Lightest Linux distros, easy for noob, with virtual winOS?

[z7vl7abxc]

my install times are also less than 30 minutes. most distros come with gui installers now so i use them because they usually make things easy. most all of my installs are directly to the system drive or in virtual machines using ethernet to download new packages.

i have one system with just wifi. the largest package that gets updated often is firefox and that takes a bit more time. i don't recall if that install took longer because of the wifi, but i know it didn't stretch across hours.

maybe part of it is installing to the usb? or i think one of your mageia installs was to an sd card. i haven't done extensive read and write testing, but seem to recall that sd cards were pretty slow compared to even regular usb's.

 

[pamojja]

What kind of internet do you have and what is the speed of your internet.

4G, certainly limited download for the Mageia actualization during the installation, taking painfully long for downloading, installing new and deleting old redundant packages separately in the process.

install the Linux distros I've used in 10 to 20 minutes depending on which it is.

However, 20 minutes is a world of a difference to the second, afterward again failing Mageia install, without internet connection or actualization, still taking whole 4 hours. Must be Mageia specific then.

 

[The Duck]

4G, certainly limited download for the Mageia actualization during the installation, taking painfully long for downloading, installing new and deleting old redundant packages separately in the process.


However, 20 minutes is a world of a difference to the second, afterward again failing Mageia install, without internet connection or actualization, still taking whole 4 hours. Must be Mageia specific then.

Are you using a cell phone as a hot spot for you internet connection.
If you are that may be why it takes the amount of time it does.

Installs are based on internet download speeds yours and where you are downloading from.
Installs are based on data transfer speed of the device it will be installed to.

 

[pamojja]

maybe part of it is installing to the usb? or i think one of your mageia installs was to an sd card. i haven't done extensive read and write testing, but seem to recall that sd cards were pretty slow compared to even regular usb's.

It may remain a mystery. The SD-card installation without actualization lasted actually 2 hours only, with continued actualization via 4G 8 hours in total. On the same new USB-3 stick now the EasyOS is installed and running perfectly, the second Mageia install without any actualization took 4 hours, 2 hours longer than the SD-card, in comparison. Both done from within the Mageia live install interface.

 

[pamojja]

Someone asked for all distros till now tested, here they are:

 

[pamojja]

Destiny makes it really hard for me again. The boot fat32 partition on the USB, where EasyOS is installed. isnt recognized anymore today. Within live EasyOS GParted shows a warning triangle on that boot partition. If I let it check and repair, it notes

FAT 1 medium eb doesnt correlate with the bootsector of medium f8. You should run scandisk.

I cant find a scandisk application in the easyos Menu. Should I just delete, reformat, name and flag the boot anew? And copy the EasyOS boot files corrected in there again?

 

[Brickwizard]

on my 2010 del laptop, it takes just in 15 mins [including installing updates as it goes] my I5 [2016] desktop takes about 10 mins to do the same [using Debian based distro's

 

[z7vl7abxc]

I cant find a scandisk application in the easyos Menu. Should I just delete, reformat, name and flag the boot anew? And copy the EasyOS boot files corrected in there again?

does windows show that partition in Disk Management? if so, you could try running chkdsk from there.

 

[pamojja]

For windows the whole USB is unformatted. Doesnt recognise any partition in it. Under EasyOS live the ext4 partition with EasyOS installed seems good to go.

 

[z7vl7abxc]

i don't know if easyos has it, but some other distros have a filesystem check version for fat called fsck.fat. that may well be what gparted was trying to run, but could be worth a shot. you could likely check if it is installed by running

man fsck.fat

if it is installed, i believe you could just run

sudo fsck /dev/sdX#

replacing X with the drive letter and # with the partition number.

sudo fsck /dev/sdc1
fsck from util-linux 2.36.1
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
/dev/sdc1: 9 files, 380/3569 clusters

 

[pamojja]

Thanks. Seems not installed. Command not found. Try from an other live distro.

