and an ancient Apple Mac mini. All three have dual boot layouts.

The Extreme Tux Racer game runs smooth on all three (that is how I test the graphic card's functionality), sound perfect, Wifi flawless, everything works out of the box.

Important when you install is to tick the option to download and install third party drivers and propriety software and of course be connected to net at that time.

Maybe you have an old harddrive lying around to swap with what you have right now and give it a try. After all the work you have gone through, that 20-30 minutes(which happens mostly unattended) is not going to hurt.

Of course that will not change much about your attempts to force Linux to run Windows applications. Wine is VERY hit and miss. Better use Virtual Box.

Nah don't need another drive. These machines are for experiment so I can just write over them.
Might give that virtual box a go though.

PS Oh and I did tick that box for 3rd party drivers etc.

[loopyloo]

Nah don't need another drive. These machines are for experiment so I can just write over them.
Might give that virtual box a go though.

PS Oh and I did tick that box for 3rd party drivers etc.

Ok so which one do I choose ?
Virtualbox, Virtualbox (Base), Virtualbox-dkms, Virtualbox-ext-pack or Virtualbox-guest-dkms ?
This never gets any easier.

(Crikey, answering myself now)

[Uncle Fester]

Ok so which one do I choose ?
Virtualbox, Virtualbox (Base), Virtualbox-dkms, Virtualbox-ext-pack or Virtualbox-guest-dkms ?
This never gets any easier.

I always used the normal Virtualbox and installed the guest plugins. Issues can occur with detecting USB devices. I have not used it for ages as I always install a Windows dual boot. For XP I then run wmware on the Win7 or 10 installs these days. Try Virtualbox, may work better now.

[loopyloo]

I always used the normal Virtualbox and installed the guest plugins. Issues can occur with detecting USB devices. I have not used it for ages as I always install a Windows dual boot. For XP I then run wmware on the Win7 or 10 installs these days. Try Virtualbox, may work better now.

I installed virtualbox then installed win7 into it.
Do I treat it the same as a normal computer ? and activate win7, download drivers, do windows updates etc etc ?

Oh and you're right about the USB. It doesn't see a flash drive. What's the trick fix for that ?

[lsemmens]

I just installed Mint 19 on my lappy. I started downloading it over tea, backed up my data and did a new install. After all the customising and updates I am now typing on Firefox in Mint 19. Absolutely no issues. Given that I did a lot of other stuff whilst loading, 3 hours ain't too bad and, of course, I'm not home with my usual stuff, too, so am working out of my briefcase.

[Uncle Fester]

I installed virtualbox then installed win7 into it.
Do I treat it the same as a normal computer ? and activate win7, download drivers, do windows updates etc etc ?

Oh and you're right about the USB. It doesn't see a flash drive. What's the trick fix for that ?

sudo adduser $USER vboxusers, log out and log in again.

I would also install the Guest additions and extension pack. Without it you got only USB 1.0 speed.


Yes, you treat like it like any Windows. However drivers(graphic) are emulated with the Virtual machine. You shouldn't need to do anything there. You won't get great speeds, so not for heavy gaming.
I only use virtual Windows mostly for my old favourites that fly even with these generic graphics. I am talking partly pre Xp stuff. I assume you don't know the Starwars racer. The speed feeling was insane even on a Win98 machine.

[loopyloo]

sudo adduser $USER vboxusers, log out and log in again.

I would also install the Guest additions and extension pack. Without it you got only USB 1.0 speed.


Yes, you treat like it like any Windows. However drivers(graphic) are emulated with the Virtual machine. You shouldn't need to do anything there. You won't get great speeds, so not for heavy gaming.
I only use virtual Windows mostly for my old favourites that fly even with these generic graphics. I am talking partly pre Xp stuff. I assume you don't know the Starwars racer. The speed feeling was insane even on a Win98 machine.

Yep got the usb working.
Windows will not go full screen. I installed the driver for the monitor but when I attempted to install the xp video driver it says computer does not meet the minimum requirements.
and you're right about slow....internet through firefox on windows was far worse than dialup. Like 5mins just to load a page.

[Uncle Fester]

Yep got the usb working.
Windows will not go full screen. I installed the driver for the monitor but when I attempted to install the xp video driver it says computer does not meet the minimum requirements.
and you're right about slow....internet through firefox on windows was far worse than dialup. Like 5mins just to load a page.

Sounds more like you are not assigning enough memory to the Virtual Machine.

Windows 7 is very resource hungry and needs at least 1GB of free RAM for itself + you may need to assign (more)memory for the emulated graphics.

Assign too much and your host machine starts chopping around in the swap partition, which slows things massively.

