Finally can install and also installed Wine, Ies4linux, cabextract to get Live 365 software to work on Linux!
Lots of application programs you don't have to download and install, just to use XP!
It's fun learning again!

One really nice feature about Ubuntu is the package manager. You select the things you want to install, and the package manager takes care of the hidden complexities, such as analyzing what is already on your computer, downloading all peripheral programs and files needed to make the software work, and setting some basic default configuration to let you run the software for the first time. This makes Ubuntu feel a lot more like Windows or a Macintosh (in a good way), than earlier Linux distributions, where you often had to read up on the software so that you could prepare your system by installing all the pre-requisite programs and files. I have heard from other users that Ubuntu is also good about properly detecting and configuring the specialized hardware found in laptop computers.

I thought Ubuntu was someone's millionaire Nigerian friend.

He will be emailing you soon...

Death By Ubuntu!

No, no, no! Ubuntu is good!!

It is good for users who want a low hassle way to get Linux onto a desktop system. It is the kind of thing that I would recommend to the novice UNIX user.

More advanced users who want to build custom servers or those who need an operating system that is very efficient on system resources would be better off using some of the more minimalist distributions of Linux. For instance, if one were to try to install Ubuntu onto a computer with less than 256MB of RAM, one would quickly discover that the installer program locks up, and it is impossible to get any further along.

Alfredo, have you ever tried the Ubuntu Server Edition? It works great for minimal systems; it installs without a GUI by default and will install with only 128MB of RAM and 1GB disk space. The server edition has a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) option if you want to build a web server quickly from this template. I've used the LAMP option a few times - it's incredibly easy, almost too easy, to setup a web server.

There's also an Alternate Desktop CD that is the desktop edition without the live boot - it's instead a text-based installer that works better for some systems. Ubuntu Desktop (either CD) requires 256MB minimum for the desktop installer to work - that's their minimum stated requirement. You can try Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFE rather than Gnome window manager) for systems with less RAM.

Andrew

I am eating my hat right now.

Anyone have any experience with Ubuntu Studio and could/n't (whatever the case may be) reccomend it? How well it works, etc?

I lately have been considering using this as my little "experiment" with Musix (another Debian-and Knoppix-based Linux) went less than stellar, and my current dealings with Mandriva One are really going nowhere, quickly.............

==================================================================

"For instance, if one were to try to install Ubuntu onto a computer with less than 256MB of RAM, one would quickly discover that the installer program locks up, and it is impossible to get any further along."

I discovered that first-hand, the hard way a couple weekends ago, trying to install "Heron" onto a (ancient) Dell Optiplex GX100 that is only equipped with a 500MHz Celeron somethingorother and 128MB of RAM.............

IT DID NOT WORK AT ALL!!!!



Edit add:
Is it at all possible to migrate programme packages (I apologise if it is called something different, as I am still somewhat new to Linux) between Debian implemetations, e.g. [read: "specifically"] from Musix into Ubuntu Heron?

Because I can't get the DSL line any time soon and I figure if nothing else, if it is possible, I could try to slap together my own little makeshift Ubuntu Studio out of Heron and the audio processing/recording/playback programmes supplied with Musix.

How would I go about doing this? Or would I even be able to do it? The only tools I have to work with at this point are the installation CDs.

If the installation files for your packages have the extension .rpm, then the operation may be relatively painless. .rpm stands for "Red Hat Package Manager." Many Linux distributions now support the Red Hat Package Manager. The Red Hat Package Manager is a program, originally from the Red Hat distribution, that takes care of checking that your system is ready for installation of a given package and performs the installation if you have met all the requirements. If you don't meet all the requirements, then the Red Hat Package Manager will tell you what support packages you need to install.

Everything for the Musix distribution is stored on the CD in a huge, 600+MB file titled "KNOPPIX". Supposedly according to the literature, everything is "transparently compressed" in order to facilitate storing about 1 1/2 GB of data on a single 700MB ISO file.

Ergo, it all could be RPM's; I haven't figured out how manually decompress the file in order to get at them yet. (They could also all be *.deb files too........)

If you can get *any* knoppix installed, then you can probably do:

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Debootstrap_to_LiveCD#Extract_compressed_Knoppix_fil esystem

Extract compressed Knoppix filesystem

extract_compressed_fs ${KNXROOT}/mnt/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX > \
${KNXROOT}/KNOPPIX.src.iso
cd ${KNXROOT}; umount ${KNXROOT}/mnt
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop/0 \
${KNXROOT}/KNOPPIX.src.iso ${KNXROOT}/mnt

At the end of the day, it's one big iso file. (CD image)

The packages are probably in there, to be run by your installer script, after mounting the compressed virtual CD image.

