Newbie here. Frustrated, scared as hell of the terminal command stuff, afraid of losing my "stuff" if I have to use that to install an upgraded os

[heretical_1]

Hi! I had linux installed on my laptop because I absolutely hate windows and mac for various reasons, including the lack of backward compatibility and the outrageous financial burden imposed by (#-****) programmers who won't just leave well enough alone when things are already working (I still have a windows xp system that is used for storage and retrieval of the vast amount of data I have stored over the years, it never goes on the internet and works just fine!). Recently, I have been using the "telegram" social media to keep in contact with friends, and now find that it suddenly doesn't work. Best I can tell, it looks like those damned programmers have monkeyed with the Telegram program, thus making it no longer functional with my ubuntu 14.04 (Zorin) system. Ok, so I go to update my system and it won't update, much less convert to the 18.whatever version that might help solve this. Aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!

 

[Tolkem]

Hi! I had linux installed on my laptop because I absolutely hate windows and mac for various reasons, including the lack of backward compatibility and the outrageous financial burden imposed by (#-****) programmers who won't just leave well enough alone when things are already working (I still have a windows xp system that is used for storage and retrieval of the vast amount of data I have stored over the years, it never goes on the internet and works just fine!). Recently, I have been using the "telegram" social media to keep in contact with friends, and now find that it suddenly doesn't work. Best I can tell, it looks like those damned programmers have monkeyed with the Telegram program, thus making it no longer functional with my ubuntu 14.04 (Zorin) system. Ok, so I go to update my system and it won't update, much less convert to the 18.whatever version that might help solve this. Aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!

Hi and welcome to the forum @heretical_1 You can't go from 14.04 to 18, that's just not possible. Ubuntu 14.04 is way old and in fact its EOL was last April, 2019 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/04/ubuntu-14-04-end-of-life and that might be the reason you're experiencing those issues with soft that used to work but doesn't anymore or at least not as good as they use to, so I think your best bet is to download new Zorin https://zorinos.com/download/ and do a fresh install.
BTW, your title says "Frustrated, scared as hell of the terminal command stuff" however you never mentioned nor "the terminal" neither "the command stuff" you're scared of. In the future try to provide a better title so people can help I think a better title for this thread would've been "how to upgrade Zorin 14.04 to the latest without using the terminal" or something like that, you get the point, don't you?
Hope this helps!

 

[heretical_1]

Hi! Thanks for the advice! I'm not even sure if upgrading to version 18 will work if all I need is to figure out how to get the 14 to upgrade properly. But doesn't a reinstall require using the command terminal? That is what scares me, is trying to upgrade (why I left windows in the first place) without losing any data or functionality. Perhaps I should delete the post and try again to better explain my issue?

 

[Tolkem]

Hi! Thanks for the advice! I'm not even sure if upgrading to version 18 will work if all I need is to figure out how to get the 14 to upgrade properly. But doesn't a reinstall require using the command terminal? That is what scares me, is trying to upgrade (why I left windows in the first place) without losing any data or functionality. Perhaps I should delete the post and try again to better explain my issue?

No, a new install only requires you to:
1. Download the new version.
2. Burn the ISO file to a USB drive.
3. Plug in the USB in your pc.
4. Start the pc from the USB.
5. Boot into the live system.
6. Install the system by clicking in the install icon on the desktop in the Live and follow the easy instructions.
7. Wait for the process to complete.
8. Reboot your pc when asked.
9. Enjoy your newly-updated OS.

 

[heretical_1]

oh! Sounds easy enough. I'll try to do all that and see if I can get it to work without screwing things up! Thank you!

 

[Condobloke]

If you have any data you need to preserve....do that first. Save it to an external hard drive

 

[heretical_1]

Thank you!

 

[heretical_1]

Crud. I looked up the requirements, and I only have a 30gb drive, with the new upload taking about 25gb. Not much room to play with. Also, only 3.8 gb memory, so not sure if unloading everything I have on here will let me do this even then. Here's the requirements for the new upgrade:

• 2 GHz dual core processor or better
• 4 GB system memory
• 25 GB of free hard drive space

and here's what is on my system:

 

[Tolkem]

Crud. I looked up the requirements, and I only have a 30gb drive, with the new upload taking about 25gb. Not much room to play with. Also, only 3.8 gb memory, so not sure if unloading everything I have on here will let me do this even then.

