Potential Replacement for XP.

Message

ETP · #1 Post by **ETP** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 12:28

Let me begin by stating that I relish both XP and Puppy in equal measure. I regard XP as my rock or comfort blanket and Puppy as my plaything.

Post April 2014 however, XP is likely to become the target of every hacker on this planet and it may swiftly become unfeasible to continue with it due to the security risks. Many forum members are in the same boat and will be seeking a new “rock

mikeb · #2 Post by **mikeb** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 12:49

Post April 2014 however, XP is likely to become the target of every hacker on this planet and it may swiftly become unfeasible to continue with it due to the security risks.

I think you will find that's has already happened.
Indeed where's the fun in targetting a system that apparently everyone will be scrapping? Plus the exploit usually used are inherent to the standard system.

Actually my replacement for windows XP is erm windows XP...grab Nlite, Xplite or similar and remove IE, outlook, windows media player , messenger and windows updates.... forget antivirus, firewalls and zone alarm and enjoy the 8 years of no viruses that I have.

Just a suggestion.
Ps got a similar install(s) of 2000 stil happy in this way....

mike

amigo · #3 Post by **amigo** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 12:50

What do you mean by "regression function"?

mikeb · #4 Post by **mikeb** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 12:59

restore older kernel ...just my guess.....
Linux should have random kernel selectors alongside random wallpaper choosers..

mike

Sylvander · #5 Post by **Sylvander** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 14:42

I fancy giving this a try, if it isn't too difficult.

Is installing to a Flash Drive the best way to do it?
Seems like a good idea to me.
I have an empty 8GB Flash Drive with a FAT32 partition.
What kind of install? Full or what?
What type of file system is best?
Any installation instructions?
I don't use any bootloader; hope one isn't needed.
My almost new [2012] desktop PC has 8GB RAM [no swap partition needed].

ETP · #6 Post by **ETP** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 16:50

Hi Sylvander,

A full install to an empty flash drive with a single ext4 partition is the safest way to try it out. You will also need an empty 4 GB SD card or USB stick formatted as FAT32.

The ISO is a hybrid so I used win32diskimager to put the bootable live media onto an SD card.

You can then boot from that and use the advanced feature of the graphical install option (an icon for this is to be found on the desktop) and install to a flash drive of at least 8GB. In my case the stick appeared as sdg1.

WARNING – Just be careful that you un-tick all references to sda, in particular the Grub2 bootloader should be put on the stick (sdg in my case).

A single mount point of / will suffice as boot, root and home will all then go onto the single ext4 partition.

The above modifies the guidance below which assumes that you are doing an advanced install to a hard drive rather than a USB stick.

http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title ... sers_0.8.8

Sylvander · #7 Post by **Sylvander** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 17:38

ETP wrote:I used win32diskimager to put the bootable live media onto an SD card.

a. To make a bootable live media:
Is it OK to make a bootable DVD+RW by burning the iso to it using Burniso2cd within Puppy?

b. Can I put "it" [what is "it" that I should put?] on a Flash Drive rather than an SD card?

c. Within which OS should I run win32diskmanager.
XP?
Does XP natively include this?
Or would I need to find an installation exe file and install it to XP?

ETP · #8 Post by **ETP** » Thu 19 Dec 2013, 18:59

Sylvander wrote:
ETP wrote:I used win32diskimager to put the bootable live media onto an SD card.
a. To make a bootable live media:
Is it OK to make a bootable DVD+RW by burning the iso to it using Burniso2cd within Puppy?

b. Can I put "it" [what is "it" that I should put?] on a Flash Drive rather than an SD card?

c. Within which OS should I run win32diskmanager.
XP?
Does XP natively include this?
Or would I need to find an installation exe file and install it to XP?

a. Yes. If you do, you can install to a flash drive from that. Win32diskimager is an XP application used to burn an img file or hybrid ISO to a stick or card which makes it then behave as if it were a CD or DVD. It saves burning the ISO.

