A weekend with linux

shiftlocked

New member
Not much to do this weekend bar some "other stuff" so for a change I thought Id try a weekend on Linux. Originally I was going to do a week on linux but I R a windowz user so Im a bit scared to being honest.

Why. I've read so much about it and the people that I ask a lot of advice from on MSN (the geeky ones :D) all seem to hint at giving it a try. Ideally Id have preferred to do a weekend with a Tiger on a PC but Im still looking for a spare hdd

Saturday 12:53

Cups of tea drank: 2

Stress Rating: 1

Google searches for help so far: 1

I've plumped for the Unbuntu live cd to get me started to see just how far I can get before going into the area of formatting and partitioning because I always loose stuff when I head into that area.

My aims for this to be a sucessfull project.

1. Internet browsing with firefox

2. Install an app and know how to do it (obvious I know)

3. I've an avermedia TV card and aver sent me their beta linux drivers. If i can get that going I'll be amazed

4. See if wine will run and attempt to run a doze program

5. Download torrents (legally of course :D)

Not to bad I dont think starting from the simple and working up to there with what I do usually on my windows box. Ideally Id love to play with MythTV but that seems a milliion miles away.

The live cd is downloading (for some reason at a paltry 20k a second. Methinks router needs a kick.) soon as its done Ill edit this post with an update.

All help and suggestions welcomed :D
 
try to execute a few silly comandsin the console, like navigating around. google will help you with some simple commands and you will feel all warm and fuzzy inside if they work
 
Well a bit of an update.

I went with a LIVE cd the other day and really enjoyed tinkering with Kubuntu just in a live setting mode. Ok so a little sluggish but still not that bad.

Feeling brave I downloaded the latest Knoppmyth ISO which was a complete disaster. It would help if I could understand the error codes but being a linux noob Im after some help to get started.

Is it worth chucking doze onto a disk, creating an empty partition and then starting an install from there?
 
yeah, you can do a lot more with a real copy of linux than with a live cd, althoug it is possible to install programs with a live cd, they are only installed to the ram, which means a lot can go wrong and it hardly ever works perfectly.
 
My Live CD (Ubuntu 5.1) doesn't even load properley. The X-Display module (something like that) fails to load and I get stuck at that point. I may fire up an old drive and install the full thing :)
 
Yeah, to get a proper feel of linux, you need to have it installed on a hard disk. Most distro's will detect a windoze install, and install in a seperate partition with a bootloader.

Or....you could install Vmware on your Windows machine, and play with Linux using that.
 
I might have become a bit soft I realise with the advent of GUI's but Im not that daft and understand a little bit about it these days.

From what Im thinking I need 2 partitions, the main root one for the os and stuff and then a swap partiton?
 
Yeah u need 3 partitions

/ - ReiserFS or XFS

/boot - Ext3

swap

(well thats how i normally have mine)
 
544f0588.jpg


Thats the bit that I get up to, i tell it to install grub, it does a few more bits and then prompts for a reboot.

Take out the cd, reboot and then i get the black screen of death. I can see why you dont use it on a desktop now lol
 
Download Fedora, Suse or Mandrake mate. They all have the most friendly installers on the planet.
 
As kemp said. Wont be able to play any games without the Nvidia Drivers, and things will probably run dog-like ;)
 
On my pc, I only have Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE on it as I downloaded the wrong disk- but it's worked great for me so far :P)

I was dual booting for 3 days, then decided I wanted more space and deleted my Windows partition. If I want to play the Sims 2, I use my partner's pc (which I'm on now as I'm creating school uniforms for the Sims 2- don't ask :P).

I discovered another use for a Kubuntu live CD- getting around the college's firewall (but that's for another post :P).
 
I didnt realise that installing drivers was so complex. Ive seen the drivers on the nvidia site that I aparantly need but all that CLI stuff put me wayyyy off. Also the same with my Avermedia TV cards

I might swap over to fedora for a bit to see what thats like to use for a bit, the main aim now is to get Myth TV working and compare that to media centre.
 
Switching distro's isnt going to make installing drivers any easier. They all have to be installed through the console and yes, it can be a freakin' pain in the ass.

I finally got all of my drivers installed and working for SuSe and come to find out none of the video drivers support my native screen resolution for my 30" dell. That was the end of linux for me, lol.
 
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