Linux advice, please!

Anonymouse · 03-05-2008, 06:57

Lately I've been feeling the need for a project to occupy me, and I've thought of one: install Linux on my laptop and dual boot with Vista. Now before y'all start, I've had no problems with Vista (unless you count the disappearing DVD-RW drive, and that turned out to be a hardware issue), so I'm not going to wipe it and install Linux instead. For me, Vista was a pleasant surprise, i.e. not the horror story I was expecting given everything I'd heard about it.

Laptop spec:

AMD Turion TL52 dual core (2 x 1.6GHz)
2GB RAM
160GB HDD (2 NTFS partitions)
Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card (128MB)
802.11g Broadcom wireless adapter

The thing is, the laptop has a recovery partition which can be used to restore the laptop to factory spec if required. I'm not sure which partition it's on, which raises my question: when installing Linux as a dual boot, what, if anything, does this do to the Master Boot Record? I'm concerned about losing access to the recovery partition...again (had a bit of trouble with Acronis TrueImage, which altered the MBR - luckily a bit of research enabled me to repair it).

Other questions:

Does Linux have its own partition format, or would it be happy with NTFS?

Which version of Linux is generally regarded as the most stable?

What's involved in installing it? I've used Unix in a variety of flavours on different platforms (SCO XENIX on PC-compatibles, HP-UX on Apollo workstations, etc.), but I've never installed it from scratch.

What sort of GUI does Linux have now? The last I remember, way back in '97, was X (version 11, I think).

admars · 03-05-2008, 07:33

Hi

A lot of the more user friendly popular ones, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva when you go to install them will look at your hard drive, and allow you to sort out partitions, resize them etc, but that may be a lot to learn get right in one go. Actually, I'm jumping the gun a bit!

go to
www.distrowatch.com

read about the different Linuxes. I try a different one every few months

The 3 main Window systems are KDE, Gnome, XFCE, they all have their pros an cons, but if you go to Ubuntu, KUbuntu, XUbuntu you can get livecds which let you try the OS and window manager without installing it. Mandriva, Fedora, openSUSE and many others do the same thing. That's a quick and easy way to test OSs to see whcih you like, which work with your hardware. You don't get the same performence as you get from an install, but you can see what they are like.

It's then probably easiesit to use partition magic or something lke that to re partition your hard drive in Vista, since you are familiar with that for the moment. Or have you already doen that, so your 2ns NTFS will be your Linux one?

back up everything

so assuming you have 1 physical hard drive,2 big bartition, and 1 recovery partition at the moment.

in Linux the HD will be called sda, when you divide it, windows will see 3, when you go to install Linux, it will ask where to put it, sda1 , sda2, sda3 (or similar), put it on sda2 (i.e. the partition when Vista, and recovery partition aren't) I've done this on a dell laptop no problem, all in tact

it will ask you a few questions, and most of th newer ones will create a GRUB menu.lst file, and write to your MBR so next time you start up, you geta simple menu which OS you want. Linux will want it's own filesystem, and will ask you to format to your choice of several ext3 probably being the most common one at the mo.

It's all really easy these days. My main PC currently has XP, KUbuntu, and openSUSE on it, later on today I'm getting rid of KUbuntu, and replacing it with Mandriva, for a change

I have used Unix a bit at work, and back at uni, but never installed it, and I've learned so much more form having to do installs, re-installs, fixing my mess ups where I have tried to be too clever

Good luck

Al

kingbuxton · 03-05-2008, 21:53

I like Linux, Ubuntu is nice, and you can get he CD's for free. It can take a bit of getting used to, but it is reasonably straight forward. Don't expect a Windows experience though. Main issue I had was getting nVidia drivers installed, it isn't a case of download, double click, reboot, sorted, and it drove me nuts till I fathomed how to do it.

You can/will/might find issues like that, however, if you are after something to do, it certainly fills that.

You could always download Virtualbox and run it in that first.

Try Ubuntu or have a play with http://www.pcbsd.org/ it's free so nothing to loose.

