Hi all.
Here's a little poser that's bothering my non-logical thinking brain and so I thought I'd ask for the wisdom of my fellow Mint-lovers.
Firstly, here are my two desktops - and I openly admit these specs do not mean very much to me:
Lenovo H50-55 (2 years old, bought new with WIN10 which didn’t work out of the box!)
CPU AMD A8 7600 / 3.1 GHz
Quad-Core
AMD A78
8 GB RAM
1 TB HDD Hard drive
Graphics Processor AMD Radeon R7
Dell Optiplex 780 (refurbished)
Intel Core i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz x 4
1x 60 GB SDD
1 x 500 GB HDD
Graphics Card NVIDIA GF108GL [Quadro 600]
My current set-up is:
Lenovo - Dual Boot Windows 7 Pro + Ubuntu Mate 18
Dell - Mint 18.3 (installed on the 60GB SSD hard drive and notifying me of no space left!)
Both are connected to an LG monitor which I can switch between via a KVM adapter.
*I also have a notebook running Mint 18.3 so that’s my work laptop and doesn’t really need to enter the equation.
I want to run Mint as my main workhorse (prob 19 if I reinstall), but keep Windows 7 and Mate as back-up, for playing around, to let Mint cool down/rest etc. from time to time as I work from home and my PC is pretty much always on.
I also like trying out live boots of other distros - just out of curiosity mainly as I find none of them work as seamlessly as Mint.
So, my question is this: which OSs would you install on each desktop and why? What set-up do you feel would allow me to get the most of out my desktops whilst not running out of hard drive space (as with Mint 18.3 is currently doing on the Dell), allowing me to play around with other distros for fun, keep my main workhorse problem free and running well, being able to switch between OSs whenever I fancy or need to?
By the way, all of the OSs mentioned run well on both machines so there’s no need for testing ‘live’ to check compatibility issues.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
What would you do?
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What would you do?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: What would you do?
Both desktops should be able to run any Linux Mint edition you want. As for disk space there's only a small difference between the editions. Safely assume the operating system needs about 10 GB for installation. It's really up to you.
If you managed to fill up your 60 GB disk it's probably because your home directory is also on there? Things like commercial games (from Steam or GOG) and media files you have can easily fill up that amount. You might want to look into what you have on that 60 GB disk that is using the most disk space and consider for future reinstall if you could move that to the 500 GB disk instead.
If you managed to fill up your 60 GB disk it's probably because your home directory is also on there? Things like commercial games (from Steam or GOG) and media files you have can easily fill up that amount. You might want to look into what you have on that 60 GB disk that is using the most disk space and consider for future reinstall if you could move that to the 500 GB disk instead.
Re: What would you do?
Thanks both.
It turns out both Timeshift and WPS backups were taking up a big chunk (over 15GB!) of space.
I'm still curious though whether it makes more sense to run my main working OS off the newer machine and dual boot this with Mate or WIN7. Or stick WIN7 Pro on the older machine and use this also for running 'live USB' installations of other distros for fun.
I guess (and I've just come up with this) one reason to dual boot the two Linux/Ubuntu OSs is that I won't have problems with time syncing like one usually experiences with a dual-boot WIN/Linux set-up. Can you see any other advantages / disadvantages of this set-up or am I just fussing over nothing here?
It turns out both Timeshift and WPS backups were taking up a big chunk (over 15GB!) of space.
I'm still curious though whether it makes more sense to run my main working OS off the newer machine and dual boot this with Mate or WIN7. Or stick WIN7 Pro on the older machine and use this also for running 'live USB' installations of other distros for fun.
I guess (and I've just come up with this) one reason to dual boot the two Linux/Ubuntu OSs is that I won't have problems with time syncing like one usually experiences with a dual-boot WIN/Linux set-up. Can you see any other advantages / disadvantages of this set-up or am I just fussing over nothing here?
Re: What would you do?
Personally I would go without Windows but that's just because I've managed to move to alternatives to Windows-only programs long time ago.
The time sync issue between Windows and Linux Mint you can solve by switching Linux Mint to not use UTC time.
You can do so on Linux Mint 19 with the following command:
Unless there is an error it won't output anything (aside from asking for your password).
You can check afterwards that the setting is correct by running:
and checking that the line "RTC in local TZ" has "yes" as value.
The time sync issue between Windows and Linux Mint you can solve by switching Linux Mint to not use UTC time.
You can do so on Linux Mint 19 with the following command:
sudo timedatectl set-local-rtc 1Unless there is an error it won't output anything (aside from asking for your password).
You can check afterwards that the setting is correct by running:
timedatectland checking that the line "RTC in local TZ" has "yes" as value.
Re: What would you do?
Yeah, I was perfectly happy just using just Mint but one client I had recently specifically requested I that use Adobe Reader. That's actually the only reason I went through the hassle of installing a Windows OS and now consider keeping in as a dual boot just in case for the future. I don't intend to use it unless the need arises again.