Linux distributions
For those unfamiliar with Linux, it is a free operating system which offers all the functionality of Windows for the average user (web browser, multimedia, office suite, image editors, etc), but without the viruses, crashes, and spyware. Since Linux is free, many different groups can put together their own version (called a distribution). The most popular (and possibly the most user friendly) distribution of Linux today is Ubuntu. If you have read all the hype and are thinking about upgrading to Windows Vista, save yourself all the required hardware upgrades and restricted media functionality and try Ubuntu Linux instead. You can learn more about Ubuntu Linux here. If you like what you read you can have a free install disk shipped to your home here. The install disk will let you try out Ubuntu on your computer without actually installing anything. If you like what see, you can allow the disk to install Linux in parallel with your existing copy of Windows. With my required Linux advocacy comments out of the way, back to my questions for Ron: What distro did you leave on your laptop when the dust settled? What Linux distro do you normally use? Is this forum also run on a Linux machine? Some of your previous comments made me think this is the case. Every year or two I try installing a few other distros on my laptop, but generally I circle back to what I know. I've been running Gentoo Linux on the desktop for about 4 years. Bit of a learning curve .. but after that it's very predictable and powerful. On the laptop I was running Ubuntu (until the screen burned out). I hope to get a MacBook in the fall (after the new OSX comes out), and I'll dual boot Ubuntu on it as well. I keep telling myself I should switch to Ubuntu everywhere. I love the power of Gentoo, but it's very much a geek's distro and I'd like to use/contribute to a project that will improve Linux for everyone. |
|
|
| My son just came home from University and has Linux on his PC. He is loves it and it going to give me a "tour" and wants me to install it on my PC...
Can I run both Linux and Windows? I am VERY nervous.....  |
| Yes, you can have both Windows and Linux installed on your computer at the same time. This is how I got started with Linux 7 years ago.
The people who develop Linux distributions realize that new users don't want to dive head first into Linux without the option of still using Windows, so a lot of effort has gone into improving the 'dual boot' setup. When you install a distribution such as Ubuntu it can make room for itself on your drive in parallel with Windows. Then, when you turn on your computer each time it will present you with a choice: do you want to boot into Windows or Linux. If you boot Windows, everything will be as it was before. It won't even know that Linux is there. If you boot Linux, it will know that the Windows install is there, typically providing you access to your files stored in Windows as well. If your son is already using Linux on his PC, I'm sure he won't have any trouble setting up yours. The idea of using a different operating system seems scary at first because many people think 'Windows' is synonymous with the personal computer. The fact is that most operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac) are very similar in functionality. I run only Linux at my house, and when visitors use our computer they often don't notice anything is different. Let us know how it goes. |
| My 4 year old laptop, a Gateway 2.4 GHz P4 desktop processor based machine is not cooperating. I am not able to resize the windows partition in advance of adding a new partition on which to install and run Linux.
Here is the synopsis: gparted LiveCD hangs on boot. systemRescueCD hangs on boot. An Older version of gparted boots but cannot read any info from the disk. Ubuntu boots and can read all of the info on the disk, but fails to resize it. That synopsis covers 3 or 4 days of efforts, and was followed by my outsourcing the reconfiguration of my laptop to a couple of 15 year olds: http://youtube.com/watch?v=idoLiEDNaaM The oes.org server is running Linux, perhaps CentOS/RedHat, running on twin dual-core AMD Opteron CPUs, 4GB RAM, 500GB RAID 1+0 for performance and reliability, connected to the backbone of the 'net with a 100Mbps connection.  |
| Well I would ask the usual questions about defragmenting the Windows drive, etc .. but if that YouTube video was your laptop then I'd say it was permanently reconfigured. I had read that the new Ubuntu contains an enhanced partition tool, so if it still ran into trouble it might have been time to reinstall Windows.
I did a dual boot install on my work laptop using Ubuntu 6.10. It resized my Windows XP partition without any trouble. I would have just overwritten everything, but I needed to keep the option to boot windows for when the IT guys came around to check hardware. Ah, you have hosting provided by http://www.jaguarpc.com. That's pretty high end! For some reason I thought you were self-hosting. I keep looking into getting a virtual host for some projects I've tossed around, but I always get stuck at the site name. Any other Linux users here? Anyone interested?  |
Didn't find exactly what you're looking for? Search again here:
Custom Search
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|