Weekend Project
Get to grips with some serious tech tinkering to
boost your computer and other devices
58 5 - 18 February 2020
oneis differentandusuallybuiltaround
anotherOS.Forexample,LinuxMint
(linuxmint.com) is basedonUbuntu
(ubuntu.com) andUbuntu,in turn,is
basedonDebian(www.debian.org).
Tomakelifea littlemoreconfusing,the
variousoperatingsystemstypicallycome
in a choiceofdesktopenvironments
(DEs).WhichLinuxOSyouuseis entirely
uptoyou,butwe’llgowithMintbecause
it’sverygoodandeasytolearn,whichHow to...
Dual-boot Linux Mint
with Windows 10
Dual-booting gives you the ability to use Linux at its best without
removing Windows. Wayne Williams shows you how
What you need
We’re going to assume that your PC
already has Windows on it. It doesn’t
matter too much which version of
Windows you’re running but, as Microsoft
no longer supports Windows 7, we’ll set
up the dual-boot using Windows 10.
You also need a Linux operating
system. There are lots of these to choose
from – they’re referred to as ‘distros’,
which is short for distributions – and each
makes it perfect for anyone not too
familiar with Linux.
Mint is available in choice of DEs- Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. If your
hardware is relatively recent, we’d
recommend Cinnamon because it’s the
most modern and the best all-round
choice. MATE is a fast and more stable
option, while Xfce is the most
lightweight. There are 32- and 64-bit
versions of the OS available. It’s likely
M T W T F S S
W
indows is by far the most
popular desktop operating
system – according to
NetMarketShare (netmarketshare
.com), the various versions of
Microsoft’s OS currently account for
over 87%. Linux, in comparison, has
under 2%, but don’t let that put you
off. There are some excellent and
very user friendly Linux operating
systems available to download and
use for free. If you fancy trying one,
you could run it from a Live CD, install
it on a second PC or set it up inside a
virtualised environment using Oracle
VM VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org).
However, in this Weekend Project,
we show you how to install Linux
Mint, which looks similar to Windows
7, alongside Windows 10, so you can
choose which OS to run when you
start your PC.