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Kulith
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:34 pm

Hey linux techies,

First of all, I know NADA about linux. Ive only used Splax once on a bootcd to install linux on my ipod. But i sometimes boot up in Splax just because its pretty fun to play with, and id like to have a linux boot-up option under VBP. Its a pretty cool OS from my little experience.

I currently have 32bit XP Home on a 50gb partition, and Vista Ultimate x64 on a 230 gb partition, and I have a 20 gb partition unformated chunk I was saving for eventually putting linux on it.

Im using Vista Boot Pro in Vista to choose between XP or Vista during bootup. So I would prefer to use this than the grub utility I think linux installs when dual-booting.

I already have ubuntu 7.1 downloaded and burned onto a cd, but seeing as I know nothing of linux feel free to recommend me a different distro cause I have no idea what I want. Im not going to use it to play games, just to look cool.

Im posting cause I dont want to install linux and find out I screwed up everything and I cant boot into Vista anymore so Im double checking. From what ive gathered, heres how I need to do it:

1. Burn iso, boot off cd, and install linux on partition.
2. Whenever given the option "install grub" I have to disable it.
3. Finish installing and boot into linux.
4. Play around with my new OS for a while.
5. Restart, see if the bootloader loads, with or without linux. If VBP loads with the regular XP/ Vista options then I can boot into vista and run VBP and add linux as the new OS on the new partition. If VBP doesn't load and it automatically boots into linux im guessing I need to insert Vista's boot cd, and repair Vista's boot loader, then boot into Vista and run VBP and install VBP again but with 3 OS's.
- Is this right? Can someone tell me whats going to happen to VBP when I install linux

- Will I have to manually install drivers for all my hardware? Do I have to specifically select "linux" under nvidia/etc downloads? And if its not available?

- Also I probably need to format the 20gb partition in windows? Just wondering if linux detects it as a non-formated and will format it for me or not.

If anybody can help me out that would be great, thanks in advance. As one guy on the linuxforum put it:
"I've gotten curious about Ubuntu and I'm itching to install it as a third operating system - to satisfy a human nature of getting oneself into deep deep trouble"

EDIT: Ive reviewed a few vague guides but feel free to point me in the right direction if this is in a sticky somewhere or give me a link or something.
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notfred
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:52 pm

Go with the Ubuntu 7.10 CD that you've got, it's probably the best thing out there for autodetecting all your hardware. It will find all your partitions and offer to format blank space to install on.

One thing to be aware of is Linux tends to like to use Linux file systems (ext3,reiserfs,XFS) as opposed to Windows filesystems (FAT,NTFS) although it can read and write FAT and read (and maybe write...) NTFS it is best not to run it from those. This means that Windows typically will not be able to see the Linux files, but Linux will be able to see everything. If you have a chunk of space as FAT then you can put any files you want to share there.

What you are suggesting sounds about right, although I have no idea if the Windows boot managers will understand Linux - a quick Google suggests it is possible:
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/ ... pport.aspx

Once you have Ubuntu up and running it will pop up a Restricted Drivers notification suggesting nVidia drivers and any other third party drivers that may improve performance and functionality, just click those and reboot and you will be good to go.
 
Kulith
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:04 pm

Sweet thanks alot.

But that doesn't make sense, aren't I installing linux on a ntfs partition of my hard drive? Or can linux format my hard drive itself?
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liquidsquid
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:16 pm

hmm, about to try something similar. I have two hard disks, and I was going to give Unbuntu a spin on drive #2 which is currently formatted NTFS. What I wonder is if the Unbuntu install will allow resizing of the second disk's partitions for its own use, or if it is something I have to do myself?

As a side-note: Unbuntu saved may rear since it could read from my hard disk Windows install with a corrupted nVidia storage driver. Windows would not let me see C:, but Unbuntu would! Keeping a boot CD of Unbutu in my list of must-have recovery tools.

-LS
 
bthylafh
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:32 pm

Ubuntu can read and write NTFS just fine these days. No need for a FAT partition for sharing back and forth. You need to install the ntfs-3g package for full support.

edit: My setup is a bit over half the drive is NTFS & marked as bootable, with Windows XP installed. Then I have a swap partition (type 82) of about 1.5x my total amount of RAM, and lastly a Linux partition formatted as ext3 with Ubuntu installed. I'm pretty sure Ubuntu's installer can take care of shrinking an existing NTFS partition.
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Kulith
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Fri Jan 04, 2008 10:57 pm

bthylafh wrote:
Then I have a swap partition (type 82) of about 1.5x my total amount of RAM,


what does that mean?

