The Great Linux Adventure - part 2

STEP TWO - Installing Linux


Well, I'm not exactly stuck yet, but there are ramifications. A recommendation of 10GB worth of HDD space free before I install Ubuntu. Guys, I dunno about you, but I could fit XP in under 4, man. Win2K is under 2! Of course, you get the bare-bones system, but for 10GB I could install the world on Windows - even a few games, if I wanted to.

Anyways, I'm assuming that the figure above is just an advisory. Let's see how I do. I will, of course, have to unplug my CD drive from my ATA133 controller before doing anything else - system won't boot from the add-on, so I have no choice. And then, I can see how to go about it.

A cleanup is definitely due, though. I have to crawl through my 20GB hard drive partitions and see what I can backup and/or junk.

Will edit this post as I have time. Wish me luck.

[Edit One: Making room on the system]

First of all, let me make a correction. For some reason, I was mistaken about the boot capacity of the add-on card. It will, indeed, boot from CD - but only to a certain extent, after which it hangs. Since I didn't want to make life difficult for myself, I simply reconnected the CD drive to the motherboard controller. So I couldn't test to see if it would boot to Linux the whole way. But since Windows wont boot from CD (neither the install CD nor UBCD4Win) either, this is not a winning situation for either. I will try Linux boot from add-on once I've installed it on my hard disk.

Secod, these are the specs for my system
Dell Dimension XPSD233 ('upgraded' to Celeron 333MHz, 384MB PC133 RAM, Intel BIOS)
Maxtor 4GB on primary master, Connor Tech 15GB on add-on secondary master, LG GSA-4167B on secondary master
SiS300/305 series AGP 1x card, 32MB RAM
CMI 4-channel soundcard
Realtek PCI Ethernet card

OK, onto making room on the system. Imaged my Win2K partition, and restored it into a smaller size. Minimally useful 2K takes up 1.8GB of space, and ME takes up approximately the same size. These are fully patched and updated (no .NET framework, but everything else), with Office viewers (not on ME, since the 2003 viewers won't install), eBook readers, anti-spyware and malware, Opera, Nero(on 2K only)/PartitionMagic/Acronis True Image. My 2K partition is now about 4.4GB in size, leaving 10GB for Linux.

This leaves out about half-day's frustration in trying to get Win2K to redo drive maps. Windows boots, because it doesn't use drive letters until GUI loads (or somewhere there), but can't login. Had to use UBCD4Win to change my registry because couldn't load it on my XP machine over the network. Let's just say that it was a learning experience.

[Edit Two: Booting the various LiveCD Linuxes]

PCLinuxOS - First Linux and already I'm not impressed. Normal boot fails, due to blank screen. Had to reboot and use Safemode (VGA). Come on, my system is ancient! All the drivers should be working at this point! And even then, a KDesktop error "The process for the file protocol died unexpectedly" crops up. Uh.. right. What's that supposed to mean?

Will continue later.