Warning about HP Laptops - incompatibility with Win 10 Creators Update

[ChickPea]

Thanks ChickPea

What extra bits and pieces do I need to get hold of to do that? Or can I just go right ahead and click the 'install Mint' disc on the boot stick I've just made?

Will Windows just let me do that to my PC, or are there certain barriers I have to break down before I start?

(Sorry again for all the silly questions!)

Yeah, you click the installer and it'll take you through a few stages. It's all very simple and straightforward. The only marginally complicated bit is the partitioning, where it divides up your hard drive between Windows and Mint. Here's a guide from the official documentation...

http://linuxmint-installation-guide....t/install.html

[Straf]

Thanks ChickPea

What extra bits and pieces do I need to get hold of to do that? Or can I just go right ahead and click the 'install Mint' disc on the boot stick I've just made?

Will Windows just let me do that to my PC, or are there certain barriers I have to break down before I start?

(Sorry again for all the silly questions!)

Windows won't even know. Let's say you made a 50/50 split. Windows would just see a 250GB hard disk. The Mint bootloader would load before the OS anyway and it gives you the choice of what to boot into. The problem is, though, that you'll have a smaller disk to work within. However if you set the Mint partition smaller you could still access your Windows partition from within there. Therefore the files you have saved there can be worked on on the Linux system.

[ChickPea]

Your Linux partition doesn't have to be massive either, if you're struggling for space. I'm not on home PC right now, so I can't check exactly, but I think my Ubuntu installation is somewhere around 6Gb(ish). That's the OS and all the apps I have installed. Obviously you'll need space for your own data files on top of that. It all depends how much stuff you want to store in the Linux area (bearing in mind that Windows won't be able to read your Linux file, but Linux can read your Windows files).

[Mouse]

Let me get this straight in my head before I do anything a bit permanent...

Are you saying that if I give Linux only 100 GB of my 500 GB drive, I can access files that are stored in the Windows 400 GB (it needs to be more than half anyway because of all the stuff I already have on there means that it is well over half full), and then save the version I've just worked on in the 100 GB Linux side?

How about accessing the files in the Linux 100GB side from Windows?

(I'm thinking that my hybrid GIMP/KRITA/CC3+ maps would be best done with CC3+ in Windows, and GIMP and KRITA in Mint)

Maybe the most important question of all - if I regret partitioning my drive, can it ever be undone?

EDIT: Ninjad by ChickPea (hardly surprising - I'm on Windows right now and the browser is slow!)

[Mouse]

Ah! I seeeeee

So I could install Mint on just 6GB of space, work on any file I wanted, and then I presume that if I saved my work on my 16GB stick I could then download it into Windows from the stick?

[Straf]

You could use the Windows partition as a storage drive for your files. You don't have to keep them in the Linux partition. Just remember that Windows can't read the Linux file system so if you're doing CC3+ on Windows and you then switch to GIMP on Linux then you save it in the Linux partition you won't be able to open that up in CC3+. So best thing is is to have a folder on your Windows partition for ALL of your maps and just work from there.

[Mouse]

Still trying to get my head around this...

Say I already have folders named "GIMP work", "Krita work", "CC3 maps" "Challenge Maps", "City Maps" etc all in the Windows side, I'll be able to open them, edit them and save them again right where they are while working in Mint, and then go back to Windows and Windows will be able to see and use them just like before?

[Mouse]

Just thought about something else:

Will I need antivirus installed on the Mint side of things as well as the Windows side?

[Straf]

You should maybe read up on how Linux structures its file system.

On anything *.nix, generally speaking any thing is a file. Anything else is a process doing something to a file. Your keyboard is a file stream into the system. The console is a file stream out to you. Locations on a hard disk can be 'mounted' onto the file system. You can actually mount a directory in the Windows partition as a mount point in Linux and see it as a physical disk if you like. However that might be getting ahead of things. You should be able to set your saves directory in GIMP to the same one in your Windows My Documents folder by navigating to it.

[Mouse]

Mint doesn't come with Krita already included. That's part of another version of Linux. I located the download point while I was booted on the stick I made, but decided the better of it because it was only a stick boot, and the download was coming from a different version of Linux.

When I've installed Mint properly on my hard drive in, say... a 20 GB section of its own, I presume I would just download the compatible Krita app from where I found it through the Mint menu, and install it right there - in the 20GB Mint partition? In effect I would have Krita installed twice on my hard drive. Is that how its done?