[RESOLVED] Old Lucid Lynx to new Zorin OS10 RC

Hi. I'm grateful to find this forum and want to thank you in advance for any help you can give me. I am brand new to Linux and so far, love it, but I'm running into problems with my second machine/installation. I had no problem installing Zorin OS 10 (RC) on my first Windows XP machine, but for some reason couldn't get this second attempt to boot into Zorin. Next, I tried an old Live CD of Lucid Lynx 10.04 which I had used a couple of years ago to save data on another corrupted Windows based PC and Lynx installed with no problem. However, that version is no longer supported and I'd rather go with Zorin anyway.

The machine now seems to be locked into Lucid Lynx. It doesn't recognize the Live CD I made when I set up the other XP machine. Is there a way I can go to the CD drive from within a different distro (Lynx) and install Zorin from there. Also, please forgive me because I don't even know they correct questions to ask. Please let me know what else I need to provide you with, so you'll be able to help me. (The Live CD of Zorin OS 10 - RC was created with BurnAware.)

This machine:
Dell Dimension 3000 desktop
160 GB Seagate harddrive
32 bit

My first Zorin installation was on:
Dell Opti-Plex - GX280
40GB WD harddrive
32 bit

Hi, As it is a Dell press F12 to go to one-time boot option and select your CD drive - I would personally stick with Zorin 9 as it is supported til April 2019 - 10 expires January 2016.

Swarfendor437 wrote:Hi, As it is a Dell press F12 to go to one-time boot option and select your CD drive - I would personally stick with Zorin 9 as it is supported til April 2019 - 10 expires January 2016.

Thanks for your reply, Swarfendor437. I need to read up on how to set the boot order permanently, as I now have to do this every time, but I do reset the boot sequence to start from the CD drive. That's what's puzzling me. Not that I have to do it every time, but that it doesn't start Zorin up. It boots into the old version of Lucid Lynx every time. I know the live CD works, because I successfully installed it on the OptiPlex mentioned (which also had an installation of Windows XP on it, just like the Dimension).

My question, if it makes sense, is this: How can I access the Zorin disk that's in the CDdrive from within Lucid Lynx? If I can do that, I'm guessing I can manually deploy the installation, or can I?

Also, I figured that now Zorin 10 has been released in Ultimate and Core forms, it was ready for prime time? I will be helping another friend who is new to Linux get familiar with this OS and he currently has the OptiPlex on loan to familiarize himself with Zorin while I get it set it up on his Dell Dimension 3000. It'll be easier if we're both using the same distribution.

Swarfendor, will I be able to just upgrade/install 10 when the LTS version comes out? Will it act as an update or is it an entirely new installation?

Please forgive my ignorance in the correct Linux terms, etc. I'm totally self-taught in everything to do with computers, so there's a lot I might not communicate well. Thanks again for your help!
-- Lauren

Hi, no worries friend. Basically, provided you have backed up all your data, I would do a complete fresh install of Zorin by booting into Live Mode and run the install from the icon on the live desktop. When it gets to the methodology of your installation, choose the 'something else' method. Now as correctly pointed out by one of our forum members, to work out how many Gb is 30 Gb, multiply this by 1024 (30000) for your '/' (root) partition, then create an 'extended partition' - at the end of which you create a 'swap area' equivalent to how much RAM (Memory is in the machine. The remainder of the extended partition should be set to '/home' where all your documents etc and settings (which are hidden . folders (see them by pressing Ctrl+ H) are kept.

Now one thing I don't know is: the amount of memory in your machine and what graphics it is using - if it is onboard graphics, this could be taking usable memory away from other bits but just guessing.

When you boot into live mode, delete ALL of your partitions on the drive and create new ones from scratch. '/' and '/home' should be formatted to 'ext4' file system.

