[underscore]

so I've been thinking of dualbooting my laptop and desktop with Linux and Vista/XP (respectively). I've never used Linux before aside from messing around with a bootcd I had a while back so which build/version/whatever is the easiest to get into using? I'm also wondering about driver compatability and such, my laptop is an HP dv6424ca and when I tried to dualboot it with XP I learned most of the drivers are only available for Vista. My desktop occasionally gets used for games but for the most part it just torrents and streams with TVersity, I'm assuming it should handle the switch just fine?

TIA

[willystyle]

Alot of problems in Linux are a bitch to fix if you don't know any Unix command lines. For me, it was a very rough transition phase, in the end, i deleted the partition.

[John]

The best distro for you is the one that has the all drivers you need. The only way to find which one does, is to install it. Install from "bootcd" or "live" or "one" cd to find which ones work for your hardware.

[underscore]

so you're saying I'm gonna have to d/l all of them til I find one with drivers that work? what a PITA. I was checking out Ubuntu last night but the supported video card page has crashed.

aside from Ubuntu what are some of the distros I should check out?

[John]

I recommend any of the 4 CD or 1 DVD distros. Mandriva and SUSE are a couple of these. Some people prefer the easy-to-install 1 CD distros. I prefer to get everything at once, so I don't have to look around for more programs, like GIMP (Photoshop clone), etc.

I also recommend you try to decide whether you like the Gnome or the KDE gui. The decision can only be made by trying them both. Gnome has the taskbar at the top like OSX, while KDE has the taskbar on the bottom like Windows.

[underscore]

awesome thanks, I'll start getting those now.

I'm thinking I'll use KDE, I hate having the taskbar at the top.

[+Kardboard+]

You can move the taskbar, which really isn't a taskbar as running programs are on another bar at the bottom in GNOME. Try Ubuntu first, as it is the easiest set up and has driver support for laptops. I think I have the Compaq version of your laptop and it was allll set up in a half-hour. All my laptop wireless and function keys work...heh. You don't need to learn commands unless you want to really get into the system, which if that's the case just Google.

[underscore]

wellk I now have Fedora x86 64 Live, Mandriva int i586 One and Ubuntu 8.10 desktop AMD, I'm burning them now. I'll start with Ubuntu and hopefully I get the same luck as you haha.

[FiveDime]

The distro will all depend what your wanting to do...

For jsut ease of use, Ubuntu is the first look, also check out fedora 10.

[underscore]

for right now all I want is ease of use as it'll be dualbooted with windows. once I get used to it I want to see if I can make the full transition, that of course depends on compatibility with my games/programs/networking.

[+Kardboard+]

Not really worth fully switching over, IMHO. Compatibility is a definite issue, however, for a secondary computer or a home file/print server, Linux is an AWESOME choice. My old laptop that I mentioned before sucked ass with XP on it, but now with Ubuntu it's been given new life, and surprisingly, more battery life. I use it as a somewhat eco-friendly file/print server. Got a 1.5TB drive hooked up to it and a Sammy laser printer for the whole house to use. :)

[underscore]

point taken, it might be better suited to my desktop as it just runs as a torrenting/streaming/print server. the main reason I'm putting it on my laptop is so I can help my g/f out with her laptop if she has any issues (her dad wants to put Linux on it)

I just booted up Ubuntu from the disk, so far it seems very straightforward, I had no issues finding anything and it said none of my drivers were proprietary so I should be good to go, I'll just need to plug in to d/l them. here goes nothing.

[+Kardboard+]

lol your girl's dad wants to put Linux on her laptop? :lol Why doesn't he put it on his own computer haha

[underscore]

from what I understand he has it on all their other computers, her laptop got a virus so it had to be reformatted and so he suggested putting on Linux so her chance of getting a virus is reduced.

I'm on Ubuntu right now, so far I've noticed that web pages load slower than in Vista (both on FF) and it's very user friendly *if* you like it as is, I actually think I would've put this on my grandparents laptop (their first computer) when we got it for them last year if I had to teach them again. I've been trying to add VLC as a test but I can't just go to the site and d/l it, I have to do some wierd shit in Synaptic Package Manager to d/l anything but I cant find VLC in there. now I'm downloading 204 updates, which seems kinda retarded as I downloaded the latest .iso from the site so you'd think they'd put the latest updates in there, I guess not. the MSN replacements suck ass too, and somehow it manages to get an 80% connection to my neighbors router when Vista could only get 10%. which is wierd. so I think later I'm gonna try the Fedora Live CD and check that out.

[+Kardboard+]

Synaptic is wonderful, but for somethings you'll need to add the sources, hence, not quite user-friendly. Very powerful and thorough, though.

Try emessene for Messenger. Much better than Pidgin (which couldn't load my list properly lol) or aMSN, which is just not updated enough lol

[underscore]

emesene doesn't seem to work for me, it hangs when I log in. Pidgin works but its really limited. hopefully I can get Synaptic figured out

[FiveDime]

why dont you just install windows virtual machine and test out the operating systesms that way?

Thats what i do to load linux. I dont even have to shut off my windows xp, i just boot ubuntu from xp so i can have both running at 1 time.

[underscore]

I have Virtual Machine, but I have no need for Linux if I'm already running Vista, I don't see any gains from running it like that.

