[SamT]

Probably been asked a million times so apologies (I'm pushed for time at the moment and just want it up and running)

Background - Old laptop just went bang (or at least windows xp did and is now asking for the key which I dont have).
Only use it for the kids to play lego games (flash and unity) and the odd Youtube vid so just need a browser (firefox or chrome preferably)

so...

Thought I'd install Linux.  Tried a long time ago and failed.

Is Xubuntu still the one to go for - or will ubuntu be OK (Its some sort of AMD processor and probably 1gb ram max).

I just burn a disc yeah? and boot from CD?

and finally - I'd like to reformat the drive and just completely eradicate  any trace of windows. Do I need to do this before installing - or can I do this from Linux once installed.

Cheers in advance.. 

[slackline]

I'd recommend Xubuntu or Linux Mint with the Xfce desktop (Xubuntu uses Xfce as the default desktop environment).  Xfce is a 'lightweight' desktop environment compared to the default on Ubuntu (something they've hacked together themselves called Unity which many don't like) or the other common alternatives GNOME and KDE (I use Xfce on all of my Gentoo installs).

Burn CD* and boot from it, you will partition and reformat the hard-drive as part of the installation thus wiping all traces of M$-Win from it.  Its sensible (as with M$ installs) to have two separate partitions, one for the OS and for everything else.  I'm not familiar with how much Debian based distributions like [X]ubuntu and Linux Mint require for the OS part, but I would expect it to be in the region of 10-20Gb (check forums for advice).  You will then want to have most of the remaining disk as the '/home' partition which is where users accounts store files (under a directory for each user e.g. /home/ermsam/).  If there is only 1Gb of RAM it would be sensible to setup a 'swap' partition too, this is like a page-file system under Windows which will be used when RAM requirements are exceeded.

[SamT]

you've *'ed CD as though it has to be a CD - and not a DVD.

However the .iso file is 786mb and my CD's are 700mb.  Will a DVD work?

[slackline]

Yes, burning the ISO image to DVD-R will be fine if you don't have a 768Mb CD-R.  This is true of any ISO (although obviously DVDs will only play back in DVD readers!)

The * was because I was going to start explaining in a foot note the difference between x86 and amd_64 architectures (the former is 32-bit the later 64-bit) and which you require will depend on the processor in the laptop.  If its a 64-bit processor then I would recommend going with the 64-bit distribution as it allows larger address' in memory to be used (but I expect you have a 32-bit processor based on the amount of RAM in the machine, which is why I didn't bother explaining it below).

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Possibly NSFS [not safe for Slackers] but if you only need a browser have you considered...

NSFW  NSFS:

trying the Chrome OS version?

http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

Not sure how fussy it is about hardware.

[slackline]

Guess what? Chrome OS is actually built on the Linux kernel*

Wikipedia : Google Chrome OS

If you were to try it I wouldn't get it from that .net site, but from the official site which is http://getchrome.eu/

The fact that Google don't mention the under-pinning reliance on Linux is savvy marketing because of the supposed stigma associated with Linux.  Can't quite see what the stigma is myself 


* just like Android, routers, NAS's and many other embeded devices, many of which use the GNU OS on top.  Linux technically only refers to the kernel, which is the software that gets all the hardware to communicate to each other.  When people refer to "Linux distribution" what they are actually takling about is a "GNU/Linux distribution", but the GNU part is regularly dropped out.

[SamT]

Cheers for the help so far guys... but as usual with this sort of shit - I'm falling at the first fence (well - tripping over the threshold of the stables more like).

Its 64 bit - so downloaded appropriate 64 iso.

Altered bios to boot off DVD then USBkey.

burnt dvd and turned on.

Nowt - DVD fires up and spins, but after a few secs - just starts booting windows.

Tried same with a USB mem stick.  No Joy... 

[slackline]

This isn't a Linux issue its a BIOS issue.  Hit F2 or F10 or Delete or whatever it is to bring up a boot menu and ensure it is attempting to boot off of the correct device (rather than setting the order in BIOS).

Also ensure the MD5 checksum of the ISO image you downloaded is correct (if its not then ISO download is corrupt and the disc you've burnt won't ever be readable).

If thats ok, check whether the disc can be read from within M$-Win, it may not have burnt correctly.  Try burning another disc.

You can't just copy the ISO onto a USB and expect it to boot, it needs a few tricks which can be done simply using UNetBootIn (available cross-platform) to put the ISO image on the USB stick.

It can't be that old a laptop if its got a 64-bit processor (are you sure, what model chip is it, could be that its not 64-bit and that might be why it doesn't boot).

Unless its really new (< about a year old) then you shouldn't have to worry about UEFI in the BIOS.

[SamT]

Phew... at last..

Checked sumdigits - fine
Checked I was infact 64 bit - yup.
installed on memstick using Unetbootin - still no joy..
tried DVD mastered and unmastered. nope.
Messed about with boot menu in BIOS. nope.
Established that, using my work laptop - the DVD's wouldn't work - but the mem stick would

eventually hit on the "USB HDD" option in BIOS - not "USB Key" which worked. 

