[ale] Linux Kubuntu install

[Robert Reese]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
On 2/10/2007 at 9:41 PM Paul Cartwright wrote:

>On Saturday 10 February 2007 19:37, Robert Reese wrote:
>> >I backed out of the installation, and rebooted windows. Windows wasn't
>> >the same.
>>
>> Can you elaborate?
>
>screwed up?? broke?? hard for me to elaborate, since I didn't see it. I
>think 
>what he was saying was it looked like his theme had been replaced, the 
>windows were all different, and things "didn't work".

That seems consistent with overwritten system files, unfortunately.


>> >At that point he tried to reinstall windows, but it said the version
>> >on
>> >the HD was newer than what he had on the CD. It was really the same
>> >version..
>>
>> Actually, Windows updates many files frequently, so it comes as no
>surprise
>> that one or more were reporting as newer than on the CD.
>
>true.. I had him take out SP@ to see if it would reinstall then, but no
>luck. 
>He also had a buddy come over and they tried a few things to reinstall, no 
>luck.

I can be quite challenging to get Windows back in shape, and sometimes there's no alternative but to reinstall.  I think Microsoft does this intentionally in some regards.  Believe it or not, support disks and software using Linux boot disks can be truly life-saving in these instances as they often do things that NTFS-based tools are not "allowed" to do because the programmers don't know how to bypass the checks.


>> the grief. ?As a guess, I'd say his system hadn't been defragmented, or I
>> should say adequately defragmented. ?It sounds, too, that he's used more
>> harddrive space in the past than he was using at the time you tried to
>> install. ?That unfortunately means that active files could easily have
>been
>> in the space to which the new partition was going, including updated
>system
>> files. ?My educated guess is that's what happened to your son's computer.
>
>it is an older PC, and I'm not sure how often he defrags....

If he's a "normal" Windows user, probably closer to the week before never.  Few Windows users know what this is, and fewer do it regularly.  To this day I still get quizzical or blank stares when I ask someone when they last 'defragged'.  They naturally ask what the blue-blazes is defragging, and I tell them it's equivalent to changing the oil in their car, and should be done just as often.  I love the look I get when they learn that!


>I'm TRYING to get him over to Linux.. no defrag required:)

Really!? Oh, that's nice to know!! :c)  As far as getting your son over to Linux, I've noticed that KDE looks more like Windows than the screenshots of Vista.  Oddly, it seems to me that Vista looks more like Gnome.  I discovered Gnome last year, and as a power-user I like it more than I like KDE.  For Windows non-power-users I've been recommending KDE as a transition as it is a less-extreme switch than Gnome is (so far).


>> Incidentally, I'm smack in the middle of installing openSUSE 10.2 on my
>> wife's PC and my laptop. ?On the laptop I'm going to run XP Pro inside a
>> Virtual Machine. ?On my wife's computer, I'm doing a dual-boot and
>> hopefully create a VM that will run the Windows XP partition inside.
>
>my laptop is dual-boot XP/Kubuntu, my desktop is dual-boot XP/SUSE 10.2
>I've never tried to run VM...

Very nice setups.  I'll get there someday.

I'll let you know how I fare as far as the VM stuff goes.  I've discovered already that Xen seems to require full virtualization to run XP and my laptop can't do it.  I'm going to try VMWare on it to see what I can do.  As for my wife's computer, it will handle Xen apparently.  I've finished with the installation on her computer and it is dual-bootable.  VMWare has a tool that supposed to let me virtualize an existing XP install, so that should also be of interest.

One last thing I'll mention before I go is that I tried installing Ubuntu 6.10 onto a 2GB USB drive, but I ran out of room.  :(  I wanted to be able to pull it out of my pocket and boot a computer to it so people can quickly see what it's all about and play with it just like a Live CD.  C'est le vie... back to the drawing board.

Cheers,
Robert Reese~

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   * Microsoft is NOT a standard. *
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