From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-11-2007 14:49
quote: NoJive said:
one with a good movie walking you through a dual boot installation
yeah, post that one up if you would NoJive. I've done it before but I am getting ready to do a dual boot but with 2 hard drives, not 2 partitions.
Might be useful.
One of the biggest questions of course... for many people... is; what about photoshop. This gets about as close to an answer as I can find.... but it also introduces 'wine.'
I'm trying as best as possible to keep track of the software I use most and it seems it's somewhere around 6 or 7 and with the possible exception of ps there appears to be very acceptable open source alternatives.
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work? Would you not have to shutdown and change the boot sequence every time you wanted to use one or the other...or have I missed something very simple? I think it's probably something ver simple. lol
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-12-2007 02:44
quote: NoJive said:
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work?
well that I'm not sure of. I was hoping that the link you gave would give me some info. Haven't researched it yet though. I would imagine that when I install linux, I just choose to have it go to /hdb (slave drive) and then have the boot loader go to the MBR as usual. Don't know. I'm going to test it first on a different computer first. LOL
I came to the conclusion that ubuntu would be where to start about a month ago...got around to the install about a week ago. Have only used it intermittenly, but so far everything has been very smooth. Many things will take some getting used to (I have to type commands to install drivers ? ugh....) but so many convenient features built right in as well...
Smoother than I thought a first expience with linux would be. =)
It wouldn't be a very good tut, as I don't by any means know what I'm doing - the documentation in the ubuntu wiki, and the screen casts, cover it all pretty well. I had a hard time following some of the wiki instructions though - just kinda winged it with their guidance basically, and got lucky
Unfortunately I saw the screen casts after the fact - I would highly recommend watching them.
Yes yes, everyone is talking about Ubuntu, I was only trying to affirm this
I actually just tried installing Xubuntu on Sunday, and to be honest am disparaged somewhat as to how inconvenient things can be. Linux really has a few years to go before it's as straight forward as it should be, but then everyone will be able to use it.
Unfortunatly it only proved to me that Ubuntu really isn't the be all and end all of Linux Distros and lamentably one does have to try a few differenyt distros to know what they want and how easy it can be.
For example, with my fresh install of Xubuntu, I can't change my wireless settings, even with the root account and using iwconfig through terminal, any changes I make are ignored! How annoying is that!
Still if anyone is reading this and would like ot try a Linux distro, Ubuntu should be on the list, but take the opportunity to look at Vector Linux, OpenSuze and Freespire.
Oh... how would that dual hard drive start up work? Would you not have to shutdown and change the boot sequence every time you wanted to use one or the other
NoJive,
I'm not a big fan of dual boot machines, so I haven't done one in a while, but my experience has always been that when you have two different operating systems on a machine, the boot loader (that will probably be GRUB) will pause for a few seconds as the machine is booting and allow you to select the operating system you want to load. If you don't select one, it will automatically load the default OS.
The length of time the boot loader waits and the default OS are both configurable.
My experience has always been that to switch from one OS to the other, you need to re-boot the machine. Unless there have been some really dramatic changes with loading OSs in the last couple of years, you can't just switch from one OS to the other the way you would from one window to another.
The exception to this is when you are running an emulator. For example, if you run Windows programs in Wine while you're running Linux, you can switch from Linux to your windows programs without re-booting, but that is not really a dual boot system.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-13-2007 06:59
^ Thank you. A friend is burning a Live CD which I will try but from what I've been reading ... my old clunker of a system likely has inherent problems so an actual installation is probably not in the works. I'm probably going to die with this system and the way it's been sounding lately I'm thinking my days are numbered. =)
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
I recently installed Xubuntu on my old 1.3GHz PC as a dual boot, the installation went well, I can't load any web browsers though or use my wireless card yet, even though it is detected correctly, I just can't enable the damn thing.
Still I managed to get Beryl up and running and it is freakin' sick dude! OMFGHOLYBBQ with PONY's!
What I liked was that this installed so very easily and it's enhanced my user experience so much, it does take a bit of configuring though, but it's worth it.
With the ubuntu, my wireless card worked without me having to do anything. Firefox, open office, and many other things installed and ready to go.
My display drivers I am still having problems with. Documentation is not very user friendly for solving the issue either =(
But I haven't really dug into it deep yet...
Haven't run with any eye candy, but the default look and feel is very nice already.
So far I have just done the basic things - web browsing, email, office app stuff, ripped a couple CD's, play with some photos from my digital camera, etc.
All of that - the basics that a computer for the average person needs to do - work wonderfully.
