Hi,

I'm about to take the plunge from Windows XP and therefore getting to know Linux Mint 17 Mate; so far so good but now I want to access Administration - without luck.
Is this due to the fact that I'm in live session (USB -ISO)?
The user setting is : live session user.
Thanks for your input.
Gwendolynn

Hi Gwendolynn,

Can you give us so more information? What version of Linux are you running? What do you mean by Administration? What task are you trying to perform?

Regards,

Brad

Hi Brad,
that was quick!
Reading about dual booting (yes, I have to ween myself off XP...!) and partinioning I came across the remark that one can access partitioning from admin - but then, I've been reading so much in these last few days..
I still do not trust myself to install Mint just like that.

thanks
Gwendolynn

Hi Gwendolynn,

OK. So, you haven't installed it yet, correct? Google is your friend. I did a quick search for "how to install linux mint dual boot xp" and came up with several very good tutorials. Have you tried that? I haven't actually used mint, so I can't get very specific about it. Unix/Linux has what is known as a root user. It is similar to the local administrator account in Windows. From you normal user account, you can use the su (substitute user) command to switch to the root user to run commands that need administrative privilege. There is also a command called sudo. If sudo is set up correctly, from your normal user account you can run "sudo command" to run a command that normally would need root privileges.

Does that at least get you pointed in the correct direction?

Regards,

Brad

Hi Brad,

Thanks for the info and apologies for late reaction. Busy going through the tutorials as Google has, indeed, lots of info (and maybe that's the problem at the same time as too much -sometimes contradictory -info can be confusing...however I'll have to sort Dell's partitioning first!
signing off for now
regards
Gwendolynn

Hi Gwendolynn,

If your Dell doesn't have free disk space, Windows XP wasn't built with that ability. You'll have to use an outside tool. There are several good ones mentioned in this web page: Shrink XP Partition.

Good Luck!

Regards,

Brad