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From Winodws XP to Linux
Group 11
Version Upgrade







Video 31 - Backup Tool

The Backup Tool is found under Menu, Administration, Backup Tool

We backup the downloads folder to a new folder called Backup.

The we look at how we can update a non-zipped backup by adding a file that was not in the backup and not updating a file that was already backed up.

Then we look at how to create a compressed file backup (zipped folder backup) using the .tar.bz3 backup settings.

After that we make a backup of our documents folder onto an external drive (The encrypted Jack file is not backup because it causes issues for the this backup tool)

We then backup the software current on this computer - making a note of the version of some of the software we backed up.





 






Video 32 - Package Upgrade

We upgrade from Linux Mint 17.1 to 17.2 with a Package Upgrade.

We first confirm the version of Linux we are using (Linux Mint 17.1 and the Mate desktop 1.8.1.

We check the Linux Mint website and see that Clem suggests we don't really need to upgrade, but we decide we want to upgrade.

Clem then suggests that we have a full backup of our system. We did that in the last video.

The he talks about 2 ways to upgrade. One is a Fresh Upgrade, where Linux is totally removed from the system and re-installed and the other way is called a Package Update, that is similar to the way we install programs by adding, deleting, and updating compiled code (called packages).

The Update Manager is opened and the software is checked for updates. Updates are applied and the system is checked once more.

We then click the "Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela" under the edit drop-down in the Update Manager window.

We take a quick look at the release notes, then a quick look at the new features,

Then we get one final warning asking if we really want to update, after clicking apply, we will need to type in a root password

Then the update starts.

An Error Occurred - The upgrade did not succeed. - Please check your internet connection and try again. We are connected to the internet already, so I start the update once again.

Now we get the error message "You have 2 broken packages on our system Use the "Broken" filter to locate them" - I click close.

I get that same message a second time and click close again - and it starts installing and removing software

Update is complete with a wink and a smile.

I reboot the system and check for updates - and install the new updates.

We then check to see everything was updated as expected - and it was.





 






Video 33 - Adding Desktops

We add the Cinnamon desktop on our Linux Mint Mate system.

We do some screen prints of the Mate system, then we log into the Cinnamon desktop by clicking on the M or default symbol next to the flag in our login dialog box.

We check for updates, and then change the desktop background, then we compare our Mate pictures to the Cinnamon versions and see they are very similar.

There are two versions of "Users and Groups", one is for Cinnamon and one is for Mate, the Mate version allows us to encrypt a users home folder.

Sometimes when we install new desktops, we get multiple versions of software (like multiple versions calculators or multiple versions of "Users and Groups".

We then load in the XFCE desktop and the KDE desktop.

When we try to open LibreOffice, we get the error: The application cannot be started.

To fix that we open Konsole (the KDE version of terminal) and type in the command : sudo chown michael /home/michael/.config/libreoffice -R then we do the same for Jill.

Then we can open LibreOffice Calc





 






Video 34 - Removing Linux (and keeping XP)

To do a "Fresh" install of Linux, we will first remove Linux from the system, and restore XP to the entire hard drive.

We start by downloading the version of Linux that we want to install on our machine. Then we use the Linux Mint USB writer tool to create a Linux Live flash-drive.

We boot into the Live version of Linux which will allow us to make changes to the files on the hard drive.

We remove the partition on the hard drive that has Linux Mint using the Disks tool.

We use GParted to resize the Windows XP partition to the size of the entire hard drive.

I then show the error message we would get if we tried to restart the computer before fixing the Windows mbr file.

The mbr file is the file that boots into the windows system, when we installed Linux, we replaced that file with GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) - now we need to restore that file in order to be able to boot into Windows again.

To restore the Windows MBR file we go into a terminal an type in the commands:

Sudo apt-get install mbr
Sudo install-mbr -i n -p D -t 0 /dev/sda

Note we could have also typed in:

Sudo apt-get install syslinux
Sudo dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda

Or we could have used our Windows rescue disk to get to a command prompt and typed:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

We then are able to restart the computer and boot into windows and the machine works as if Linux was never installed on that machine.





 






Video 35 - Restoring from a Backup

We restore from the backup we made in video 31.

After plugging in the flash-drive, we extract the file backup zipped folder and see we have the home folders of Jill and Michael.

We create a user account for Jill before restoring, because the backup tool can not create user accounts.

It is then shown that we can restore specific documents from the extracted file by dragging and dropping, if we only want to restore specific documents or folders and we don't need to use the backup tool to do that.

If we want to restore everything from the backup, it is easier to use the backup tool restore feature and restore everything from the tar.bz2 backup file we created.

We restore the home folders using the backup tool from the backup we created - then I log out and log back in because we may have updated some system settings that were saved in our home folder.

We restore the software using the backup tool and the software selection backup we have on the flash drive. We notice not everything was restored - The Linux Mint Backup Tool can not restore programs that are not in the Linux Mint repository. Even if the the program is in the Linux Mint repository, the backup tool can not restore to any specific version, on ly the version that is in the Linux Mint Repository.

This is the last video in this series - I will be taking break from making videos for a while - Thanks for watching