So here's what happened. I tried installing Ubuntu, but ran into trouble with the built-in partitioning tool. I couldn't get my ntfs partition shrunk to free up some space for the Linux partitions. After a little Googling, I even tried using an alternate partitioning tool - qtparted, which I had on my Knoppix Live CD (live CDs are good for more than just demos). Qtparted couldn't do it either. A little more Googling uncovered a possible solution by running the Windows command chkdsk /f, which checks the ntfs partition for problems and tries to fix them (on the next boot). It worked. I could now use Qtparted to resize the partition. But then I ran into a new issue. Stupid Windows would not let go of a section of hard drive space in an area about 15 GB away from the end of the drive. I tried everything, 10+ defrags, alternate defrag programs, killing the swap file - nuthin' doin'. In the end I said screw it and took the measly 15GB I could get for Ubuntu and sacrificed my plan for a shared Fat32 partition (for swapping files between XP and Ubuntu).
The rest of the install was painless. I started with a wired network connection just to get things rolling and it went fine, once I configured the connection properly. Then I gave my wireless PCCard network card a try. Again, with the configuration. I had to choose hex WEP key, it was ASCII by default. But it worked! Impressive. Spent the rest of the morning trying out different screen resolutions, disabling the screensaver, tweaking the look of Firefox and trying out GAIM (to access MSN Messenger buddies).
Bottom line - installing Ubuntu (to dual boot with Windows) is not something I would recommend anyone but a seasoned user try on their own. Get or arrange for some help from someone familiar, it will go much smoother. Tutorial on dual-boot with ntfs.
5 comments:
You so lost me. I hope it all worked out.
Hey............... Jon started it.....
Norm said;
Thanks for the post Karl.Breezy should mount your NTFS automatically in read only mode. So you can still listen to the mp3 (that you downloaded legally) in your Windows partition. As for .doc files, you can always open them in OpenOffice. I know that you end up with a duplicate, but it is a work around until we can write safely to NTFS.
Been using Ubuntu almost exclusively for over a year now. I use windows at work to edit MS Word documents, but otherwise Ubuntu serves me rather well. Welcome, and enjoy your new found freedom.
(Psst.. you know what you really want to do... ditch windows!!!)
:)
Honestly, I would gladly ditch Windows, but I support a lot of people who use it, so that's not viable. In reality, I'm trying Linux to see for myself just how viable it is for the average user as a replacement for Windows.
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