Thank YOU Ubuntu 21.10...

By the way, I had 120 GB external disk with  faulty boot partition.

Ubuntu could not configure it BUT I used Knoppox 9 (English version) and mounted Knoppix with a large persistent volume in it.
I will be storing all my books published at Amazon and final copies of all the  articles there, before my memory fails due to old age.

That should be sealed and put in in my coffin, the day I quit this World and Linux with it.

I had enormous problems installing 9 (only five distributions of my choice, one copy in hard drive and another copy, in a one terabyte external rotating disk and one exclusively on a 120 GB external drive) Linux distributios.

I rarely use the primary hard drive for my work but boot the external SATA disk.

There is a guy who is boasting in YouTube, about booting Linux in a breeze.

Please do not believe him.

He is a savvy guy with good intentions but he has never read the Linux Bible (the last copy came out in 2010).

I have it with me for reference.

I have the book "Using Linux" by QUE published in 2002 with 3CDs, Caldera Linux, Debian 2.1, and Redhat 6 version.
I used only Caldera Linux and manually configured the boot file to learn Linux.
I have misplaced those 3 CDs.

I have three other books Linux in a Nutshell and two UNIX books.
This is in addition to Redhat books.

I do not think a library in America have them for browsing.

No use at all now, with 64 bit computers in the market.

I discarded 12 of my 32 bit computers long before 64 bits computers came into operation.

Unlike Linux Star (he should be named Linux Tzar) I moved, on with the new trends.

I could not install Redhat with 2MB RAM in my first PC.

I could never update the RAM of the first computer, I bought for my son.

It is still with me, as a reminder, next to my work desk on a table which I have my utilities including knives, scissors, screwdrivers and hard disk nails and cameras utilities.

The bottom line is one should never try the things, I explain here with 4GB RAM.

One need at least 8GB RAM to run  Debian 11, kernel 11.

I counted it runs nearly 3 million files when preparing the live booting.

Only Ubuntu is stable in a Live session and Debian could not remove 10 files with 4GB RAM for nearly half an hour.

I switched, the computer off and went to sleep.

Most of my problems were of my own making.

IMPATIENCE.

That is to get the GRUB file installed in the external disk.

I have large number of films in another external disk on  NTFS partition of 600 GB which I am going to keep as an archive and as a reserve disk (with three distributions running within).

The point I want to bring in here is I have never lost (of course like finding an old book out of 400 other books, I forget the file's name but I know it is in the 72 GB home drive in the master hard drive) a file for 20 years.

It is vital for a book writer not to lose an old file.

Mistake number one is using 120 SDD disk.

SDD disks cannot make a boot or grub partition.

SDDs runs only one distribution.
Only one installation.

Unfortunately
I have configured it as the boot drive.
I have overcome this by having a rotating slave disk of 1 terabyte.
That is the slave disk from which I can boot the primary boot drive.

I have Debian installed in the first drive which I have migrated from version 10 to 11 version.

The home partition of this drive was never formatted but all my files going into thousands are still there which I retrieve whenever I want a file to start a new book.

I remove old files manually when updated to a new copy.

By the way, I used Peppermint
Linux and AbiWord for my books.
I could not configure the boot file using Peppermint 10 and I have stopped using it.

Now this piece is about Configuring the GRUB boot file.

Only Ubuntu can configure the boot file having looked at all three disks.
Debian cannot.
Emmabantus cannot.
Magiea cannot
PCLinux cannot.
Endless OS cannot.
Even Knoppix cannot.

Only Ubuntu does it, perfectly.

Ubuntu needs a small Grub Boot file of FAT 32.

EFI partition to bypass the Microsoft's UEFI discrimination strategy of Linux.

Other Linux distributions have not figured out this UEFI branding and brandishing.

Coming back to my failures, it is all due to my impatience.

I want to go to sleep and I switched off and rebooted, when the distribution was reading something and RAM was not flushed out and Swaps were not mounted.

Linux use SWAP partition to shift memory pages from RAM to Swap when flushing the memory.

If there are no Swap files it takes ages to flush the memory.

I have 5 Swap partitions.
One in the primary boot drive two each on the others drives.

The SWAP file is Mandatory.

SDD does not do a proper swapping.

That is the other problem with SDDs.

