Replies

terrabill

Hi terrabill,

See my post #18 in this forum. If the bootloader had been installed on the partition where Linux is, it wouldn’t have messed with the MBR for Windows.

hth you!

I have long been interested in some flavor of Linux, but not to complicate things by running Windows under Linux. And I depend on a program which works with a modem and one phone line, listens to an incoming call for a fax tone, if a fax tone, sends back the handshake, and receives the fax digitally. If there is no fax tone, it answers, sends an outgoing message, and records the voice mail. I started with WinFax Pro until it dropped voice, then HotFax Message Center until Smith Micro dropped it, and then FaxTalk Messenger Pro.

I have checked several times and never found a Linux program that will perform that function. Does anyone know of such a program which will run under Linux?

Hi Meadi8r,

There are so many programs for Linux it would be impossible for me to point you to one.

But there are many good friendly forums where you could post your question and see what turns up.

You could try asking in:

The Mint forum :http://forums.linuxmint.com/
The Ubuntu forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/
A Linux forum: http://www.linuxquestions.org/

I have used these on occasion with good results, these forums are filled with folks who have forgotton more than I’ll ever know about Linux! 😀

Good Luck

Thanx for the informative article. However it, and the responses, illustrate the reason I (and most users) stay away from Linux by the droves. I don’t want to work with an OS that comes with dozens of different major versions, options and choices. The Linux community has identified the fragmentation of the their OS as a main barrier to its widespread adoption and have often tried to encourage some sort of unification. But their answer seems to be yet more versions, options and choices. Yes Windows is a pain, but a unified, consistent, and supported one.

Maybe you aren’t aware that there are versions of Linux that are considered ‘LTS’ for Long Term Support. Plus you don’t have to upgrade to a newer version, if it works and you like it, keep it! 😀

My feeling is that Linux will never be popular because it doesn’t get pre-loaded onto PC’s. If it were, and more people were exposed to it, the useage would go up considerably imho.

For something that is Open Source and free, to work as smoothly as it does is a credit to the developers. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to convert you or anyone to even try any version of Linux! If you don’t have the interest, then by all means stay with M$ and watch them botch, release after release in hopes of getting it right. Just look at Win 7, it works just fine, but that doesn’t suit M$.. so here comes v10 … Oh wait what happened to 8 and 8.1?? Epic fails both of them.

Cheers

Thanx for the informative article. However it, and the responses, illustrate the reason I (and most users) stay away from Linux by the droves. I don’t want to work with an OS that comes with dozens of different major versions, options and choices. The Linux community has identified the fragmentation of the their OS as a main barrier to its widespread adoption and have often tried to encourage some sort of unification. But their answer seems to be yet more versions, options and choices. Yes Windows is a pain, but a unified, consistent, and supported one.

Maybe you aren’t aware that there are versions of Linux that are considered ‘LTS’ for Long Term Support. Plus you don’t have to upgrade to a newer version, if it works and you like it, keep it! 😀

My feeling is that Linux will never be popular because it doesn’t get pre-loaded onto PC’s. If it were, and more people were exposed to it, the useage would go up considerably imho.

For something that is Open Source and free, to work as smoothly as it does is a credit to the developers. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to convert you or anyone to even try any version of Linux! If you don’t have the interest, then by all means stay with M$ and watch them botch, release after release in hopes of getting it right. Just look at Win 7, it works just fine, but that doesn’t suit M$.. so here comes v10 … Oh wait what happened to 8 and 8.1?? Epic fails both of them.

Cheers

Nice job Kathleen, but so little space and so much to say, a lot if info was left out :/

I would like to think that any Windows user would have already explored using a “distribution” or “Distro” of Linux by now, on their own, as I did.

One important thing omitted from your article was that anyone can try a “Live CD” version of Linux without ever actually installing it to their HD. You get the .iso file, burn it to a CD/DVD and boot from it to run that version of Linux. You are able to explore Linux as often as you want, only thing is that since its on a DVD any changes you make won’t be saved.

Choice #2 is that you install Linux “beside” Windows, it’s on your HD but it behaves like another program, so if you want to remove it, simply use Add/Remove to get rid of it. It will not run very fast in this mode either but faster than running from an optical disk

Choice #3 is to actually fully install Linux to your HD on partitions made just for that purpose, making your system dual boot. Be careful here… you don’t want to install Linux OVER your Windows OS, or maybe you do, that choice is yours.

Here is the best tip I can give you when installing Linux is to put the Grub Bootloader,btw … Grub is “Grand Unified Bootloader”, (which controls the booting of Linux), on the SAME PARTITION AS LINUX. Read that last part again!

Why do you want to do this? If you allow Linux to install Grub where it wants to go by default, it will put Grub in charge of booting BOTH Windows and Linux. That might be OK for some, but if Grub gets corrupted you can’t boot either OS! Putting Grub on the partition where Linux resides prevents this, if Grub gets corrupted somehow, you can still boot to Windows and vice versa. So watch when you install and you can easily choose where to put Grub.You will also need to use the free program Easy BCD, to allow give you the choice, on boot up, of Windows or Linux. Plenty of articles out there that discuss all this in more detail, check YouTube as well.

I’d suggest trying many distros of Linux using the Live CD method, that way you can see what hardware will and won’t work with any Linux distro. I have used Ubuntu 14.04, LuBuntu, and Linux Mint. My wife’s machine had Win XP on it, now it happily runs Lubuntu and is connected wirelessly to my router and printer. LuBuntu isn’t as processor instensive as Ubuntu, it’s older brother. If you have an old machine you want keep using but it has a slow processor and low RAM, Lubuntu should be fine for you. On the machine I am using now to write this I have Mint 17.02 Rebecca installed with Win 7 64 a dual boot. It works wonderfully and I spend more time in MInt than I do in Win 7 and I LOVE 7!! I run no virus scanner or firewally with Mint! It’s nice to be free of all that.

In the end it’s up to you to make the choice to try Linux or not. I find that Mint is very Windows Like in it’s appearance and operation. Do I see it as a replacement for Windows? For what I do, yes it can be, for others it can simply be a wonderful. free compliment to Windows. Using it in dual boot, Windows doesn’t ‘see’ the Linux file system at all, in Computer Management. Just the reverse is true in Linux, it can access ALL the Windows files and partitons, that makes it a nice way to find and recover Windows files if it becomes infected with malware etc.

Good luck!