----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian" <a...@cityscape.co.uk>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 1:51:50 PM
Subject: Re: How to get Jessie to run at boot time -- Problem solved
On Wed 14 Sep 2016 at 11:34:31 -0400, Alan McConnell wrote:
> From: "Felix Miata" <mrma...@earthlink.net>
>
> It does seem curious that the Debian installer would need knowledge of a
> particular Windows version in order to provide a boot menu selection for it,
> rather than simply having one that says "Windows", booting from whatever
> non-native/NTFS filesystem it happens to find containing anything resembling
> boot sector code.
This following quotes beginning with > are from Alan McConnell.
> Yep. I have been back to my Jessie in the meantime, and run
> os-prober.
> I didn't attempt to copy down on a piece of paper what it wrote;
> trust me
> that it was unenlightening garbage.
Ah. That's good. Your E-mail reader seems to respect my indentations.
Others
don't, alas. Do you perchance use mutt?
What is "unenlightening" to you may not be unenlightening to others;
trust me on that. "garbage" is *your* value judgement;
No, I'm going to insist on my "garbage" denotation. Since I have a
very
acceptable way of going from one OS to another, your input on what
os-prober
returned to me is of little interest to me, and much less to the other
members
of this E-list, I'm sure.
But I'd like to defend what Lisi calls a "kludge". Here is what I do:
when I
boot, or reboot my machine, if I do nothing I get my Jessie, which is
what I
want. If I want to go to Windoze, I gotta hold the F12, as Felix
Mieta taught
me several moons ago, and then I get put into a nice menu: Choose the
boot
manager. I use my Arrow keys to get to Windows boot manager, and
voila! in a
few seconds I'm in Windoze. Not so difficult after all. And I would
think that
an expert programmer, which I used to be but am not any more, could
put those
few simple steps into a "first of all" window. Maybe a simple grub
file?
We Debian users yearn for the day when copy 'n paste and USB sticks are
invented. It will make things so much easier to move information (which
is severely lacking from you in this thread) about.
Yes. If I could move stuff from my Windows OS to my Jessie, and vice
versa, that would be a big help. Any suggestions from anyone about
that?
Linux used to be able to go into MS-DOS and put files there and get
files
out of there. Has anyone any information on that?
> > Should you be game to try installing Jessie again, you might try a network
> > installation started via a Stretch installer.
> Jeez! I can't even run X11 on my present install(*) let alone get on
> line.
That situation has changed as of just an hour ago. I did a reinstall of
xorg(or maybe it was x11), and my 'startx', from my old
wheezy(fortunately
saved) worked, after I'd done a few tweeks to my .xinitrc. I tried my
old beloved sawfish(now wmctl) but that didn't work as well as metacity.
> (*) Does anyone here know how to create a .Xauthority file? That is one of
> the
> things the Jessie installer failed to provide me with.
You've asked this five months ago:
I did indeed. That was before my old machine gave up the ghost. I am
impressed, Brian, that you keep such careful track of me.
My final problem is: how to get my Jessie to get on line. I don't think this is
anything anyone here can help me with, since I live in a retirement community
which has a huge contract with Comcast. I called a tech person here, and he
gave me
a username and password which got me, and keeps me, online . . . but only for
the
Windoze side. I gotta do some exploring to see if I can make this work with
Jessie.
> You are probably asking the wrong question.
<G>
Best wishes to all, even to Lisi!
Alan