That means you may have a shot at extracting them with a win32 box, with something like daemontools, or just burn a CD!

Looks like you need some storage though.

Some to just boot a Linux to get the iso, some to manage that process and potentially break out files and store them. Finally some to build up the collection necessary to build the final OS.

I would worry about kernel differences however. Maybe there are not any.

Most likely deb files too, BTW.

No biggie. It's just another package manager. Read about it, then use it just as you would RPM.

BTW: Managed system software is just the coolest. Been enjoying this on SGI for quite some time. Dependancy mapping can be a bitch, but the end result being known stable is worth it.

If you can, deal with one of the GUI tools, so that you can queue up your changes prior to executing them. Going at it command line can take some considerable time, particularly as you are merging things.

The SGI command one would sort it all out, present you with options, you make choices, then hit go and it does it all, while you work, or not, if you are running single user.

Anyway, it's good to see this kind of thing continue.

I've always been confused as to why Microsoft didn't adopt this. Their OSes are now plenty big enough to warrant the effort, and with all their developer partner stuff, a great deal could be managed in the repository.

Oh well, that's why we have Linux!

"The packages are probably in there, to be run by your installer script,.....That means you may have a shot at extracting them with a win32 box, with something like daemontools, or just burn a CD!"

That sounds EXACTLY like what I am after! Thank you Missing......

For extracting files from ISO, I have generally (typically) used Isobuster. Works decently; pretty basic but always gets the job done and doesn't b!7ch about it. Unfortunately, I have found that can't always be said about Win Explorer. ;o)

I will try to report back on it, if it all works out.......

What is/are Daemontools?

It's a set of CD image manipulation tools. One of the core functions is to mount an ISO image virtually, as if it's a CD.

No need though, if you can get the ISO extracted. Just burn a CD from that. I think you will need some level of knoppix installed to do that.

Maybe you've got a temporary disk to just work through this crap with?

You might also find Damn Small Linux to be handy. It's only 50 or so Mb. You can get it via dialup while you sleep!

"Maybe you've got a temporary disk to just work through this crap with?"

I have at least two or three portable USB hard drives to store it all on and a Win32 box to manipulate it with, yes.......

You might also find Damn Small Linux to be handy. It's only 50 or so Mb. You can get it via dialup while you sleep!

I used to like Damn Small Linux, until they put cut-down, custom "hacks" of programs on there that were usually well behind the current versions. Or, when a good, well-thought-out program gets replaced with one with half the functionality because "it's smaller," and they add something else that's fairly useless for general desktop work.

Found an even smaller one that I like, except the 1.0 version doesn't have dial-up support... Slitaz Linux.
(Checks website... OK, I'll absolutely have to try out the new "Cooking" version!)

I also have a failed install of Debian Linux on another partition of my hard drive... only full-featured distribution I could find where it has a smaller download without having to download a full CD worth of stuff... didn't realize the installer doesn't have dial-up support, so all I have there is a command line. D'oh.

Newflyer, have you considered ordering a free Ubuntu CD? Will take a week or two but they will mail you a free desktop CD...

The problem with these small Linux implementations is that the apps these days are what really eat the memory and need resources. You want to look at the modern web, you need a modern web browser like Firefox, which just eats memory - because the modern web is so bloated with little apps now. Firefox uses the same amount of memory whether running in Damn Small Linux or Ubuntu.

Since it's so cheap to get a decent used computer that will run one of these more memory-hungry distros, I don't see a lot of point in going through a lot of pain with ancient hardware. Last year I found a close-out sale of some old hardware. I bought two Dell desktop towers, 1GHZ (and 733MHZ respectively) with 20GB hard drives, 256MB of RAM, for $10 each. Ubuntu installed beautifully on both of them. Sometimes people even give such systems away.

Andrew

The problem I have with mail-order stuff as well as CDs from friends, etc., is that I always seem to specify that I need/want the install CD, not the Live CD, which will probably wipe out my entire hard drive if I want to install it on a partition there.

Since this leaves me with downloading via dial-up (doing it myself is the only way I know I'm getting what I want), I'm always looking for something that can be downloaded in parts vs. an entire CD.

The memory isn't the problem, even though my computer is a 7-year-old 1 GHz P3--I upgraded to 1 GB RAM (the max the motherboard will handle) a while back. I also have an actually-newer desktop from volunteering at Free Geek, however due to clueless family it sits on a side table in the living room collecting dust because they want to use my Windows 98 computer instead of Linux. (One day I switched computers... the response was "you're bringing the other one back out here, right?")

