I'll do lip service to Torvolds (see below) by installing the KDE version of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, on the notebook at the next SIG.
Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'."
The way around the partitioning is: http://www.sysresccd.org/
They link you to download a bootable cd with several tools. For dealing with the NTFS partition that windows XP is in, use qparted.
When you boot the cd, you need to use their frame buffering; ie, you respond to the boot prompt {boot:} with fb800 or fb1024 for 800x600 resolution or 1024x768 resolution on your monitor.
I re-installed XP and then ran qparted from the system rescue cd, giving XP about 8 gb and leaving 10 gb for the installation of linux (which I haven't installed yet).
Another "gotcha" that surfaced is that the bootloader grub over rides my Toshibas boot sequencing, making it impossible to simply boot from a cd. I'm not sure how to edit grub in Ubuntu. I think that the last time that I did that were with Mandrakes tools running the community version of Mandrake 10. I'd appreciate anyones help on this.
Spent a long time fighting the Toshiba which claimed that I was applying the Restore XP CD to an invalid machine. I finally got the patch, used it and installed XP (one big C: partition - NTFS format). This provides the situation that we want to deal with for the next SIG meeting.
The next problem was that I couldn't resize the drive. Using the default and a range of other values, when I highlighted continue and pressed enter, I was told that the drive could not be resized. I finally quit in frustration about 11 last night. Today was stuff with the hiking club and installing luminarios, so I didn't get to the notebook until after dinner.
Try the Ubuntu install again, just for kicks. This time after selecting the first (resize your C: drive windows partition) option I hit enter with the default gigabyte value still highlighted. (instead of getting the "{continue}" text highlighted) Surprise! It worked.
Floppy drive now works. I can write to it and get files from a floppy.
You can see the thread at
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=98446
The fix requires that you modify the list of repositories to download the "upgrade" and then remove the modification. Next you have to modify the fd0 line to your /etc/fstab file (added by obtaining pmount 0.9.6, and re-logging in or restarting the computer -- I don't recall which, but I'm afraid that it required shutting down and re-starting the computer) to this:
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 media/floppy0,ext2,vfat user,noauto 0 0
Major point of interest: The speed of help was MUCH greater and more explicit than the responses to equivalent questions to the Fedora forum. Plus, the Ubuntu forum is searchable, the Fedora forum wasn't.
Hu and I want to demo a dual-boot installation on the 15th. So we were trying to get Win 98 to run on the club machine in the lecture hall. If we manage to patch the error (cpu too fast for Win98), we will do that. Otherwise, we'll do a dual-boot installation with XP on my notebook.
A byproduct of chasing down the windows patch that Hu found, was discovering the biggest problem with Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) to date. The code for accessing the floppy drive is broken. We need to install pmount 0.9.6 (pmount 0.9.5 is installed). This patch had been in the repository for the next verstion of Ubuntu (Dapper Drake), but it was removed to put into the "upgrades & patches" location for 5.10 (Breezy Badger). It should show up automagically soon, but I can't find it now to save my life.
The re-install went well. Current Browsers are SeaMonkey 1.0a and Firefox 1.5 (released yesterday). Thunderbird (e-mail program) will be updated when the 1.5 version is released later this week or next week.
All of the necessary toys are installed and I'm using Gnome rather than default windowing environment. No apparent difference (the gnome windowing environment is supposed to be the default condition, but enough KDE stuff is installed to leave me wondering just what all default did).
So, I'm currently a happy camper with Ubuntu 5.10
I got playing with Automatix
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80295
and too much stuff got done at once. I'm doing a re-install and add stuff more gradually, so that I understand (as well as one can with the "base installation" that Ubuntu uses) what is going in.
Here's a sudo description that is user oriented and just for Ubuntu:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo?action=show&redirect=RootPrivileges
The snapshot approach to "upgrades" seems to be working.
The rest of the day was wasted dinking with valve adjusting and a new fuel filter on the bike.
I really haven't done anything since the last input, except a couple of updates. Having the computer nag me (with the little red icon for new updates) is acceptable. You get to confirm/deny each of the updates/patches.
Now I need to either learn to use ksyslogd or start copying the list of additions so that if a "fix" causes aproblem, I can back out of it.
The simplist way to do that is to set up a folder called updates; within that create a new folder for each day I update, with screenshots (click on the "System" word on the taskbar to quickly get to the screenshot option) put into into the folders. I'll initiate that now, use it in the future, and report later on what I think.
Lastly, I'm pretty happy with everything. Photos were downloaded from the camera to send dog pics to one son. Scanning and printing work. Audio seems OK (still installing xmms for main mp3 usage) with rhythmbox and ogg-vorbis used for music (ripped and stored from CDs). I haven't tried to rip a new CD yet. {PAUSE} OK, I used CD Juicer (I prefer grip, didn't find it on the applications--sound and video list, so I'll add it later. CD Record is installed and I'll have to get it's icon up on the taskbar... if nothing else, for burning newer versions of Ubuntu), and I am now being attacked by the Car Talk Car Tunes, thanks to CD Juicer.