To give you an idea how to install Zorin, please take a look here - skip past the Windows bit and go straight to the installation part of Zorin on this video I uploaded to vimeo.com:

https://vimeo.com/110085401

Hi,

did you follow this advice when creating your boot media?:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4771

Have you tried resetting BIOS to default, when you boot your PC, press one of the following keys to determine which one is responsible for opening BIOS, look at the screen (normally bottom left) and look for either "Del" or "F1" or possibly "F2", once in BIOS, press the key that will restore your BIOS to factory default and try booting again with the live CD:

http://www.howtogeek.com/131623/how-to- ... -settings/

You might need to change the boot order again so it boots from CD first, it depends on the BIOS model!.

My replies to your post will be in italics and this color.

Swarfendor437 wrote:Hi, no worries friend. Basically, provided you have backed up all your data, I would do a complete fresh install of Zorin by booting into Live Mode and run the install from the icon on the live desktop. Hello, again, and thanks for your new response! There is no data to worry about on this PC and trying for a fresh install is exactly what I'm trying to do. As I hope I outlined above, it will not boot from the live Zorin CD, but continually boots into Lynx. When it gets to the methodology of your installation, choose the 'something else' method. Now as correctly pointed out by one of our forum members, to work out how many Gb is 30 Gb, multiply this by 1024 (30000) for your '/' (root) partition, then create an 'extended partition' - at the end of which you create a 'swap area' equivalent to how much RAM (Memory is in the machine. The remainder of the extended partition should be set to '/home' where all your documents etc and settings (which are hidden . folders (see them by pressing Ctrl+ H) are kept. I am seriously hoping I don't need to do the rest of this, as I don't recall having to do it with my two previous Linux distro installations -- one two years ago and one last week. Sounds like it's over my head. I'm not trying to set up a dual boot system, so perhaps it won't be needed?

Now one thing I don't know is: the amount of memory in your machine and what graphics it is using - if it is onboard graphics, this could be taking usable memory away from other bits but just guessing. I'll get the memory amount the next time I turn it on, if the next process I intend to try doesn't work. -- I went to the ubuntu PreciseUpgrades page on help.ubuntu.com and found out how to upgrade Lucid Lynx to Precise Pandolin and hopefully, that will get me out of the notification screen Lucid Lynx gets stuck in ("...no longer supported...", etc) so I can eventually install Zorin.

When you boot into live mode, delete ALL of your partitions on the drive and create new ones from scratch. '/' and '/home' should be formatted to 'ext4' file system. I did so, when I installed Lucid Lynx, so other partitions no longer exist. Or, at least, that was the option I chose, doing away completely with XP.

To give you an idea how to install Zorin, please take a look here - skip past the Windows bit and go straight to the installation part of Zorin on this video I uploaded to vimeo.com: Thank you for the link. I have some partial hearing loss due to years of close proximity to loud rock and roll speakers, lol, so I had a hard time understanding the syllabic-speak of Gespeaker, but it was easy enough to take notes on. I hope the basics I can write down will be enough, should I need to go this route. Thank you again for all your help, Swarfendor. I'll definitely pay the community back by contributing my time, once I get familiar enough to be helpful!
--- Lauren

https://vimeo.com/110085401

Edit: Memory in this machine: 512 MB DDR SDRam

Update and new, related question: I went here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades and found instructions for upgrading 10.04 Lucid Lynx to 12.04 Precise Pangolin. Even though I didn't follow all the instructions (like: "Clear out unnecessarily old linux-image kernals."), this time the machine booted into the live CD (Pangolin) in the drive with no problem. Is it possible that Lucid Lynx had code in it that would only recognize/allow the correct upgrade? I did exactly the same thing with the Zorin 10 live CD and it never worked; did it with the Pangolin live CD and it responded.

So. I now have Precise Pangolin 12.04 on the Dell Dimension 3000 and in the installation, opted to erase Lucid Lynx. I guess I'll try again with the live CD of Zorin 10 and see if Precise Pangolin will allow the switch where Lynx didn't.

How do I "clear out unnecessarily old linux-image kernals"?

