Booting Old Gadgets with Ubuntu

I have old gadgets with lot of old data including my favorite films.

For about three weeks I was trying to install Debian 11 and Emmabantus while keeping old data.

I could not.

I tried copying to a SATA external disk but transfer rate was snail pace and it abruptly stopped for no reason.

There was no problem installing Ubuntu along with data.

But due to frugal and commercial Ubuntu ploys, I could not open most of my files including films.

There was no VML utility.

I tried Debian and Emmabantus first but they won't boot after installing on the Immation and Apallo disk with no ESP partition, to boot.

Finally, I decided to install Ubuntu last, after Debian or Emmabantus install, on one Immation 500GB and the other, one terabyte disk.

It worked and Ubuntu read and installed the GRUB, the Grand Universal Boot Record.

By the way, ESP or EFI partition can reside on any sector, not necessarily starting from the first sector of the hard disk.

That was a relief and if the first sector becomes corrupt or unusable the whole disk cannot be used.

I have a USB stick which I installed a bizarre script and it cannot be formatted.

It has become a read only stick.

USBs are supposed to be erasable and reusable, unless of cause a copyright firmware is installed by OEM guys.

Thanks Ubuntu your GRUB search is excellent.

Both hard disks had only 3 year warranty and I erased all Windows utilities.

The Windows won't let me install Linux distributions.

They are solid after forty years of use.

Thanks Immation the workmanship of your hardware is excellent.

They are solid sealed disk containers.

Keeping them in the box was absolute waste.

They were the with two, OLD, Type 2 USB slots, one for reading and one for writing.

They work as new and I decided to pack the SATA external disks into their original boxes and give them a little respite.

Do not throw old hard disks simply because you have new gadgets.

I can take them with me as mobile units and watch my old films and re-edit my book files.

I had forgotten the data were recorded in one of the disks.

I do not have to redo files and my PC is free of junk files.

Recordings stuff on USBs without a label on top is annoying.

I have erased data on all USBs and use them as bootable Linux USBs leaving some space for storing and keeping the ISO images.

Mageia 8 is out

I was a fan of Mandrake and Mandriva and it went into dormancy and Mageia Linux kept it afloat from France.

It was the first commercial portable OS and Globe Trotter was its innovation.
Soon after Globe Trotter it went bust.
Since then, I have not used Mageia as a regular installation and lost interest in Mageia.

According to reviews it's version 8 is pretty good.

However Download speed of Ceylon is currently at snail pace and I need at least two days to download almost 5GB Iso.

I have download it and installed it on hard disk and an external drive.

It brings back nostalgia of Mandrive with a blue desktop.

I have to say something nice about it.

It has more utilities than Ubuntu 21.10 frugal edition.

It takes over the entire hard disk.

All the utilities work well Mageia Control Center has a partition tool which allows one to resize the home partition, which I did to save free space to install Debian and Emmabantus.

It has No ESP (Debian and Emmabantus, too do not have ESP at boot time) and won't allow dual booting.

Finally when Ubuntu was I stalled with its ESP partition, all other distributions were identified as bootable with the GRUG 2 utility.
Ubuntu does difficult things easily and luckily I never use it but have a copy in an external disk to trouble shoot.
Funny thing about Debian is once installed it never fails and no need of updating software.
In my latest book on Rebirth, I am going to state that Linus probably has had rebirth connection to me like our dog who inspired me be a Linux addict.
Now that I am off alcohol, I need annother addiction to be tagged onto.
Fortunately, for me our download speed in Ceylon is hopeless that it takes 4 days for a 4GB image to download.
They are



Currently downloading FreeBSD.

It took nearly two hours to download.

I had to configure the Transmission utility to speed up the download speed.

Mageia installation bit messy.
It did not install on the free space and did not configure the boot loader.
It only allowed plasma desktop but was not as flashy as with Debian 11.

It needs 50GB for root and took the entire disk for home partition.
I resized the home partition.
I am using Ubuntu to do the honors and keep four distributions in the hard disk with over 700GB left for Data.

I downloaded FreeBSD and tried to install it on an external disk and failed.

