[Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

This is an update and a test to see if I have figured out Thunderbird's 
settings so that everything comes over as plain text instead of 
something else.  If there are any issues let me know.

Friday the Mint crew announced that they were releasing their new 
version of Mint, version 18, Sarah, so I went _bleeding edge_ and tried 
to install it.  Things did not go well in the sense that I was not able 
to make a dual-boot installation where Windows 7 was on its existing 
hard drive and Mint 18 on its own.  As far as I can tell I did 
everything correctly, but upon rebooting there was no option to go to 
Mint; instead, the boot went directly to Windows 7.  After many hours of 
effort, searching, etc. (It was after 6 AM local time when I gave up.) I 
decided to simply unplug the Windows 7 hard drive and plug my new hard 
drive in its place.  I successfully installed Mint 18 and it booted up 
fine with one quirk.  My understanding is that I would be prompted to 
remove my installation USB drive prior to it rebooting, but it didn't 
and this seemed to cause issues.  On my repeat installation effort I 
removed the USB drive myself when it appeared that the system had just 
shut down.  Things have gone well since.

I guess I will save the dual-boot effort for some other day.

Now I am updating things, playing with Firefox and Thunderbird, etc.  On 
the latter I was surprised that Thunderbird did not support conversation 
views out of the box.  I am currently testing an extension, "Thunderbird 
Conversations", which is a bit different in what I was expecting 
(Compared to Gmail.), but I suppose I will get used to it.

We will see how the Linux experiment will work!  My plan is to work my 
way through the book, "How Linux Works", by Brian Ward.  So that will 
probably distract me from Python studies for a while.

Again, thanks for all of the help you've collectively given!

boB