Installation on Linux Mint 19.1

[BKelley56]

@ BKelley56

Since you want install Windows 7 inside of Virtual Box, I'm assuming you're using a laptop computer. Those on the Mint forums will not recommend installing VB which is found in the Mint repositories. They will all suggest you install VB at the link below.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

If you need help with VB on Mint, get yourself a username and password and register on the Mint forums, make a topic and you'll get plenty of help.

I think when you install W7 inside of VB running in MInt, in a folder, the W7 time might be off by about 5 hours at some point. Not sure about this because I don't use VB. I have 4 computers (2 desktop towers, 2 laptops). I gave one of my laptops to my wife and she has been running various versions of Mint since 2015. My second laptop is loaded with W7 since I take care of my sister-in-laws W7 desktop tower via Teamviewer since she lives 221 miles from me. Some of the programs she uses have new versions and I try them out on my W7 hard drive "first". If there are no problems with those programs on my end, then I tell her to download and install them on her computer.

One of my desktop towers has 2 hard drives in it, one running Mint 19.1 Xfce and the second hard drive running W7. The second desktop tower has 3 hard drives in it; one hard drive running Mint 19.1 Xfce, the second hard drive is running W7 and the third hard drive is an experimental hard drive which I use to install and play with different linux distros (Mint, Manjaro, Linux Lite) when I'm in the mood.

Because of the multiple hard drives, I have no need for VB. When I turn on either of my two towers, since I changed the boot order of the drives in the BIOS which affects the Boot Menu, Mint always loads to the desktop. If I want to access a W7 hard drive, if I'm using Mint, I have to restart my desktop tower I'm in, wait for the monitor's screen to turn black colored, start tapping my ESC (escape key) since they are HP computers and when the Boot Menu shows up, I select the W7 hard drive, click Enter and it will boot into W7. If I want to go back to Mint, I just restart the computer from the W7 Start Menu and the computer will boot straight into Mint.

As for an email program, I don't use Thunderbird. I just use my online email address, Excite and Hotmail (through Outlook.com). I don't get a lot of emails so there is no important data, ad or otherwise, that Excite or Microsoft can get from reading my emails (incoming as well as outgoing).

As for Gimp, you just have to play with it and that is how you'll learn it. Looking at YouTube videos how to use Gimp will be a big help to you also.

Sorry been so long replying. Actually, I'm installing all this on my desktop first. Kind of like you, I have a method of accessing different hard drives with different O/S's. I have a removable hard drive tray enabling me to swap out three different drives as needed. One has XP & 7 (dual-booted), one has W10 and the other one Linux Mint. That's the one I'm experimenting with in regards to Linux. If I get it running the way I envision, then I'll do the same thing to my laptop so I can have the best of both worlds on that one, but all of my experimentation takes place on the desktop first to iron out all the road bumps.

I don't like Windows 10 and I want to be able to continue to use Windows 7 and if that means Linux is my main O/S with W7 operating virtually, then so be it. Whatever I have to do, I'll do, but at the end of the day I refuse to let MicroThief control my computer.

[Moonchild]

Just keep in mind it's not like Win 7 will suddenly stop working when EoL is reached.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

re: Windows 7 see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21685#p163754

[Uppity]

Debian and Ubuntu are related, but still different. DO NOT USE the Debian packages in normal Mint! Especially when the Ubuntu packages are right there! (except the special Mint Debian edition, LMDE)

Did you see my post directly above yours where I explain what Ubuntu package to use for what Mint version?

Sorry for the delay in responding. First time I've cranked up the gaming laptop, since my last post.

I did see your explanation of which Ubuntu package to use for what Mint version.
This may have been the same issue I've worked around a few times, before.

My issue may have been reading too fast.

I removed the .deb version of Pale Moon, but ran into an error in the ubuntu script.
So, for temporary actions, I extracted the tar ball, which I ran - in Mint 19.1

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palemoon-28.4.0.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

I then deleted the extracted files, including

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~/homdebe/palemoon and ~/home/.moonchild

before the final command:

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sudo apt-get install palemoon

The layout of the page shows a scroll bar in between the

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sources.list and the repository key

The scroll bar makes it appear that sources.list for xUbuntu_18.04 is a follow-on to the repository key for xUbuntu_18.10.