I don't think saying Thank You can be said too many times, so thanks once again. I really appreciate your help.

Hi, the easy way would be to install 'Ubuntu Tweak' from here:

NOTE THIS IS THE DOWNLOAD LINK!:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/0.7. ... e4_all.deb

Install it - can't remember if it will run straight off. Anyhow, once launched, click on the 'Janitor' Tab and you will see the option to clean out older Kernels - you should leave at least one prior release kernel on a machine after a kernel update in case of any issues and you need to boot into the earlier one.

Wonderful! Thanks, Swarfendor.

I decided to download the 32bit .iso for Zorin OS 9 Core and will install it on this machine (after I create the live CD) and also on the OptiPlex tomorrow when I see my friend to swap these computers. I'll pick up my loaner and give him this one back. Currently, I am writing you from the Dell Dimension which now has Precise Pangolin on it.

I have my fingers crossed that I'll have no issues when I try to replace this version of Ubuntu with Zorin.

Did you see my other question re whether you think Lucid Lynx might have been preventing the installation of a distro that wasn't specifically listed as an upgrade for it? And if I run into problems, do you think upgrading from 12.04 to 14.* would work around them?

If I'm honest I have never gone via the upgrade route - I just backup my '/home' folder (remembering to press Ctrl+ H to show hidden files first) and do a clean install - simple as.

(I also responded to Wolfman's suggestions, but got a report back that the post would have to be approved by a moderator before it could be posted.)

DGLauren wrote:(I also responded to Wolfman's suggestions, but got a report back that the post would have to be approved by a moderator before it could be posted.)

Oops - I may have deleted that in error thinking it was a duplicate of the one above?

i.e. above or below this post:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9638#p47625

Swarfendor437 wrote:

DGLauren wrote:(I also responded to Wolfman's suggestions, but got a report back that the post would have to be approved by a moderator before it could be posted.)

Oops - I may have deleted that in error thinking it was a duplicate of the one above?

i.e. above or below this post:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9638#p47625

No problem. I'll reconstruct it here soon.

In the meantime, I'm not having much fun today. Rather than boot up into Precise Pandolin this morning, the Dimension presented me with a black screen, wanting the sign in information and asking if I wanted to upgrade now to 14.04. Since Zorin OS 9 is based on 14.04 (although... Lubuntu...in a squeaky voice) I thought it might be best to go ahead and update Pandolin. IF (the question I had re whether Lynx could have had code in it that only recognized/allowed its proper upgrade) that was the case, maybe ubuntu will be more likely to let the Zorin live CD load if 9 is built on that platform. (Again, abundant apologies for not knowing Linux-speak.)

All was going well with the Precise Pandolin to Trusty Tahr upgrade and after two hours, the initial phase of the installation was complete. Then I watched for 30 minutes as page after page scrolled by, showing files that were being unpacked, moved out of the way, etc.

I figured I would soon be able to try my live Zorin OS 9 CD.... then, we had two sets of power surges. It killed the process. During the second surge, the monitor came back on with this:

Filesystem check or mount failed.
A maintenace shell will now be started.
CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and continue booting after re-trying filesystems. Any further errors will be ignored
root@computer name:~#

Is there a command I can enter at this point that will instruct the machine to pick up where it left off before it was so rudely interrupted?
Am I supposed to press CTRL+D, or enter the command as it is spelled. Will that cause it to resume?

Hi if it says Contro -D then copy the command EXACTLY as shown on screen!

I'm going to try again. I'm convinced I'm not presenting this in a way it can be easily understood.

1. Do any distros have code built into them that restricts them to only being upgradable by their logical, recommended upgrades? Reason: Lucid Lynx accepted a live CD of Precise Pangolin, but not Zorin 9, or 10.

2. Is it necessary to update/upgrade an installed OS as far as it can be taken before trying to switch to a different distro? Reason: Again, Precise Pangolin will not let me install Zorin 9, or 10. It keeps booting back into ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin, just like Lucid Lynx did.