 

[pamojja]

fck under lxle reported approximately: improperly unmounted, corrupted, giving up.

 

[z7vl7abxc]

corrupted doesn't sound good. you may save yourself some extra troubleshooting time by rebuilding the partition like you suggested initially.

 

[pamojja]

you may save yourself some extra troubleshooting time by rebuilding the partition like you suggested initially.tu

What a nightmare? Re partition and building this time within live EasyOS after GParted got stuck, because simple copy and paste of the easyos files from the ISO copied only parts of those files. Unable to delete and rewrite again. This time using GParted was the first time it let me choose GPT instead of msdos to create the partition table. Only to fail with the following partitioning again and again, so used msdos for that again.

Unable to delete and correct the easyos files again, was switching to live Mageia to try it there, only to be shocked that this repeated partitioning hasn't even stuck. In GParted there it still showed the original partitions, before the repeated repartitioning just before!? With the only difference, that instead of the boot vfat partition, the ext4 showed an error triangle.

Now what to do if one can't trust GParted, in different live distros? As a last try I took the live GParted only distro to repartition, and went to bed. Really needed a break.

Which leaves me with the only possible conclusion: This new USB-stick is simply damaged to begin with. Which also would explain the mysteriously long Mageia install, and then fail.

 

[pamojja]

Windows recognized no partition of the new stick this morning, in EasyOS life it was still there.

I made a trial from within EasyOS by using the DDeasy image writting tool. It took over the stick, created a 8MB esp, boot partition, an other ext4 for the about 800MB partition. On saving session it enlarged the ext4 to the whole remaining size of the stick. Without any possible control of the size of the partition, by the user.

Other then the simply copy paste of EasyOS files during the first install, though it says it saves sessions and takes it time for that - now even after the 4th reboot with 'saving session' nothing sticks. All the 6-7 dialogs for settings are repeated each boot up, and firefox still isn't installed, though already downloaded and installed repeatedly.

Limine bootloader from within EasyOS so installed, still again doesn't recognize the EasyOS installation.

 

[The Duck]

What a nightmare? Re partition and building this time within live EasyOS after GParted got stuck, because simple copy and paste of the easyos files from the ISO copied only parts of those files. Unable to delete and rewrite again. This time using GParted was the first time it let me choose GPT instead of msdos to create the partition table. Only to fail with the following partitioning again and again, so used msdos for that again.

Unable to delete and correct the easyos files again, was switching to live Mageia to try it there, only to be shocked that this repeated partitioning hasn't even stuck. In GParted there it still showed the original partitions, before the repeated repartitioning just before!? With the only difference, that instead of the boot vfat partition, the ext4 showed an error triangle.

Now what to do if one can't trust GParted, in different live distros? As a last try I took the live GParted only distro to repartition, and went to bed. Really needed a break.

Which leaves me with the only possible conclusion: This new USB-stick is simply damaged to begin with. Which also would explain the mysteriously long Mageia install, and then fail.

Windows recognized no partition of the new stick this morning, in EasyOS life it was still there.

I made a trial from within EasyOS by using the DDeasy image writting tool. It took over the stick, created a 8MB esp, boot partition, an other ext4 for the about 800MB partition. On saving session it enlarged the ext4 to the whole remaining size of the stick. Without any possible control of the size of the partition, by the user.

Other then the simply copy paste of EasyOS files during the first install, though it says it saves sessions and takes it time for that - now even after the 4th reboot with 'saving session' nothing sticks. All the 6-7 dialogs for settings are repeated each boot up, and firefox still isn't installed, though already downloaded and installed repeatedly.

Limine bootloader from within EasyOS so installed, still again doesn't recognize the EasyOS installation.

Let's not overlook the obvious here.
Hasn't it dawned on you that with as many attempts to install and the amount of failures you have reached that maybe the way you are going about this is all bungled.
Now you say you can't trust gparted and that your usb stick is damaged.
Maybe the ways and the method you are going about everything is what the real problem is.
Step out of the box and have a look.
Simply put Linux isn't that hard to install.

