Installing Ubuntu Linux

[Adamman715]

Hello all,

I wanted to install Ubuntu on my Dell Latitude D600. I recently partitioned my hard drive, and I was wondering, if I boot from the live cd I burned, and select Install Ubuntu, will it give me the option to install on my second partition? It appears as its own drive, drive E: but that doesn't matter to Linux....I think.....

Also, I have about 9 gigs of free space left on said partition. Is this enough for the full installation?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Adam

 

[kmote]

It will give you the option of where to install it during the installation, just make sure you don't select the wrong one as it will not appear as drive E (or any letter since drive lettering is a concept I've only seen in Windows).

You should know that installing any OS will format (wipe clean) the partion on which it is installed.

 

[Adamman715]

Okay, thanks for the quick response!



Adam

 

[TieFighter]

Ubuntu 10.04 has served me well. I had a laptop that came with Windows Vista... and like many people didn't realize that I was supposed to burn a disc from a partition held on the hard drive to reinstall Vista if it ever crashed. Of course you can probably guess the rest of the story Vista is a BSOD prone OS much like Windows 95 was and there were so many bugs in Vista it was a running joke for a bit. I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop ever since - I didn't want to pay the shipping and handling on a restore disc, and was interested to learn more about unix based systems. I'm still running a stable release of XP on my desktop computer, but with Ubuntu I don't have to worry about virus protection, it has a much nicer method of using hard drive space, and it's completely compatable with my laptop - supports the 1280 x 800 resolution and my volume knob. I've found Ubuntu to be great for programming as well. Since Unix was designed in C, it already has gcc installed, other languages are a snap to download from the command line.

 

[Jayce]

In the partitioner menu it'll show you the available options you have along with what's already there. I have not used the guided partitioning, but I do believe there are two options - Install Ubuntu on the entire hard drive, wiping everything. Install Ubuntu next to the existing operating system (Windows) making them both bootable. Or Manual Partitioning mode. I personally always go to manual mode, since I have a specific way of doing my partitioning structure.

If you go to manual mode, you can see each of the partitions, with the existing NTFS partition. DON'T TOUCH IT. Use the free space to add a new EXT4 partition and mount it as root "/". Then run through the rest of the process. Just make sure before you commit to the changes, you DO NOT SEE a checkbox in the "format" section of the NTFS drive. If you don't see that, you're good.

Of course, you could do the guided partitioning too, assuming the options available fit whatever you need to do. Just think slow with whatever you do and make sure you're setting it up the way you like.

Also - 9gb for a full Linux install is PLENTY. You will find Linux applications aren't "fat as ****" like often seen elsewhere. Take my install for example. I'm running it as a file/media/print server and I have every application I could ever want or need on my Linux box installed. It's simply as feature packed with available apps as I'd ever need it. Space in use? 5.28gb.

HOWEVER - you just won't have a lot of space for personal documents on your Linux side. You can however mount NTFS partitions and use the data already existent on your Windows drive.

 

[willv624]

why did you partition? You can just use wubi to run ubuntu in windows, yet you'd still have a virtual machine

 

[forrestcupp]

I definitely would not suggest using Wubi. A dual boot setup works much better. But you didn't really need to partition ahead of time. The installer does that for you. But it doesn't hurt anything that you already have that done.

But like Jayce said, 9 GB should be more than enough. From my experience, the latest versions of Ubuntu automatically mount your NTFS drives for you. So you can just open up Nautilus and you'll see your Windows drive there and be able to access all of your files. So you're not limited to the 9 GB for file storage, only for system files and apps.

 

[ronss]

might try ultimate edition 2.7.......its got a ton of software on it.....and based on ubuntu 10.4

 

[Jayce]

might try ultimate edition 2.7.......its got a ton of software on it.....and based on ubuntu 10.4

Ultimate does indeed have a ton of software on it that the regular edition of Ubuntu does not come prepackaged with. My cousin swears by the Ultimate Edition.

FYI if you already have the regular edition and you want the software Ultimate Edition comes prepackaged with, you can simply download it. I'm pretty sure all of the additional software it comes with is available in the repos.

The only thing to be aware of is it requires a DVD to burn whereas the standard Ubuntu version is aimed to fit on a regular CD.