Not fun

[trike lady]

Having an old hard drive take a **** and having to switch to the computer that is running a test of Linux Mint 22.0 Cinnamon and loosing all your not saved stuff. Thankfully there is stuff saved to usb sticks and sadly I lost some trike notes. I'm going to have to get a better system for storage.

 

[Papa Zook]

My new-est 6 month old Lenovo laptop crashed three weeks ago and I aways carry the Best Buy Total Protection Geek Squad Plan as well as Lenovo's extended warranty plan. They had to backup everything to a seperate hard drive and reinstalled the operating system and Ive been adding back all my files, apps, custom themes and bookmarks as I have had time..what a pita that has been.

 

[cycle7447]

For about $59, you can buy a 2TB backup drive. This will automatically back your system up (I usually have mine does at 2 AM on Sunday). This will hold your entire system.

 

[trike lady]

It has been fun finding everything and everything is back to normal to a degree. I can be my own enemy at times by saving/using old mechanical hard drives. Now somewhere I do have two solid state ones, I should have used one of those.

 

[trike lady]

Things are shaping up, the files are okay and there are a few missing bookmarks. I switched to Linux Mint 21.3 XFCE and I'm having a fun time sorting the bookmarks and keeping the important ones. The XFCE is light and fast & it works better.

 

[JTJersey]

Have you ever tried Mint Mate?

 

[Papa Zook]

For about $59, you can buy a 2TB backup drive. This will automatically back your system up (I usually have mine does at 2 AM on Sunday). This will hold your entire system.

Best Buy downloaded everything to a 1TB backup drive that they sell, but Im thinking maybe I should take your advice and buy a 2TB drive and start doing a weekly backup. I run my Trike Shop business, as well as this site and my business FB page, ebay page, etc, from my laptop so all that data is not replaceable.

 

[trike lady]

Have you ever tried Mint Mate?

Never tried that version. The very first version of Linux I used years ago was Peppermint 8 and it was a light & fast version and then I was told to try Linux Mint Cinnamon and that is what I have used since 18.3 and 21.3. With the disaster I went back to XFCE. One day I may give it a try, that's why I have my testing laptop; that's the one with LM22.0 Cinnamon, both Librewolf browser with 7 search engines and Brave browser.

 

[JTJersey]

I've always found Cinnamon a nuisance to deal with when, for example, just personalizing the desktop. Simple things like moving an icon on the taskbar requires entering edit mode, adding spacers, expanding or contracting spacers and moving the icon beyond where you want it and hoping it ends up in the hoped for position. In Mate you just move it and it stays there. Lots of little things like that keep me from using Cinnamon full time. I do keep a separate hard drive attached to the same machine with Mint Cinnamon installed. I boot to it occasionally to keep it updated thinking I may need it in an emergency if my Mate drive goes south. Try it out on a thumbdrive. If you have any questions about it you can always ask me.

 

[Marc H]

So if a light user wanted to go to Linux from windows with least headaches and learning curve what version would be best.

 

[trike lady]

For me it was XFCE and it was Peppermint8 Peppermint OS – The Linux Desktop OS
Now I'm using Linux Mint21.3 XFCE and its what I like and it doesn't seem to slow the computer down.
Linux Mint 21.3 "Virginia" - Linux Mint
XFCE has everything you need. In my opinion its the easiest to work with.