It is over 4.8GB and could not be written on a DVD to test it live on a DVD.

When I find a Big 10GB DVD I will try it as a live session.

USB image is 1.1GB.

Partitioning Tools

This is not an expose of all tools available but quick recipe for the newbies.

I have been using partition tools from the time of Windows 95.

I accidentally found a tool called Partition Magic which I had to install on Win-98 and resize FAT partition and install Redhat 8 dual booting with Windows.

I could never lay my hands on Redhat 7 series but managed to find 6, or 7 CDs of Debian 6.

There was no return to Windows and I was an avid advocate of Linux full-time.

Partition Magic was bought by an agency and it has changed it's name to Qparted and I never used it again or bought a paid copy.

I was hooked to Gparted and suffice to say, I did not find any problem with it, in 32 bit days.

It has a PAE and a 64 bit version of which I have multiple copies mounted on USBs, using MultiSystem CD.

Lately I have been using Disk utility of Debian which is very handy to mount 32 bit USBs and format them to FAT and reuse them as bootable Linux such as Ubuntu.

Then there is FDISK utility on command line which I used sparingly on early Caldera Linux book days, that came with 3 CDs.

There are no books on Linux nowadays but thanks to those pioneers who wrote books, if not for them, I would have never entered the Linux World.

It ended up, me writing few books on Linux as a precursor for the LINUX Freedom in a Capitalistic World.

I have Linux Bible and UNIX, the master book of Linux commands.

I have never used LateX but have a copy of it in one of my Linux versions.
It is the best Word Processor and can be used in command form.

Linux World is a never ending Stream.

There is also GNU partition tool.

So do not try to be a pundit in YouTube boasting about 10 Linux commands but try to learn Python 3.

You never finish Python in your entire life.

It is 70 years old and still ruling the Linux World.

But my favorite is ViM.

Ubuntu is the King of ESP Protocol

Let me be forthright.
Coronavirus has affected all the Linux Developers, including Debian Base.

Only Ubuntu 2110, has been able to keep it's head above water.

It has pruned its application base, but has enough applications left for the workspace.

It looks like Ubuntu has gone commercial and paucity of applications on base install is the end result.
Downloading additional applications is a pain.
In that sense I prefer Endless OS which has an endless source of applications.
I was never an Ubuntu fan and no hard feelings.
It's GRIP with ESP partition is commendable.

It's new Desktop does not have a Debian name and an equivalent desktop to compare with but has kept its uniqueness, quite evident.

I love it's hippos face-lift.

For Debian has kept all its desktops afloat with 2700 applications to boast about but it takes at least two hours to install.

The problem is installation, I will come to that in a moment.

If you need a fully functional OP, go for Emmabantus but it also fails to have a ESP partition at the end of installation.

Remember I DO NOT give any room for a Microsoft partition to lay resident in my PC with all it's assortment of Viruses.

Only boot partition is 528 ESP and that's it.

The crunch point is NO more boot partition of the old.
One has to master the ESP boot partition which is the replacement for Windows UEFI.

My old computer PC which is 64 bits has NO UEFI front but only the Legacy BIOS to boot on.

After installing the base Debian and Emmabantus struggle to write the Grub boot loader.

My PC's main boot partition of 120 SSD has no ESP or Master Boot Record.
It has been upgraded to Debian 11 but boots by default to its Debian fully fledged desktops.

I cannot boot an operating system installed on the IDE disk.

I do not have lot of Data and Films to be saved in my PC's Free Space.

Each OP takes about 100GB and if I have three OPs installed I have 700GB or more FREE Space in a one terabyte internal or external Hard Disks left idling.

Solved it by removing the one terabyte SATA disk from my laptop and installed Endless OS on a 120 SATA disk.

Endless.OS takes only 4GB.

Formated it for future use.

Then I found another one terabyte Seagate hard disk.

Both are in Original Sealed casing and cannot be removed.

Then I removed two other ancient SATA disks  that I paid a handsome amount of money in 1980s when tiny (IDE hard disks are heavy and I wanted portable disks for music and film files which included GOD Father) disks were coming to the market by air travel agents or the correct name the smugglers of banned electronic items of Ceylon.

