Ubuntu 10.04 - anyone else trying it out?

Darksun

I'm using 10.04 on my new laptop, dual booting with Windows 7, although I'm pretty much exclusively using Ubuntu.

My last laptop which I ran 9.10 on I had no problems with, everything ran out of the box, whereas this laptop I had more issues with Wireless, Graphics, everything took a bit of fiddling to get working. Hopefully it's all stuff that'll be fixed over time though.

candtalan

NiVZ wrote: »

I'm trying out Ubuntu 10.04 using Wubi (so I didn't have to re-partition the Windows drive). I do like it, but I have had a couple of crashes. One thing I can't get working is the gwibber social networking app. It crashes everytime I try to add an account.
NiVZ

Go a bit carefully though, at this stage Ubuntu 10.04 is still in testing stage (beta2 just now) so crashes are part of the game...... but avoid using it in a production system of course.

jamesy

My son has installed this on to my laptop and i wish to install windows xp pro back on to the laptop as i dont like it,

now when i try to install windows it say that there is no hard drive?

i cant install any software at all what is the problem how do i fix this need help please!

thanks jamesy

fwor

Are you ~sure~ it can't find the hard drive?

XP doesn't understand the filesystem that Linux uses (typically ext3 or ext4), so the windows installer will typically show that the HDD has two or more "unknown partitions" on it. If you delete those and let the install process create a new NTFS partition it should work Ok.

jamesy

fwor wrote: »

Are you ~sure~ it can't find the hard drive?

XP doesn't understand the filesystem that Linux uses (typically ext3 or ext4), so the windows installer will typically show that the HDD has two or more "unknown partitions" on it. If you delete those and let the install process create a new NTFS partition it should work Ok.

yes it says no hard drive found and cannot continue with instalation

where do i find ext3 or ext4 don`t know anything about this linux stuff

thanks for your help

fwor

Ext3 and ext4 are just ways of formatting a partition that Windows does not use (it can only "see" FAT and NTFS).

First thing to check: enter the BIOS setup and see if the BIOS can see the HDD.

If it can, boot the PC from the Linux CD that your son used to install from (run it as a LiveCD rather than using the installation option).

You should now be able to run the Partition Manager (sometimes called GPARTED, under System, Administration) and take a look at the HDD. If you don't want anything on there, it will allow you to delete all of the existing Linux partitions, but you will probably need to unmount them first.

Don't worry - all of the above is point & click. No horrendous Command Line stuff needed!

turbobob

ext3 or 4 is the file system that Linux uses normally - there's nothing to find as such. It's basically unimportant to the typical user. If Linux boots then the hard drive is likely formatted in ext 3 or 4.

Linux uses ext3/4, XP uses a file system called NTFS. Linux can read NTFS no problem, but XP and its installation program does not recognise Linux partitions. Hence the XP installation program should show an "Unknown Partition" of x number of megabytes. This partition needs to be deleted and then a new NTFS partition needs to be created and formatted.

This here is a step by step guide to installing XP - http://www.getpcmemory.com/microsoft/how-to-install-windows-xp-step-by-step-guide-to-clean-installation-of-xp/

You need to ignore parts of it which refer to previous Windows installations, and treat it as a fresh installation.

Is "no hard drive found" the exact error message? In my experience if the installer fails to find the hard drive the installer stops abruptly with a stop error code.

poppy10_2

jamesy wrote: »

My son has installed this on to my laptop and i wish to install windows xp pro back on to the laptop as i dont like it,

now when i try to install windows it say that there is no hard drive?

Sounds like a SATA issue. Windows XP does not have native support for SATA hard drives (used in virtually all modern laptops and desktops) and so won't recognize these hard drives. You need to slipstream in the drivers or have a floppy disk with the SATA drivers on it. It's a bit complicated - might be better just to upgrade to Windows 7 which is SATA compatible from the start.

HO87

Started playing around with Ubuntu 5 or 6 years ago - Breezy Badger seems to ring a bell and it was something of an unwieldy beast then (for the uninitiated) compared with the latest iterations. All updates have run without issue (except 8.04 but that sorted its life out eventually) but I've always ended up doing a clean install once things are reported as stable (cautious old git).

In a household with five computers there is only one machine that runs Bill's Stuff and that's only for work and only because of some specialist mapping software that sadly only operates after a fashion in Wine and isn't quite foolproof - yet.I live in hope.In fairness, I also know that there will be an issue with the wireless card in the laptop if I was to transfer over to Ubuntu on that and can't be bothered to fiddle with it as I need the machine everyday.

Cairo Dock is brilliant and provides the familiarity that the younger members of the household, who have Macs, are happy with and the missus thinks is great too.

I have run OpenSuSe on another PC for a couple of years now but am rapidly falling out of love with it in favour of Ubuntu only because it tends to be a little more fiddly - i.e. more use of a terminal than I always feel comfortable with.

Having played around with most of the mainstream Linux flavours at one time or another i.e. Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Debian, Knoppix, SuSe, Fedora and even Slackware I find myself inevitably drawn back to Ubuntu simply because the others in the household find it the easiest to get on with given their everyday OS's. The freedom to customise your computing that Linux provides leaves Windoze in the shade, IMHO, and there is nothing - even the mapping business - that Linux cannot provide for. The only thing I've ever paid for was for some Fluendo codecs packs.

Haven't really tried Mint - don't know why though as I have a fairly recent live cd that came with Linux Format mag IIRC. Must give it a try.

Its always great to hear of someone who is so enthusiastic on trying it for the first time. I'm convinced that were more Windoze users to try a live cd or two they'd actually be very surprised at what Linux has to offer - especially in terms of performance.

candtalan

HO87 wrote: »

I also know that there will be an issue with the wireless card in the laptop if I was to transfer over to Ubuntu on that

Have you tried a Ubuntu Live CD recently? Ubuntu does include a number of proprietary and other wireless drivers in the more recent versions, and a test with a Live CD would be easy.