Posted on 09/17/2025 10:49:42 AM PDT by Paul R.
Oh, boy. My Dell Win 10 Pro desktop suffered a MS Update last night, and won't reboot. None of the Dell repair / restore options have worked so far: I'm holding off on a complete "recovery" which would involve repartitioning the boot SSD & losing all the data on it, then reinstalling the OS, etc. Luckily, all my documents, images, etc., are saved to another HD, but, I would lose the programs on the boot drive and have to reinstall them, which means losing lots of settings and so on. So far as I can tell, I may be able to pull the boot / OS / programs drive and extract my Brave and Chrome bookmarks (I have a ton of them), and, I MAY be able to retrieve the Windows and Libre Office dictionaries, which would be hugely helpful.
Meanwhile... It appears the USB (flash) boot drive I'd made ages ago has become corrupted. No problem, I'll just download a fresh copy of Win 10 Pro and save it to an unused USB Flash drive, using my Win 11 laptop, right? Well, wrong. The process hangs at the actual download step where the little progress notification shows up. Progress shows "0%" and stays there, for over an hour.
I tried reformatting the flash drive to exFAT, no dice. I tried a different (new) flash drive, no dice.
What the heck? Microsoft says nothing about this support already being ended, and all the steps up to this point work fine.
As long as you got a good backup it’s a cake walk to get it back.
Well good luck! I hope you succeed!
Wow, this is a weird one...
I’ve located my Brave bookmarks file in my whacked-OS-on-the-C-drive Dell Win 10 Pro desktop, but, when I go to try to import it into Brave in my Dell Win 11 Pro desktop, despite Brave saying the import was successful and good to go, it’s not actually there. Or at least Brave isn’t displaying it despite me making sure the “Show Bookmarks” button is on.
If I go to a website and then hit the button near the top of the Brave window to add a single bookmark, that works fine.
I used Notepad to take a peek at the file, and it looks ok to me - not that I’m an expert at evaluating HTML bookmark files. I closed Brave and fired it back up - no dice.
I’ve tried dropping the bookmarks file directly into the “Default” folder the bookmarks file regularly sits in - no dice. I’ve read suggestions on the web and tried them until my eyes are falling out.
:-(
I run dual boot on almost everything with Win 7 Pro as the windows OS and it is not allowed to connect to the web. I have PC based automotive scan tool, automotive repair data and TurboCad CAD software I need win for.
I did recently install FreeCAD on this Ubuntu based OS. It's come a long way since back when I started using TurboCad and importantly, FreeCAD now has a large user community to get help from.
The PC based Scan Tool has no Linux equivalent but I could buy a stand-alone hand held scan tool. The auto repair data does have an equivalent, AllData, which is cloud based so it's OS independent. I've been using Mitchell On-Demand but it's outdated and was pirated to begin with and takes up way too much disk space at 60 GB.
There are a few versions of Linux that are meant to make it easy to convert from Windows but to be honest, an OS is an OS. Win/MAC/Linux all pretty much work the same. I jumped on a MAC back in the day and once my sister showed me that the sideways traffic light is the main menu button, I just used it easily.
Most versions of Linux out of the box are very similar to Windows with a menu/start button in the bottom left that pops up the menu of programs, shut down options etc. Programs have different names but even once in a program, the menu system is basically the same with that top menu for File - Edit - View - Tools etc.
Every popular browser has a Linux version. ONLYOFFICE is a good replacement for MS Office. VLC Media player is popular on Windows and Linux, more so than MW Media Player. I use Thunderbird for an email client but Evolution is available which is more like Outlook with Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Memos. Thunderbird is compatible with connecting to a workplace that uses Outlook Enterprise version.
Most versions of Linux can be burned to a USB stick as a Live USB. Boot up on the USB drive and run the full OS live to test drive it. Installation can be trickier but there are plenty of tutorials out there. It can install itself alongside Windows, provided you have the disk space, to give you a dual boot system which gives you a menu on start up to choose whether to boot into Linux or Windows. There are two installation types, one for PCs with BIOS systems and one for UEFI systems(approx Win 8 and newer). It's best to use whichever one Windows was installed with. On some systems, you can go in and disable UEFI if you want. All my machines are old enough to be BIOS based. duckduckgo.com installing ubuntu uefi vs bios
Linux has a structure that Windows does not. You have the Linux Kernel which is super basic and has no GUI and then layers are added to that so on Kubuntu that I run, it looks like this: Linux>Debian>Ubuntu>Kubuntu>Plasma
I have one machine that uses Debian with Plasma desktop so it's: Linux>Debian>Plasma. Kubuntu as the name implies, is based on Ubuntu and Ubuntu is based on Debian. That's why Plasma desktop will work on both. Debian is more stable but also one version behind on many programs. For all Linux Distributions - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions Mind blowing.
More common lists - Still big (https://linuxconfig.org/exploring-the-foundations-of-linux-a-look-at-major-distributions-and-their-base-systems
More common, top level list - https://diversinet.com/linuxia/
Any flavor of Ubuntu or Linux Mint are the popular Windows replacements with large community bases for support. Generally, if you have an issue, you hit up the search engine and good answers will be found on stackexchange, Ubuntu forums or Linux Mint forums. That and plenty of tech blogs but in those cases, ymmv.
Meanwhile, Hiren's BootCD has been a popular repair disk for a very long time and their latest is Hiren's Boot PE for Win 11. You'll need to do some reading or watch tutorials to safely use it and not make matters worse but it's the best there is. https://www.hirensbootcd.org/
Playlist for making the switch to Linux -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLykja8wdTZH3WxJHUKa37ajjPKeowGqK8
Both of the above people are new to Linux, 1-2 years, and both left Windows for the same reasons. Cluttered desktop with ads or news you don't want. The new or upcoming features, MS Co-Pilot and Recall, both privacy killers. Forced AI coming soon. Forced updates and upgrades.
Both also get into the command line -- terminal but not to do things you can't do in a GUI. Just to show how fast and powerful it can be.
I've been running Linux/Ubuntu for 20 years and back in the day, it had some quirks. I like the Plasma desktop but for several years, it was buggy. These days, things just work; unless you have weird hardware.
“Both also get into the command line — terminal but not to do things you can’t do in a GUI. Just to show how fast and powerful it can be.”
And that is true. While the newer Graphic Interfaces and apps are great, there is absolute magic in the command line terminal if one dives into it down the road after switching over.
But I strongly suggest Mint Cinnamon for a first time user. Extremely simple construction and the help documentation is priceless and easy to understand for someone new.
What did you think of that Vape server? I’m surprised he even had room for that image background he had on that page... lol
Excellent description and knowledge...
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