3. Is there any way of knowing a reason why my proven live CD of Zorin 10 worked on one Dell computer with XP on it, but would not work on another Dell computer with XP on it? I am not trying to set up dual boot systems; I want to replace Windows XP with Zorin OS. I had no problem with one computer, but am having countless problems with the second.

4. When a power shortage stopped my upgrade of ubuntu 12.x to 14.x, I got a report I did not understand. A copy of that report is in my previous post. I had hoped to learn there was a Linux command that could make my machine resume where it left off during the surge. Is this saying it will do just that --> "CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and continue booting after re-trying filesystems." It didn't make sense to me because it didn't look like it was booting, but installing, moving, unpacking, etc. Was this part of the process of booting, after a downloaded and installed upgrade?

I pasted that entire error msg into a search window and then followed three different solutions on askubuntu.com. None of those worked. I currently have Precise Pangolin on the machine and that OS seems to be entirely functional, but I want Zorin.
Note to Swarfendor: I tried fsck -f / -C0 which was recommended on askubuntu before I got your reply, so I didn't have the option again to type in CONTROL-D at that prompt. Sorry I didn't get to see what that would do.

Are there any specific forums that you know of that are for rank beginners? I am afraid I will wear out Swarfendor's patience before I get this solved.

Reconstructed reply to Wolfman which got inadvertently deleted:

Wolfman wrote:Hi,
Hi, Wolfman, and thank you for responding to this thread!

did you follow this advice when creating your boot media?:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4771
Yes. I did. I was lucky enough to have found that information elsewhere before I created my first live CD of Zorin OS 10 - RC over a week ago. I burned the disc using Burn Aware and 3x was the lowest speed it offered. I also downloaded the .iso via Firefox as I had also heard that other browsers can corrupt Linux distro downloads. I believe it was your advice I found here before I joined this board, to hold the disc up to the light and not use it if you could see any pinpoints of light through it.

Have you tried resetting BIOS to default, when you boot your PC, press one of the following keys to determine which one is responsible for opening BIOS, look at the screen (normally bottom left) and look for either "Del" or "F1" or possibly "F2", once in BIOS, press the key that will restore your BIOS to factory default and try booting again with the live CD:
In case it's helpful to anyone else who happens to come across this thread, on the Dell Dimension 3000, you'll see these in the top right corner and F2 takes you to Set up, F12 takes you into the Boot Menu. When troubleshooting, I discovered that I had gone in and reset the boot sequence to always start from the CD/DVD drive first. Plus, every time I'd try again with the Zorin live discs, I'd make sure the boot sequence in F12 was also set to boot from the CD drive. Is there any chance that the two of them could cancel each other out? I'm still baffled as to why it never seems to look to that drive upon bootup.

http://www.howtogeek.com/131623/how-to- ... -settings/
With the OptiPlex, which I set up with Zoring 10, I opened the case and removed the CMOS battery, held the power button down for x number of seconds to discharge any residual electricity, and installed a new battery before attempting to install my Linux distro on it. Is there any chance, could it have any bearing that I didn't do that on this one?
You might need to change the boot order again so it boots from CD first, it depends on the BIOS model!.

Thank you again for lending your time and attention to this. I will be elated when it's solved, as will my friend who is waiting on me.

I can't believe I forgot my most important question!!

Is there a way to access the CD drive from within my distro (Precise Pangolin), with a Zorin live CD in the drive, and launch the installer from there? If that could be done, it would solve everything!

Hi, You have been updating Ubuntu, Zorin is a 'fork' of Ubuntu - put simply a 'child' of Ubuntu which can be upgraded to the latest Ubuntu but not the other way around and you would then have a broken install! The principal thing holding back a Zorin install could be due to a number of reasons; graphics, ACPI, amount of RAM. Could you please post the full spec of the problem machine? You could always press F2 at boot and see if ACPI is present and if set to on set it to off.

