Ubuntu/OS Installation questions

[Olympic Gamer]

Hey there

 

Im currently using a 32 bit Vista home premium laptop, and as you probably had guessed, I dont like Vista.

 

I had been looking around at all the usual OS on offer, and I like the look of an OS known as Ubuntu. Looks pretty slick, should hopefully speed things up a little as Vista is quite resource heavy compared to most.

 

Problem is, I'm not sure what I'm expecting to adjust to. Now this wouldnt be a problem if it was just a standard program installation, but its a ful fledge change of OS. If i dont like it, how do I revert etc? This laptop was preloaded with Vista, and all I got with it was a 'Upgrade your Windows Vista Experience' disc.

 

So the big question is should I bother? I've never installed an OS before, so I have no clue what to expect. If I dislike Ubuntu, is there any way I can possibly revert?

 

Also, what files am I expecting to vanish if I rid myself of Vista? Are all the preset folders such as those folders that follow my sign in name (You know, documents, pictures, music files) going to vanish and I'm going to need to back them up somehow?

 

If I'm missing please tell me as I'm really looking to change OS, but if its too complicated it'l be better if I skipped the idea.

[Sanchez]

To install a new OS the first thing you want to do is make a new partition. What this is is basically splitting your hard drive into two, so it looks like you have two physical hard drives. You can use a program called "Partition Magic" to do this, I think Ubuntu's installer can do this too. You want to give it about 10GB to play around with.

 

Then you install ubuntu, just put in the disc and choose the partition you want to use when you get to it in the installer. It will start installing. When you boot up you get to choose between vista and ubuntu.

 

Ubuntu will require:

To learn a whole new interface (about a week to get used too, a month to master) although many things are in similar places, easy to find.

You will need to learn how to use a command line, at least basically to do simple tasks.

You will need to find new programs to replace the ones you use now. Firefox is on linux but winamp, foobar and such aren't. Amarok is the name of a good linux media player. GAIM is a decent multi playform IM client (MSN messenger won't work). If you use torrents someone else will need to guide you to the best client.

You will probably have an issue with a driver or two at the start, particularly the video driver, googling the answer should yeild results.

[Shino]

Hey there

 

Im currently using a 32 bit Vista home premium laptop, and as you probably had guessed, I dont like Vista.

 

Why would we guess that?

 

About the instalation, Sanchez said it al. Just to add that Ubuntu's installation does allow you to do a partition and as for torrents, it comes with the Transmission client.

[triforcemario]

If I may point out, the latest version of Ubuntu Linux (8.04) comes with Wubi, which allows you to install Ubuntu to a Windows directory (instead of a partition), and will function in exactly the same way as Ubuntu would with a traditional instalation.

[Olympic Gamer]

Ah this is sounding rather good, I will be trying the partition method you suggested within the week. Thanks very much!

 

One final question though, say I am very happy with Ubuntu, will I then be able to delete all the windows vista data and keep the files I need and then merge the two portions of the hard drive back into one piece?

[Sanchez]

Yes, you will be able to access the windows partition from inside ubuntu and transfer the files over to the ubuntu partition. After that you can undo it and merge without problems.

[Mr_Odwin]

Using wubi to install from Windows makes it easy peasy to try Ubuntu. If you decide to go with it fulltime you should reinstall as the wubi install takes a very slight performance hit because of the way it stores files on your hard drive.

 

I tried ubuntu 8.04 with my new laptop and in the end have gone back to vista because of a few things.

 

1) No Shockwave player (can install in a wine version of firefox, but that's a bit round the houses)

2) Full screen flash performance is poor - affects iplayer/youtube/etc

3) No FAVC/decent dvd creation utilities (DeVeDe is okay)

4) Unable to play DVDs with recent copy-protection (pretty much anything with higher than CSS = pretty much all recent dvds)

5) No EAC equivalent (works through wine though - but that kinda defeats the point.)

6) Nothing comes close to foobar2000

 

If I were a less picky user, Ubuntu would have suited me fine.

Apt-get, synaptic package manager and gnome-do are amazing.

[Shino]

How does this Wubi works? Is it like a virtual machine, or can you choose it at start up as a normal installation?

[triforcemario]

Wubi does not work like a virtual machine. It still works like a traditional Ubuntu installation, except it runs a little slower due to how the files are installed (instead of installing them on a seperate partition, it installs it within a directory in Windows).

[McPhee]

BACK UP VISTA BEFORE YOU INSTALL

 

Thats the most important tip anyone can give you, unless you've got deep pockets and a love for giving Microsoft money?

 

Also, if you are using an ATi graphics card then you might not be able to do any 3D work in linux because there are very few 3D ATi drivers for Linux. This includes 3D desktops like Beryl.

 

And yeah, use Wubi, saves a lot of bother

[Sanchez]

I imagine the technical reason is that Wubi needs to convert the EXT3 filesystem commands to NTFS on the fly, and that takes a bit of time and CPU power.

[DCK]

Installing Ubuntu seperately is pretty straightforward. It's the most out-of-the-box Linux I've ever seen, and I use it regularly. There's some warnings though. I've installed Hardy Heron myself, and these are some of the issues that are stopping me from making it my main OS (aside from that I do quite love Vista):

 

- the nVidia driver has a bug that prevents it from recognizing Geforce 8 (and equivalent Quadros), so you'll need to manually configure a somewhat buggy beta nVidia driver. Should be resolved in a few weeks hopefully. If have an Intel, and probably ATI too, you should be fine.

- there's a big chance your Wi-Fi won't work if you don't have an Intel chip. I do have an Intel chip, but because it's relatively new (< 1 year), it can't access my university network. Ordinary Wi-Fi works fine.

- the Linux fonts and font-rendering engine suck ass compared to Vista's and especially Mac OS X's systems. Hint - run sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts immediately after you have network.

 

Other than that, Ubuntu is superior in responsiveness, window looks and snazzyness, power management, and ease/speef-of-use most of the time. It just has some flaws that come with Linux, which is fundamentally flawed in some areas.

[Jackster]

Congrats on your decision to move to the dark side

 

It might be worth seeing if you can make some sort of image of your Vista partition, like Carbon Copy Cloner does on OSX, incase something goes wrong and you want to get rid of Ubuntu and just put Vista back on, (although it's unlikely anything will go wrong).

 

As for having to learn the new UI etc, it's all fairly straightforward and I imagine you should be able to pick it up fairly quickly. Installing drivers is usually straightforward, but can ocassionaly require you to do a bit of messing about.

 

If you need any help it might be worth searching through http://www.ubuntuforums.org , just about every Ubuntu problem has been covered there :-)

 

Good luck,

Jack

[triforcemario]

I thought I'd tell you guys (the ones interested in running Ubuntu) that I'm currently typing this on Ubuntu installed via Wubi, and tbh, it's fantastic. The installer couldn't have been any easier to use, I've yet to see slow-down, and I haven't lost all my windows files.

 

So, on the whole, I highly recommend the Wubi installer.