The Ubuntu Live CD DOES NOT wipe out your whole hard drive unless you tell it to. I used it to install Ubuntu on my laptop as a dual-boot with Windows XP, which had already been installed. Installed perfectly, XP still boots fine (with Grub). There's an option during install to do manual partitioning, which is what I recommend in that case. Same with the alternate install CD - you'd have exactly the same issue at the stage where you commit to partitions. Do you want to use the whole hard drive? NO! Let me do it manually. The fact that you are using a Live CD has nothing to do with it. Just make sure you know exactly what you are doing when attempting a dual-boot installation.

Granted, in my case I had a huge hard drive and had already cleared free space to install Ubuntu. If you don't have free space, Ubuntu has an option to shrink your existing Windows partition (assuming there is free HD space available) to make room for new partitions for Ubuntu. That could take a while to do but it should work.

It's always a good idea to backup your hard drive (image backups are the best if you can) before doing any sort of dual-boot install, because shit can always go wrong. AT LEAST backup your MBR and partition table; that way, if Grub gets hosed or something, you can always "undo" at least the boot manager install. There's a simple "dd" command you can run in a terminal from the Live CD before you do the install, to save the sector from your primary master hard drive to save the MBR, only 512bytes. Just email it to your self or save it on a USB flash drive.

Andrew

That is extremely good advice Andrew. Been hosed on the MBR several times.

...wishing Microsoft didn't hose computer manufacturers on smart BIOS technology. ARC bios code understands file systems, which would essentially mean a small partition with a boot folder. From there, you can actually ask the BIOS to load the boot file you are interested in.

There is a patent complication, that hosed the SGI 320 machines, which were supposed to run win32 and Linux. Microsoft legal put the nix on that...

We would have PC machines with GUI BIOS code, easy cheezy menu driven diags, etc.

No hoping 512 bytes does not get mangled...

"I bought two Dell desktop towers, 1GHZ (and 733MHZ respectively) with 20GB hard drives, 256MB of RAM, for $10 each."

I got another 128MB RAM module yesterday for the Optiplex, and I am going to try installing Ubuntu on it this weekend. Should be interesting, I am sure..........

........Mandriva on the other hand installed just fine, with KDE and everything else. And supposedly Mandriva One 2008 needs at least 512MB to run--the same as what I have in my other box. I had only 128MB in the Optiplex before, now it has 256. Very odd.......

It ran slower than Hades on that box but it ran nonetheless! Meanwhile I have been running DOS 7 salvaged from a failed Win98 install on there for the last month or so. (Hey, I need something to run Doom on!! ;o)

Oh yeah, another thing to remember for when you prepare your computer for installing *any* OS--Linux, Win or whatnot: Boot & Nuke. It is basically a Live CD which loads a specialised Linux environment on startup, and I think it even comes in a smaller version that boots from a floppy disk. It erases *all* the data on your hard drive, even the Linux partitions, filesystems and swap space--you would definately want to do this if you install Win32 or even, heaven forbid, DOS because you can then reclaim HDD space that would otherwise likely be inaccessable. (whew...) *Very* handy programme to have around if you do a lot of this kind of stuff!

Motozak2, you don't need to Boot & Nuke unless you are trying to erase sensitive information from your hard drive, prevent it from ever being recovered (except perhaps by the NSA). A simple format or erasing a partition does not actually clear the sectors on disk that contain your files, just removes the file entries.

But if you don't really care about any sensitive info on your hard drive, you can erase any existing partitions during a Linux install. If you do manual partitioning, you can erase existing partitions before creating new ones. In Ubuntu, you can also ahead of time start up the Gparted tool from the live CD and blow away any partitions you don't want. That reclaims all the space. No need to download/boot anything else ahead of time.

By the way, if you like KDE as a window manager, get Kubuntu not Ubuntu, because Kubuntu has KDE installed instead. You can still get KDE with the "classic" Ubuntu bit it's a little more work.

Andrew

I was speaking mostly in the context of a Win/DOS install.........when I tried to install Win98/DOS on the Optiplex FDISK wouldn't touch the Linux partition for some reason--I think they call it a "root partiton," where all the system files are--only returning the error message "No Non-DOS partitions exist" when one clearly did!

I had this same problem some time ago on my (even older) IBM Aptiva when trying to re-install 98 after a failed "experiment" with Mandrake 10. Really, you definately want to do it before installing Windows--specifically older versions of Win which also use a DOS layer, like 98--and you want to reclaim your entire hard drive. Then run FDISK and FORMAT like you normally would.