Hi,

have you tried booting the Zorin disk on a different PC to see if it indeed is in order?.

Hello, again, Swarfendor!

Swarfendor437 wrote:Hi, You have been updating Ubuntu, Zorin is a 'fork' of Ubuntu - put simply a 'child' of Ubuntu which can be upgraded to the latest Ubuntu but not the other way around and you would then have a broken install!
I have indeed been updating Ubuntu, because it was the only distro I could get to load on this machine after the Zorin live CDs I tried wouldn't work. I think I pretty much understand the hierarchy now, but thought since I wasn't trying to "upgrade" to Zorin, only to launch it and replace Ubuntu with it, that it could be done. Do you think there are possibly some drivers in Zorin that are incompatible with this particular Dell machine? Could that be causing this problem?

The principal thing holding back a Zorin install could be due to a number of reasons; graphics, ACPI, amount of RAM. Could you please post the full spec of the problem machine? You could always press F2 at boot and see if ACPI is present and if set to on set it to off.
Thanks again for something else to try! I'll look for ACPI and graphics info on this machine. RAM I posted earlier, which is 512MB.

Hi! Welcome back!

Wolfman wrote:Hi,

have you tried booting the Zorin disk on a different PC to see if it indeed is in order?.

I set up one other Dell machine with the same disc that I cannot get to work in this machine. I am now going to set up a third PC as another test case. I'll report back with the results. I'll try anything, at this point.

OK 512 Mb is quite low for Zorin core - you would be better with Zorin Lite which is based on Lubuntu.

Guess I'll start with the last first...

Swarfendor437 wrote:OK 512 Mb is quite low for Zorin core - you would be better with Zorin Lite which is based on Lubuntu.

Now that memory is so cheap (compared to the first time I bought memory back in 1985), I think I'd rather just put more memory in this machine. The other Dell I put Zorin 10 on also had 512 MB of memory and that one's hard drive was 80 GB. (80GB!!! good grief) This one has a whopping 160.

Is there a way to get the Linux distro I have on this machine in the interim* to give me as much information about the computer's hardware as you can get from Device Mgr > Properties and System Info, like on Windows machines? When I tried to get more information for you, it was bare bones.

I also searched through every category in the BIOS looking for ACPI and couldn't find that anywhere. I don't understand what that is, other than the brief bits found in browser searches, so if you can tell me where I should look for it, I'll see if it is there and if it can be turned off.

*I know you're going to get tired of hearing this. It currently has Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin, on it.

Wolfman wrote:Hi,

have you tried booting the Zorin disk on a different PC to see if it indeed is in order?.

I set up one other Dell machine with the same disc that I cannot get to work in this machine. I am now going to set up a third PC as another test case. I'll report back with the results. I'll try anything, at this point.

I set up the third machine since I wrote this earlier. Here is the computer info:

HP dx5150 Small Form Factor PC
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
3000+
1.79GHz
960MB RAM
ACPI Uniprocessor PC
Display Adaptors:
ATI Radeon XPress 200 Series
ATI Radeon XPress 200 Series Secondary
62.2 GB free hard drive space

I will have to open the case on this one and remove (I'll replace) the CMOS battery to clear the password before I can go in and switch ACPI off. I'll do that tomorrow. Until then:

I booted this machine up with the Zorin OS 10 - RC Live CD and it worked without issues. I elected to "Try" the distro and not to install it at the time, because I also wanted to see if my Live CD for Zorin OS 9 worked. It didn't. I'll try it again tomorrow, after I've acted on that ACPI issue Swarfendor suggested. (The OS 9 Live CD doesn't work on either machine.)

DGLauren wrote:

Wolfman wrote:Hi,

have you tried booting the Zorin disk on a different PC to see if it indeed is in order?.

I set up one other Dell machine with the same disc that I cannot get to work in this machine. I am now going to set up a third PC as another test case. I'll report back with the results. I'll try anything, at this point.

