Dumb Easy Ububtu questions

Factual Questions
1

OK, I have a laptop with vista, and I have been considering loading it with ubuntu as the OS for a while now. I figure since I have the whole thing backed up on its own little almost 1tb hard drive, [the hard drive was making funny noises, so I decided to make it its own little hdd instead of loading stuff over to my main computers back up drive. I mainly have some of my ebooks and some of my music duplicated on it so i have them when I travel.] this might be a good time to mess around with a laptop and linux.

So, I went here. My main question is if I follow the instructions and make a tiny partition for part of ubuntu, a second tiny partition for another part of ubuntu, and a third tiny partition for swapping [?] I have 25 gig free of 275, and they apparently are recommending 8 gig per little tiny partition. I can delete music and books, and some odds and ends of games I no longer play to free up another 10 gig or so. So I can install it as a dual boot deal. Once I have it installed, how do I wipe windows so I can have a linux box, or do I have to wipe absolutely everything first and boot with a dvd with linux on it and proceed as if I have a virgin hdd? If I do that, can I suck the data off my backup external drive and slap it into the linux box [or should I just dropkick the laptop and get a new one and have them preinstall linux?]

I am frustrated because I can’t find any message board with anybody ‘live’ to ask stupid questions like this. Although my computer geek buddy is visiting the US sometime in Feb, I could just go buy him lots of pizza and make him do it… but I was sort of hoping to get this done now. Though if the hdd dies, I can always use the boot disc I made with a virgin replacement hdd … and the new drives I would be buying to replace this are much bigger!

2

If you’re sure about not wanting Windows at all, the Ubuntu install process will walk you through the steps needed to erase it totally and have an Ubuntu-only system. (Note that if you do this, Windows and everything in the Windows partition you haven’t backed up is erased. Totally. Entirely. Gone.) It will also walk you through the process of resizing the Windows partition and putting Ubuntu on the newly-created free disk space. You should still make a backup before you do this.

You can also reformat partitions and make them reasonable for use in Ubuntu. This is admittedly a more advanced thing to be doing and you kinda need to know what you’re up to or else you’re risking massive damage to the OS. (It isn’t difficult, per se, just the potential for damage is high.)

Yes.

I don’t know who would sell laptops with Linux pre-installed. If you can find someone who does, and want to go that way, do it.

It isn’t that hard to do, especially if you want to erase Windows entirely and just have Ubuntu from then on. In fact, it’s almost certainly the case that you’ll have Internet access from the Ubuntu boot disk before you do anything to the hard drive; you should be able to post last-minute questions here and at the Ubuntu Message Boards before you take the final plunge.

3

Have you run Linux as a Live Disc to evaluate it first?
It can have problems with graphics and wireless cards.

It works fine on my Toshiba laptop and a desktop I built myself, also on my wife’s laptop.
Better than Windows in every case.

I installed it on a Packard-Bell for a workmate who had screwed his windows installation beyond recovery (recovery partition corrupt, no discs)
Everything works perfectly except the graphics, no drivers available so runs in default (800 x 600) mode.
Useable but not pretty.

Also, I was called to look at a new Packard-Bell bought for our MD last week.
It had lost the hard drive altogether didn’t get the full story but he had plugged something in that he perhaps shouldn’t have).
Booted it from an Ubuntu disk and the display was too corrupt to use.

I strongly recommend Linux and in particular Ubuntu to anyone who will listen but you should be aware that there can be pitfalls.

Also, if Ubuntu fails, you might try Linux Mint. Sometimes one works where the other won’t.

4

Ok wait, it’s not clear to me if you want to keep windows or not. I think you should.

Second of all, I’m concerned about the clicking noises you hear from the hard drive. This is really bad news, as it’s pretty much the only indication/symptom of a dying hard drive. If I were you, I would replace that ASAP even before installing Linux.

But the general procedure for installing Linux goes like this:
Freeup space in the hard drive by deleting all the data you can. I think you did this already pretty well, but consider that A windows partition should have at least 10% free space after you install Linux just to have some breathing room.