Edit: OK My first problem, more importantly what does this mean: http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5563 ... enszp0.png

It seems linux just wont install on a pre-formatted partition. It HAS to "edit" or create the partition itself. The other options are to install it on the WHOLE 320gb drive OR to partition my main hd partition (230gb) and use the partitioned option (the lowest option for the new partition is 85% [of my 250] which is WAY more space than I want to give to linux). Another option is to "install on the largest chunk of free space" which I dunno what that means, and I tried it and it didn't work.

And the last option is manual, and I selec the partition I want to install it on and I get that error in the picture.
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titan
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 11:18 am

Part of the problem I see here is that Linux needs three partitions for itself: boot, swap and root. At least, that's the way I've always been instructed to do my Linux installs.

The boot partition doesn't need to be very large. Sometimes only 32MB will do the trick. The swap partition is generally recommended to be between 1.5-2.0x the amount of system RAM -- if you have 1GB of RAM then you should have your swap be 1.5GB-2.0GB -- and it behaves just like the page file in Windows/Vista. The root partition is where all the action takes place. It's the Linux equivalent of Windows'/Vista's C:.

You want to manually edit your hard drive setup in your case. You should make sure you know which partition is which before you do anything. Otherwise, you'll botch your Windows/Vista installs. Nothing to really worry about since you have your data backed up...right? I can't find the rest of the partition install screens, so I'm flying blind. The error makes me think that you haven't selected which partition you want to be root.

I've looked at the image you've linked, and I need a little clarity. From what I see, you should have six partitions in that list, but there's only three. What happened to the other three? At any rate, sda1 is partition 1 of the first hard drive -- SATA/SCSI disk a. Then there is sda5 and sda6 which should be partition five and six of SATA/SCSI disk a, but it looks like it's actually partitions two and three, respectively. Because all of them are NTFS, which ones have your Windows/Vista install and which one is it that you want to install Linux on?

One of the nifty things about Linux is that you can mount hard drives, or even individual directories from various hard drives, and it will look just like one hard drive as you navigate the file system. So, if Ubuntu really wants to make the partition that it'll reside on a Linux file system instead of NTFS, you can just move your /home directory to a Windows partition and have Ubuntu mount it from there.
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bitvector
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 1:17 pm

Kulith wrote:
It seems linux just wont install on a pre-formatted partition. It HAS to "edit" or create the partition itself.

Looking at your screenshot, you have all NTFS filesystems. It's not the Linux has to create the partition, but as notfred and titan said, it needs one with a Linux filesystem like ext3, XFS, JFS, etc. So you can create the partition(s) however you want, but don't format it with a Windows filesystem (or delete the Windows FS from the partition(s) you intend to use).

titan wrote:
I've looked at the image you've linked, and I need a little clarity. From what I see, you should have six partitions in that list, but there's only three. What happened to the other three?

In Linux, logical partitions start numbered at 5, even if there aren't 4 primary partitions. So he's got one primary partition (/dev/sda1) and two logical partitions (/dev/sda5 and 6).

titan wrote:
The boot partition doesn't need to be very large. Sometimes only 32MB will do the trick.

I would recommend larger than that these days (probably no less than 100MB). Each kernel image and related files (like the initrd) in something like Ubuntu would take approximately 9M a piece. Someone who came to our last LUG installfest had to resize his /boot partition to be able to upgrade from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 (and that's after purging all old kernels but the running one). It doesn't make sense these days to be stingy over a few megabytes.
 
Kulith
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 4:45 pm

Part of the problem I see here is that Linux needs three partitions for itself: boot, swap and root. At least, that's the way I've always been instructed to do my Linux installs.

The boot partition doesn't need to be very large. Sometimes only 32MB will do the trick. The swap partition is generally recommended to be between 1.5-2.0x the amount of system RAM -- if you have 1GB of RAM then you should have your swap be 1.5GB-2.0GB -- and it behaves just like the page file in Windows/Vista. The root partition is where all the action takes place. It's the Linux equivalent of Windows'/Vista's C:.


wait a minute. So do I need to manually partition my 20gb partition into 3 chunks? I have 4gb ram. So I need a Boot Partition of 100mb - a swap partition of 6-8 gb (it says 256 mb in the picture) - and the rest 14gb as my root partition?

And then, for the first step as shown in the picture I need to select the root 14gb partition? Are the next steps selecting the boot and swap partitions?

You want to manually edit your hard drive setup in your case. You should make sure you know which partition is which before you do anything. Otherwise, you'll botch your Windows/Vista installs. Nothing to really worry about since you have your data backed up...right? I can't find the rest of the partition install screens, so I'm flying blind. The error makes me think that you haven't selected which partition you want to be root.