What distro is it you're installing/upgrading actually? Zorin? Ubuntu? The new install won't take the whole 30gb but only what's necessary. Usually, a new Linux OS install will take at the most 6-7gb from my experience and even less. I recently installed a distro, Q4OS, in a USB drive with only 8gb and it took around half, that is 4gb and after installing a few apps there's still around 2gb left, check it out

take a look at the conky where it reads Disk: 5,78GB /7,39GB and by the way it runs really good, quite impressed actually by the performance, considering ... I've even installed distros in a 4GB USB drive, so I think with 30gb and 3.8GB for RAM you're more than good to go. Save your important data somewhere safe and proceed with the install process, if by any chance your PC doesn't meet the recommended requirements, which I seriously doubt, you'll be promted with some warning stating that the process can't continue and will stop, but again, I'm pretty sure that won't be the case.


Hope this helps!

 

[heretical_1]

obviously, I'm not real "up" on computer stuff, so I definitely appreciate your input and will take the next step of trying to download the 18 onto a flash drive to see if I can get it to work. Then it is on to the next step...to infinity and beyond!
oh, and I am running zorin. Not particular as to what "brand" the new 18 is going to be.

 

[Tolkem]

obviously, I'm not real "up" on computer stuff, so I definitely appreciate your input and will take the next step of trying to download the 18 onto a flash drive to see if I can get it to work. Then it is on to the next step...to infinity and beyond!
oh, and I am running zorin. Not particular as to what "brand" the new 18 is going to be.

After you download Zorin https://zorinos.com/download/ by the way, there's a Lite version https://zorinos.com/download/#lite which requirements are a lot much lower than the ones you posted https://zorinos.com/help/system-requirements/ use some tool like etcher https://www.balena.io/etcher/ if you're doing this from Linux, if using a Windows machine then you can use rufus https://rufus.ie/ to create a Live USB, that is, burn the ISO to a USB drive so you can install it. You might want to read here https://linuxflips.com/guide-to-install-zorin-os/ it's for Zorin 12 but very easy to follow, if you have more questions regarding how to proceed don't hesitate to come back and ask for help.

Hope this helps!

 

[heretical_1]

I'm working on offloading the contents of my flash drive onto another puter right now, will take several hours. Will def read those articles and follow the destructions. Thanks again!

 

[Tolkem]

I'm working on offloading the contents of my flash drive onto another puter right now, will take several hours. Will def read those articles and follow the destructions. Thanks again!

Don't follow the "destructions" please lol we don't want you to destroy anything

 

[heretical_1]

hehehe. Always good to throw some humor in!

 

[heretical_1]

ok, downloading the zorin 15 now. Baby steps.

 

[heretical_1]

ok. I am stuck. I have always hated the hell out of "zip" files, because they are not intuitive and I can never figure out how to work them. The etcher program is a zip file. When I try to open it, it just comes up with a blank screen and a popup asking if I want to open it with firefox, which then leads to another blank screen and the same popup. Grrrrrr. I did try using the archive manager to open it, and it now says there are no programs available to open it with, asking me to look on the internet for another program to open that one with.

 

[Tolkem]

The etcher program is a zip file.

Did you download it from here https://www.balena.io/etcher/ ? If scroll down that page you'll see a few different files to choose from just like the image below shows and none of them is a zip file

Go to that page and download the one for your system, however, if you're using a Windows machine I recommend rufus https://rufus.ie/, otherwise etcher will do just fine.

 

[heretical_1]

that is the page I downloaded from. Didn't scroll down to see those options, just saw the one near the top which said "download for linux x64". Now I feel even more stoopid. My apologies. Trying again now.

 

[heretical_1]

still comes up as a zip file

 

[Tolkem]

that is the page I downloaded from. Didn't scroll down to see those options, just saw the one near the top which said "download for linux x64". Now I feel even more stoopid. My apologies. Trying again now.

Don't feel like that, those things just happens. Actually, I just tried out of curiosity and turns out it is a zip file so you were right the whole time. Are you doing this from a Linux OS? Zorin?