If your CD writer ever fails or you are using a laptop with no optical drive you can find a copy on my server.

http://mydrive.ch (Switzerland)
Guest login name = maddog@puppy4
Password= maddog

Dean · #9 Post by **Dean** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 05:52

ETP,
Build your own Manjaro with the Net Edition

ETP · #10 Post by **ETP** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 09:22

Dean wrote:ETP,
Build your own Manjaro with the Net Edition

Dean,
Thanks for highlighting the Net Edition which I should have mentioned. It is in effect a “barebones

Sylvander · #11 Post by **Sylvander** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 09:24

1. Used Burniso2cd to burn the ISO to a DVD+RW.
SUCCESS.

2. Rebooted with the DVD in place.
Chose option 1 = load Manjaro.
It began to load.

3. Lots of processes scrolling down the screen.
Lots of FAIL's listed.
Took a VERY LONG TIME, and seemed to be making no progress.
It was repeatedly attempting to logon, and failing.

4. Eventually I gave up...
Held in the on/off button to power off.

ETP · #12 Post by **ETP** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 09:58

Hi Sylvander,
I can only suggest that you try what worked for me - i.e. use Win32diskimager to write the live ISO to a SD card or USB stick.

Sylvander · #13 Post by **Sylvander** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 12:03

OK, will try that.

Sylvander · #14 Post by **Sylvander** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 14:11

1. I'm struggling on WinXP.
a. Couldn't find Win32diskimager anywhere in XP.

b. Installed Imgburn [which I've used before and liked], and used it to burn the ISO image to a good DVD+RW.

c. Booted the DVD.
The desktop failed to boot it.
Tried hitting F11 to manually choose the boot device.
None of the F buttons would do ANYTHING with this DVD in the drive.
The desktop booted into XP, regardless of the DVD being in the optical drive.

d. The above [c] had me worried...
Had something in the UEFI BIOS been altered by XP or the DVD it made?
Would my Puppy CD-RW's still boot ok?
Well, they did, so that's a relief.

e. Tried to find an exe installation file on the web for Win32diskimager, to download and install.
All I could find was a zip file.
Downloaded it, extracted it, an exe [program?] file was included.
Thought maybe it was a portable program...
Ran it, kind of primitive, wouldn't allow me to choose an optical disk to write to.
I believe it only writes to memory cards and Flash Drives, not optical disks.
Erased all of the files.
If I use it to write the ISO to a Flash Drive, will that [Flash Drive] be bootable?
What about the bootloader?

ETP · #15 Post by **ETP** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 15:04

Hi Sylvander,

That’s 2 cd writing programs that have failed to produce a bootable DVD. Did you confirm the checksum of the ISO download?

e. Tried to find an exe installation file on the web for Win32diskimager, to download and install.
All I could find was a zip file.
Downloaded it, extracted it, an exe [program?] file was included.
Thought maybe it was a portable program...
Ran it, kind of primitive, wouldn't allow me to choose an optical disk to write to.
I believe it only writes to memory cards and Flash Drives, not optical disks.
Erased all of the files.
If I use it to write the ISO to a Flash Drive, will that [Flash Drive] be bootable?
What about the bootloader?

In my previous post I advised you to obtain the version of Win32diskimager that I used from my server and gave you the login name and password. If you have obtained a later version from say sourceforge I cannot vouch for it as I have not tested it.

The version on the server is 0.7. It does not need installing, just extracting. It is not native to XP. To launch it click on Win32DiskImager.exe in the extracted directory.

It does not write to an optical disk. It is used to write an img file or ISO to a SD card or flash drive which will be bootable.

Once you get the hang of it you will probably never burn another DVD as you can also clone a device with it. That image can then be written to another device.

From the point of view of just writing an ISO image to a stick or card it is the windows equivalent of the Linux DD command.

