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These are my notes on configuring Linux Mint 21.x.

If you find this and think it is useful, leave a comment and say what you like or don’t like. Keep in mind these are my own notes and are not intended to be a HowTo for the general public.

This installation was done on an Dell Optiplex 7050. I’m also installing on Oracle Virtual Box so I will add some additional steps for that which will be noted as extra steps for Virtual Box.

Disable Secure Boot

I configured the Dell BIOS to have Secure Boot Disabled. It is possible to install this and have Secure Boot Enabled but for my purposes this is simply a hassle that I don’t need and the benefits are negligible for a home computer.

Install Linux Mint 21.x.

As of this writing it is Mint 21.1. I may update these instructions as newer versions come out. Without going into lots of detail on how to install Linux Mint which has been covered in many other HowTos I am just focusing on what I do to configure it to my liking. I am installing on a fresh new disk. I did install multimedia codecs. If you have turned off Secure Boot as mentioned earlier you will not have any additional prompts in this area.

I did select Advanced Features in the Installation Type window and selected to use LVM with the new installation. I did choose to erase disk because this is a new disk and a fresh install. I did choose to encrypt my home directory. Maybe not? Testing without encrypting.

The installation is pretty straight forward and not complicated.

Up and Running

Virtual Box Guest Additions

For Virtual Box Virtual Machine you will need to install Guest Additions

1. Click Devices
2. Insert Guest Additions CD image
3. Click ‘Run’
4. Type your password

This will install guest additions and allow you to resize your screen on the fly.

First Steps

When you first run Mint you will get a Welcome Screen. On the left click First Steps.

Panel Layout. I like Traditional Panel Layout.

Launch the Update Manager and update everything. You may need to reboot at this point.

Launch Driver Manager and see if you need any drivers. I did not need any.

I’ll talk about System Snapshots a little later.

I will address Firewall a little later as well.

The other items on First Steps are pretty much self explanatory.

Firmware

I get a message when I did the updates that the firmware was outdated. I was able to resolve the issue by doing the following:

$ sudo apt install fwupd
$ fwupdmgr get-updates
$ fwupdmgr update

Then follow the prompts to update. The system will reboot and do the updates then reboot again.

Synergy

I’m putting Synergy first. For me it makes it easier to set up my new machine alongside my old one and use the single keyboard and mouse. That way I don’t have to switch back and forth on the keyboard.

Linux Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint

Go to https://symless.com/account and sign in. Go to the download page and get the package for Synergy 1. Synergy 2 is no longer supported and is not backwards compatible. Synergy 3 is in beta if interested. Download the Ubuntu 22 package and save it to ~/Downloads.

Install it on both the Server and Client computer. Make sure the same version is on both computers.:

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ sudo apt install ./synergy_1.14.6-snapshot.88fdd263_ubuntu22_amd64.deb

Now from the desktop menu select Synergy and run it.

• You will be prompted to name the computer. If your computer already has a name then it will suggest the name for you. Click ‘Apply’.
• You will be prompted to enter your serial key. This can be found on the Account page on the Synergy web site.
• You will be prompted to select to either ‘Use this computer’s keyboard and mouse…’ or ‘Use another computer’s keyboard and mouse…’. In this case I am using another computer’s keyboard and mouse. Select the appropriate response.
• Type in the IP address of the Server. Click ‘Connect’
• You will get a ‘Security Question’ about the Server’s fingerprint. Read that and click ‘Yes’.
• On the Server side you need to click the ‘Configure Server’ button to configure the layout.
• If you run into trouble you should go into preferences and un-check ‘Enable TLS encryption’ on both Server and Client and get it working without TLS. Then once it is working switch to TLS.
• From the new computer’s startup menu find ‘Startup Application’ and add Synergy to startup list. I’ve added a startup delay of about 30 seconds.
• Once you have everything working correctly you should go to Preferences in both Server and Client and click both ‘Hide on startup’ and ‘Minimize to system tray’. Now you can minimize and not have it open in your task bar.

Sudoers

Edit the /etc/sudoers file so you don’t have to put your password in each time:

$ sudo visudo

There will be a line that looks like this:

%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Comment out that line and make it look like this:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Now when you use sudo you will not have to enter your password.