This is the code I ran, this time...

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sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/stevenpusser/xUbuntu_18.04/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser.list"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install palemoon

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----- Scroll Bar Here Looks like a Separator ----- 

You can add the repository key to apt. Keep in mind that the owner of the key may distribute updates, packages and repositories that your system will trust (more information). To add the key, run:

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wget -nv https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:stevenpusser/xUbuntu_18.04/Release.key -O Release.key
sudo apt-key add - < Release.key
sudo apt-get update

I ran the above commands and now have a fully configured installation, including

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~/home/.moonchild

but no

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~/home/palemoon

It seems to work fine. I had a previous problem when Root owned

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~/home

Now, Help > About Pale Moon does not show the

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Updater

...
Only Moonchild Productions
which links to:

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http://www.moonchildproductions.info/

I changed from false to true:

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app.update.auto --- true

and Re-started Pale Moon
but this did not change in Help > About Pale Moon

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app.update.enabled is: true

There were other entries in about:config, but I thought it best to wait for instructions on what to do next.

Am I missing something else.?

[stevenpusser]

Pale Moon stores all its settings in the hidden ".moonchild productions" (yes, with a space) folder in your home folder, not in a "palemoon" folder like might be expected.

If you installed Pale Moon from my repo, updates will be coming from my repo through the standard Mint apt package manager system, not the updater built into the browser. I try to update it the same day as a release.

[Uppity]

I saw that the updates were done through the Synaptic Package Manager
- I think, in another thread.
I checked and sure enough, it was in there.

I appreciate the work that you guys do. I was hesitant to switch from Firefox, but looking back, I should have switched at least a year or more, before I did.

Thank you.

[ChelonianEgghead]

Earlier someone said that he preferred Cinnamon for its menu because the XFCE one is so small. In case anyone is still interested, here is a program called the Whisker Menu (Package name: "xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin") which is a lot more like Cinnamon's the the Windows 95-ish default menu. Here's a screenshot:


I was blown away when I first got started with XFCE. I guess that when I first got it I was expecting it to be just a simple Windows 95 clone for old PC's. Wow, was I wrong. Despite being so tiny, XFCE manages to be the most configurable desktop I have ever seen. Cinnamon also excels in customizability, but tweaking things isn't as simple as in XFCE where in just one afternoon I was able to completely re-theme my desktop just by messing with a text file! The panel customization is also really, really impressive, allowing as many panels as your screen can contain, with loads of available applets, and just the ability to put anything I want wherever I want it. I was able to change from Fedora's default Mac OS X-like panel configuration to one more like Windows 95-Vista in mere minutes, and later on I made another auto-hiding panel kind of like Ubuntu's sidebar to more efficiently use the laptop's rather limited screen space. I really miss that laptop now. Right now I'm on GNOME, and probably about to switch to Budgie just because of XFCE's handful of little inconveniences, but writing this up really makes me want to go back. In retrospect, they were a trivial price for the amount of freedom I had, and while on my main "just wanna get stuff done" PC I'll likely stick with Cinnamon or Budgie, I really think I'll go back to XFCE on my hobby PC in the near future. Wow, that was long, but I guess that's just how much I love XFCE xD

[Night Wing]

I was blown away when I first got started with XFCE. I guess that when I first got it I was expecting it to be just a simple Windows 95 clone for old PC's. Wow, was I wrong. Despite being so tiny, XFCE manages to be the most configurable desktop I have ever seen.

This is the main reason why I like and use the Xfce desktop environment in Mint. I've been using Mint with Xfce since late 2012.

[BKelley56]

@ BKelley56

Since you want install Windows 7 inside of Virtual Box, I'm assuming you're using a laptop computer. Those on the Mint forums will not recommend installing VB which is found in the Mint repositories. They will all suggest you install VB at the link below.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

If you need help with VB on Mint, get yourself a username and password and register on the Mint forums, make a topic and you'll get plenty of help.

