Category: Windows

migrating from windows 10 to linux mint 21.1

whbeebe2 Comments

I have been threatening, for many years now, to switch from Windows 10 Professional to Linux on my Samsung Series 7 Chronos 700Z7C 17.3″ portable computer. Every time I decided to do it, I’d go look for any directions from prior switches, only to be dissuaded from doing so by horror stories of Linux bricking the Series 7 because of the way its BIOS was set up. But after many false starts, I was finally pushed to find a successful solution to migrating the Series 7 off Windows 10 and onto Linux Mint 21.1.

The final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back and drove me to finally make the switch are all the current stories about what Microsoft has been doing with Windows 11 and Microsoft’s Edge browser and Windows 11 and advertising within the desktop. That, along with the fact that the Series 7 can’t upgrade to Windows 11 because it’s not worthy; the Series 7 doesn’t support TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0. The Samsung Series 7 was first released in 2012, and I bought my copy in 2013, so I can see why TPM isn’t a part of the system. But until Windows 11 was introduced, Microsoft Windows supported the Series 7 from Windows 8 thru Windows 8.1 and onwards to the free upgrade to Windows 10 with nary complaint nor issue. Not one. If I can give Microsoft a complement, it’s that Windows supported this computer for over a decade, far longer than any other manufacturer, especially Apple. What makes the case against Apple even more damning is that Microsoft didn’t make the hardware. To add further praise to Samsung, I’ve never had a problem with any Samsung computer since 2010 when I bought the R580, and which is currently running with Fedora 38. As a contrast to Apple, I bought a mid-2015 15″ Retina MacBook Pro fully kitted out in 2015. Apple stopped updating macOS on that machine with Monterey 12.6.1. Macs in good stead are currently running Ventura 13.3.1. Anyway…

Installing Linux

The ability to install Linux on the Samsung Series 7 was very non-intuitive. Documentation repeatedly states that holding down, or rapidly tapping, the F2 key while the computer is booting will put you in the Phoenix BIOS configuration menu. It never did. Since I knew I wanted to replace the SSD with Windows 10 installed, I purchased a cheap Samsung 1TB SSD ($50 — my how prices have dropped), swapped it into the machine in place of the SSD with Windows 10 installed, and then tried to force the computer to automatically drop into the Phoenix BIOS menu when I powered it up with that blank SSD. It would not. Instead, if you had a USB drive with a Linux ISO copied to it, then the Samsung would sense this and present a very simple menu that allowed you to select that USB drive as the boot device.

Before I’d decided to install Linux, I downloaded Xubuntu 23.04, Fedora WS 38, and Linux Mint 21.1 ISOs and flashed them to individual USB drives. I wasn’t sure how Linux might support such an old computer, and I decided to try a few different ones before making my final installation decision. I chose Xubuntu because a reviewer on DistroWatch wrote that it was decent, so I thought, why not?

I started with Xubuntu. Plugging in the Xubuntu USB drive and selecting it on the Samsung built-in menu, when the Xubuntu USB drive booted I was greeted with the following Xubuntu boot menu:

Down at the bottom of the Xubuntu menu was an entry for UEFI firmware settings! Sure enough, if I selected that it opened up the Phoenix BIOS BIOS settings. As it turns out the same capability is available with Linux Mint, but not with Fedora. A little bit of testing showed that all of my USB drives would boot this way from the Samsung boot menu. I also discovered that if I tried to boot the Linux Mint USB that it failed some sort of purity test and wouldn’t boot at all, while the Fedora USB booted and had problems working with the processor. So I plugged the Xubuntu USB drive back in and selected the UEFI firmare.

Long story short: when you’re in the Phoenix BIOS screens, move over to Boot and make the following changes.

  • Disable Secure Boot
  • Set OS Mode Selection to UEFI and CSM OS. That allows anything to boot, including Windows 10, as well as Windows 7, Windows XP, and DOS (yes, that’s what the help screen on the right said), As well as Linux.
  • Go down to PXE OPROM and enable it, and then select the USB to be the first item to boot. If you don’t do this then you won’t be able to boot with a USB device because the BIOS will automatically boot the SSD first.

After much fiddling around and booting all the distributions, I settled on Linux Mint because I already had it running on my UM250 and I’m quite comfortable with it.

One feature that I discovered after installing Mint. Once secure boot was disabled, a one line menu appeared at the bottom of the screen during boot, listing F2 to bring up the Phoenix BIOS menu, and F4 to boot into recovery. F2 still did not work, but F4 put me into the Grub menu, which included the UEFI firmware settings at the bottom. So that was a sweet feature to have.

One piece of software you should not install is the Nvidia GPU driver. The Samsung machine comes with a separate Nvidia chip for those intense 2013 games you want to run, along with the Intel i7’s built in GPU. The Nvidia GPU drive is buggy, and causes the Samsung to run hot with the fans blowing full speed. Rather than trying to uninstall the Nvidia package, I just re-installed Linux Mint to make sure it was totally gone. When the Mint ever-so-helpful app popped up asking if I wanted to install that driver, I configured it to ignore that recommendation and moved on.