Because all of them are NTFS, which ones have your Windows/Vista install and which one is it that you want to install Linux on?


The 50 gb partition (sda1) is my XP partition. The 246 gb partition (sda6) is Vista, and the 20gb partition I have selected is the empty one I want to install linux on.

But I HAVE selected which partition I want to be the root haven't I? The 20gb partition is highlighted in the picture.

And uh no I don't have a byte backed up. I have an external hard drive arriving on tuesday though.

Looking at your screenshot, you have all NTFS filesystems. It's not the Linux has to create the partition, but as notfred and titan said, it needs one with a Linux filesystem like ext3, XFS, JFS, etc. So you can create the partition(s) however you want, but don't format it with a Windows filesystem (or delete the Windows FS from the partition(s) you intend to use).


Ok. I think linux had the option to format it under "edit partition" Any filsystem in particular I should use of those? After I format it as a Linux filesystem, do I still need to manually split the 20gb up into 3 partitions (boot/swap/root) or does Linux do this itself?
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bitvector
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 6:53 pm

Kulith wrote:
Ok. I think linux had the option to format it under "edit partition" Any filsystem in particular I should use of those? After I format it as a Linux filesystem, do I still need to manually split the 20gb up into 3 partitions (boot/swap/root) or does Linux do this itself?

Generally what you do is make room for Linux partitions by leaving free, unpartitioned space. Then the installer will automatically make several partitions in that free space by default if you don't have any specific ideas about how you want your layout. Sometimes you have to be careful how and where you leave the unpartitioned space, however, because the old DOS partition table has limits that can make certain free space unusable (for instance, if you have 4 primary partitions, there is no way to use any free space after that).

And since you're only giving 20GB total, as far as swap space goes, I would disregard the 1.5-2x times physical memory recommendation since you have 4GB of RAM. 3-4GB would already be more than enough and 6-8GB would be fairly wasteful.
 
notfred
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:50 pm

You can forget the boot partition under Ubuntu with a modern motherboard, it will run happily in the main partition. So all you need is to point the Ubuntu installer at the empty space on your disk and it will split it in to a main partition that it will format with ext3 by default and then a swap partition as well that it will also initialise.
 
liquidsquid
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:51 pm

Well, I bit the bullet and installed Unbuntu. It went sooo well!!! I love it. Talk about slick, I will probably make it the default for my wife, I always worry about her getting spyware/viruses since she isn't the most savvy of web users. She figured out how to use it well enough.

The problem is I have a nVidia 6600 which the 3D has died on. I updated to the latest nVidia drivers, and no more Unbuntu. 3D mode (accelerated mostly) is so corrupt it is not funny, and apparently Unbuntu uses 3D on its interface. Poop!

Now I have to wait a few months to save pennies to buy a video card.

-LS
 
notfred
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 9:14 pm

If you can get it to go at all then do System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects and set it to None. That should stop it using any of the 3d stuff for the window manager.

If it is completely hosed, you can always recover by pressing escape when it prompts during boot, selecting recovery mode and then it will come up in a basic text mode. At that point you could edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (although you will probably have to use vi and you will need to read up on the commands first before you fire it up, it's not so much a WYSIWYG editor as a "you get what you asked for, regardless of whether you meant it or not" editor and brutal on people who haven't used it before), look for the line that says Driver "nvidia" and change it to Driver "nv" to switch it back to the original installed graphics, then just reboot and this time don't enable the nvidia option in the Restricted Drivers Manager.
 
Kulith
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:08 pm

k in a sec im going to retry install. But first, what does this mean:

if you have RAM around 1GB.. then you wont need swap.. all distros works fine with this much RAM... i have 512 MB of RAM.... untill now, FC5 never used swap...


Someguy on the linux forums said this. And another guy said he has 3gb RAM so he didn't need swap. I know they where talking about FC5 but this guy says "all distros work fine with this much ram".

So I dont need a boot partition (I have an Abit IP35PRO -pretty modern I think) and according to this I dont need a swap partition either?
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notfred
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Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:34 pm

With that much RAM, you pretty much don't need a swap partition, but you might as well let Ubuntu create one rather than trying to force it not to.
 
titan
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:59 am

Kulith wrote:
k in a sec im going to retry install. But first, what does this mean:

if you have RAM around 1GB.. then you wont need swap.. all distros works fine with this much RAM... i have 512 MB of RAM.... untill now, FC5 never used swap...


Someguy on the linux forums said this. And another guy said he has 3gb RAM so he didn't need swap. I know they where talking about FC5 but this guy says "all distros work fine with this much ram".