After you’ve made room for Linux, run the Disk defrag in windows to consolidate all the data as much as possible. If after running disk defrag there is still data sprinkled all over the place, that’s ok. When you install Linux, it will force move data within the windows partition to make room for itself, but it’s best if the data is consolidated as much as possible before running this.

next you are ready to install Linux, pop the live dvd or thumb drive. Restart the system, then when you see the initial Bios screen press F12. In a few seconds you should see a few choices of where to boot from. Arrow down to whichever choice says cd or DVD rom, or USB port as your case may be.

You should come to the Ubuntu installer. Choose the live boot option. It’s always best to try out Linux on your particular hardware before installing, just in case you have some hardware configuration that is not supported. When you log in as a guest user on the live boot session, you should try out you network connection both wired and wireless. Make sure it connects and reconnects fine. Also try out the speakers by playing some music. Fully verify that the volume works as expected.

If all checks out while in the live session then you can install. There should be an icon on the desktop to install Ubuntu.

The wizard is pretty intuitive. Just follow the prompts, but the only complicated choice you have to make is the partition configuration. I recommend the following: / “root”, equivalent to C:\windows and C:\Program Files combined, should be approximately 10gb big. The next partition should be /swap and it’s size should be equal to the amount of ram you have, and up to 1.5 times the ram. Anywhere between those values should be sufficient. The last partition should be /home and it should take up the rest of the room you have. This is where you have your data.

Continue with the prompts until it starts installation. When installation finishes, it will restart the system, then log back into Ubuntu to create your user profile with a few more prompts. Finally you will have Linux installed. When you restart the system again, you will get a choice of which operating system to boot into. The default will be Ubuntu and it will go into it after a 10 second period where you can arrow down to Windows. Net time you boot into windows, you will see a warning from windows saying there could be something wrong with the disk. This is normal, and nothing to actually worry about.

That pretty much covers it. It’s really simple honestly and you should have Ubuntu installed in under 30 minutes.

5

I started with Ubuntu almost four years ago (Hardy Heron). I kept it dual boot (about a 50/50 partition split) for a while until I learned that Pokerstars would run just fine under WINE. I just reinstalled Ubuntu with a one large partition. It only takes about twenty minutes plus a couple of hours to reload my files from the external drive I use as a backup. You can do the same with the partition editor but for me it was just faster to do a clean install from scratch.

Before Ubuntu, I was using Firefox, GMail, Open Office, VLC Player and GIMP. After installing Ubuntu, I’m still using Firefox, GMail, Open Office, VLC Player and GIMP. I even used the Firefox FEBE extension to bring over my entire browser profile (my bookmarks, extensions, themes, preferences, passwords, cookies, etc.). It couldn’t have been easier.

6

One of the privately owned computer stores will take delivery of a new laptop and put linux of whatever flavor you want, all set up with browser, email and open office - moving data and bookmarks, address book and whatall for a setup fee [I think it is like $150, and they will dispose of your old laptop for you if you do not want to keep it.] They also do a nice custom build desktop, if that is your inclination.

I have just been a bit hesitant because transferring all the data back is daunting - I know that frex with windows you have to install programs specifically, you cant just drop it onto a drive and expect it to work properly, and I don’t believe that Itunes works in linux, so I need to convert everything from itunes format to MP3 [I guess] and all my ebooks to epub[?] I am not sure if calibre works under linux.

At least I can use the desktop to process all the files that would need to be changed and then I can dropbox them over.

Looks like we are headed out of state for next week job hunting for mrAru, so I may have to just do it next weekend so we have a laptop for the trip. sigh But I am taking along the ubuntu disc in case the HDD craps out, so I can load an OS onto a new one!

7

Is “Ububtu” the redneck version?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

8

No, rednecks still won’t give up “Winders 95”.

9

Maybe that’s why RedHat gave up on their Redneck version of Linux.

10

I can’t say I miss the Text User Interface days…