I'm not meaning to be rude or mean but come on man you ain't getting nowhere the way you are doing things.

Good Luck.

 

[pamojja]

maybe the way you are going about this is all bungled.

It has become all too obvious, that the only way to know if a live distro works installed, is by trying the installation itself. That is for sure now. Testing a few live-distros and choosing one - as most advises suggested here - isn't working, if and when an installation just turns out dysfunctional again. And many of ISOs don't even work live (with least complicated Ventoy).

Step out of the box and have a look.

You mean, not looking left or right, and just try the usual installation way, of each of those distros already tested? After 2 of them working live, failing installed again?

Now you say you can't trust gparted and that your usb stick is damaged.
Maybe the ways and the method you are going about everything is what the real problem is.

Well, there must be a rational reason, which as a newbie I can't be sure of.

I tested not only a few live distros, and until now I tested just 2 installed. According to the live-distros installation instructions, each in 2 prescribed allegedly straightforward ways. If you can't point out how a successful tester uses a different method, then how could that assumption without reference to anything I really do differently be sort of helpful?

It's not a silly excuse, that most Linux distros work perfectly on older hardware, but obviously not the newest, with probably still unusual hardware - as in case of miniPCs. So there is no other way, then to try one after the other installed. If not already too frustrated by following the common advice of testing a 'few'.

 

[The Duck]

If you can't point out how a successful tester uses a different method, then how could that assumption without reference to anything I really do differently be sort of helpful?

Download Easy OS onto a computer.
Download Etcher onto a computer.
Plug in the USB flash drive.
Using Etcher create a bootable flash drive.

Plug the USB flash drive into the computer you want to install or use Easy OS on.
Restart the computer and from the boot menu whichever F-Key it is boot from the USB flash drive and follow the text installer.
When everything is completed restart the computer and from the boot menu whichever F-Key it is boot from the USB flash drive.
You should see an Easy OS menu if you followed the text installer correctly and see Easy OS displayed on monitor.

I've already posted a working method to test as a live version or to install Linux distros.

 

[Brickwizard]

Well, there must be a rational reason,

Well let me say this, as a user of over 20 yrs Linux has become increasingly simple to install, in the last 5 years I must have done over 100 installations on kit from 2 to 23 yrs old, the only failures I have had, are on the oldest kit that drivers are no longer readily available, [ok some have needed tweaking to get wi-fi /graphics @sound working but that's part of being a Linux user]
I keep it simple, In the old days you had to partition and format your drive before installing Linux, for the last 12 years at least this has become unnecessary with the majority of distributions as , they have a built-in partition manager that is easy to use [if you need to ] or will do it for you depending on how you answer the questions when asked,
Never make a task more complicated than it need's to be.
Don't believe everything you see on YouTube, at the best much of the content is misleading, out of date or just plain bad.

 

[pamojja]

Maybe the ways and the method you are going about everything is what the real problem is.

Maybe you see my prerequisites to a linux distro, as 'my method'?

Lightest...easiest...with support for VMs... that's a tall order.
I am reminded of a meme about fast cars. You can have fast and cheap, or cheap and safe, or fast and safe, but
you can't have all three. Somewhere you have to cut a few corners.

That isn't a method, that are simply the requirements, for me changing to linux. It would be more honest to say, there isn't such a linux distro out there, accomplishing all 3 requirements at the same time. Very few advises here were as honest, or with such a sense of realism.

I've already posted a working method to test as a live version or to install Linux distros.

The method not advised by the Installer of live Mageia? Or by the developer of EasyOS now even disadvised? How can you say such a minority advice in respect to these 2 distros is the common way? - Admittedly, in cases where the distro's developer advises it as most straightforward, I certainly will use Etcher too. I just didn't come yet to my 3rd distro install, where this has been the case.