I cleaned up my photobucket pictures and some of them were the ones which this post connected to. But if anyone out there is interested in this operating system, please let me know. I've never had a problem with it, can access anything online, can do word processing, printing, spreadsheets and all that, can install (if I want) any Microsoft program (like Office, etc), don't need to be slowed down with a virus program/virus scans and nobody bothers me with updates. Oh, and it is free. Totally free. A friend of mine told me if I were to update to a solid state drive the system would fly along at much greater speed but those things need to come down in price a bit more for me to get one.
Jon

One question I have is whether the Windows file system (specifically data files such as documents pictures etc.) on the computer hard drive is accessible once the pc has booted using the Linux sofware. To put it another way, is the Windows drive visible to Linux?

Depending on the pc I am running windows XP 64 bit, 7 32 bit and 8 64 bit.

Thanks
Xena

Hi Xena,
Sorry for the slow reply. Just saw your question. The Linux system uses a different type of file system...most use SFS or Squash File System but it is very efficient once you know how it works. It is a read only system which operates with file compression for greater ease of use. The Windows drive (being different) will be visible to Linux, however unless you're using a program like WINE (stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator) Windows applications, software, programs, etc won't be usable. WINE makes Puppy Linux and other Linux programs zip along with MS programs just fine. I'm using MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc plus other add-on programs. Any file (like a MS Word doc file or pdf) is saved quickly and can be swapped to any computer running Windows. The Linux stuff isn't difficult to familiarize oneself with...if an aged Texican (with pretty limited computer skills) can do it, I would suppose anyone can. I hope this helps.

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your knowledgeable input. Your answer has inspired be to go boldly forth into the Linux universe and see what develops....

Thanks again
Xena

I have been using Linux for many years now. For beginners, I recommend Linux Mint. The disk image comes with with pretty well everything you need including Libre Office.

Gord,
Thanks for the info. I have stuck my toes in the water and gone to the mint website and have decided on Mint 19 Cinnamon 64 and 32 bit installations.

I have decided to take the cowards way out and order the live installation disks for both the 32 and 64 bit systems and set them up as a dual boot system on my PC's (I have 3, running 3 different versions of Windows). I just seems it will be much quicker than downloading and installing a torrent download program and then using it to download, verify and install the Mint OS. The Win 7 has a virtual XP mode emulator box that may enable me to run Linux from within the Windows desktop environment. Time will tell.

Sure am glad I have an uncomplicated, 52 year old badass truck to work on, and a 69 year old tractor to ride on when I need to take a break from modern technology!

Thanks again for your input.
Xena

Hi Xena,
Mint is another of the many Ubuntu copy/variants--out of France if I remember correctly. It seems to be gaining support with the younger crowd and that often is a good message. I haven't tried it, but I probably should. There are so many of these newer distros around now that if you get on any of their email lists it is starting to seem like a popularity/please donate contest.

One note: SoftMaker Free Office now has versions for Linux. SoftMaker GmbH (Germany) has been around since the early 90s, I've used it since around 2011 and I consider their Free Office to be the best of the MS imitator options by a long stretch. They also have flexi-pdf which allows you to create and modify pdf files, but I'm not sure they give this away free yet, although if you do any technical writing or work with pdf files the cost (around $30) is well worth it. Good luck with the changes.

Hi Jon,

I have been using both Free Office and FlexiPDF for a couple months, since finding it on the internet, in my windows environment and I am truly impressed with both products. The Flexi PDF program in particular has a great number of options that are not usually available without paying big bucks, and me being a natural born cheapskate, I truly do appreciate the still free downloads that are available. I am absolutely installing it into my Linux partition, especially after reading that Libre can be a bit unpredictable at times

One disappointment I have encountered is that the HP laptop I wanted to install Mint 32 bit on is not up to the task as far as hardware is concerned, specifically, not enough RAM to fun Mint efficiently. The minimum is 3GB and the pc HD ZD7000 running Win 7 has a max memory capability of 2GB. Mint will run on 2GB but not well.

Thanks for the well wishes, I will probably need all the help I can get by the time the install is successful!
Xena

Hi Xena,

That has been my experience for certain, although some friends seem to like Libre. Glad to hear you have been using Free Office. A natural born cheapskate? I've been told I'm so tight I squeak when I walk.

One reason I suggested the Puppy Linux os to folks here is that it was designed to run on limited and old machines...as opposed to Ubuntu which is in my opinion approaching Windows in the bloat factor. My laptop (which has only 2 GB) scoots along pretty well with only that much RAM. It is a Pentium 4. Puppy is written to put as much of the system into the RAM as possible (in order to make it run faster--and it does run faster when it doesn't have to look for things on the hard drive). This only becomes a problem when you're trying to surf on sites which by their nature are memory-hungry. But honestly I am usually ok on even those sites. As I said the TahrPup is my favorite of the many Puppy versions that have come along. For years I used one called Bruno Puppy, but TahrPup impresses me as one of their best. Some of the very early versions are tiny...meaning they can run on 1 GB or less, however some of those haven't been updated too much.

I'm happy to try to help. Just let me know either here or via PM.

You should be OK with Mint. Up until last year, I was running v17.3 on an Acer Aspire Netbook with Atom processor and 1 GB RAM. The Acer is now retired and I'm currently using a Lenovo N23.

Anyway, just plug the install media in (disk or jump drive) and start it up. Linux will run off the media without installing it. This way you can compare distributions to see what you like. I see that on distrowatch, that Manjaro is currently the most popular distro moving Mint into 2nd place. 1G RAM is recommended for Manjaro and it's not based on Ubuntu. Might give it a try on the old Acer.

BTW, Mint was developed in Ireland. I suppose Mint--> Green --> Ireland...