I was stupid to buy three external cases for, one new SATA hard disk and two ancient (30 years old) hard disks (of no use at all).

The last two could not be formatted for current use and the other had working Endless OS mounted on an external case.

I have two spare external cases but no spare hard disks.

All of them in proper use.

My AXIOM of more than 10 years Old and they are electronic junk of no use anyone.

Do not give it to your old aunt Aubry.

Hard disk was a banned item then.

Me going to Singapore at a cost of less than Rs. 7,500/= and paying three times the air fare of Rs. 25,000/= to buy a hard disk was shamefully stupid.

The laptops were bulky and they had only Windows installed, which I HATED.

I was not stupid to buy a laptop when I had over 14 PCs in my home network all second hand IBM machines booting an assortment of Linux starting from PC Linux, Redhat,  Peppermint, Ubuntu and Suse Linux and many more which I forget the names.

I bought one laptop for Rs. 35,000/= and it worked for a decade and suddenly went dysfunctional.

Now I know Windows guys write a secret code so that it won't boot at all, so that the next generation of OEMs with jacked up price are available on the market to fool the innocent young guys.

It is Branded  Money Swindling by Microsoft and Apple Guys.

Finally I bought a Windows laptop in 2009 and after three years of use erased Windows using TrueOS and installed Debian 9 or 10.

All these preamble is not to bore you but even with that background, I found it difficult to figure out how ESP works.

The bottom line is old hardware one has to discard including SATA.

How I figured it?

Only Ubuntu at partition time could use ESP.
Debian and Emmabantus Debian based could not.

The ploy is simple.

1. I install first  Ubuntu on the external SATA.

2. Then use Gparted to delete all the Ubuntu partitions except ESP.

3. Install Debian and Emmabantus.

4. Do not touch ESP.

5. Install Ubuntu last of all.

6. Presto Ubuntu figures out what is best  for you and install the GRUB bootloader on the ESP partition of any internal or external drive.

7. Press F2 or Del and chose which partition to boot.

Thank you Ubuntu and it took 10 days of my time  of trial and error to figure it out.

I scheme out my options and partition the hard disk according to my need and that was what I was doing for over 30 years.

It is second nature for me to understand my mistakes and I read  all the Warnings on display and follow the instructions to the last letter.

NO shortcuts.

Books on Linux are not on the market and I do not intend to write one for a foreseeable time.

Enjoy Linux!

My Favorite Linux Distributions

1. PUPPY Linux comes first.
I hate bloated Operating Systems.
With 100MB Puppy large collection of utilities.
It has save options.
FatPup supports 64 bit computers and all Puppy Linux in the past were 32 bit.
4 to 8GB USB is more than enough.

2. Knoppix comes second and last version was way back in early 2021.
Its desktop effects are fantastic and application list is enormous.
It can be booted with a persistent  volume and one should use 32GB USB.

3. Ubuntu 21.10 is only 3.1GB and bootable from a USB of 4GB. It has curtailed basic stuff in this volume but once installed it has enormous applications to install from Debian store.
It has AbiWord.

4. Number 4 is Emmabuntus which support old 32  bit computers.
It can be booted on a 64  bit computer and it's application supports children utilities and its application base is enormous.

It has AbiWord my favorite word processor.

5. Debian 11 is my workhorse and it does not support AbiWord.
It's disk tool is useful and I do not need Gparted for partitioning.

6. Number 6 is Gparted PAE and 64 bit versions booted on a USB.

7. Number 7 is MultiSystem OP which is Ubuntu based and one can boot multiple image on a USB.

8. Number 8 is Endless OS.
It takes over the HD and no dual booting options.

9. Number 9 is PinguOs.

10. Number 10 PCLinux which has fallen out of my liking and it does not support dual booting.

11. I have installed Ubuntu, Emma bantus and Debian on a external terabyte disk and I have 700GB left for data.
Emmabantus need 30GB for root partition and Debian 25GB.
Ubuntu needs only 3.1GB.

The 240GB is used for Home and Var partitions for data.

The operating system consumes the least resources.

