Linux Q & A

tigerfan88 · 07-18-2007, 12:10 AM

I already have about 23GB of stuff on the drive. How do I partition things? I've also tried running the live Ubuntu 6.06 CD and it locks up on me every time before it even boots up. Any ideas for why this is happening?

**surferdude9375** · 07-18-2007, 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigerfan88

I already have about 23GB of stuff on the drive. How do I partition things? I've also tried running the live Ubuntu 6.06 CD and it locks up on me every time before it even boots up. Any ideas for why this is happening?

Once you get into the Live CD there will be an application called GParted that you can use to partition. Since you have 23GB used and plan to continue using XP I suggest you keep the NFTS partition around 40GB. Once you have resized the partition to that size you have to create a Linux partition(ext2 about 49GB in size depending on the Swap size) and a Swap partition(usually equal to the amount of RAM you have. someone confirm this please) in that same program then you install away.

As for the error can you elaborate on the problem a bit more. You have the bios set to boot up on the CD and it freezes up where? What are your system specs?

tigerfan88 · 07-18-2007, 12:24 AM

My system has the following specs:

HP 6740C Pavillion
512MB RAM
Pentium III Processor
13.6GB HDD (with XP Pro installed) and a 90GB HDD (with just random programs and files)
ATI Radeon 7200 Graphics card
CD-RW drive
Ethernet card

The error occurs right after a screen where things are checked (and an ok is placed next to each thing, like network configurations are checked and it says those are OK). The screen goes black and just freezes. It's after the user is created and all that. I've tried booting in Ubuntu's version of safe mode, but I get an error that my graphical user interface isn't working.

Thanks for the help so far

**surferdude9375** · 07-18-2007, 12:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigerfan88

My system has the following specs:
ATI Radeon 7200 Graphics card

I've tried booting in Ubuntu's version of safe mode, but I get an error that my graphical user interface isn't working.

Thanks for the help so far

Linux + ATI = uh oh!?!?! crash!

I am going to have to let someone else help you with this problem as I am not experienced enough to direct you here.
Your welcome, its what we are here to do.

tigerfan88 · 07-18-2007, 12:34 AM

By the sound of it, ATI and Linux don't get along too well, huh? I had a feeling that might be the case.

**surferdude9375** · 07-18-2007, 12:40 AM

If you have on-board graphics you might be able to go ahead and install Ubuntu then upgrade to Studio then work on getting it to work along with you ATI card. Or just take it out when you want to run Ubuntu and put it in when you want to run XP. (but who wants to do that?)

tigerfan88 · 07-18-2007, 01:30 AM

I tried Googling it and it seems the suggestion is to use an alternate install/live CD. So I guess I'll try that and see if it works.

One of the main reasons I'm considering Ubuntu is because it takes forever to boot up XP Pro on my PC and when it is running, it's still pretty slow. Will Ubuntu be notably faster?

**surferdude9375** · 07-18-2007, 01:43 AM

I don't know if you have ever tried but you could trying to fix the problems with XP first. The former owner of CGR, Mickey, has a site dedicated to this specifically. http://www.speedupmyxp.com/

As an addition to that I recommend Power Defrag with Contig to get deep with defrag.

With Ubuntu you would notice a speed up because it is a more lean OS than XP. That only stays until you start to install more programs which puts more load on the computer at startup then it will slow down a bit.

tigerfan88 · 07-18-2007, 02:13 PM

Yeah, I've tried a lot of things to speed up XP. I've deleted old programs, minimized the amount of programs that boot at start-up, defragged the drive a couple of times in the past few months, deleted temp files etc. It still takes a long time to boot up, even after I added in another 128MB of RAM. It's also pretty sluggish when it is booted up and doesn't seem to be very stable, despite having all the latest updates installed. So that's why I'm so heavily considering Linux.

Really, when I think about it, I only need the following programs to run on my PC:

Audacity
MobilePre
Paint Shop Pro 9
Dreamweaver 8
Flash 8
Firefox(which I know Ubuntu comes with)
Visual Basic 2005
QBasic

That's really it. As long as Ubuntu is able to run all those, I'd be happy. And from the research I've done, I know Ubuntu runs all of those, but I'm not sure how compatible programming programs are with it. I would assume they would be compatible.

Also, do you have any idea on how to disable the graphics card and go with onboard graphics? I know my PC has onboard graphics because we used those before my brother put in the graphics card a few years back. I looked around in BIOS but didn't see an option.

Jay Tea · 07-18-2007, 08:46 PM

Can all Linux distributions be run without a GUI/desktop manager, and use only a command line?

FreakShiny · 07-18-2007, 08:53 PM

Yup... the CLI is the native interface for Linux/Unix. The GUI/Desktop Manager was added later.

Most linux geeks will still heavily use the CLI as it is quite powerful with bash shell scripting and such.

Jay Tea · 07-18-2007, 09:30 PM

A lot of what I'm seeing talks about downloading stuff during installation. Is it generally assumed that you've got an internet connection, even if you're installing from a CD?

FreakShiny · 07-18-2007, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jay Tea

A lot of what I'm seeing talks about downloading stuff during installation. Is it generally assumed that you've got an internet connection, even if you're installing from a CD?

No, it's optional. The installation (on some distros) gives you the option to download the latest updates during installation. You can simply select no and skip past it. The updates usually go more smoothly once you are up and running, anyhow.

tigerfan88 · 07-20-2007, 12:13 PM

I'd like to thank surferdude for his help, especially the links he provided. I installed Ubuntu Desktop on Wednesday night. Due to incompatibilities with my driver, I couldn't get it working. I tried again yesterday and figured out the correct PCI bus location. That got the system up and running (I also did some asking at the Ubuntu forums and they helped me with figuring out partitioning and stuff). Then I upgraded late last night to Ubuntu Studio which is freakin' sweet! I have to say that I'm still very much a newbie to Linux and Ubuntu, so I don't know how to do very much with it--yet. But I can already tell this is an awesome operating system. The cool thing for me is that it runs so much quicker than XP. It's incredible because it loads up things just like that. No waiting for a minute or two or anything. It also boots up significantly faster and shuts down faster.

I have Vista Premium on my laptop(it's a Compaq with 1GB memory, 100GB harddrive and more) right now, and the past couple nights, I've had an extreme slow down to the point where Task Manager wouldn't even boot up. It wasn't even like I was doing something invasive--I was only running Mozilla, Open Office, iTunes and AIM. That was it and it was so slow! I say all this because I may eventually set up Ubuntu on my laptop. Not right now, but maybe a bit later on, especially if Vista continues to be this painfully slow for me.

So the things I like about Ubuntu are:
Very fast speed: quick boot-up, shut-down, programs load fast
Very sharp looking interface (sure it's different from Windows, but it's cool)
Lots of updates and free programs
It's not made by Microsoft
Seems to be excellent for recording and editing music

The only thing I don't like is that there is quite a bit of an adjustment curve to it.

Oh, I also have a question. I have a game called Frets on Fire on my harddrive. It's a .exe. Is there some sort of package that I have to get to run .exes on Ubuntu? Obviously, I could just boot up XP and run my game through that, but I so love Ubuntu that I'd like to try FOF on there.

**surferdude9375** · 07-20-2007, 12:50 PM

I have never really used emulator/virtual desktops but I know that is what is needed to run windows on Linux. I have heard a lot of things about the program Wine (http://www.winehq.org/) which is open source program for virtualization (Firefox spell checker says I spelled this wrong, but I don't think so) on Linux/Unix based OS's. I know there are other programs out there, but I have no idea if they are any good.