I'll just throw this out there though: I hate GIMP. A lot.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-16-2007 17:44
Well piss me off! I have both Ubuntu and Mepis on CD and neither will run. I get the same error message as these folks. I really want to have a go at this but I am just not interested in this much jackin' around. Like I said back up there^ this system is old, is not going to be replaced any time soon... if ever so, it's coffee time. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=192689
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-16-2007 21:04
quote: Blaise said:
So did CPrompt ever get his dual boot going?
I got the extra hard drive. It's sitting on my desk at home. I have not had the time or energy to mess with it yet.
It kind of concerns me that my hard drives are SATA. Since there's no master/slave on the drives I am not sure how to go about setting it up. I have posted something at a local linux user group about it but haven't really gotten a reply yet. Does anyone here have a suggestion?
The new drive is twice the size of my current drive so I will be able to see the different drives best that way for sure. But I am not sure how to go about it since I have never set up linux on an SATA drive before.
I'll start googling it since things here at work seem to have calmed down for the time being.
I'll just throw this out there though: I hate GIMP. A lot.
The GIMP takes a lot of getting used to and even though I have used for almost ten years and like it, I still tend to use Photoshop for most of my image editing.
From: Underneath a mountain of blankets. Insane since: Jan 2007
posted 02-16-2007 22:47
When I went to buy my laptop, I took a live CD with me so I could grab the laptop which worked with it. Wireless worked out of the box... It took a little tweaking to get the memory card reader to work.
rukuartic@halflght:~/$ whatis life
life: nothing appropriate.
It kind of concerns me that my hard drives are SATA. Since there's no master/slave on the drives I am not sure how to go about setting it up.
SATA may not contain the concept of primary master/slave and secondary moaster/slave the way PATA does, but it does contain the concept of primary/secondary with SATA slot 0, SATA slot 1, and so on. Linux in and of itself doesn't really pay attention to the whole master/slave thing. It sees all drives in a flat row, in the order of: Primary Master -- Primary Slave -- Secondary Master -- Secondary Slave, or /dev/hda through /dev/hdd to be more precise. I believe that Linux still displays SATA drives as /dev/hda and so on, so you should just be able to install normally.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-17-2007 03:27
just spent about an hour backing up a bunch of "important" files to dvd (8 disks). Put the new drive in...plugged up the power...no data cable! LOL
I'll have to go buy a data cable for the thing tomorrow. I don't think the install should be that big of a deal though like Skaarjj said.
Right now I have my other linux box that I just updated to Edgy Eft
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-18-2007 23:22
well....I screwed it up!
Installed the new drive. Booted up Kubuntu 6.10. The installer came up and listed both drives, 80gig and 160gig. I selected the 160 gig since windows was already on the 80gig. Everything went according to plan. Booted back up and it went straight to linux.
OK...so I rebooted again and went to linux. rand fdisk -l and what was there?....the 80gig drive!!!! Unhooked the 160 drive and the same thing. Completely wiped out windows. Good thing I backed everything important up.
Oh well. I have everything on disk so I can just reinstall windows and put everything back. Just a bummer. I wonder if it would be easier just to install windows and reconfigure Grub?
Install Windows first. It's so much easier that way, since the Windows bootloader will refuse to admit that the Linux partitions exist, and so will overwrite the GrUB partof the boot sector. Put the /boot partition right at the start of the drive, and everything should be sweet.
From: there...no..there..... Insane since: May 2001
posted 02-19-2007 14:14
quote: Skaarjj said:
the Windows bootloader will refuse to admit that the Linux partitions exist
Just to get my terminology right. By "partitions" you are referring to the 2 hard drives? Because this will be on 2 different hard drives. Linux on one and Winders on another. Seems like you could just install windows on the other hard drive and edit the grub config to show that Windows is there.
Eigh...I'll just start over again LOL. I'll install winders on the 160gig drive and re-install Linux on the 80gig and see what happens.
Sorry to hijack this thread. I know it has to do with Vista
One more point to note as you're having adual boot system.
When I did this I had 4 partitions. 1 for windows (10GB NTFS) one for all programs and files (80GB FAT 32) one for linux swap (1GB ext2) and one for linux (69GB ext3). That way no matter what OS I booted in, I could always access my music and video on the FAT 32 drive with both read and write access. NTFS can bve troublesome for Linux and I believe there's no reliable way to gain write access.
posted 02-11-2007 14:49
I've done it before but I am getting ready to do a dual boot but with 2 hard drives, not 2 partitions.
? ugh....) but so many convenient features built right in as well...
I have not had the time or energy to mess with it yet. 