Grip added. Just use "Add Applications".
Things were going so well that I thought that I'd shift the desktop (running Fedora Core 4) over to Ubuntu. ---time for gastly ghostly music---
My desktop has two hard drives: (1) an 80-gig Seagate 7200 rpm ATA drive replacing the 40-gig Samsung drive that died shortly after the HP 1-year warranty ran out; and (2) a six year-old IBM 10-gig HD that was salvaged from my PII 350-megahertz Dell. The 10-gig drive has been used as a backup drive for docs, photos, and music under Fedora Core 4.
Ubuntu gives the default user and ID of 1000; Fedora Core gives the default user the ID of 500. My backup drive was preserved to copy the files, but it was/is owned by ID 500 (the first user on the Fedora Core installation). Can you guess how well this worked for copying files?
After screwing around to the point where almost nothing worked, I opted for a re-install, being careful to get hdb1 (the 10-gig drive) installed as "/backuup" to avoid confusion with a "backup" directory in the filesystem.
Ubuntu defaults to having root deactivated; you use sudo to get root privileges. Now, I appear to be too dumb to get the files (about 7 gigabytes) transferred using sudo.
Fortunately, the little red-and-white life preserver really is one. It takes you to Ubuntu help which let me put in a root password, and then let me actually set it up so I can login as root and do the really dirty work. I'm much more accustomed to su but logging in as root and using the terminal when all else fails was sweet.
example command: chown -R dad /backuup/
As I write this, the desktop is installing 86 additional packages, Bob Dylan is singing via RhythmBox on the desktop, and I'm using yesterdays installation on the notebook to write and upload this.
This is the start of an account of attempting to turn my nearly 4-yr-old notebook into an XP-Ubuntu5.10 dual boot machine.
I'm using the mac to record approaches attempted and results in the quest to "finish" Ubuntu (no mp3, ftp, etc.).
First up is the re-partitioning (which I did before starting this). You CAN'T erase the whole drive, so you pick the only other option (at top); sorry, I don't remember what it was. That wound up showing me the old linux partitions, which I deleted to form free space which I let it assign to '/' and 'swap'.
For those of you with just one big windows partition, life may be more interesting. I'll try to see how to work this without partition magic; there may be a way (1) first using "unused space" on the hard drive that may or may not allow later Qparted partitioning. I'll have to load Win98 on the HD and then re-install Ubuntu at the club using the "unused space" option.
Once you are installed, click on the red package manager icon on the task bar to get the latest updates. (I had 19 for the Nov. demo; you'll probably have more)
To do graphical addition of programs, click on System --> Administration -->Add Applications. Then click on File in the upper left-hand corner to get the listing of all possible programs to add using the Synaptic Graphical File Manager. Also, go into settings and add the additional repositories. This increases the number of available programs from 4,000 to 17,000
This approach permitted met to add the gnome file transfer program, gftp, the music player xmms and the mp4 plugin for xmms, kmahjongg and ksysguard, etc.
CD ripping = grip
Digital camera --> computer = gtkam
Winamp replacement = xmms, xmms-mp4 & xmms-xmmplayer
FTP (used to upload and download files -- as for a web site) = gftp
Deciding that 17,000 options were insufficient, I went to the mozilla web site and downloaded the alpha version of seamonkey (replacement for Netscape with better fonts). Attempting to install this caused the same problem that I had had 'out of the box' with Fedora Core 4. The installation program was looking for an earlier version of libstdc++
However, this was easy as I went to Synaptic as described above and downloaded the older version and then installed seamonkey. The sudo situation (lack of root access) causes some problems (minor annoyances); i.e., seamonkey trys to install in /usr but I don't have root authorization and I wind up installing it in my area (/home/dad/seamonkey -- I've used "dad" on my drives since the youngest boy and I squabbled over hard drive space... it is short!).
I took a bit of a break. This has been done between HOA stuff in the morning and shopping with my wife in the afternoon. Below is a screenshot of the desktop. The top taskbar has icons for launching: OpenOffice calc (spreadsheet); OpenOffice writer (word processor); Abiword (small word processor); gnumeric (small spreadsheet); Thunderbird (e-mail program); Seamonkey (web browser); Kmahjongg (KDE mahjongg game); Aisle Riot (Gnome solitaire game); Gedit (a text editor [in which I'm typing this]); Terminal (a command line program - like the dos command line program); Gftp (a program for transfering files, used to upload this to the website you are viewing); Ksnapshot (which took the screenshot below); Ksysguard (monitors computer activity); and a trash can.