dban...How on earth???????

leosayer39

Hi all,

Well firstly i would like to thank all of you for your input on my difficulty with dban. You have all had your thanks button pressed.

I thought i would update you all on my progress with dban.
In the end I successfully wrote the iso file to a cd and booted my dell from that cd.

It took a little over 2 hours to do its stuff...and there was nothing on the hard drive when it had finished.

I also successfully installed unbuntu and the pc now appears to be running fine with that operating system on it.
I am now interested in a linux operating system and I may well intstall unbuntu into the lappy that I am using now and run either it, or xp, at startup and have a play around with it.

Once again many thanks for all of your help. I could not have done it without your input. :beer:

HO87

Glad to hear it worked well for you. Don't forget that the best way to try your laptop out is to reuse the Live CD you have. Laptops can be something of a minefield (far more than desktops) as far as Linux installations are concerned - only in the sense that you might have to tweak the install. Ubuntuforums are an excellent source of solutions.

leosayer39

HO87 wrote: »

Glad to hear it worked well for you. Don't forget that the best way to try your laptop out is to reuse the Live CD you have. Laptops can be something of a minefield (far more than desktops) as far as Linux installations are concerned - only in the sense that you might have to tweak the install. Ubuntuforums are an excellent source of solutions.

Is that right? Are lappys a bit more of a minefield?

In any event I will use the live cd and go from there...I wont be ditching XP anytime soon lol

HO87

leosayer39 wrote: »

Is that right? Are lappys a bit more of a minefield?

Yes, but only in the sense that components can be very much more specific than their desktop equivalents. I'm sorry if I put you off as that wasn't my intention and perhaps "minefield" wasn't quite the right analogy. IME installing Linux onto a desktop has always been trouble-free but the laptop installs have both required a few extra minutes to identify part-specific solutions. This entailed using a Terminal (which is the equivalent of using the command line in Windows) and it is this that puts alot of Windows users off. However, it is actually very easy to use - guided by the help in Ubuntuforums.

gaming_guy

leosayer39 wrote: »

Is that right? Are lappys a bit more of a minefield?l

Yes.

Older ones are even worse. I have a 6yr old dell laptop and it doesn't even start the graphical interface without some tweaking to xorg.conf - and it only works on certain distros such as debian lenny (only one i've got going properly) and ubuntu 8.04.

Newer laptops are a lot better, but still expect some problems

leosayer39

gaming_guy wrote: »

Yes.

Older ones are even worse. I have a 6yr old dell laptop and it doesn't even start the graphical interface
Start the what?

without some tweaking to xorg.conf
Tweaking the which?

- and it only works on certain distros
Distro? and that would be what?

such as debian lenny
What is this then?

(only one i've got going properly) and ubuntu 8.04.
Huh?

Newer laptops are a lot better, but still expect some problems

Bloody hell...... is it going to be worth the effort?

gaming_guy

leosayer39 wrote: »

]
Start the what?

Graphical interface - the thing that you use to navigate around the computer (ie. the desktop)

without some tweaking to xorg.conf
Tweaking the which?

The configuration file for the x server (which displays the graphical interface).

- and it only works on certain distros
Distro? and that would be what?

a certain variation of linux like Debian, fedora, ubuntu or opensuse (just like microsoft have XP, vista & Win 7)

such as debian lenny
What is this then?

Release number 5 of the debian linux operating system

(only one i've got going properly) and ubuntu 8.04.
Huh?

I tried several distributions (eg the ones named above) and i could only get debian working properly on my 6/7 year old laptop, where as pretty much all the distributions i've tried work fine on my pretty recent desktop.

Newer laptops are a lot better, but still expect some problems

Bloody hell...... is it going to be worth the effort?

Pretty much all recent laptops should run linux fine (and not have as many problems as my laptop). Download the ubuntu live CD and try it out on your machine as it will give you a good idea if all the hardware is compatible. A good explanation of a live cd can be found here

Darksun

leosayer39 wrote: »

gaming_guy wrote: »

Yes.

Older ones are even worse. I have a 6yr old dell laptop and it doesn't even start the graphical interface
Start the what?

without some tweaking to xorg.conf
Tweaking the which?

- and it only works on certain distros
Distro? and that would be what?

such as debian lenny
What is this then?

(only one i've got going properly) and ubuntu 8.04.
Huh?

Newer laptops are a lot better, but still expect some problems

Bloody hell...... is it going to be worth the effort?

'Distros' are basically different versions of Linux, produced by different teams of people, with different aims in mind. Ubuntu, Debian and Mandrivia are three popular ones aimed with general, easy use in mind (especially Ubuntu).

Linux actually just refers to the kernel, which is the core of the operating system, so different distros add different Window Managers, GUIs and packages into the mix.

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop recently and had no trouble getting it working straight after install. Try it yourself, you have nothing really to lose, go for an Ubuntu LiveCD or the Wubi installer and see how you like it.

leosayer39

Darksun wrote: »

leosayer39 wrote: »

'Distros' are basically different versions of Linux, produced by different teams of people, with different aims in mind. Ubuntu, Debian and Mandrivia are three popular ones aimed with general, easy use in mind (especially Ubuntu).

Linux actually just refers to the kernel, which is the core of the operating system, so different distros add different Window Managers, GUIs and packages into the mix.

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop recently and had no trouble getting it working straight after install. Try it yourself, you have nothing really to lose, go for an Ubuntu LiveCD or the Wubi installer and see how you like it.

I will have a go with unbuntu and i ll post back here in a week or so how I get on. I have read about the wubi installer and i ll have go with that as well.

Thanks