----- Original Message ----
From: kazman1914 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2008 10:16:13 AM
Subject: [LINUX_Newbies] The fun continues....
Hi folks,
Well, I finally had time to reformat my desktop and reinstall Windows
and Linux. I decided to use the Windows disk to create two partitions
of approximately equal size (=2 x 95 gig). I then installed Windows
on the first partition, and had quite a time getting things to work.
For some reason the sound card would not work, even after installing
the drivers from HP's site. Then I added Real Player, rebooted, and
the sound card worked.
Your mistake was to use Windows to create the partitions. Gparted comes with
Ubuntu and all distros come with a variant of this which is much more flexible
and robust that the Windows partition tools.
Using Gparted you can resize your partitions and create new drives in the freed
space. The Windows drive should be the first one on the partition. The Linux
drives can be made after this. It is advisable to have separate root and home
drives. The Linux file structure uses the / slash instead of the \ slash. The
root mount point is: /. The home mount point is: /home. You can also create a
small swap drive. The swap drive should not exceed the amount of RAM on your
system. Making it larger does not improve performance. The swap drive has its
own format. The home and root partition should be formatted with ext3 which is
the most common format type. You can use others, but it is best to use standard
ones to minimize potential problems.
Next I tried installing PCLinuxOS, but it wouldn't work. I'd get to
the point where I was installing files, and every time I reached the
point where about 25% of the fies were copied, the system would
freeze, and nothing would prod it to move. Fine. I downloaded the 32
bit version of Ubuntu per the advice I got here, and I was able to
install. Things went much better this time. I was able to manually
install, which I couldn't do previously. I took the non-Windows drive
of about 95 gig and made two drives, one with about 85 gig and one
with about 10; I chose the / symbol for the larger drive and "swap"
for the other, and proceeded without trouble. (No, I didn't mean to
create such a large swap drive, but I didn't select the number of
megabytes correctly. Anyway, I have 85 gig to devote to Linux on this
PC, and I think that will suffice for a long time.)
85 GB is loads of space for Linux. I would make a small swap drive of 512 MB
and a root drive of 20 GB and the rest used for the home drive. It does not
matter what order you put them in. You can adjust any of these later on. You
can even resize the home drive and make another root drive later on to run more
than one distro! You can reuse the same home drive over and over. Just change
the user name and two distros can share the same home drive.
Finding the right distro is a matter of trial and error. Use Live disks. If the
Live one won't boot then there is no need to install it. It saves a lot of
headaches. You can tweak most distros from grub (the menu that loads before
booting the distro) to improve your chances.
Laptops are notoriously hard to load Linux on. This is because they use more
proprietary equipment and the manufacturers are reluctant to release
information the the open source community. This isn't because Linux does not
work. Open source developers must work backwards to create drivers.
Once again I've set up email, installed drivers that allow me to play
music CD's, and downloaded software allowing me to watch videos on
YouTube. I haven't figured out what to do so that I can listen to the
partial songs that you can preview on some CDs on Amazon's site. I
tried to install Real Player, but after I downloaded the Linux version
of the program I couldn't do anything with it. I double clicked and
got an error message.
Ubuntu and several distros do not use proprietary software such as Real Player
by default. They must be installed afterwards. Another example of this is
Flash. Some distros such as PCLOS, openSuse and SimplyMepis are not so picky.
One way isn't better than another. It is just a question of different
philosophies. It makes it confusing for newbies since you do not necessarily
understand the differences in the various approaches of the Linux developers.
Open source is all about choice and doing things differently. In comparison
Windows is the product of one company and Microsoft dictates terms to OEMs.
I can't get a DVD to play, but from what I'm reading online I'm not
alone. I'm thinking about trying either Freespire or the pay version
known as Linspire. The latter is about $50.00, which will defeat my
dream of totally-free software, but what good is totally-free software
that I can't use fully? I'll start with Freespire, though, and hope
for the best. Hopefully I won't run into any problems installing it
on my laptop.
Try VLC to play DVDs. Also load the Win32 codecs from the repositories.
Freespire costs nothing. It is the same as Linspire.
I went into the Synaptic Package Manager and, without a clue what I
was doing, managed to find and supposedly install Wine, but I can't
figure out how to make it work, or to get it to download any windows
programs. Is there a "Wine for Dummies" or some other book that tells
you what to do step by step in such a way that those new to Linux can
follow it? The program is not at all intuitive, at least not as far
as I'm concerned.
Wine does not include all of the libraries needed to make a fully functioning
Windows version. Some are available for download, some are not. To get maximum
compatitbility with Wine you can either buy a copy of Codeweaver's Crossover
Office or use free programs such as Wine-Doors which give you a list of things
to install. Once Wine is set up properly, it creases a dummy c drive in a file
called .wine in your home directory. Files that start with a dot are hidden
files. Hidden files may not be displayed by default. You can change the options
in the file manager to display them. You don't have to mess with the .wine
directory. when you click on a Windows executable file it will run in wine. You
will see the installer open up shortly. Msi files will not open unless you
first install this installer using Wine-Doors or similar program.
Well, that's it for now. It looks like Freespire is about done
downloading, so it's time to create another disk.
~Sean
Another approach is to install Innotek's VirtualBox from the repositories. You
will need help to do this successfully since certain development tools and the
kernel headers need to be installed. also you will have to add yourself as a
user to the vbox user group. This isn't too hard and is really rewarding once
it is set up. However you will need a copy of Windows to install it in
VirtualBox or VMWare. Wine does not require a copy of Windows.
Good luck!
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