I set up the third machine since I wrote this earlier. Here is the computer info:

HP dx5150 Small Form Factor PC
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
3000+
1.79GHz
960MB RAM
ACPI Uniprocessor PC


Display Adaptors:
ATI Radeon XPress 200 Series
ATI Radeon XPress 200 Series Secondary
62.2 GB free hard drive space

I will have to open the case on this one and remove (I'll replace) the CMOS battery to clear the password before I can go in and switch ACPI off. I'll do that tomorrow. Until then:

I booted this machine up with the Zorin OS 10 - RC Live CD and it worked without issues. I elected to "Try" the distro and not to install it at the time, because I also wanted to see if my Live CD for Zorin OS 9 worked. It didn't. I'll try it again tomorrow, after I've acted on that ACPI issue Swarfendor suggested. (The OS 9 Live CD doesn't work on either machine.)

Hi,

have you considered the fact that Zorin OS may be simply too heavy for an old PC?, have you tried Zorin Lite?:

http://zorin-os.com/download9.html

See also:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4835

My thoughts too Wolfman

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9638&start=20#p47701

Thanks again for your help. I tried Zorin 10 Lite yesterday, (even though I got the RC version to boot up and install on two older PCs, with less resources than the Dell Dimension has) and got the same results. This computer acts as if it has no clue there's anything in the optical drive. The CD/DVD drive lights go on, then it passes right on by and loads up Ubuntu 12.04 from the hard drive.

I personally think there is something about this specific computer that's conflicting -- to the point of rejecting -- any and all attempted Zorin installations. I only have three tracks left to follow; one is to teach myself how to discover what sort of onboard graphics this pc has (to follow Swarf's suggestions), the second is to try to install via USB, and the third is to buy the premium version so I can get premium installation support. I just hate to do that when I'm suspecting this computer can't run Zorin anyway.

Re this being an older computer, I read up on a lot of different distros before deciding on Zorin. I chose it because it is touted as being one of the best for older systems and particularly for Windows XP users. I now regret having given my friend a loaner PC so he could get familiar with Zorin while I installed it on his machine. I've spent a bit of time helping him transition over and now it looks like he might have to go to another Linux distro? He's a car guy. Computers aren't his strong suit.

Even though the numbered questions I asked in this thread are repetitious of what I've been wondering all along, I was really hoping they might get answered in our interactions because they will help me understand a lot about Linux in general and Zorin in particular. I rewrote and simplified them, in case I hadn't made myself clear in the previous posts. Is there any chance you could take another look at them? And now, the three most pressing questions I have at this point are:

1. Is there a forum anywhere specifically for absolute beginners that I should be using?
2. Is there a way to get Linux distros to show the same detail of system information you can get through Windows?
3. Is there a way to launch Zorin by accessing the optical drive from within the Ubuntu installation currently on the PC? Once launched, I'd replace Ubuntu with Zorin,

Thank you.
Lauren

You would not be able to install Zorin via your Ubuntu build but you could run it as a Virtual Machine if you installed Virtual Box with the same version of the necessary add-ons. My next thought is have you ever used one of these:

http://www.needledoctor.com/Allsop-DVD- ... egory=1168

A long time ago we had a forum member who had similar issues and it was down to a dirty Optical Drive!

Finally! Success.

Since this machine had successfully read the CD/DVD drive to install both Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04, and since two other machines had successfully installed Zorin OS 10 from the Live disc I made, it just didn't occur to me that this PC couldn't use the same disc in the same drive to install Zorin. Perhaps it was an issue of incompatible drivers or something. My research assistant, -- after reading the last two posts I made to this thread in particular -- suggested I go ahead and give the USB flash drive installation a try. I downloaded UNetBootin, made the whatever a live USB is called, and it booted right up. I do wish I understood it all, but I'm just happy to finally have Zorin on that machine!

It's currently downloading and installing 252.9 MB of updates and it looks great.
Whew.

Thanks again for your help.