Debian takes about 2 hours to install and configure 2700 packages.

Once installed booting is smooth and brisk.
It's fsckd takes a few minutes to check file system integrity at boot  time, although one can halt this process it is prudent to let it do it's house keeping job at it's leisure pace.

By the way, I am wrong about Debian cannot be booted on a USB.

All what one has to do is to download the ISO and use image writer from Debian, to write it to any bootable media external or internal.

In a flash it boots an image without an ESP partition (boots from a 2MB boot partition) and rest of the media is available for data.

All these are coming with kernel 5 and USB Mouse is very sensitive to slightest of hand movements.

I forgot about Peppermint but since it wants Microsoft words to be installed I have given up using it from version 10.

It took 20 minutes of fiddling to get torrents files for Debian and Knoppix 9.1 images.

It was a good exercise for my age  and clumsy hands.

With DVDs and CDs disappearing from the open market, it makes sensed to buy few USBs.

I have a big collection.

Both Debian 11 and Ubuntu 21.10 Need ESP Partition

My PC with 120 SSD Hard disk is set up with Legacy BIOS and the new  Debian 11 was installed without a problem.

My Home partition is never formated so all my old data are saved.

I tried installing Debian and Ubuntu on one terabyte Seagate External Disk with Fat partition as the first boot partition and I could not boot it after installing Debian.

I ignored the Debian flashing at boot time, it is now supporting UEFI.

UEFI is a ploy by Microsoft to scuttle dual booting Linux in your PC.

The ploy I used overcome this problem was to go back to Legacy BIOS.

UEFI stands for Universal Extensible Firmware Interface.

Linux does not use the term UEFI but has renamed, it as ESP.

For a long time Ubuntu and Debian could not overcome this problem of UEFI but now they have their own solutions to this problem.

Back a few years ago, when I had this problem with my Windows Laptop which I erased everything and I used True OS to erase and mount an ESP partition and boot Debian subsequently.

TRUE OS is No more and it's follower FREE-NAS has no desktop.

Attempt of using Debian ESP was a failure.

Then I used Endless OS to erase everything.

Unfortunately Endless OS does not let you dual boot and using one terabyte SATA disk for Endless OS was an absolute waste of resources.

I removed the one terabyte disk and put a 120GB SATA and reinstalled Endless OS.

I have another problem and there are no DVDs in this city to write an ISO image. Debian 11 does not support bootable USB but Ubuntu does.

I have lot of USBs and all have bootable OSes.

The only USB that did not boot a graphic desktop was BSD.

I formated it.

Downloaded Ubuntu 21.10.

Made a bootle ISO image on a 4GB USB stick, using the Debian PC.

Mounted Ubuntu and installed Ubuntu on the External Disk without a ESP partition.

While I was doing this I got a message saying that it won't boot without ESP partition.

I reinstalled Ubuntu with ESP partition.

Presto it is booting.

ESP partition is only 300MB.

I am currently booting Debian and expecting it to write the boot loader in the ESP partition.

I have 800 GB free space left in my external disk.

Perhaps I will boot Emmabuntus on this free space, on a later date.

I have to download Emmabuntus first.

Knoppix 9 Update

I believe Knoppix is the only Linux Distribution with enormous number of applications that can be booted from a USB and does not fear or care whether Microsoft Windows exists at boot time.

Of course it can be installed on a hard drive but with a persistent volume in a 64 GB USB that need does not arise.

It is a fully fledged mobile OS.

I can do all my jobs with only one USB stick but I have all the volumes from version 7.

Being a Linux guy I keep Debian in my PC but it needs a windows partition to boot.

It won't boot from a Ext-4 partition.
This subservience to Windows is an unwelcome ploy.

Since Linux can stand on its own in the cloud, why one needs a windows boot partition?

This is true also, if one boots from a SATA disk with SSD.

I do not like carrying a Laptop on travel.

It is a big hassle on the plane.

If I cannot take my Operating System in a external disk and boot it at the airport, all the achievements of Linux is lost due to Microsoft's UEFI hegemony.

I still use legacy BIOS and usually carry a USB stick prepared from Multisystem USB on travel.

