Mint or Ubuntu to run a Windows 7 KVM machine.
 

Hi,

I have a Lenovo B40-80 i3, 250GB SSD with 16GB of RAM with Windows 7 PRO and Kali dual boot. I would like to install either Mint or Ubuntu as my main operating system but run Windows 7 pro as a virtual machine.

The reason I want Linux to be my main O/S is to be able to encrypt my hard drive and O/S. Unfortunately, Windows 7 pro does not offer bit locker and I refuse to upgrade to Windows 10 pro. Due to work and school purposes, I need to run Windows O/S.

Please advise.

Thank you

Ubuntu and Mint are marginally different. THey use the same repos for the most part. Either will suit you. I personally would use Ubuntu. I have found occasional small issues with Mint that I never had to deal with in Ubuntu.

Be sure you have a few copies of that encryption key saved in a few separate places. Always someone posting on the forums how they lost their key and the hard drive is encrypted. I recommend encrypting files, not the entire drive. GPG encryption and backup your secret key on paper in a safe place, more than one is better.

Hi Jmgibson1981,

Thank you for your response. Yes, I was also leaning towards Ubuntu instead of Mint for the same reasons. I once had Mint running on a Dell Inspiron and certain things wouldn't work correctly.

Yes, I have seen various forums of people forgetting/losing their encryption keys. I used to use TrueCrypt but unfortunately, they stopped supporting it and pushed users to use BitLocker.

I have one more question, how about just encrypting my home directory using Ubuntu?

Thanks again!

Buntus fanboys post ???

Another possibility is Debian if you want a stable base, I've had trouble with it as well though. Libdvdcss didn't decrypt like it should. Works fine on *buntu though. For me Mint lost it's appeal as soon as I installed virtualbox, then found out you need to manually install the gui for it separately. Also it kept kicking random errors whenever I tried to run a vm.

Your sig pretty much explains everything about you using the word fanboy as an insult. Grow up. Just because you don't like something, be it Ubuntu, or systemd (which is great by the way) doesn't mean you need to troll off of it.

Yes, I remember with my old Dell the screen would freeze or flicker... some applications would give me random errors. I haven't used Debian in years. I mainly use CentOS for home and work servers and Kali for pen testing, etc.

Gotta love these Keyboard warriors. They all talk trash until they get punched in the face. I already reported him.

Thank you!

A lot of distro choice is down to what sort of interface you like:
Computer looking like a traditional computer: Mint
Computer looking like a tablet: Ubuntu Gnome
Computer looking like a phone: Ubuntu

As for the "issues" in Mint, I can remember problems with Ubuntu over the years — installation disk that wouldn't work with Intel graphics, mysterious installer crash on certain hardware, inability to use usb speakers — which were sorted in Mint long before Canonical got round to them. Almost every distro will have its issues at some time or other, but you remember the ones that affected you.

Thanks for your response DavidMCCam. I downloaded Debian 8 and installed it with Mate desktop. It is working fine so far. I will test it for a few days and if i don't run into issues or weird problems then I will use Debian for my laptop.

Thank you so much everyone who contributed.

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Dear un1x,
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