What to do when a small business is seriously thinking about moving from Windows to Linux
Preface. I hope my story will help beginners or indecisive users to quickly and without delay go to Linux from Windows without removing Windows.
Start. By the will of fate, I am asystem administrator of a small enterprise enikeyschik (less than 10 machines) in the service sector. The management had been thinking about switching to Linux for years, but the first experiments (they chose Fedora) could not be called completely successful, I didn’t like the interface, work with programs and equipment. In the future, of course, we realized our mistake: we just chose a bad interface and installed a minimal set of drivers, without going into details.
However, the manual, though saddened, however, did not lose heart and after another conversation with a good Python programmer (maximum respect for him), I was puzzled, not familiar with Linux, especially, to install Linux Mint with all interfaces on all working machines
Mate (linuxmint-18.1-mate-64bit to be precise) is parallel with Windows. This option seemed to us most similar to the usual Win interface, the OS version was the last at that time.
The main goal of all this was to get free software (for corporate WIN10 you had to lay out something in the region of 10-20 thousand, I don’t remember exactly). The company values ​​its reputation and did not want to use unlicensed software. At the same time, it was very important to preserve the appearance of the system, making the transition to Linux as comfortable as possible (from this in the review there are many personal settings that I will write about below). The second most important reason for abandoning Windows was the extremely unfriendly policy of the United States to Russia - the management simply fears that even in the event of a purchase, you would still have to switch to Linux sooner or later (I know a good part of the community immediately causes an emergency call ”another patient diagnosed with ").
')
Well, the goal is set. I started to implement. Looking ahead, I will tell you why I decided to create a whole article on Habré about this: the topic is relevant for most small enterprises in the country, but there is little light on mass resources, and there are a lot of material on it-resources, but to find an intelligent educational program for the average user - worker small business in the service sector - it was difficult.
Initially, I simply created instructions for myself so that in the future I would not forget all the settings.
Therefore, I cannot but share the fruit of my many days of work. In the end, if your friend, who is far from IT, suddenly asks - how to switch from Win to Linux - you can just drop this article to him.
1. Write the downloaded Linux image to the USB flash drive using the rufus program.
2. We break the existing hard disk into 2 parts in order to allocate a partition under Linux.
Windows / PU / Administration / Computer Management / Disk Management
3. Reboot, turn on BIOS, turn on booting from flash drives (there may be problems with booting, then you need to select uefi / legacy mode - google, in very rare cases you will need to change BIOS firmware - I had this with one of the computers)
4. When installing, click the checkbox “install third-party software”, the program will probably issue “install next to Windows”: you can do this if you don’t want to understand much, or erase the disk and install Linux (if you don’t feel bad about Windows), but always better Click "another option." Further you look for in the list the section that you specifically left for Linux, it will be easy to find by the volume and by the fact that it is empty. Delete it, and create 2 new sections - the swap section (for example, set 4GB, usually put as much as RAM, although a lot is also harmful - this is a controversial issue). The remaining space is allocated under ext4 (this is a file system similar to ntfs in Windows) and the mount point in "/". Important. Do not accidentally delete the efi section. Restore it is not fast. The program in which all this can be done under Linux is gparted.
5. A small nuance that affects security. At the time of debugging the system during installation, you can leave the checkbox “enter the system automatically” if there are only reliable people behind the computer and you want to be able to remotely reboot and configure it through TeamViewer. And so, the simple user will be able to force TeamViewer to log into the system at boot, by analogy with Windows. If you need a permanent solution for remote reloading and management, you need to configure ssh.
6. Perhaps not in the Linux installation topic, but in general, a good advice to any reinstaller: change your hard drive to ssd, significantly speeds up the boot of the system and many programs.
7. After the reboot, the grub menu will appear with a list of operating systems. For editing the list and the order of the operating systems we use grub-customizer, installation:
8. I recommend to download in advance all .deb installation packages (similar to .msi in Windows) of the programs you are interested in. Perhaps some programs after the update will not work correctly (for example, I had this with firefox). Even if it happened and nothing can be fixed by the usual methods, do not be discouraged, download other versions. For example, I downloaded a friendly firefox nightly on which everything worked like firefox before the update.