(DBAN has a simple delete operation which merely erases the entire hard drive and old/unnecessary file systems completely unrestrained by partitions--it erases those too. This is the quickest method and the least secure, but the one I used for the Win/DOS boxes.)

On the other hand I think NT-based Win (like 2000 or XP) does that all automatically........ ;o)
-------------------------------------------------
"If you do manual partitioning, you can erase existing partitions before creating new ones."

In fact, manual partitioning is the *only* reliable way I am aware of to prepare an HDD before installing Musix..........

If you install it to run in "Knoppix" mode (the default, rather then the alternate "Kanotix" install) it can automatically do it but I haven't had a lot of luck with that method.

You can just do fdisk /MBR to deal with all that crap.

A nice, fresh generic master boot record is all you really need. The rest of the disk is just bits!

This can be done with a DOS boot disk image, easily had from bootdisk.com, if nothing else.

The cause for this is that win32 OSes generally only play well with THEIR boot record data. Other OSes, and Linux in particular, will play well with just about ANY boot record data.

Also handy, is to just boot Linux and write zeros to the entire disk! No need for a program, just use the dd command in this fashion:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

In Unix, everything is a file. So, /dev/zero is just a file that contains as many zeros as you need for output. /dev/hda is the actual disk, represented as a file. The first byte of the file is the first byte writable on the disk, the last byte being the last writable place on the disk.

Easy cheezy.

For extra fun, substitute /dev/random for /dev/zero and fill your disk with noise.

Want to clone a disk?

Partition them so that they are the same size, then use the dd command to copy over the entire thing, bit for bit.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

(assuming disks are the same size; otherwise the device reference will be to a specific partition, not the whole disk!)

Cloning laptop disks, to avoid Microsoft XP activation hassles, when I already own licenses, is my number one use for damn small linux. Just put the disk to be cloned in one of those little USB cases, boot the laptop and dump the internal system disk to the external one, install it into the target laptop, and boot, done!

(this is, of course, for laptops where the hardware config is similar)

The dd command is great but it is not an efficient way to clone a hard disk. It copies every sector, including the unused ones. I have some great software (for Windows) called True Image, from Acronis (it's like Ghost but better). You can use it to make image backups too but it also clones. It copies only the sectors used, and you can change the size of the destination disk at the same time, e.g. if you are hoping for more space on the destination drive. True Image works great - love it. Image backups rock, because you can do incremental backups, and you copy everything - windows, programs, and data. An exact snapshot of the original disk.

A few months ago I upgraded the hard drive in my brother's XP laptop. I cloned (via USB HD enclosure) an 80GB HD to a 160GB HD. Since manufacturer-versions of XP do not require activation, that wasn't a problem. I did find he had a copy of some Adobe software that wasn't 100% legit. Adobe apparently saves some activation signature on an unused hard disk track and that track wasn't copied - or their activation is tied directly to the disk signature. In any case, had to re-activate it and he didn't have the right info handy, so that was tricky...

Supposedly Microsoft fixed an issue with hard disks > 137GB back in XP SP1. But, my brother proved that the haven't quite fixed it - or not if your original hard drive wasn't > 137GB. He hibernated his drive and corrupted the boot sector or something related - and could never boot the hard drive again. Thought it was a hardware problem. Turns out MS had an obscure bug with hibernation and standby corrupting hard drives > 137GB. Supposedly fixed in SP2 (which I had installed), but I guess since orig HD was 80GB it wasn't fixed correctly. Anyway, I wound up having to re-clone it and limit the primary partition to just under 137GB. So be really careful with that when cloning, because you might not see any problem right away. (In corrupting his hard disk, we thought he lost all his data, one month's worth of photos, but it was all still there - just couldn't boot anymore.)

Andrew

True image is great software.

Agreed on it being faster. I'll quite often just use the lower level tool mostly because I understand it, it's free and it's behavior is simple.

Your Adobe example is one of the reasons I'll do simple things first. When time is an issue, then I default up to something better, falling back when something goofy happens.

The disk signature can be changed BTW... I have to deal with older software quite often. Sometimes it can be re activated, sometimes it can't. So, there are ways.

Wow, I didn't know about the 137GB thing. Nice tip --thanks!

Yeah, the 137GB problem involves an old 28-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) limitation. 28-bits apparently gives you the ability to address up to 137GB - seemed like plenty eons ago. LBA was later improved to 48-bits to address way more space, but Windows XP didn't have native 48-bit LBA support right away. It was added only in SP1 and fixed completely - so they claimed - by SP2, except for the exception I mentioned above. On a modern XP where SP2 came preinstalled, probably not an issue at all. Just watch out when upgrading old computers.