So I dont need a boot partition (I have an Abit IP35PRO -pretty modern I think) and according to this I dont need a swap partition either?


I'm not so sure about that either. You probably don't need to have an 8GB swap, but maybe something smaller just in case. I know that with Windows/Vista there are programs that need the page file, but I don't know if there are programs for Linux that need the swap.
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notfred
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 11:11 am

No, under Linux the applications don't need swap unless the kernel runs out of memory. Note that the Linux kernel is actually very good at sorting out what should be in memory and what should be in swap - it will even swap out programs that are not doing anything at all to free up memory to allow it to cache more disk accesses.
 
liquidsquid
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:08 pm

notfred wrote:
If you can get it to go at all then do System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects and set it to None. That should stop it using any of the 3d stuff for the window manager.

If it is completely hosed, you can always recover by pressing escape when it prompts during boot, selecting recovery mode and then it will come up in a basic text mode. At that point you could edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (although you will probably have to use vi and you will need to read up on the commands first before you fire it up, it's not so much a WYSIWYG editor as a "you get what you asked for, regardless of whether you meant it or not" editor and brutal on people who haven't used it before), look for the line that says Driver "nvidia" and change it to Driver "nv" to switch it back to the original installed graphics, then just reboot and this time don't enable the nvidia option in the Restricted Drivers Manager.


Wow, thanks for the help. VI is definitely NOT intuitive. I am clearly very new at this. VI is one of the many reasons why I understand the Linux is a tough sell for casual users. Any moron can fire up the old DOS EDIT editor in Windows and use it intuitively, but not in Unix or derivatives! You need another machine to read the help file since it is not installed by default. Frustration abounds in the learning process of Unix.

Quick question: If I type HELP to get a list of available commands at the prompt, how do I get it to go page by page, or go back and look at items off the top of the screen?

Thanks!
 
bitvector
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:39 pm

liquidsquid wrote:
Wow, thanks for the help. VI is definitely NOT intuitive. I am clearly very new at this. VI is one of the many reasons why I understand the Linux is a tough sell for casual users. Any moron can fire up the old DOS EDIT editor in Windows and use it intuitively, but not in Unix or derivatives!

Well a lot of distros come with nano installed normally (Ubuntu and Debian, for example) so just use that if you don't like vi. Fedora also has it installed by default now, IIRC.
 
liquidsquid
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:43 pm

bitvector wrote:
liquidsquid wrote:
Wow, thanks for the help. VI is definitely NOT intuitive. I am clearly very new at this. VI is one of the many reasons why I understand the Linux is a tough sell for casual users. Any moron can fire up the old DOS EDIT editor in Windows and use it intuitively, but not in Unix or derivatives!

Well a lot of distros come with nano installed normally (Ubuntu and Debian, for example) so just use that if you don't like vi. Fedora also has it installed by default now, IIRC.


Yup, found that, thanks. Now I just need to know how to change the atribute of the file from Read Only to writable. The help gives no examples, and I don't seem to be getting the syntax correct.
 
notfred
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Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:48 pm

You need to be the root user to edit some files. This you can do by prefixing the command with "sudo" which stands for "Super User DO", so "sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf"
 
titan
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Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:59 am

liquidsquid wrote:
Quick question: If I type HELP to get a list of available commands at the prompt, how do I get it to go page by page, or go back and look at items off the top of the screen?


Shift+Page Up/Down will scroll the screen for you, but if you're in the GUI environment using a terminal like Xterm -- think of it as the command prompt window in Windows -- you should have a scroll bar to use.
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bitvector
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Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:25 am

titan wrote:
liquidsquid wrote:
Quick question: If I type HELP to get a list of available commands at the prompt, how do I get it to go page by page, or go back and look at items off the top of the screen?

Shift+Page Up/Down will scroll the screen for you, but if you're in the GUI environment using a terminal like Xterm -- think of it as the command prompt window in Windows -- you should have a scroll bar to use.

He can also try piping it to less and then scroll at his leisure. For example:
help | less
 
liquidsquid
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Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:35 pm

Thanks guys, I figured out the piping thing, same as old DOS days of | MORE The Sudo command worked just fine, and then I tinkered for a while with the NV driver to get both monitors to work with no progress. Oh well. Now I have to wait roughly 3 months until I have enough money to replace my video card. Get a kid, and you can no longer have a bleeding-edge computer. Diapers are a major priority.

All of the E-Bay video cards seem to not have Dual-DVI. What's up with that? Not to mention Christmas seems to have drained all of the stock of reasonably-priced higher-end cards.

-LS

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