Problem with Multisystem USB stick is one cannot save data.

I hope Endless OS look into this problem in future.

The latest Endless OS DVD won't let me create a USB stick and also won't install on my laptop with a small SATA disk.

I used the old version of Endless OS to Install a new copy.
It is running smoothly and I believe it does not need updating but I would only update the applications.

Thank You, Debian 11 Plus, You have solved all my Linux problems

I have been using Debian intermittently for decades and  solely for the last five years.

Suffice to say Debian did not support AbiWord but I used Puppy Linux and other Linux distributions, including Peppermint and Ubuntu for making light weight AbiWorb, Word and Pdf files, print ready for book format.

1. Latest LibreOffice can now load and read my numerous Abiword files.
This thanks belongs to LibreOffice and Debian for  supporting LibreOffice.

2. I had problem with my digital speaker device which Debian did not configure at boot time.
It does configure it now at boot time.

3. For visually handicapped the every movement of the mouse movement is verbalized and is great for them.

It is annoying for me but I can live with it by lowering the volume of the speakers.
A mute button was not visible on desktop.
They could add it on a future date.

4. I cannot still boot fully fledged Debian on a USB stick but I reinstalled Debian on a external SATA disk.

5. I have saved the Debian 10 and 11 ISO images on a 16GB MicroSD.
That is cool thing of my own thinking.
I hate carrying loads in my possession to teach a Linux newbee.
Preparing a bootable disk is one of them.

I now pretend not to know Linux to save my free time.

One word of caution.
I once press the off button of the computer while Debian was updating its files and it did not finish fschk file and it did not boot   again and I had to reinstall Debian  11.

One should keeps hands off when  Debian is checking its files including the files in external disks.

Debian automatically check files at boot time.

Let it do its house keeping job on boot time.

Few lines about Endless OS.

First Thank You for erasing all the contents of Microsoft boot files from my Laptop.
It takes over the entire disk and no dual booting options.
I removed the 1 terabyte hard disk with Endless OS and stuck a 120GB SATA disk and installed Endless OS on it.
I have over 100 GB left for additional applications.

Using one terabyte for an OS is absolutely waste of resources.

My Debian 11 is on a 100 GB SSD disk for ages and never give problems.

I have Debian 10, Peppermint 10 and Ubuntu 21 on an old IDE disk in my PC for use when I am bored.

It has been serving me over 5, years, now.

The idea was to erase the 1 terabyte disk with Endless OS.

Since endless OS does not allow one to make a bootable USB once it is installed on a hard disk, on second thought, I decided to keep it as as an External Boot Disk with ton of applications already installed that gulped all prepaid data in one night of installation.

The end result is I have one terabyte FREE external disk and two USB sticks of 32 GB with FREE capacity.

I do not need a 3 terabyte external disk for saving data.

Since I do not save films now and all my files are saved in 3 USB sticks with high capacity, I do not need any more space in spite of price of SSDs coming down drastically during the pandemic.

The bottom line is Linux does not corrupt the hardware and system unlike costly Microsoft.

Linux learning curve may be steep but once the basics are mastered it is smooth sailing.

Thank you Linux developers and I can sleep long hours, now.

On a different note for Linux gamers, Steam Deck and Dock are coming soon in this year for you to enjoy games.
Proton utility is there to play Windows games.
This year is good for all Linux users.

Endless OS and Debian 11

I downloaded Endless OS version 4.1 and tried to make a bootable USB on my Linux Box.

I could not.

Then I explored it's website and realized that USB booting is only supported on Windows machines and has a windows exe boot file.

As a last resort I copied them to a USB but it won't boot.

Ironically it takes over the hard drive and won't dual boot.

I have Endless OS on my laptop and I cannot upgrade to version 4.

I would NOT try it.

If I do that I have to reinstall all the applications I have already downloaded.

Instead the OS, I updated the software and it took almost 24 hours (VERY Slow) and some applications could not be updated.

This OS is not for the weak hearted.

Its plus point is it has many Android applications which a Linux guy like me cannot install on Debian base.

By the way, Debian 11 is fabulous!