Andrew

Funny how crap like that keeps coming up.

People chuckled when SGI XFS came out with petabyte addressing capability. It's freaking huge. None of us will ever come close, so it seemed a bit of a waste.

Today we have simulation problems that live at that size, making exabyte sizes something viable. That's the addressing now. (and it will not be enough before it's all over)

They used binary trees in the thing too, so it's quick, even at that size.

After stubbing our toes on these things so many times, maybe a bit of over engineering at the core levels is not a bad thing! Toes will still get stubbed, but maybe not as often.

28 bits, in the GB range seems just goofy, like it just fit nicely somewhere, so somebody did it that way.

Aren't the USB deals just great?

I was a huge SCSI snob, for similar reasons. Always maintained a few cables and enclosures. Used them to connect all kinds of stuff to my SGI for data recovery, disk cloning, and other things.

That went away, and for a time USB was slow.

Rough time for external disk tricks.

USB 2 more or less brought us back to the general utility of SCSI with none of the downsides, but for peak speed. (and I've never really been impacted by that difference, and it's gonna go away with USB 3)

Now, I'm down to a coupla enclosures, one suitable for 5" disks, one for 3.5, and just a few cables. All cheap too.

Now a laptop can do most of the tasks of this kind, where I would normally use a desktop machine. (again, not quite as fast, but generally not a worry either)

USB makes this a great computing time, IMHO. Can boot from it, hang a *lot* of devices off of it, it's cheap, fast enough, robust, compact.

Love it.

On the topic of MBR, blocks and such...

Many of us would probably be using an ARC BIOS, instead of the usual crap today, if it were not for Microsoft legal.

ARC loaders see file systems and work on that basis, not low level sectors. Makes things like disk cloning, booting multiple OSes, low level trouble shooting and repair just dead simple.

The first ARC machine I used, that ran Windows was a DEC Alpha. Most Unix boxes use arc, with the SGI implementation being a full on GUI environment.

One PC ended up with it, and that was the SGI 320 / 540 series. Great machines, that were to have run win32 and Linux, as standard, supported system options, with full driver support.

Would have been the Intel + Linux version of the O2. Oh well.

The whole package was shown at Siggraph '99, then scuttled the next year when Gates cried foul on SGI for promoting choice in computing.

We are getting past that now, but a lot of damage was done...

Maybe BIOS environments, better than the ones we have now are not completely off the table yet.

Sorry moto for just rambling about computing stuff on your "hope I get it installed" thread!

Missing--you are cool, I do the same thing myself on occasion. Besides, "Itsvern" started the thread, not moi. ;o)

-------------------------------------------------

I do intend to try and install Ubuntu on the Optiplex this weekend, possibly to-morrow.

I got Musix installed on it last night and after about three hours of cursing and two pots of coffee later, I have an overly bloated (but functional) Knoppix implementation that takes (literally) five minutes to boot up. Of course, it probably doesn't help matters much that I am working with a 500MHz Celeron and 256 MB of RAM................

Ouch a celery.

Well, go through and kill off the unnecessary services. You can start those on demand, if needed.

Know much about the X window system?

If the box is too slow for GUI stuff, or too ram starved, which is the more likely case, network it and run the GUI from another machine.

You can get a free X server trial from a number of different vendors. Use your win32 box for the X server, and just have that old celery do mostly compute! That and weeding out the services will probably get you some usability in the 256Mb RAM.

Just toss "xhost +" in your login script, and ssh -X -C to the box. That turns on compression and X forwarding.

use "xcalc" to test. Also, PUTTY is a great SSH client. It does the X forwarding stuff in a nice little GUI style.

X is damn cool. It's one of my favorite UNIX things really. IMHO, we missed the boat big time, not having multi-user, network aware GUI environments elsewhere.

Something to try, if you are board.

Bit of a change of plans:

Neighbour is going out of town again so I will be getting the DSL line this weekend........looking into my crystal ball I believe a copy of Ubuntu Studio is in my stars.

(I am also going to try and get a copy of the regular Kubuntu, just "because it's there". Then again, I really don't feel like making the same mistake I did last time: choosing the regular Gnome-based Ubuntu Heron........

Linus himself even put it right: quote "Please, just tell everybody to use KDE instead." ;o)

I do still intend to try decompiling the Knoppix image from Musix tho, if only just to see if I can do it. Proof of concept, that sorta thing.

(Fortunately I have three-day weekends now because of rescheduling at work so I have a bit more time now to do this stuff than I normally would. Dennis just about tore my head off when I told him last week because he only has Sundays off! ;o)