New to Linux, want to try

Ok, I did use Redhat but that was 8 years ago, and I never got anywhere with it.

This old laptop of mine is no longer portable, due to bad battery, keyboard, hinges and bloated XP. I don't want to wipe out XP, as I technically paid for it; but I'm not sure about dual booting. And of course, I can't open up the computer and add a second harddrive (which is what I think I did with Redhat years ago). Can I do something off of a USB drive? Computer doesn't have 2.0 USB, though, and it has a Celeron processor running with only 256MB. I guess I could do a liveCD install, but I'm unsure how that would work out -- this CD is not a read/write one, and I'm unclear if Linux will work properly with a Windows drive.

I don't want to take a big plunge on this, at least not until I get a second laptop. Kinda hard to surf the web for fixes while installing or fixing some issue. But it'd be nice if I could get this machine to run faster, or at least learn Linux better.

 

Meh, try a Ubuntu Live CD. If it works without an issue - install it. The installer handles dual booting for you, and it shouldn't give you any issues. I've installed it on several laptops without any complaints (well, except the broadcom Wifi drivers, but they work fine with the latest release).

 

Ah, dug around in my old CD's, found a copy of Knoppix 3.8.1 that I got a few years ago. I remember trying it once, but didn't have the time to really play with it. Maybe I'll dust it off once again.

 

I second Mikelx215's suggestion. However, since your machine has very limited memory, it would be better to go with the lighter-weight Xubuntu.

Yes, actually. There is a large community of linux aficionados who specialize in this, but you should take note that distros specifically designed to be run from USB drives (like Slax) have a different structure than mainstream ones like X/Ubuntu. Check out PendriveLinux.com for more info.

Live CDs are designed purely for showcasing and other dedicated applications that do not require persistence. You cannot use a CD as a hardrive for the purpose of running an OS, even if the medium is re-writable.

 

You should definitely download something newer. Most Linux distributions change at a very fast pace.

 

My wife burned a copy of Ubuntu for me, I'll try that out instead. I might try out DSL (D* Small Linux) too later on, for kicks.

 

I second the idea of dual booting xubuntu.

 

Well, I probably made the wrong decision, but I went with Knoppix Light 4.0.02. It was at Borders, came with a book, and I had a coupon. I scanned through the book, but it's not a real good intro book--once I actually tried it out, the book wasn't as much help as I hoped. My laptop boots nicely though; but from what I can tell the PCMCIA buss is not starting. [This I can tell because in Windows, I have one light on always on the PCMCIA card, which is apparently power. I do not get this in Knoppix. I did see something to the effect of pcmgr starting during the splash screen, though, so I'm not sure what is up.] I cannot get my 802.11g card working, which from what I can read online, is a common problem. Not sure where I'm going to go with this...

 

I don't keep up Knoppix, but how old a version is that came with the book? How old is the book? The one thing with Linux is that it changes very quickly and some things that did not work a short time ago can work perfectly in the next version. So my point is, whatever distro you choose(personally I think you should stick to Ubuntu and variants) choose/download the latest one from the web. This way you are not banging your head against a wall trying to fix something that already works.

 

I want to try Ubuntu, but at the moment I don't want to get into partitions. I don't want to wipe out Windows, but rather keep it. At the moment, I just want to play with it, convince myself I can run Linux, and then go from there.

However, it appears you are right--the book is copywrite 2006, so the distro is on the old side. I'll give it a couple more tries, then see if Ubuntu can recognize my card. I've been reading up on ndiswrapper, but I think it's just not getting whatever runs the PCMCIA buss correctly.

 

Ok, I guess I am confused. You said your wife burned you a new copy of Ubuntu right? Did you try that already? You do know what a live CD is right?

With a live CD(such as Ubuntu) you don't touch anything on the machine, nothing is wiped out and you don't have to partition anything. Just put the Disc in the drive and boot from it. The machine will automatically run Linux off the disc and you can experiment all you want without having to worry about erasing anything. Try that rather than a 2 year old version of Linux.

 

Ok, am trying Ubuntu now (whatever the latest release is). Well, for the second time--I thought it locked up, it is much much slower on boot than Knoppix! Knoppix Light would come up into the GUI in 2 or 3 minutes. Ubuntu is being slower than Windows, been more than 5 minutes now and it doesn't appear close to being at the GUI. After the first try, I ran the "check CD" utility; I thought that locked up too--but apparently it compiles something, as it took 2-3 minutes of it doing something, after the CDROM spooled down, before it actually ran the check CD utility.

I was thinking Knoppix would work better than Ubuntu, since I wasn't going to use the HD at all--and it appears I'm correct. I also wasn't sure if Ubuntu would allow me to use an USB jumpdrive to store an image to, so as to save various settings for the next time I start up.

 

Ubuntu isn't designed to be used as a live cd, the live cd is designed to be used to install it on the hard drive.

 

Well, it wouldn't boot in Ubuntu with the LiveCD option. After 20+ minutes of continous activity between CD and harddrive, I gave up. Supposedly there is a Linux guru here at work, so I will try him next to see if we can mess with whatever runs the PCMCIA buss.

 

knoppix is made to be run off cd, thats its whole purpose. ubuntu isnt made to do that, theyre just nice enough to let you check it out without installing yes it will run alot slower off cd.

if its hanging during the boot process try the following
when it asks "start or install ubuntu" press F6, then delete "quiet" (leave everything else), then hit enter.
this will show the steps it is taking to boot from the cd, and if it hangs somewhere you can troubleshoot it better.

if youre computer is old though it might just take a while to boot from cd...and yes if you do install it it would be much much faster

 

Ah, thanks. I did that. It goes through some text real quick, then gets to a screen where it sits for 2-3 minutes, with the HD light on but no CD spooling. The following is displayed:

Code:

Loading essential drivers ok
Running /scripts/init - premount ok
Mounting root file system
running /scripts/casper - premount - ok

Now it sits there for 2 or 3 minutes, then moves. Mounting root file system never gets the "ok". There are more lines that follow, but these ones never get the "ok" (I didn't jot down all the ones that were ok):

Code:

Moving mount points
Running restricted drivers
setting the system clock
starting powernowd

Then the screen goes to a bird in the background, with a mouse pointer. Mouse is moving via USB mouse and trackpad. Then I get grey bars at top and bottom. This time I get past the last point, and get "Applications, Places, System" at the top. Then it does what it did last time: harddrive running, CDROM chattering away, mouse frozen. It's been almost 10 minutes now, but I'll give it another 10 and see if it comes to life.

[edit] Let it go for 25+minutes, didn't get past this point.

 

Ha! Went back to Knoppix, but this time, I did a search for the "right" driver for ndiswrapper. I needed bcmwl5a.inf, but I (and others) keep thinking it's bcmw15a.inf. Anyhow, once I got a proper tar file onto my usb drive, and extracted it, I was able to load it, start ndiswrapper with modprobe, and the light came on! I did iwlist, and it came up with a couple of cells; I'm at work, so it should. [Can't connect though.] Will try again tonight, but it appears I might be set now.

[edit] Yup, working now, surfing the web using Konqueror.

 

Wow, you've had a tough time getting Ubuntu to work. Most people would've given up by now ;/

 

:laugh: It took me two days to figure that out. Anyways, congratulations on a successful installation.

 

Most would, but I'm trying to justify buying a new netbook with Linux. If I can get my old computer to work on Linux, how can I keep a new computer running on Linux?

 

Well, it if comes with Linux preinstalled, most everything is already taken care of for you. The only real hard part is getting the hardware to work. And fortunately I've never had too much trouble with that.