[underscore]

I hit a snag - I can't access the files on my Vista partition from Linux, I can however get to the files that are shared on my other computer on the network. help?

[+Kardboard+]

There's a way to do that. It was on Lifehacker I think?

[underscore]

ok sweet, I'll try to look it up.

I also can't install Flashplayer to go on YouTube, I've tried all the methods they list but it wont start installing.

[+Kardboard+]

Mine downloaded it automatically, I think? Or maybe it's in Synaptic too. I'll share my extra sources in a bit lol

[Soundy]

I haven't tried it, so I dunno how well it will work, but you could try installing Virtual PC and then test your Linux distros in that, running within XP/Vista... save some hassle from dualbooting, at least while you're testing, and the virtualized machine might help reduce driver issues.

Free download from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en#filelist

[underscore]

I got Flash to d/l automatically, tho it told me it was going to take 6 hours to download so I said fuckit and cancelled. 12 hours and it wasn't done the 204 updates. thus far it's not offering me any benefits as far as I can see, just a lot of hassles and settling.

I know I can run them in VPC but using a bootcd is easier, plus if it can't get the drivers to work with my laptop it's useless to me anyways.

[+Kardboard+]

lol that sucks man, for me it was so painless. :(

[underscore]

there we go, got all the updates and such to go at a decent rate, it automatically added more sources now, I'm just wondering why exactly Linux doesn't use .exe at all?

[Soundy]

It does, they're just marked as Binary files. Only Windoze is STILL wholly reliant on file extensions to tell the OS what type of file it is.

[underscore]

^ it's handy when you want to trick windows haha. but when I went to d/l Flashplayer directly, there were 4 different ways to download it, from what I gathered they were mostly just different compression formats, but when I decompressed them and tried to run the file inside, nothing happened.

[underscore]

so Gnome died somehow, I reinstalled and it fixed it however now when I boot the default is different, and it has a bunch of extra options I don't want. I opened up disk/boot/grub/menu.lst and found this, I'm pretty sure I know what to move/delete to get it how I want but I'm unsure. Currently:

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid a7e2a041-51fb-4a7e-b461-715375a01f5d
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=a7e2a041-51fb-4a7e-b461-715375a01f5d ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
uuid a7e2a041-51fb-4a7e-b461-715375a01f5d
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=a7e2a041-51fb-4a7e-b461-715375a01f5d ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
uuid a7e2a041-51fb-4a7e-b461-715375a01f5d
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda2
title Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=40121af0-8eba-43ee-ab12-175b4ff339fa ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=40121af0-8eba-43ee-ab12-175b4ff339fa ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=40121af0-8eba-43ee-ab12-175b4ff339fa ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=40121af0-8eba-43ee-ab12-175b4ff339fa ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
savedefault
boot


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
# linux installation on /dev/sda5.
title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+ (on /dev/sda5)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
savedefault
boot

so since I don't want the "Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic" and instead want the -9 as default, along with -9 recovery mode, and Vista and nothing else, can I just delete the entries I don't want, or comment them out, and move the "Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic" and it's info to the default spot?

[+Kardboard+]

Now you're into territory I dare not venture into. :lol

[underscore]

pansy! :P

[+Kardboard+]

No, just lazy. :p

[underscore]

that works too haha, I'm starting to get lazy here and I'm thinking of going back to Vista, Ubuntu boots faster but once it's going it seems to run slower, albeit without as many jam ups. I'm too lazy to run Wine and I'm too lazy to figure some of this shit out, I've tried 5 different archivers that claim to unpack .rar's but they don't. oddly it won't let me d/l winrar. stupid thing.

[+Kardboard+]

You need to get unrar and rar in Synaptic.

[MegaHurtz]

If you are just getting into it, the best way to do it IMO instead of dual booting is to use VMWare. You can just switch back and forth between Windows and your Linux distro if you need to do anything.

As far as distros go, Ubuntu seems to be one of the most popular. I've got it installed on a VM here on my laptop, and most of the Windows admins that I know who tinker with Linux use Ubuntu as well.

[underscore]

You need to get unrar and rar in Synaptic.

I've tried, it won't let me select it for download. wierd thing. eventually I just gave up, copied it to the Vista part. flipped to Vista, unpacked it, and flipped back.

If you are just getting into it, the best way to do it IMO instead of dual booting is to use VMWare. You can just switch back and forth between Windows and your Linux distro if you need to do anything.

As far as distros go, Ubuntu seems to be one of the most popular. I've got it installed on a VM here on my laptop, and most of the Windows admins that I know who tinker with Linux use Ubuntu as well.

haha too late, I considered a VM but then I figured by the time I get everything all nice and setup and want to put it on my computer, I'll have to start over again, plus I wouldn't be able to see if there's any performance benefits over Windows. I know I'll always need Windows in some form or another so I'm sticking to the partitions. Ubuntu happened to have all the drivers I needed so I went with it, I think it was Mandriva that wouldn't even boot from the Live CD and Fedora looked exactly like Ubuntu except blue not orange, and without all my drivers.

[underscore]

latest issue: mounting flash drive and my USB HDD to my g/f's laptop, it says we don't have the permissions to mount the drive. I can go into terminal, sudo su myself and enter the password, then force the drives to mount, but that's a bit of a pain when you're connecting/disconnecting daily. She's on Suse and I'm on Ubuntu, how do I change the priviledges on the user accounts to permanent sudo status?