9. Install wine, in order to be able to run programs designed for Windows. After installation, click on any installation file
Windows - then everything is set up in Windows. If you want to open files with this program by default, simply copy the command to launch this file in the properties of the shortcut.
and then right-click on the file: open in the program - another application.
10. Installing updates and basic programs, a list of commands and my personal settings:
but. Parameters / power management, disable standby mode (if the computer is always on the network), change the tray layout to the usual one, taskbar width is 35
b. Set TeamViewer / Start at login and password for settings.
at. Single system update
Parameters / appearance theme mint-x aqua, in the same place, change the window view to
clearlooksre, change the screensaver, setting the usual shortcuts
Installing popular
through program manager
e. Parameters of auxiliary technologies / mouse / disable touchpad - who are prevented from accidentally touching the touchpad on the laptop.
g. Add calculator to the panel in the start menu
h Options / customize the desktop to remove too much and add a basket
and. Keyboard parameters / key combinations: minimize windows, and, possibly, customize other familiar commands.
k. Installing Flash plugin analog
l Remove the file browser and the terminal near the start menu (for ordinary users, the terminal is not required every day).
m. Installing viber, telegram, other work programs (Start at login is configured by the right button)
n Connect printers and scanners - setting up printers
about. Install java plugin
11. Not accidentally deleting the window list applet is a common mistake when the list of open windows is not visible. It is solved by adding an applet not the panel with the right button.
Afterword. For me, the main problem of the transition of all computers of this network to Linux was some problems with printers. However, in general, they are all a thing of the past, the universal print driver, which is the default in Linux, is quite suitable. If there is no equipment in the list, I just choose more or less similar in name and everything works fine. Also, one of the laptops did not see wi-fi - they found a solution to the problem on the forum with a team
The rest was, of course, a period of adaptation of employees, someone needed old programs (launching them under the new system always successfully managed the wine application).
About a year has passed since the start of the launch, the flight is normal, now no one even voluntarily wants to return under Windu (they asked for interest), there are no complaints, a couple of times only the list of open windows was deleted, which generally did not stop the work.
Start. By the will of fate, I am a
However, the manual, though saddened, however, did not lose heart and after another conversation with a good Python programmer (maximum respect for him), I was puzzled, not familiar with Linux, especially, to install Linux Mint with all interfaces on all working machines
Mate (linuxmint-18.1-mate-64bit to be precise) is parallel with Windows. This option seemed to us most similar to the usual Win interface, the OS version was the last at that time.
The main goal of all this was to get free software (for corporate WIN10 you had to lay out something in the region of 10-20 thousand, I don’t remember exactly). The company values ​​its reputation and did not want to use unlicensed software. At the same time, it was very important to preserve the appearance of the system, making the transition to Linux as comfortable as possible (from this in the review there are many personal settings that I will write about below). The second most important reason for abandoning Windows was the extremely unfriendly policy of the United States to Russia - the management simply fears that even in the event of a purchase, you would still have to switch to Linux sooner or later (I know a good part of the community immediately causes an emergency call ”another patient diagnosed with ").
')
Well, the goal is set. I started to implement. Looking ahead, I will tell you why I decided to create a whole article on Habré about this: the topic is relevant for most small enterprises in the country, but there is little light on mass resources, and there are a lot of material on it-resources, but to find an intelligent educational program for the average user - worker small business in the service sector - it was difficult.
Initially, I simply created instructions for myself so that in the future I would not forget all the settings.
Therefore, I cannot but share the fruit of my many days of work. In the end, if your friend, who is far from IT, suddenly asks - how to switch from Win to Linux - you can just drop this article to him.