Install OpenSSH Server

Install SSH Server so you can ssh to the host:

$ sudo apt install openssh-server -y

Test ssh to the new host. You may during this process encounter an error regarding an “Offending ECDSA key in ~/.ssh/known_hosts”. This is easily resolved by deleting the referenced line in ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

I’ve also experienced an issue where when attempting to ssh to this new host via name it does not work. SSH via IP address does work. DNS resolution is correct. I even have the host in /etc/hosts. No dice.

I was finally able to resolve the issue by putting an entry into the ssh config file on my SSH from host in the ~/.ssh/config.d/LocalHosts.conf file. The entry in this file looks like this:

Host pop
  Hostname 192.168.20.34
  ForwardX11 yes
  ForwardX11Trusted yes

This seems to have solved the problem. I suspect I have some other conflicting entry in my ssh config files that are preventing this, but I can’t find it.

SSH Keys:

Now that you can ssh to your new host you will want to be able to ssh using your ssh key instead of password. From the remote host do this:

$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [newhostname]

You will be prompted to enter the password for the New Host. It will copy over your public ssh key from ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. This assumes your public ssh key is indeed ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

You should be able to ssh to the new host now without entering your password.

(Optional) Now copy all the ~/.ssh directory contents from your old host into this new host so you have the keys, the known hosts and authorized keys files from your user on the old host and now have them on your new host.

From the old host:

$ cd ~/.ssh
$ scp -r * [new-host-name]:~/.ssh

Hosts file:

Copy the Home Network section of your /etc/hosts file from the old host to the /etc/hosts file on the new host

Dropbox

Install Dropbox and python3-gpg packages

$ sudo apt install dropbox python3-gpg

Then go to start menu and find Dropbox and run it.

You will get a message that says in order to use Dropbox you must download the proprietary daemon. Click OK

A Web Page will pop up where you enter your credentials. Do so. You can now open the DropBox client in the toolbar.

Install KeepassXC

Keepass XC is the greatest Password Safe in my humble opinion.

Install it:

$ sudo apt install keepassxc -y

Install Chrome

You’ll need Chrome as well

Go to https://www.google.com/chrome/

Click the Download Chrome button. Mine automatically downloaded into ~/Downloads. The 64 bit version was automatically selected.

Install it like this:

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

This will automatically install a repository as well for future updates.

Install Signal

Go to https://signal.org/en/download/
Click on Download for Linux and follow the instructions that pop up.

After you install Signal edit the startup line in /usr/share/applications/signal-desktop.desktop to look like this:

Exec=/opt/Signal/signal-desktop --use-tray-icon --no-sandbox %U

Additional Software

There are other software packages I need. I’ll do them one at a time because I don’t want to confuse error message between one package or another:

$ sudo apt install kwrite -y
$ sudo apt install kate -y
$ sudo apt install terminator -y
$ sudo apt install sshuttle -y
$ sudo apt install vim -y
$ sudo apt install sshpass -y
$ sudo apt install nfs-common -y
$ sudo apt install gparted -y
$ sudo apt install imagemagick -y
$ sudo apt install whois -y
$ sudo apt install lsscsi -y

Mount NFS Share

Create a mount point:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir -p mnt/[nfs-server-host-name]

Edit /etc/fstab and add these lines:

# External Mounts
[nfs-server-host-name]:[path-to-nfs-export] /home/[your-user]/mnt/[nfs-server-host-name] nfs rw,soft,noauto 0 0

Edit /etc/hosts and add the IP address of Serenity.

Then mount the NFS share:

$ sudo mount [nfs-server-host-name]:[path-to-nfs-export]

You will need to modify the firewall rule on the NFS server to allow connections from your new host before this will work.
https://squoggle.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/iptables/

Mount External Hard Drive

See what device your External USB device shows up as:

$ lsscsi
[0:0:0:0] disk ATA Samsung SSD 860 4B6Q /dev/sda
[1:0:0:0] cd/dvd HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GU90N A1C2 /dev/sr0
[4:0:0:0] disk WD Elements 25A1 1018 /dev/sdb

In my case it shows up as /dev/sdb
Edit your /etc/fstab file and make an entry like this:

# Western Digital Elements Backup Drive
/dev/sdb1    /home/mac/mnt/WD    ntfs    rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other   0 0

Create a mount point for the External Hard Drive

$ mkdir -p ~/mnt/WD

Then mount

$ sudo mount -a

Something else here.

