Ethical computing

[Muddypause]

I'm pretty sure the HDD is OK - it's less than 9 months old, and I reckon all my problems are basically down to my own ineptitude and ignorance.

But there are things about installing Linux that seem determined to trip me up, and information doesn't seem very forthcoming about some situations - f'rinstance, on an old-ish machine, the boot partition(s) has to lie within the first 1023 cylinders of the disc (I've no idea what the specifics of that translate to on my HDD, but in general terms it means 'quite near the start'). This seems to have been the cause of Ubuntu not dual booting with Windows.

I've had to do some tricky shuffling around of partitions, so that I have both boot partitions near the start of the drive. I've been doing a bit of experimenting, but this has enabled me to dual boot OK in a 'practice' run. But when I came to do a final re-partition for a 'real' install the partitioning tool crashed (after nine hours of processing). This seems to have corrupted all the partition information on the disk. I could still boot Windows OK with the aid of a little utility called Super Grub Disk, and I also managed to transfer the whole operating system to another disk (which I'm currently working from). But I now have to do some serious reformatting of the main disk, and then transfer everything back again. And then try to install Ubuntu for a final time.

This may all take some time, and I may just decide to throw the 'puter out of the window before I'm done.

[catalyst]

often the problem is that winduhs is a jealous god!!!

you have to install winduhs first, then install linux. if you do it the other way winduhs will delete linux!
obviously i don't know whether you are doing it this way already, if so, its something else!

[revdode]

But there are things about installing Linux that seem determined to trip me up, and information doesn't seem very forthcoming about some situations - f'rinstance, on an old-ish machine, the boot partition(s) has to lie within the first 1023 cylinders of the disc (I've no idea what the specifics of that translate to on my HDD, but in general terms it means 'quite near the start'). This seems to have been the cause of Ubuntu not dual booting with Windows.

I know the feeling. When I first moved to XP as a dual boot (3D CAD is my bacon) I tried to keep the XP install pristine and use it to manage teh dual boot as I had previously with NT/Win2K. This was dumb and resulted in the use of the restore disk supplied with the laptop. Second time around I just let Ubuntu take over the boot sector using grub as the boot loader. This was the default behavior for the Install CD anyway. It worked I can boot into XP when I need to from the grub boot menu (it just hands over to XP) or let it boot into Kubuntu (7.04 Feisty Fawn) for everything else. My PC is noticeably faster, more stable, prettier and geekier running Linux, my wife appreciates three out of those four.

[catalyst]

the sense of acheivement when you finally get a troublesome linux install sorted... wow, fantastic, i did it, and i understand so much more about how computers work!

:)

[Muddypause]

Don't hold yer breath y'all, but I'm posting this from Ubuntu, installed and working on my machine alongside Windows.

the sense of acheivement when you finally get a troublesome linux install sorted... wow, fantastic, i did it,

Yes indeed - but I think it's a bit like banging your head against the wall - when you stop it's such a relief to know that you don't have to keep doing it. Till next time.

and i understand so much more about how computers work!

In my case, I just seem to find out how little I know.

[catalyst]

but you've started down that long road, before you know it you'll be writing perl code and designing your own software :)

personally, though, once i'd got our machines running linux i've kinda stopped learning. for instance i know that using the console i can tell my puter to resize a quantity of photos to the 640 x 480 web size with just a few instructions, but i still do it one by one using gimp. if i spent a little time learning some new tricks i'd save myself a lot of time in future, but i am lazy and often prefer software where i can just point and click... duh!

[wulf]

mogrify -resize 640 picturename.jpg

... assuming you have ImageMagick installed. That will proportionately resize the picture so the horizontal length is 640px. Be careful though - it overwrites the original image, so you want to make sure you are working on a copy (or use "convert" instead of "mogrify").

The real win comes when you want to deal with a batch of pictures:

for i in mypictures.*.jpg; do mogrify -resize 640 $i; done

That is much easier than doing them one by one through a graphical user interface.

Wulf

[catalyst]

cheers wulf, as i said, i knew it was damned easy. and this is just the tip of a vast iceberg of stuff that is easy to do in a batch via linux consoles.

i used to always use a package manager to install software, but now find it easier to use the console to download, install and setup for me...

[catalyst]

thought i'd share a site that i just found:
http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk/

these look fantastic, silent (i crashed ubuntu yesterday trying to make my computer quieter!), low energy and so small.

[mrsflibble]

windows vista WILL tell micro$oft EVERYTHING - if you try to play a CD that is not record company original (ie, a mix-cd/copy of a cd) then it will not play it and will 'inform' micro$oft of your intentions.
If you go to any p0rn sites, it will tell micro$oft to 'validate your adult status'.

So, i'd avoid vista if possible!

can one still get xp from computer shops?! not that i have anything dodgy or anything.... *ahem* **looks over shoulder**

[Welsh Girls Allotment]

dell are still offering it - I have had my earlier thingymas present and is has Vista installed and I am uncomfortable with it so I am looking at getting an XP one instead

[Annpan]

If you already own a copy of XP with the disks and the 936 digit code (it may be a little shorter than that) Then you can upload that onto your new machine.

Legally you only have the right to use it on 1 computer, ie, if you are on the internet microsoft might find you out.

I've heard other stuff about vista, basically, just being a bit crap.

[Des]

Anyone heard of these gadgets? Strikes me as a potentially useful idea, although I'm not sure how easily or efficiently one can generate the necessary 120W, 12V input.

Rolling your own low-power PC. *sigh* Yet another project to add to the queue...

Edited to Add: ...Although to be honest I'm more likely to be recycling "junk" computers from work (which are still probably more up-to-date that our home PC...) than build my own from scratch for the foreseeable... Just another reason to love Linux; there's nothing like it for making three-year-old hardware run like a brand-new Windows box... ;)