Well, I got a leak in my roof, a flood at the front door, a leak in my gum boots and some wet insulation material.

Where are your pictures currently located?   What device?

If it is computer to computer, use the SD card or jump drive method then once they are COPIED OVER TO THE JUMP DRIVE/SD CARD, THEN COPIED FROM THE JUMP DRIVE/SD CARD TO YOUR NEW MACHINE your JUMP DRIVE/SD CARD then acts as your emergency backup in case of some really bad issue taking place with your new machine and your old machine, with both of them packing it in at the same time.  

Don't laugh, Microsoft can foul them both up with nightly updates that go very very wrong all at the same time.    You could be very happy to have the pics on a jump drive right about then.

MM, did you ever receive the Linux Mint Mate 19.1 DVD I sent to you?

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After 10 days, it should be there.   I know the mail gets messed up by the Christmas rush, the Christmas days off and then the New Year's holiday, but 10 days should be enough time for it to trickle on through the post office.

Let me know if it is lost, I can start a new disk headed your way ......


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New shipment was sent Jan 1    If the old shipment in the clear case is damaged or is something stupid is wrong with it like postage due just refuse it knowing the new one is on the way.

Get all the old data you want off the 17" laptop machine, pictures, etc. and COPY the data files on a jump drive so they can be copied to wherever you want them and also be preserved afterwards using the jump drive as a data safe.

Remember to charge your old laptop up all the way and hook up whatever mouse or USB hub or whatever else you like to use before cold booting the machine with the DVD in the drive.   Make sure the 17" laptop's WiFi is light lit and your router is on so the machine will go ahead and set that portion up as well too.

You can unhook things and turn things off after it is running, and they will remain set up & working properly for whenever you want to use them by plugging the stuff back in.

During installation routine, pick a VERY SHORT dirt simple easy to type password and remember to tell Mint to "take the whole hard drive" and you will get a brand new Linux HD format and a complete Linux hard drive file system installed, a completely modern system that doesn't require maintenance, file defrag nor re-compression nor any form of virus scanning.    

Servers use this sort of hard drive system for a reason, you know  ......  a server needs to run 24/7 for like 10 years without needing attention so that is what the Linux guys built.



Getting into the DVD cardboard package ---- look for the dotted side edge on the cardboard square and use a pair of scissors to trim off the last 1/8" of that edge to free the disk without damaging it.   Take care not to clip the edge of the disk.   Sticking a knife in there to slice it open isn't a good idea because you could scratch up or gouge the DVD read surface.  

Once you have trimmed most of the dotted edge you can rip open the remaining cardboard if need be, as it will be very weak and easy to tear along the dotted line.   Once again, take care not to clip the edge of the disk

MM, I do that too, mislay something and then have to ask the wife where I left it.

Sending Anders off has got to be hard, and is likely to get more hard as it sinks in.

Sending Anders to the Airforce is good and can form a good base to his life going forward.

Yep, I would say Anders is as far ahead of the game starting out as I was when I was pushing 35 --- of course that was back when some of this stuff got invented .....

 

Post when you get the 17" laptop charged up and are ready to give it a Linux Mint Mate 19.1 install attempt.

You are going for a total cold boot on a laptop, so you will put the DVD in, shut the drive then turn the machine OFF, pull the charger to laptop connector, then pull the battery and give the laptop a few minutes to completely drain whatever capacitors etc. are charged up, then put the battery back in and turn it back on.    You want all of Windows to be dead, power drained away and totally turned off when the Mint Install boot cycle starts.

Mint Install should find the DVD drive and start up a SOMEWHAT SLOW DETECTION CYCLE, carefully determining what hardware you have and teeing up the bits and pieces of 19.1 Mint OS software to match your machine exactly.   This partially occurs both before and during the full install as the machine has to be recognized pretty well to get the desktop going.

The machine will boot into the stock Mint Mate desktop and it will have an Install Linux Mint icon on the home screen.   Click that to start up the Mint Install software.   Stand by to answer questions as the machine gets to the various stages.

If you get asked specific questions or asked for special permissions during this detection portion, POST THEM as they assume you know more about the Linux Mint OS than you currently know.

You can look the questions up on the Linux Mint internet forums to go get some instant help.   Go to the Mint forums and post what shows up on the screen and you will get a selection of answers for older version that may be helpful.  

You may see some of the responses come from the Ubuntu Forums, this is OK because Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS versions.

And don't worry, if you go ahead and try something and it doesn't work out, no biggie, just start over from a battery out of the machine total cold boot with the DVD sitting in the drive with the door closed again ......

When you start seeing time zone choices and dual boot choices, go slow, pick the right time zone and TELL MINT TO TAKE OVER THE WHOLE HARD DRIVE 100% FOR A FULL COMPLETE LINUX MINT INSTALLATION.   Remember, no dual boot.   0% Mickey ....

The thing that screws up most newbies is leaving any form of MS dual boot set up and good 'ol MS still visits the machine at night intentionally messing things up over time ......   This represents 85% of all newbie issues, BTW.    

Mickey likes to reserve over half your hard drive and 75% of your systems resources for Windows to use -- even it it isn't supposed to be running.    

So, to make things simple, get Mickey off the machine, totally.

Things that might well cause MS to destroy your installation disk or your machine's file system are not going to be a problem for a Linux only machine --- you might get a kernel panic and a detailed message telling you what the error was, not some blue screen of death with no usable information about what just took place and a machine that will not boot.  

MS just loves to invalidate your installation media then Mickey tells you to go buy a new one from the Microsoft Store --- you are obviously a software pirate after all ....

My bet is that all proceeds normally .... and you get your first Linux Mint Mate install with no problems.


P.S.   The Mint Online manuals are here if you want them ......           https://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php

jcstokes

This is my "Old Vista Computer" , so I've got nothing to loose and everything to gain !
Going "TOTAL" Linux is a  simple decision to my situation.
But
enough about my Christmas Computer ,   WHAT DID EVERYBODY GET ?


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