Install Slack:

Go to https://slack.com/downloads/linux
Download the .deb 64 bit package into your ~/Downloads directory.
Then install it:

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ sudo apt install ./slack-desktop-4.29.149-amd64.deb

Crossover

Get the most recent version of Crossover here:
https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

Get the free trial and download to your machine.

Then install like this:

$ sudo apt install ./crossover_[version-number].deb

Before you attempt to run any bottle you will need to install this library:

$ sudo apt-get install liblcms2-2:i386

This will install a bunch of other dependencies as well.

To export a bottle from one machine to another, in this case Quicken, which is the only reason for running Crossover, do this:

1. Open Crossover
2. Right Click on the Quicken Bottle.
3. Choose ‘Export Quicken 2017 to Archive’
4. Choose a location to save it. It is a good idea to time stamp the file to not overwrite a previous working bottle export.
5. On the new machine go to Menu > Bottle > Import Bottle Archive
6. Browse to where you stored the archive, click it and click ‘Restore’.
7. I get a message that CrossOver needs to install several Linux packages in order to run Windows applications. Click Yes. This will install a butt load of libraries and dependencies.
8. You may actually think it is stuck but when it seems to stop doing something see if the ‘Continue’ button is active and if so, click it.
9. The process will sit there for a bit acting like it is stuck. Just be patient.
10. Finally your bottle should be imported.
11. Make your symlinks to your datafiles to your home directory because Crossover has issues with finding files that are deep.
12. Crossover only needs your email address and login password to register. There is no serial number.

Surprisingly this was the first time importing a bottle worked flawlessly. This is a new version on new machine so maybe they worked the kinks out of it.

VueScan

Get the latest version here:

https://www.hamrick.com/alternate-versions.html

Profile

Modify your profile.

Edit ~/.bashrc and change

alias ll='ls -alF'

to

alias ll='ls -lF'

Set your $PATH to include ~/bin

# Set your path to inclue $HOME/bin
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

Save the file and then source it like this:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Additional Packages

Here’s a way you can see what packages you have on your old machine and compare to what you have on your new machine.

On the old machine do:

$ sudo apt list --installed | cut -f1 -d/ | sort > installed.[old-hostname]

Then on the new machine do:

$ sudo apt list --installed | cut -f1 -d/ | sort > installed.[new-hostname]

Then SCP the installed.[new-hostname] file to the old host and then compare them like this:

$ diff installed.gob installed.pop | grep ‘<‘

This will give you a list of packages that are installed on the old host but not on the new host. It turns out I had quite a few. Go thru the list and see what you need on the new.

The majority of the packages you find will probably be dependencies for some other package you installed. If you don’t know what a package is for you can easily check information about it with:

$ apt show [package-name]

The majority of the packages I found this way are libraries that are dependencies for other packages I have installed over time.

I found a few packages that I think are useful and should probably be installed:

alien
gimp
gparted
git
mlocate
nmap
traceroute

This is a short list of many.

Other Must See Pages

At this point you should be up and running and ready to work. However there are a lot more things that I typically use on a day to day basis when using Linux Mint.

This list is not an extensive list but may be of help:

Install VirtualBox 7.0 on Linux Mint 21.x

Key Store Explorer

Installing ZenMap in UBUNTU 22.04

How to Install Zenmap on Ubuntu 22.04

How to install Proton VPN on Linux Mint

How to use the Proton VPN Linux app

Install JetBrains Toolbox App Then use the Toolbox to install PyCharm and DataGrip

What you will need:

• A USB flash drive big enough. A 4GB flash drive should be big enough.
• The latest Linux Mint ISO image downloaded to your Windows box. I’m using version 19.3 for this.
• Rufus. Preferably the latest version. As of this writing it is version 3.10.
• Since Rufus is Windows software you will need a PC running Windows.

How to do it:

1. Insert the USB drive. Determine what drive letter it is.
2. Open Rufus. In the Device field choose your USB drive.
3. In the Boot selection field select the ISO image for Linux Mint.
4. For Partition scheme choose GPT.
5. Choose NTFS for File System.
6. Click the START button.
7. You may see a pop up that asks you what mode to write. I have had better luck using DD image mode.
8. You should then see a warning about overwriting the USB drive. If you are sure you can proceed.

To use the USB flash drive, insert it into the slot, reboot. When you see the splash screen hit F12 to get into boot options.
In my Dell PC I see a section that looks like this:

UEFI Boot:
        UEFI: SanDisk

Choose that to boot the Linux Mint installer OS.