When you browse for the image to write within the tool (i.e. the Manjaro ISO) make sure you select *.* as it defaults to *.img.

wboz · #16 Post by **wboz** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 15:13

This is really interesting .. I was not familiar with Manjaro but I might definitely consider it in the future. I'm particularly impressed by the availability of a PDF INSTALLATION GUIDE

The major thing preventing me from installing a fullon HDD distribution is my fear of messing something up seriously with the partitioning and installation. I really wish I had a blank-slate computer to practice on

Maybe I should just see if I can get a replacement SSD to plug into my Lenovo so that I can play around without fear .. but they're sorta expensive. Less expensive I guess than a new computer!

nubc · #17 Post by **nubc** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 20:56

wboz wrote:The major thing preventing me from installing a fullon HDD distribution is my fear of messing something up seriously with the partitioning and installation.

Funny, this is exactly the reason why I am locked in to using Puppy exclusively. Because I don't trust the loss of control implied by a semi-automatic installation of some other distro. I didn't install LXLE (Ubuntu fork) for this reason. The devs couldn't convince me that the installation would respect my other OSes and partitions.

Sylvander · #18 Post by **Sylvander** » Fri 20 Dec 2013, 21:23

1. OK...I'm typing this from Manjaro.

a. Downloaded your copy of Win32diskimager from within Puppy to a folder [01] on the Windows partition.
b. Rebooted to XP, ran the portable win32diskimager.exe, used it to install the contents of the ISO image to a 4GB FAT32 partition filling a Flash Drive.
c. Rebooted, hit F11 and told the UEFI BIOS to boot the Flash Drive, and got to the Manjaro desktop pretty quickly.

2. Some small problems:
a. Text is displayed rather on the small side, need to make it bigger.
Quality looking display, NICE!

b. Keyboard is displaying some of the characters incorrectly [I get > when I hit the backslash, and @ when I hit quote symbol].
c. When I try to do anything [configure the firewall or install Manjaro to a different (8GB ext4) Flash Drive], I'm asked for a password that I don't know!
d. It's taking a long time [in the Puppy forums only] to go to a new window.

ETP · #19 Post by **ETP** » Sat 21 Dec 2013, 08:25

@ wboz,

This is really interesting .. I was not familiar with Manjaro but I might definitely consider it in the future. I'm particularly impressed by the availability of a PDF INSTALLATION GUIDE

The major thing preventing me from installing a fullon HDD distribution is my fear of messing something up seriously with the partitioning and installation. I really wish I had a blank-slate computer to practice on

Maybe I should just see if I can get a replacement SSD to plug into my Lenovo so that I can play around without fear .. but they're sorta expensive. Less expensive I guess than a new computer!

Just to clarify matters here this thread gives:
A brief overview of Manjaro.
Describes how to do a non persistent live install of Manjaro to a USB2 stick.
Provides instructions on how to then, using that stick, create a full install to another stick which will be persistent.

I have NOT done a hard disc install and don’t intend to unless forced to scrap XP at some point in the future. The only bootloader on my hard drive is NTLDR and will remain so. The good news therefore is that you can try this out just using cards and sticks which are a lot cheaper that a new PC or SSD.

@ nubc

Funny, this is exactly the reason why I am locked in to using Puppy exclusively. Because I don't trust the loss of control implied by a semi-automatic installation of some other distro. I didn't install LXLE (Ubuntu fork) for this reason. The devs couldn't convince me that the installation would respect my other OSes and partitions.

I entirely agree. Anything that is put onto my SSD is always done manually rather than trusting some possibly flawed alien script.

@ Sylvander

That’s good news. With regard to your "small problems", before you press enter to launch Manjaro on the live USB you need to use F2 to set the language & keyboard.
See:
http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title ... ners_0.8.8

Sylvander · #20 Post by **Sylvander** » Sat 21 Dec 2013, 11:20

Did the F2 business OK.

1. Now attempting to install Manjaro in "Advanced Installation Mode" [so as to be given the choice to install to the Flash Drive].

2. Got as far as the display of available drives->partitions.
a. Highlighted/selected the 8GB ext4 partition on the Flash Drive.
b. Chose "Lexar USB Flash Drive [8GB] (/dev/sdc)" in the drop-down window.
c. Ticked the box = "Use this device for bootloader installation".

3. The "Install now" button is greyed out, and nothing I do changes that.
Hence, clicking it has no effect, and install won't proceed beyond that step/window.

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