You must not forget that your computer needs to deal with two OS at the same time and if you are doing this on old lower spec'ed machines Win7 is a no go.
I would suggest to use WinXP, that runs much faster on all machines and can survive with only 256MB RAM.


I personally have never installed Win7 on Virtual box.

[loopyloo]

Sounds more like you are not assigning enough memory to the Virtual Machine.

Windows 7 is very resource hungry and needs at least 1GB of free RAM for itself + you may need to assign (more)memory for the emulated graphics.

Assign too much and your host machine starts chopping around in the swap partition, which slows things massively.

You must not forget that your computer needs to deal with two OS at the same time and if you are doing this on old lower spec'ed machines Win7 is a no go.
I would suggest to use WinXP, that runs much faster on all machines and can survive with only 256MB RAM.


I personally have never installed Win7 on Virtual box.

What would you say is an adequate amount of memory for the emulated graphics ?

[Uncle Fester]

What would you say is an adequate amount of memory for the emulated graphics ?

As much as you can

128MB would be painful minimum with Win7.
You need to be sure you have all the add-ons installed to get higher and may have to research the net.

You should first think about what you REALLY want to do with it.
Firefox is quite an energy hungry browser. It is slow and slow here converts to it using a lot of resources.
A light weight browser like QupZilla might solve your problems.

Also is there any point in running Firefox in a Windows Virtual machine when you can run it much safer and more efficiently in the Linux host?

I thought you wanted it for some paint program you are used to using.
How has the virtual machine responded to that?

Keep in mind that your Host requires a bit more than what your Guest OS can work with.
For a Win7 guest you really need a computer with 4GB of RAM. 2GB for the Host, 1.5GB for the guest and 256MB each for Video RAM, unless the host has dedicated Video RAM then you can add more to the host.

As said Win XP will run much better with minimal resources. 512 of RAM and 64 VRAM and it should already fly for the simpler stuff.

[loopyloo]

As much as you can

128MB would be painful minimum with Win7.
You need to be sure you have all the add-ons installed to get higher and may have to research the net.

You should first think about what you REALLY want to do with it.
Firefox is quite an energy hungry browser. It is slow and slow here converts to it using a lot of resources.
A light weight browser like QupZilla might solve your problems.

Also is there any point in running Firefox in a Windows Virtual machine when you can run it much safer and more efficiently in the Linux host?

I thought you wanted it for some paint program you are used to using.
How has the virtual machine responded to that?

Keep in mind that your Host requires a bit more than what your Guest OS can work with.
For a Win7 guest you really need a computer with 4GB of RAM. 2GB for the Host, 1.5GB for the guest and 256MB each for Video RAM, unless the host has dedicated Video RAM then you can add more to the host.

As said Win XP will run much better with minimal resources. 512 of RAM and 64 VRAM and it should already fly for the simpler stuff.

Um, I used firefox to download paint.net.
Yes it had 4GB of ram and I've left 2 for the host. Don't know about the video. I couldn't find out how much is onboard but I suspect it's 128. It was previously set at 24, I increased it to 64.

PS Oh and pain.net seems to work ok, just a small amount of lag with the mouse.

[Uncle Fester]

PS Oh and pain.net seems to work ok, just a small amount of lag with the mouse.

There you go. That was what I was hoping for

[tristen]

...Yes it had 4GB of ram and I've left 2 for the host. Don't know about the video. I couldn't find out how much is onboard but I suspect it's 128. It was previously set at 24, I increased it to 64...

Get a copy of CPUID from .

It will tell you all about the computer hardware (processor, cahes, mainboard, memory, spd, graphics, etc.

I have used it for years and find it invaluable for determining what hardware is installed.

[loopyloo]

There you go. That was what I was hoping for

Before I downloaded paint.net, I downloaded Everest to another computer and transferred it by usb to the virtual machine's windows 7. After installing it didn't show the info I needed, but now there's another problem....I downloaded CPUZ as suggested (from that other computer) and now when I put the usb in, it doesn't register in windows 7 but instead the linux file explorer pops up over windows showing the drive. What the heck ?

[Jma]

sudo lshw -c video in Terminal should give you graphics card info.

[loopyloo]

sudo lshw -c video in Terminal should give you graphics card info.

Yep that gives some info but unfortunately doesn't say ram size.

I found another one on the net , lspci -vnn ...... is appears the video is 256M, gee I don't know about that one.

[loopyloo]

Just noticed if I go File > Preferences, in virtualbox it just shuts down.
What's that all about ?

[Uncle Fester]

Are you trying the change preferences while a virtual machine is running?
That you can't do.
I can't remember it ever shutting down though but just shutdown the windows. THEN close and restart Virtualbox, you know the standard solution to 90% of all IT problems