1. Write the downloaded Linux image to the USB flash drive using the rufus program.
2. We break the existing hard disk into 2 parts in order to allocate a partition under Linux.
Windows / PU / Administration / Computer Management / Disk Management
3. Reboot, turn on BIOS, turn on booting from flash drives (there may be problems with booting, then you need to select uefi / legacy mode - google, in very rare cases you will need to change BIOS firmware - I had this with one of the computers)
4. When installing, click the checkbox “install third-party software”, the program will probably issue “install next to Windows”: you can do this if you don’t want to understand much, or erase the disk and install Linux (if you don’t feel bad about Windows), but always better Click "another option." Further you look for in the list the section that you specifically left for Linux, it will be easy to find by the volume and by the fact that it is empty. Delete it, and create 2 new sections - the swap section (for example, set 4GB, usually put as much as RAM, although a lot is also harmful - this is a controversial issue). The remaining space is allocated under ext4 (this is a file system similar to ntfs in Windows) and the mount point in "/". Important. Do not accidentally delete the efi section. Restore it is not fast. The program in which all this can be done under Linux is gparted.
5. A small nuance that affects security. At the time of debugging the system during installation, you can leave the checkbox “enter the system automatically” if there are only reliable people behind the computer and you want to be able to remotely reboot and configure it through TeamViewer. And so, the simple user will be able to force TeamViewer to log into the system at boot, by analogy with Windows. If you need a permanent solution for remote reloading and management, you need to configure ssh.
6. Perhaps not in the Linux installation topic, but in general, a good advice to any reinstaller: change your hard drive to ssd, significantly speeds up the boot of the system and many programs.
7. After the reboot, the grub menu will appear with a list of operating systems. For editing the list and the order of the operating systems we use grub-customizer, installation:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install grub-customizer 8. I recommend to download in advance all .deb installation packages (similar to .msi in Windows) of the programs you are interested in. Perhaps some programs after the update will not work correctly (for example, I had this with firefox). Even if it happened and nothing can be fixed by the usual methods, do not be discouraged, download other versions. For example, I downloaded a friendly firefox nightly on which everything worked like firefox before the update.
9. Install wine, in order to be able to run programs designed for Windows. After installation, click on any installation file
Windows - then everything is set up in Windows. If you want to open files with this program by default, simply copy the command to launch this file in the properties of the shortcut.
and then right-click on the file: open in the program - another application.
10. Installing updates and basic programs, a list of commands and my personal settings:
but. Parameters / power management, disable standby mode (if the computer is always on the network), change the tray layout to the usual one, taskbar width is 35
b. Set TeamViewer / Start at login and password for settings.
at. Single system update
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt autoremove && sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt clean Parameters / appearance theme mint-x aqua, in the same place, change the window view to
clearlooksre, change the screensaver, setting the usual shortcuts
Installing popular
ttf-mscorefonts-installer fonts in Windowsthrough program manager
e. Parameters of auxiliary technologies / mouse / disable touchpad - who are prevented from accidentally touching the touchpad on the laptop.
g. Add calculator to the panel in the start menu
h Options / customize the desktop to remove too much and add a basket
and. Keyboard parameters / key combinations: minimize windows, and, possibly, customize other familiar commands.
k. Installing Flash plugin analog
sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree && sudo dpkg-reconfigure pepperflashplugin-nonfree l Remove the file browser and the terminal near the start menu (for ordinary users, the terminal is not required every day).
m. Installing viber, telegram, other work programs (Start at login is configured by the right button)
n Connect printers and scanners - setting up printers
about. Install java plugin
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer 11. Not accidentally deleting the window list applet is a common mistake when the list of open windows is not visible. It is solved by adding an applet not the panel with the right button.
Afterword. For me, the main problem of the transition of all computers of this network to Linux was some problems with printers. However, in general, they are all a thing of the past, the universal print driver, which is the default in Linux, is quite suitable. If there is no equipment in the list, I just choose more or less similar in name and everything works fine. Also, one of the laptops did not see wi-fi - they found a solution to the problem on the forum with a team
sudo apt-get install linux-image-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') broadcom-sta-dkms sudo modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac bcma sudo modprobe wl The rest was, of course, a period of adaptation of employees, someone needed old programs (launching them under the new system always successfully managed the wine application).
About a year has passed since the start of the launch, the flight is normal, now no one even voluntarily wants to return under Windu (they asked for interest), there are no complaints, a couple of times only the list of open windows was deleted, which generally did not stop the work.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/346310/
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