I think when you install W7 inside of VB running in MInt, in a folder, the W7 time might be off by about 5 hours at some point. Not sure about this because I don't use VB. I have 4 computers (2 desktop towers, 2 laptops). I gave one of my laptops to my wife and she has been running various versions of Mint since 2015. My second laptop is loaded with W7 since I take care of my sister-in-laws W7 desktop tower via Teamviewer since she lives 221 miles from me. Some of the programs she uses have new versions and I try them out on my W7 hard drive "first". If there are no problems with those programs on my end, then I tell her to download and install them on her computer.

One of my desktop towers has 2 hard drives in it, one running Mint 19.1 Xfce and the second hard drive running W7. The second desktop tower has 3 hard drives in it; one hard drive running Mint 19.1 Xfce, the second hard drive is running W7 and the third hard drive is an experimental hard drive which I use to install and play with different linux distros (Mint, Manjaro, Linux Lite) when I'm in the mood.

Because of the multiple hard drives, I have no need for VB. When I turn on either of my two towers, since I changed the boot order of the drives in the BIOS which affects the Boot Menu, Mint always loads to the desktop. If I want to access a W7 hard drive, if I'm using Mint, I have to restart my desktop tower I'm in, wait for the monitor's screen to turn black colored, start tapping my ESC (escape key) since they are HP computers and when the Boot Menu shows up, I select the W7 hard drive, click Enter and it will boot into W7. If I want to go back to Mint, I just restart the computer from the W7 Start Menu and the computer will boot straight into Mint.

As for an email program, I don't use Thunderbird. I just use my online email address, Excite and Hotmail (through Outlook.com). I don't get a lot of emails so there is no important data, ad or otherwise, that Excite or Microsoft can get from reading my emails (incoming as well as outgoing).

As for Gimp, you just have to play with it and that is how you'll learn it. Looking at YouTube videos how to use Gimp will be a big help to you also.

I finally got me a hard drive I can use solely for Linux Mint. I installed the Oracle VirtualBox software suggested above but didn't like it. The graphics it gave me was only VGA (800x 600), gave me no audio and everything else about it was very buggy. I was not impressed so I removed it.

I can swap out hard drives so I can go back and forth between Windows XP/7, 10 and Linux so I don't necessarily need to run Windows 7 virtually, yet, but when MicroThief ends it's support of it I will want to at some point soon afterwards.

[stevenpusser]

Well, that's what you get with Oracle's Virtual Box until you install the guest additions inside the guest OS. There's a couple of ways to do that, but I like the Debianized version of the guest packages that handle that automatically--I have virtualbox 6.0.6 along with its virtualbox-guest-dkms and virtualbox-guest-utils in MX Linux, but I guess with Oracle's you need to install the kernel headers and compilers in your guest, add the virtual guest additions CD in the guest, and then run the "VBoxLinuxAdditions.run" file on that "CD" image.

[BKelley56]

Well, that's what you get with Oracle's Virtual Box until you install the guest additions inside the guest OS. There's a couple of ways to do that, but I like the Debianized version of the guest packages that handle that automatically--I have virtualbox 6.0.6 along with its virtualbox-guest-dkms and virtualbox-guest-utils in MX Linux, but I guess with Oracle's you need to install the kernel headers and compilers in your guest, add the virtual guest additions CD in the guest, and then run the "VBoxLinuxAdditions.run" file on that "CD" image.

I finally got VirtualBox and the Guest Additions installed, I hope. I got my higher resolution screens on all three of my monitors. I got Windows 7 installed, activated, Office 2010 installed, activated, and both updated. For some reason the HDMI Audio doesn't work but I'm thinking I'll have to use regular speakers. I'll try that tonight. The VirtualBox won't see USB drives and I can't figure out how to configure it so it will. Those two things are my next project. So it's coming together, slooooooowly.

[stevenpusser]

You'll have to install the nonfree Virtualbox Extension pack on the host operating system to have USB pass-through to the guest; then the devices should appear on the Device menu.

