Replacing HD and Wanting to Switch Over to Ubuntu

I have an Acer 3690 with a bad HD.It's only a 5400rpm 80gb pile.I want to upgrade to a 250gb spinning 7200rpm and run Ubuntu 64bit.This will be my first experience with Linux.What should I look out for when buying an HD to run Linux?Any advice to make the switch over a little smoother and easier.

Here's the run down on the machine.
Win Vista Basic 32bit
Acer Aspire 3690
Intel Celeron M 520 1.6 GHz
2Gb ram
Intel 945 Express Chipset
SATA HD

Please forgive me if this is a dumb post.I'm just not up on Linux but I'm researching.

 

The type of HDD you have and the operating system you use are not correlated.

 

Cool.So Ubuntu should boot from disc without issue?

 

yup! just download, and burn the iso..boot from cd and wallah! your good to go! u can try it out using the live version..or just install

 

Hi and welcome
1. ur post's not dumb, if it were, then all "Q" posts would be dumb, contrary, you're good to give info on ur HW

2. HDD is of course relevant (not in sense of OS type installed) but speed and size "always matters" (the bigger the better, with speed the 7200 downturn is it sucks up battery faster)

3. dont install only linux on your new HDD (unless you really dont wanna see nothing more of that wind0Zez ), I'd advise - use dualboot, install your Vista first on dedicated ntfs partition and then install linux - the priority really doesnt matter, but if you install it like this, then grub (linux boot loader) automatically detect windows OS and make a 'writedown' of it in the boot menu.
Also, in case of troubles with drivers on linux (wifi etc) you can use W. to hook up on net and download, or find help

4. dont use bubuntu (now just dont take me seriously, just to tease brown worshippers)

 

What Helikon said Look at the top four on Distrowatch.com. Use one of them... I would keep a slim windows partitiaon around for a while. For example, on this Vostro 1220....it has a 320 gig HD....80 gigs goes to Win 7, the rest to Linux. I only keep my strat games installed there. All docs, music, pix everythign are on the Linux partition. You'll figure it all out after a while You can use a windows virtual machine for windows only stuff, but if you're a gamer, that's not there yet with the graphics acceleration.

@threadHIJACK: Helikaon...I had to give up CentOS because of a multimedia problem, i.e. something I couldn't make happen with a codec...I can't frakkin' remember though what it was...I really would have liked to stay with CentOS because it was rock solid. Have you run into anything with CentOS that you've had to 'give up' because of Kernel problems, etc? Maybe we should start another thread for this.

 

Thanks all.I am purchasing a Win7 based pc.I just wanna keep it simple with my old one.Something to play with.Acer didn't include a copy of Vista and I can't find the ones I burned to disc when I got the machine.I fought with a couple people at Acer about getting a Win Vista disc, for when I replace the HD,but I wasn't successful.Anyway I could transfer my exsisting copy over to disc?

 

Well the bad HD needs to go.My current one is an 80gb Toshiba MK8034GSX.Can some one recommend a quality 250gb HD?I wanna stay under $50 because this is just an experiment and the machine isn't worth much.My machine is an Acer 3690-2970.All other info is listed above.

 

Hi,
i wouldn't bother with those guys from acer support in this case. If you got the Vista unlocking code stickie on the bottom of you laptop (or you written it up somewhere), then i'd just:
1. use uncle google and search for e.g:
Vista 64b EN torrent
2. download, burn + install with your own legal code

As for transferring your copy of Vista from old hdd to the new hdd - it would be possible by cloning the partition.
e.g. acronis migrate easy
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/
the demo-version should be enough (or find some similar SW if not - i havent tried acronis for like two yrs, but it was possible to use it)
gl&hf

 

Sorry to hear Zoid,
what was wrong with multimedia? I use codecs and xine installed from rpmforge repo and everything is just working ...
I can only recommend, if you return to centos in future and have prob., then ask on centos forums, there are some guys that really know their 'stuff' .
And as for kernel recompilation, i was forced to do it only once (on server) when i needed badly start to filter P2P traffic on the request of one private company and i needed to patch netfilters and include xtables, and this was possible only on newer kernels (used 2.6.30).

Otherwise i run new kernel compilations on my ntb - just the usual 'geek' hassle - make smaller kernel by excluding unnecessary drivers etc and so gain 0.00001 sec faster start. (but not necessary). But i can imagine i would have to compile newer than CentOS kernel if i had new notebook with some 'bleeding edge' new HW.

Sometimes i run in problems with old sw (not often, but happens). Last time i needed support for chrooting ssh users, restrict their port forwarding, and possibility to set rules per user ... ended by recompiling 5.3 ssh since the 4.3 in RHEL - CentOS didn't support this yet.
But this is not often. To be true i installed CentOS on my notebook (had fedora), just when i went for rhct and rhce exams, but it stayed there, since it's so reliable.