Live USB users should keep in mind that they are NOT completely isolated from the HDD in their machine . It can be accessed by the Live distro and therefore , so can the registry in the case of Windows .... ... the same goes for drivers and .dll files ! A fairly well-known example is running Ubuntu from a live USB , which can cause the system clock to change by an hour .
I've just tried UUMATE and didn't experience the wifi "bug". Maybe it's a Sony related thing. I'm still eager to test Mint to see how it goes with my ATi video card...
One of my machines is a Sony and I've run countless Live USBs on it without problems ( apart from the minor Ubuntu quirk ). Many Linux distros give trouble with drivers , which is one of the reasons Mint is such a star performer . I have still never succeeded in getting Lucid Puppy to connect to the Wi-Fi but it was a side project anyway , so I left it.
Exactly my point. The kernel might be the same, but the scripts are created and tweaked by different people, that's why I prefer to test these distros in order to find the less "buggy" one. SolydXK looks good, hwinfo in console showed the presence of ATi videocard, but the Device Driver Manager wouldn't start. Probably installing it on a HDD/USB the DDM would work, but in live mode, trying to launch it, it gave the out of "Device Manager already started". Also, SolydXK did not provide a script in the live session to make a persistent partition, like other distros tested until now. I wish they had. Moving on to Kubuntu-14.04.3...
Mutoid: I know about that link, I've done some research prior to "dive" into this, but still I want it...the easy way with a click.
Kubuntu doesn't have a persistent mode, unless you install it on USB just like on a HDD, thus it can't be called "live". Works very nice installed on the USB, but the ATi driver problem persists. The hwinfo reports the card being present in the system, the driver installs fine, but doesn't detect the card. Moving on to Linux Mint 17.2...
Just did mine with Startup Disk Creator - set a 1GB persistence file - installed it from the Software Mngr. (NB make sure to erase before creating as it does not automatically overwrite a previous MBR and will fail to boot ) All settings, themes and apps preserved - unbelievably easy (beats the pants off making a custom WinPE image...!)
Ignore that message , and carry on regardless .... all will be good ! That message often includes something like .... " will attempt to install using xxxxx" .... where xxxxx is a closely related earlier version . Which simply means that the LiLi developer hasn't yet caught up with the endless backlog of new versions ..... ....they have my sympathies !!! The kernel will be the right one , and so will the Syslinux ..... and that's all that matters ! I'm so used to seeing that message that it no longer registers in my mind Edit :- If LiLi isn't doing what you want , try Pendrive Linux ( aka UUI ). It also includes an option to create a persistent file ( but only for Ubuntu derived distros , and Mint is one ) IMPORTANT I've noticed that with these utilities it is sometimes necessary to first right-click then choose "Run as Admin " .... even if you are logged in as Admin ! .... in Windows anyway .
Out of all of the Linux distros I've tried (about 15 in all) I like Linux-Mint and Chromixium the best. Linux-Mint because it is the easiest to use, no typing commands if you don't want to, and it's very Windows like. Hey I know how to type on a command line on a computer. I started out in 1984 using an HP-150 touchscreen computer and MS-Dos 2.11. But I've come to like a graphical interface and the least command typing the better. Chromixium because it's a Chromebook clone and I wanted to try a Chromebook without buying hardware. It's very tied to the Googleverse. I also like Linux distros based on Ubuntu, because they seem faster on my hardware and they all have installed very smoothly, play well with grub and other distros and have all recognized all of my laptop hardware.
That is quite selection to choose from ! Do all of them show on the initial boot screen ? I didn't know you could have that many bootable partitions , but I can't remember why I might think that -
Yes they all appear on the boot screen (see photo above). You can only have 4 Primary partitions on a hard drive, but if you add 3 Primary and 1 extended Partition, you can add quite a number of logical drives within the extended partition that are all bootable. I don't remember the allowed number of logical drives, but I have added at least 10 and they all worked. If anyone is interested in detailed steps on how to create a multi-boot hard disk with Linux distros, let me know and I will post the steps here, with illustrations.
Yes , full agreement here . I've tried out literally dozens of distros over the past year or so , and I just keep coming back to Mint , and I am also quite happy working in Terminal so that isn't a deciding factor for me . Apart from a few highly specialized distros , I haven't found anything that I can't do more easily and quickly than I can in Mint.
UUI & LiLi failed to create an USB with Kubuntu live with persistence, thus I will use Kubuntu live in one session and do the mods I want to see how it goes. L.E. kubuntu-15.04-desktop-amd64 failed to launch in live mode, thus I used kubuntu-14.04.3-desktop-amd64. I'm not big fan of plasma 5 at all which Kubuntu 15.04 uses. I must say I am pretty well impressed by Kubuntu's ability to detect and offer to install the correct driver for my ATi video card. So far it's been the only distro capable of that. Software center works well, everything should be very easy for a Windows user who wants to move to linux. I want to try Mint...
@Antilope: I for one would -definitely- like to see that tutorial. Please put it in its' own separate thread, so that it can possibly be pinned along with John Sutherlands' post. QUOTE=SOCRATE_MMXII]I want to try Mint...[/QUOTE] @Socrat: I think You'll be very pleased with it.