Cobbydaler · 03-05-2008, 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

Lately I've been feeling the need for a project to occupy me, and I've thought of one: install Linux on my laptop and dual boot with Vista. Now before y'all start, I've had no problems with Vista (unless you count the disappearing DVD-RW drive, and that turned out to be a hardware issue), so I'm not going to wipe it and install Linux instead. For me, Vista was a pleasant surprise, i.e. not the horror story I was expecting given everything I'd heard about it.

Laptop spec:

AMD Turion TL52 dual core (2 x 1.6GHz)
2GB RAM
160GB HDD (2 NTFS partitions)
Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card (128MB)
802.11g Broadcom wireless adapter

The thing is, the laptop has a recovery partition which can be used to restore the laptop to factory spec if required. I'm not sure which partition it's on, which raises my question: when installing Linux as a dual boot, what, if anything, does this do to the Master Boot Record? I'm concerned about losing access to the recovery partition...again (had a bit of trouble with Acronis TrueImage, which altered the MBR - luckily a bit of research enabled me to repair it).

Other questions:

Does Linux have its own partition format, or would it be happy with NTFS?

Which version of Linux is generally regarded as the most stable?

What's involved in installing it? I've used Unix in a variety of flavours on different platforms (SCO XENIX on PC-compatibles, HP-UX on Apollo workstations, etc.), but I've never installed it from scratch.

What sort of GUI does Linux have now? The last I remember, way back in '97, was X (version 11, I think).

Have a look here for a guide to installing a Linux distro to a Vista machine.

Linux has it's own file system formats; ext2, ext3 & reiserfs being the most common.

Most modern distros are stable.

The actual GUI depends on whether you use Gnome or KDE & their respective window managers, or if you use something more snazzy as a WM such as Compiz Fusion...

admars · 04-05-2008, 08:38

Actually in some distros installing new graphics drivers is easier. I found in Ubuntu I clicked on the icon of a PCI card, it told me I wasn't using nvidia restricted drivers, asked if I wanted to, I said yes, it got them, installed them, and told me to reboot.

In other distros, it can be a pain, downloading scripts, messing around with your xorg.conf etc

xpod · 04-05-2008, 14:46

Never got round to testing it out myself but if you dont fancy messing around with partitions right away you could always try Ubuntu via http://wubi-installer.org/

cimt · 04-05-2008, 15:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by xpod

Never got round to testing it out myself but if you dont fancy messing around with partitions right away you could always try Ubuntu via http://wubi-installer.org/

That's what I used. I recommend it 100%. Very easy to use. Only downside is how long it takes.

xpod · 05-05-2008, 18:20

Quote:

That's what I used. I recommend it 100%. Very easy to use. Only downside is how long it takes.

I`m a bit hesitant about recommending stuff i`ve never tried myself but i`ve heard a few good reports about it.Glad someone else rated it though,takes the heat of me a bit

Anonymouse · 07-05-2008, 19:44

Another question:

My laptop has an up-to-date Phoenix BIOS. When my external USB drive is plugged in, the BIOS detects it on bootup...and lists it as a drive on the Boot Priority list. This implies that my laptop could boot from the USB drive. Is this possible? If so, could I in fact install Linux to the USB drive and not touch my laptop at all?

admars · 07-05-2008, 20:17

Most probably yes.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

has guides on how to do that

Anonymouse · 08-05-2008, 06:41

You can install Linux on a pendrive?! It's obviously nowhere near as vast as Windows in terms of disk space, but I hadn't imagined it'd be that small.

Druchii · 08-05-2008, 09:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

You can install Linux on a pendrive?! It's obviously nowhere near as vast as Windows in terms of disk space, but I hadn't imagined it'd be that small.

www.damnsmalllinux.org/

50Mb Linux. There are smaller ones though...

admars · 08-05-2008, 12:24

yeh, and something like Damn Small Linux or Puppy http://www.puppylinux.com/ fly when you run them on a modern high spec PC, as it just loads the whole live CD into memory