Quote:
Originally Posted by Townandcountrygal
Honey, what's a Linux Mint? A new type of breath mint?  For those of us who are technology challenged, like me, could you please explain why I might need/want to install Linux Mint? Thank you! |
Main Page - Linux Mint
In computers you have a BIOS and an OS. The BIOS is what you see when you first turn on the pc. Its main functions are to start all your hardware and to load the OS. The OS in most cases is Windows. There are also other types available though. Linux, BSD and Mac are the 3 most common. Each of these have many many versions available.
Linux mint is a operating system that is based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian (one of the main versions of Linux). It is designed to be a easy to use for beginners vs using Debian. Its really easy to install or just test.
This is a good version for an aging pc
Editions for Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" - Linux Mint
Just scroll down to the XFCE version at the bottom and choose the appropriate 64 bit or 32 bit version and download it from one of the mirrors.
Burn the image you download to a CD or DVD, making sure to burn an image and not just copy data option.
Then restart your computer and you should boot straight into Linux Mint. If it boots back to windows you may need to adjust your boot options in the BIOS so that your pc attempts to boot the CD/DVD drive before the hard drive. An internet search for you pc model will give you a guide on how to do that if necessary.
Once in linux mint you can open up different programs and poke around and see how you like it and how you pc operates with it. At this point no changes have been made, if you don't like it simply shutdown the pc and remove the disc and you are back to exactly where you were.
Make sure and look at the software manager and check out some of the software available. You can easily install any of them with a click.
If you decide you would like to keep Mint around you have 3 options. You can either boot into it each time just like you did by inserting the CD. This is called "live". Any changes you make or programs you put in will be wiped out when you reboot the pc. You will be able to access your windows files and even save files there but any changes you make to mint itself will be wiped.
Option 2 you can install it. If you click the icon on the desktop to install Mint it will walk you through a simple installation process. You have 2 options. Wipe the whole hard drive and install mint, or you can install it alongside windows and you can then select windows or mint when you start the pc. The installation is pretty straight forward and it will guide you through it. Takes about 5 to 10 mins.
It used to be that linux was difficult to use. You had to have a lot of in depth knowledge to make stuff work. Now days though its very simple. I recommend it to nearly everyone. You will not get viruses, spyware or junk like that. Its fast and stable. Its free. They release new versions every year. You don't need to upgrade that frequently though. I mostly just upgrade when they release a Long Term Support version, which is about every 3 or 4 years.
If you find that your pc is still a bit sluggish then there are other extremely lightweight versions of Linux available. You can try these in the same way you can Mint. They all have extensive support and help communities.
LXLE ----
Revive that old PC! < The LXLE Desktop
Puppy ----
Puppy Linux Community Home - Getting Started
Peppermint----
Peppermint - The Linux Desktop OS
If all you use a computer for is basic stuff like browsing the internet, word processing, spreadsheets and image editing then I highly recommend using some version of Linux.
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