On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 07:21:51PM -0800, Willie Wonka wrote:
> I have two assignments given to me by my fav son and wife:
> ?
> Build a room with traintables and install Linux on all computers at home.
> ?
> I started researching which Linux version to install and how to do this.? Is
> it me, or the installation of it has become exponentially more complex in the
> last ten years?? I ran Linux on my machines at the end of the nineties and
> the process was not so complicated...
> ?
> So I want to install Linux on three computers.? I would like to be able to
> use Linux and Windoz on two of them and only Linux on the third.? One of the
> computers that will run both OS's is a Dell minilaptop.? For now I only care
> for the open office apps and gimp, but dont mind installing an entire package
> (2500 apps?)
> ?
> I would like recommendations on a free OS, Debian and Ubuntu are the ones I
> looked at, and clear directions how to do installation that would satisfy the
> requirements above.? I dug into the plethora of info on both sites for an
> hour and still dont have the instructions at hand...
> ?
> Thank you very much in advance.
> ?
> Boris
Hi Boris,
best of luck in your quest.
The concensus of opinion among the crowd of GenY techs I work with is
that Ubuntu is the best. Note that I don't have any personal experience
with any Linux, I prefer a true UNIX (FreeBSD in my case, not something
that I would recommend to a others as one needs to have very solid ideas
about what one needs to achieve for the application at hand- say,
preparing disk partitioning for server vs workstation requires some -
usually painful :) experience to be able to make sensible choices).
However, the setup and apparent environment is similar.
A dual boot system with XP or Vista is very easy to achieve. the only
thing needing consideration is selecting a 'boot manager'. Looks like
GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) is the default choice.
IMHO it is safer to pre-format the disk into slices at the 'doze
install, if possible. Examples:
http://www.howtoforge.com/dual_boot_windows_xp_vista_ubuntu_feisty
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Windows-Security/Using-Windows-XP-and-Linux-Ubuntu-Dual-Boot-to-Maximize-Computer-Efficiency/
Plenty of stuff on the www about setup for an existing install, the
disk management tools are on the Linux disk & in the 'doze mmc. e.g.:
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first.htm?page=1
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
Single boot install is much the same, without the pain of making
decisions about how to split the disk between environments, & installing
the 'other OS'... :)
One other thing, note that GIMP & OpenOffice (plus many GNU & Linux
applications) have been ported to Windows. As you suggest, much better
to use freeware apps than ones that you have no license to use...
http://www.gimp.org/windows/ http://www.openoffice.org
(the openoffice.org site is currently down ATM due to a datacentre
upgrade at the hosting site. when it's back, hit the download button &
it will offer you the correct one for your OS version)
hope this helps
davidt
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