Emergency Kit - save your files from a dead OS

With Ubuntu live, Knoppix for DVD Live, Linux Mint, and a few others the NTFS volumes will still be available regardless of whether or not you have an old 120gb ide or 1tb Sata 3 drive. The type won't make any difference while some older releases of distros going back 5-7yrs. might have problems with SSDs. The more recent releases have been updated since.

Wolfgang I am downloading the latest Mint (17) and it is 1.2GB - so much larger than the 14 which downloaded really quite quickly is this normal for this ISO as it looks like it might be an all night job (after half an hour it is still at 0.1 download) and I don't remember it taking that long before.
My rig is really quite fast so am curious on how long it should take.
John

If that is the 17.2 expect to be over 1gb in size. That features the new Cinnamon desktop as well as including the OS installer not simply just being another live only download. The Debian flavor of the 17.2 weighed in at 1.26gb on disk here.

I have the 17.2 running on a few VMs both desktops at the present time as well as written to the second primary on one of the two 128gb flash drives while it won't boot live from flash drive if the UEFI and Secure Boot is enabled! Found that out fast here when just getting in a W10 laptop where the UEFI setting in the bios is greyed out when wanting to see if it would boot from a usb drive in case of a repair or OS refresh was needed at some time. Fortunately a full system image backup was made as soon as the last of the items going on was finished.

Thanks mate it finally downloaded after quite a while (I was using 3.0 port and stick) I thought at first it would be longer anyway got it on sticks now to try out

I am sorry for the big downloads. But that is beyond my control.

Yep I kind of waiting to see what is happening with Zorin 10
It says updates till January 2016
Zorin OS - Download

ICIT2LOL said:

Thanks mate it finally downloaded after quite a while (I was using 3.0 port and stick) I thought at first it would be longer anyway got it on sticks now to try out

One thing I found over the years whether downloading from either from a domestic(more local here) or other server it would take a bit longer for a distro then for other types of downloads including the latest GParted release. A good number of those are privately funded if not a school type rather then the typical fast servers a software company will provide for it's customer base.

Another thing you likely have to take into account how many may be downloading the exact same from that same server at any given moment. With any smaller slower type server it can bogged down rather quickly. For quite some time I would download and save each new release ending up with a collection I had to sift through from not wanting to have to download the same all over again due to the longer time period commonly seen. The latest GParted Live 23.0.1 iso came in at only 244mb but took long enough from a university for that. That grew in size from the 11.0.1 release seeing only a 114mb size download that took it's time several years ago.

Yep thanks everyone have got the 32bit and 64bit versions now and am going to try it on my tester machine this afternoon

I would run the 32bit for sure on a VM since one look at your specs for the tester build showing 8gb will only result in seeing the 4-5gb mapped out to hardwares while the 64bit can benefit from that amount of ram available. One thing to note however is that for the most even with the 64bit you will likely never even come close to the need for the extra memory even with some of the largest Linux apps until you get into the programming end.

It took long enough for MS to realize the modular WinMin kernel with 7 after Vista simply grew too big and has continued on with that with the newer versions. One is certain however and that will be how fast the 17.2 goes on as far as the installation time despite the size of the iso you downloaded as well as no need to be expecting a ton of updates waiting for you.

MS has finally started to take after the example there of seeing everything new rolled up into the next release which for Windows 10 was to see the July 29th build updated by the upgrade to the newer Threshold 1 Update seen in November rather then the wait for any service packs. I would also add that if you hadn't already been familiar with Linux Mint that the Debian flavor also in both kernels is loaded with options for some 200 apps. Whether LM or LMDebian this particular has been made much more user friendly for the typical Windows user.