It cannot reconfigure boot file, if another distribution is installed.
That is again bowing down to Microsoft Mafia.

Then there is another big problem.

Suppose you have the original boot file in the primary SDD drive and it gets corrupted.

Then, one cannot boot an alternative drive.

Format and Reinstall of Microsoft is not my way.

That is why I never used Microsoft's Windows for overt 20 years.

I hate Windows for needing updates every 3 months.

In Linux once installed properly, it runs perfectly for 10 years, if one lets, the deamon utility to run at 1PM every night.

That is why I do  all my important work after midnight.

With in one hour deamon utility does it's house keeping JOB in the background.

Computers are meant for running 24/7 schedule.

This is the very reason I get Ubuntu to write the GRUB file on an external disk (in my case in two removable external drives so that (it never happened in my case since, I use the primary drive sparingly and almost never on critical work), it is ready to boot any distribution (already installed).

The cardinal feature of computer is even though you have fancy gadgets everything is done or running on RAM  (on RAM only).

So do not listen to these guys who used Windows for 30 years, then suddenly find Linux and try to teach one's Grandmother Linux.

The guys have never read a Linux book to see how Linux operates.

Thank Linux Torvalds, for editing 3 million files over 20 years and producing kernel 11 with fabulous  Debian.

Even though, I only use Debian for my work, thanks all the same to Ubuntu (all Thanks   go to Ubuntu) for Configuring the GRUB file perfectly.

The cardinal mistake I did was while Ubuntu was mounting the Swaps, I became impatient and rebooted the PC.

After telling myself of my mistakes and having had a good sleep, finally I waited for Ubuntu to do the House Keeping (PC Updating), which it did perfectly.

It took two days due all to my own mistakes but it was all worthwhile in preparation, of my new  book on Debian on kernel 11.

You may be wondering why a big cock and bull story here.

Simply because I cannot put some of the things I say here in a book, which is bordering an academic exercise.

I said about books above.
I am very fast reader on many topics.
Even in the Internet I pick the gems and discard pebbles.

By the way, Internet had metamophasized to a cesspit, and one cannot learn anything worthwhile.

One cannot reproduce class room experience in the Internet.

Coming back to the book story.

I managed to find two (2) CDs on Redhat 8 and a guy in my city was having 6 Redhat out of 7 CD series, probably illegally copied and I ask him can you give me at least five copies out of six.

He never did and much later I found that the set of Redhat CDs (version 7) was for a server and it was for commercial enterprise.
The desktop edition went up to 3 CDs the most and 2CDs were enough to learn Linux.

Because of this guy I decided to learn Linux in depth, and this guy who wanted to set up a Linux network with his brother for commercial purposes went into oblivion.
I told him Linux is free and if you want to make money join the Windows guys. This guy did not have money.
But another guy who came from a rich family had a shop in the town and beat him, by  associating with Microsoft.
All the young guys I tried to teach Linux was employed by him.
I used to go to his shop to do hardware shopping (he was well away from the town) and I did not find anything that I was looking for him.
There was another guy who used to go to Singapore and buy computer stuff and sold at exorbitant prices, I decided shouldn't  I go to Singapore myself and save money.
This guy also got hold of one of my Linux trainers and none learnt Linux after that.

Microsoft's ploy was/is to buy these guys and stunt Linux growth in my city.

Thankfully a guy very young from my college was a wizard in Linux and was a Debian developer from early days.

I hated Redhat after 8 and joined the band wagon of Debian and never looked back.

By the way, my favorite was Mandrake which came from France but it went bust by toying with hardware called "globe trotter".

I went to SuSe for a while and when they went commercial I stopped using it.
I hate both Community driven Fedora and SuSe Linux.
None of them can beat Debian.

But my love was Knoppix coming from Germany.
To get Knoppox latest DVD I used to  subscribed to journal,  Linux for over 10 years and two years after retirement I stopped subscribing to it, coinciding with the demise of our dog.

By the way, I adopted Puppy Linux from its (coming  from Australia) very beginning.

Barry Kauler has gone dormant and he is a better dog lover than me.
I do not blame him.
Linux has got firmly ROOTED.

Lot of eccentric guys support Linux and that is why it's success.

But my most favorite utility is AbiWord the smallest Words program but slowly I am migrating to LibreOffice 7 which is fabulous.