Initial Impressions

This was the last computer in my household that was still running any version of Windows. Now they all run Linux or macOS. Give me time and suitable motivation and I’ll be replacing macOS with Linux as well, especially on those machines that are no longer supported by Apple.

The Samsung machine runs smoothly without any issues. I’ve installed some tools and run some basic compiles and it will, from time to time, fire up the fans a bit, but then immediately goes silent with the task is done. Every piece of gear on this machine works, including the built-in CDROM drive, which is why I wanted to keep this machine operational. The older R580 has a build-in Blue Ray DVD reader/writer, which is an important reason why I’m also keeping it up and running.

I’m able to play multi-media, and I have full WiFi and Bluetooth functionality. I’m writing this on the Samsung, connected to my home WiFi access point, and using a Logitech MX Ergo Bluetooth trackball. As a consequence I have the touch-pad disabled when the Bluetooth trackback is active, which is a much nicer setup than I had under Windows; it was either enable or disable the touch-pad, not the elegant solution provided by Linux Mint.

I may have more to write after working on this machine for a while. Linux Mint has re-invigorated it for me. Call me silly, but I don’t like junking machines anymore. The Samsung may be eleven years old, but it’s still quite usable.

more linux musings

whbeebe2 Comments

It’s a cold and rainy day in Florida, so I’m indoors puttering around the little computers, updating and installing into virtual machines. First up is a twelve-year-old Samsung R580 running Fedora 36.

I’m amazed that the Samsung, which is twelve years old, going on thirteen, is still fully functional. By that I mean everything, from audio to WiFi to Bluetooth to the Blue-ray drive this machine was sold with.

Here, in no particular order, are my observations.

  • Even though it still is running with Fedora 36 (Fedora 37 having been released 15 November 2022), the Linux kernel is at version 6.0.8, the same version as Fedora 37. And it boots and operates just fine. When I first installed Fedora 36 on this machine it was running with kernel 5.17.
  • The general performance is quite good. While it “only” has an Intel i5-430M, all the Linux distributions and software still work just fine on this processor which was first released January 2010. If you want an example of processor sufficiency, you need look no further than here.
  • The Samsung R580 was also released at the same time as the i5. After all this time the only repairs I’ve had to make on this notebook computer is the keyboard and the barrel jack on the side used to power and charge the computer. I upgraded the machine with a Samsung 1TB SSD back in late 2013, and it’s still going just fine itself. I spent $700 at a local Office Depot (which has since gone out of business) for my oldest daughter. When she “broke” it in 2013 I got it back and installed Ubuntu on it to recover usability. It’s been around the country, and at one point it went on a cruise with my wife and I on our 30th wedding anniversary so I could process photos taken with my Olympus E-M5. I’d say I’ve gotten my money’s worth.
  • Early next year I’m going to convert it into a testing IoT hub for home automation.

I got a wild hair and installed Alma Linus 9.1 as another KVM/QEMU virtual machine on my Linux Mint mini box. I wanted to see if it was even possible (it was obviously) and I wanted to see if I could mount the host’s Shared folder, and I did. I have thus been able to do quickly and painlessly what I can’t do with the latest version of Parallels on my MacBook Pro running macOS 16.2 (and yes, there’s a 16.2.1 update waiting in the wings at this point). I have a Parallels VM with Alma Linux 9.1 running, and the Parallels tools will not build and install on that instance. Yet when I use a free virtualization system on Linux itself, Alma Linux just installed and ran without having to do any installation of special tools within the Alma Linux 9.1 virtual instance. It’s faster and easier using KVM/QEMU/Virtual Machine Manger than it is under Parallels on macOS. A lot easier and faster. And the Alma Linux VM runs quite nicely with all its tools.

I’ve already walked away from Microsoft Windows, not because I consider Microsoft “evil,” but because I’m way tired of the advertising and other shenanigans that Microsoft practices with Windows. Microsoft’s attitude that I don’t actually own Windows but just purchased a license to use it has become anathema to me. There are many rumors that Microsoft is getting ready to pull Windows into their Azure cloud, and you will just run an instance and pay them a monthly fee for the privilege. Nope. All I will ever need to do I can do on Linux, and do it as good if not better. And if there’s an application that won’t run on Linux, then I didn’t really need that application to begin with.

I keep hanging onto Apple because the underpinnings of macOS are “real” Unix, and I’ve been enamored with Apple Silicon and consider Apple Silicon far superior to Intel/AMD processors. All of that appeals to my inner geek. But I can see a point in the near future where I wipe macOS off and install Linux on all my remaining Macs, just like I’ve removed Windows from those machines it initially came installed on.