Download link for all operating systems.

[[PCMartin]]

I'm chiming in late, but as a fellow Linux beginner, I'd like to try to give you a step-by-step answer to your actual question. Basically, it involves adding Steve Pusser's officially endorsed PPA repository -- which is kind of like a special-purpose third-party "app store" for an app that isn't in an official repository -- to your trusted software sources, and installing and updating Pale Moon from that.

CAVEAT # 1: Before you copy a command from your browser, make sure you have selected the entire line, all the way to the end of the line. In the browsers I'm most familiar with, including Firefox, you can do this by triple-clicking on the line.

CAVEAT # 2: If you get an error or serious warning in the terminal, stop and research it online before deciding whether to proceed. If you copy the commands correctly, this probably won't happen.

CAVEAT # 3: There may be some intermediate confirmation prompts in the terminal portion of the instructions below. If so, I no longer remember where they might crop up. Use your best judgment, and if you have serious doubts about how to respond, do some research online before proceeding. (I don't recall running into anything remotely confusing and everything installed fine for me.)

(1) In a browser in Linux Mint 19.1 (probably Firefox), go to:

https://linux.palemoon.org/

(2) Under that page's "Installation" subheading, open the link that says "Pale Moon repositories for Debian and Ubuntu -- maintained by Steve Pusser", which at the time I write this goes to:

https://software.opensuse.org/download. ... e=palemoon

(3) On the new page, click on the "Ubuntu" button (because you're using regular Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, and not Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is based on Debian).

(4) Click on the newly-revealed link that says "Add repository and and install manually".

(5) Scroll down to the subheading that says "For xUbuntu 18.04" (because Linux Mint 19.1 is based on Ubuntu 18.04).

(6) Select and copy the first command under that subheading, which at the time I write this is:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... ntu_18.04/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:stevenpusser.list"

(7) Open a terminal window. (In Cinnamon, tap and release the "Windows" key to open the Cinnamon menu, type "terminal" without the quotes, and hit Enter. That probably also works in MATE and Xfce, but I can't swear to it.)

(8) Paste the command you previously copied from the browser into the terminal, either by doing Edit > Paste in the terminal's menu or by doing shift-control-V on the keyboard. (If you accidentally do control-v instead of shift-control-V out of habit, backspace to the beginning of the command line to delete any output that may have been generated, and then try pasting again correctly.) Then hit Enter.

(9) Type in your sudo/root password, or your personal Linux Mint user password if you didn't create a sudo/root password. (So far as I know, you only have to do this once per terminal session.) Then hit Enter.

(10) Wait until you get another command prompt and check the first command's output (if any) for errors and warnings.

(11) Alt-tab back to the browser, select and copy the second command, alt-tab back to the terminal, paste the second command, hit Enter, wait until you get another command prompt, and check the second command's output (if any) for errors and warnings.

(12) Repeat step (11), but with the third command.

(13) Alt-tab back to the browser and scroll down to the subheading immediately below, which starts with "You can add the repository key to apt." (It's the subheading between the "For xUbuntu 18.04" subheading you were just working under and the "For xUbuntu 16.04" subheading.)

(14) Repeat the same type of copy-and-paste operations you previously did, from browser to terminal, but this time with the three separate commands immediately below the "You can add..." subheading.

(15) When the three last copy-and-paste operations are done, exit the terminal (by typing "exit" without the quotes and hitting Enter, or by clicking on the terminal's Close/Quit button).

If all went well, you will have installed Pale Moon and you will be able to update it (along with most of the rest of your software) through whatever graphical update manager your desktop environment uses. (For Cinnamon, that would be "Update Manager". I've forgotten what MATE and Xfce use.) In short, Pale Moon will be included in your easy, "one-stop-shopping" updating routine.

Pale Moon installed this way has been working and updating great for me in Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon for around four months and in Kubuntu 18.04.2 LTS for around one month. (Pale Moon is my favorite browser, and It was the first software package from outside the official repos that I installed in both OSes.)

Finally, a big thank-you to the Pale Moon team and to Steve Pusser!