[GTALUG] Back to basics: upgrading from Windows to Linux

Sat Apr 30 15:03:54 EDT 2022

Many thanks to all, and especially Nigel who has clearly described what is
now Plan A.

I didn't even know about Clonezilla until Lennart mentioned it yesterday.
Then I studied up and it quickly rose to the method of choice, and your
detailed instructions have made it dead simple. Up to now I had made a
system image and bootable USB recovery USB stick using the MS tools, but a
proper clone seems a much cleaner way to do it.

(Aside: in preparing for this, in making Kubuntu installation media,
Windows recovery and Clonezilla Live, I've discovered that more than three
quarters of my collection of USB sticks are useless -- unformattable,
unrecognizable by the hardware, or now reporting capacity of 2MB.
Miraculously, one of the remaining good ones is decades old with a bootable
DR-DOS on it.)

Fortunately I am not under pressure to shrink the Windows partition(s); the
new drive is large enough that I can leave the existing Windows install
as-is and still have plenty of room for the Linux install (as well as a
shared-data partition).

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56

On Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 8:54 AM Nigel Auger <subs1 at augermax.com> wrote:

> I also run multi boot Windows 10 and KUbuntu on my main two systems. Am
> currently on KUbuntu 20.04 LTS. Here is my way of doing what you want to
> do.
>
> I have used Clonezilla for years. I boot it from a USB stick. I use it to
> make regular disk and partition backups as well as migrate and build new
> systems.
>
> In my experience shrinking Windows system partitions is very problematic
> due to unmovable files that Windows places high up in the partition. Years
> ago I found this tool. It was free when I found it. If works (I used it
> recently on an old Gateway machine with a hard drive) however I am
> conservative so I take extra steps to ensure success. These extra steps are
> a lot of work. Many probably wouldn't bother.  I describe these steps
> below.
>
>
> https://www.diskpart.com/articles/shrink-volume-with-unmovable-files-4348.html
>
> NTFS access from linux - I have been accessing NTFS formatted large data
> drives from Linux for years. NTFS support in Linux seems to be excellent
> from my perspective. The only caveat is you will probably need to ensure
> the mount command in the fstab file is configured to give your preferred
> user full access to that drive. My systems are single user systems so it's
> easy. For multiuser systems you are probably better to seek the advice of
> others on this forum who are far more knowledgeable than I am. Here is an
> example fstab entry I use:
>
> #UUID=F474B7AA74B76DCC /home/augern/WDp2 ntfs-3g
> defaults,nofail,uid=1003,gid=1003,umask=000,dmask=027,fmask=137 0 0
>
> MY STEPS to ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
>
> 1) Use Clonezilla to clone your original M.2 SSD onto the new M.2 SSD.
> Just use straight full disk image, NOT individual partitions because you
> want to ensure all of the boot sector info is cloned. Since you are cloning
> onto a larger disk this should just work. There will be empty space at the
> end of the new drive. Use the beginner mode in Clonezilla.
>
> 2) Swap out the old smaller SSD and swap in the new larger SSD into your
> target system.
>
> 3) Boot the system into Windows. You might have to reboot once or twice to
> allow Windows to do whatever it does when the environment changes.
>
> Preparing and shrinking Windows.
>
> 4) Install AOMEI Partition Assistant.
>
> 5) If you have the patience, stamina, copy all user data such as
> documents, photos, videos, etc. to a backup drive and consider temporarily
> deleting them from the Windows system partition. As I wrote above I am
> conservative so this is an optional step, probably not necessary but it
> will reduce the burden on the partition shrinking tool.
>
> 6) Run Windows Disk Clean as administrator. You want to ensure all the
> crap from Windows updates and upgrades is deleted. These files can run into
> many gigabytes of data. Also ensure you click on the tab in Disk Clean and
> select delete all old restore points as these files also can be quite large
> and are unnecessary since you have a cloned copy of your system should
> something go wrong and you need to start over.
>
> 7) From your administrator account in Windows disable hibernate and
> disable the page file (virtual memory). Check to make sure the files have
> been deleted. They are hidden system files. If they are still there delete
> them.
>
> 8) Use AOMEI Partition Assistant to shrink your Windows system partition.
>
> 9) When finished shrinking the Windows partition, re-enable hibernate and
> the page file and copy back over any user data files you deleted to speed
> the process up.
>
> 10) Once you are happy Windows is stable and working, make a Clonezilla
> backup image of the entire disk so that when something goes wrong during
> Linux installation or some unplanned Windows Update and your system gets
> wrecked, you can recover it in 30 odd minutes rather than having to start
> over from scratch.
>
> 11) You are now ready to install your Linux system(s). Use the normal
> partition tools to set up your disk the way you want it.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 9:22 PM Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 01:35:38AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
>> > Hi all.
>> >
>> > This topic is one I hope will be on many peoples' minds as they
>> encounter
>> > frustration (and in some cases a dead end) moving their Windows 10
>> systems
>> > to Windows 11. This may soon become the source of a multi-stakeholder
>> > public campaign, but that's just in the planning stages.
>> >
>> > Now for the personal angle.
>> >
>> > Some ago I installed Windows on a desktop I use a lot. It replaced Linux
>> > because that was incapable of running the one game I like playing. I
>> even
>> > gave a talk to GTALUG about that move, about Windows Subsystem for Linux
>> > and the things I thought were better about the Windows desktop.
>> >
>> > Turns out I was wrong. So very, very wrong. And now I can't wait to go
>> back
>> > to my Linux desktop, especially since there's a recent LTS release of
>> > Kubuntu, my traditional distro of choice. Plus, according to ProtonDB,
>> my
>> > game might just run well natively on Linux
>> > <https://www.protondb.com/app/255710>!
>> >
>> > But it's been a long time since I've done this so I have some remedial
>> > questions to ask from this group's wisdom ... to help me change from a
>> > Windows install to a dual boot, priority Kubuntu:
>> >
>> >    1. My motherboard takes a single M.2 SSD for my one and only drive. I
>> >    have a larger M.2 card that I'd like to replace it with, cloning my
>> >    existing setup to the new drive (in a temporary USB enclosure) then
>> >    installing and shrinking the Windows partition in anticipation of
>> the Linux
>> >    dual-boot install. Can anyone recommend a good tool for doing the
>> disk
>> >    clone? Or am I better off to just fresh-install Windows on the new
>> drive,
>> >    and restore my data from the old one?
>> >
>> >    2. I want to have one partition for data that is visible regardless
>> if I
>> >    boot Linux or Windows. Previously the most reliable filesystem
>> readable by
>> >    bothwas FAT32. Should I still do that? Is Linux support for NTFS good
>> >    enough now? Even better, can Windows be taught to read ext4?
>> >
>> >    3. I've never used snap or flatpack before. Others have told me to
>> >    install as much native (ie, .deb packages) as possible, use flatpack
>> when
>> >    it's the only option and uninstall snap. Any comments or caveats
>> here? And
>> >    why did app installation sources become needlessly complex?
>>
>> I have avoided them so far by not using a distribution with such silly
>> additions. :)
>>
>> I think even Mint Linux based on Ubuntu has removed it.
>>
>> As for cloning and resizing, clonezilla should do the job well.
>>
>> --
>> Len Sorensen
>> ---
>> Post to this mailing list talk at gtalug.org
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>> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>>
>
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