Once beyond that - plain sailing...

Duly Wadded.   

[slackline]

 

I've only ever come across USB HDD in the BIOS' I've messed around with before.  My most recent laptop has UEFI which needed some tinkering with upon return from repairers (they kindly put M$-Win back on it 

Feel free to ask if you've any questions, I've no direct experience of Xubuntu or Linux Mint but they're Debian based and as such use the apt package management system which I use on my NAS.

[SamT]

OK - first impression.

Desktop is fine - quite intuitive, settings all 'findable' etc. Connected to Wifi as part of the installation, somehow bringing the wifi card back to life (was having to use a usb dongle with xp before)

However - seems a bit S...L...O...W when navigating around and in Firefox and playing youtube.

sure that XP was faster 

No Unityplayer plugin available so the boys wont be able to play their fav. Lego Chima game.

Installed Chrome from the software center and it was dreadful - flash animations wouldn't render properly and it seemed uber juddery/glitchy - so sacked it straight off.

Ho Hum - Guess I have a working laptop for the boys to play on and will just hope that a Unity Plugin arrives soon.

[AB]

I had problems with ubuntu based distribution (i tried mint and normal ubuntu) and slow internet. Apparently the network card is known for not working well. Swapped to mageia and its much faster so could try that? Same method as linux mint, make a iso image on a cd (they've made it cd size which is useful) boot on cd and then follow install instructions, re-boot and enjoy fast internet  Hope that helps

[slackline]

However - seems a bit S...L...O...W when navigating around and in Firefox and playing youtube.

What graphics card is in your laptop?

If its nvidia then you may have defaulted to the reverse-engineered 'nouveau' drivers, I find the proprietary ones from nvidia much better.  That said most laptops tend to use on-board Intel graphics cards.

No Unityplayer plugin available so the boys wont be able to play their fav. Lego Chima game.

Installed Chrome from the software center and it was dreadful - flash animations wouldn't render properly and it seemed uber juddery/glitchy - so sacked it straight off.

Ho Hum - Guess I have a working laptop for the boys to play on and will just hope that a Unity Plugin arrives soon.

Never heard of Unityplayer, don't use Chrome either so can't help there.

I had problems with ubuntu based distribution (i tried mint and normal ubuntu) and slow internet. Apparently the network card is known for not working well. Swapped to mageia and its much faster so could try that? Same method as linux mint, make a iso image on a cd (they've made it cd size which is useful) boot on cd and then follow install instructions, re-boot and enjoy fast internet  Hope that helps

Switching distribution just for network seems excessive when it was likely down to the wrong wifi network card being selected on your behalf.  The forums for most distributions are the first port of call when trouble shooting these problems.

[AB]

I'm confused, I use my computer for three functions; internet, word processing, photo editing. If one of these functions does not work then how is it excessive to swap to a format where it does work? I also didn't select the network card for linux because I brought the computer a few years ago before i'd even heard of linux which I imagine the same goes for SamT.

[slackline]

Its called troubleshooting.

The install you did had a go at picking out the correct driver for the network card it thinks is in your laptop.  It probably got it wrong which is why you experienced problems.

If that had been me I would have investigated how to fix it under Ubuntu or Linux Mint rather than trying a different flavour of GNU/Linux completely.  Its why distributions have forums where users help each other out with problems.

But then I enjoy the challenge of tinkering with computers , which isn't for everyone.

Oh and the "internet not working" is such a broad and vague term, its an incredibly complicated and multi-layered process.  This is quite a good post on how complicated the everyday things we do actually are Dizying but Invsible Depths

[chris20]

I've just started dabbling with the penguin, got a raspberry pi for xmas and have just loaded ubuntu onto an old desktop.  I've loaded retropie onto a spare micro sd and was trying to ftp some roms from the desktop to the pi which didn't work so I tried to ping the pi which said it was down until I typed into the terminal >  nmap -Pn <ipaddress>  which then got a response and I was able to ftp.  What does "Pn" do? I only did it because the terminal suggested I should try it and I've tried searching for it but pn is not an easy term to search for.

[slackline]

I've just started dabbling with the penguin, got a raspberry pi for xmas and have just loaded ubuntu onto an old desktop.  I've loaded retropie onto a spare micro sd and was trying to ftp some roms from the desktop to the pi which didn't work so I tried to ping the pi which said it was down until I typed into the terminal >  nmap -Pn <ipaddress>  which then got a response and I was able to ftp.  What does "Pn" do? I only did it because the terminal suggested I should try it and I've tried searching for it but pn is not an easy term to search for.

For every single command you type at the shell you can read the help page by prefixing it with 'man' (short for 'manual') to find out what those flags do type..

Code: [Select]

man nmap

...and you can read what the "P" and "n" flags do.

Often a command will show an abridged version of its help if you use the '-h' (or '--help') flag after it, e.g.

Code: [Select]

nmap -h
And if you want to search for help on a given topic across all the manual pages use the '-K' flag to search for a keyword....

Code: [Select]

man -K networking
...will then ask you if you want to view each page that matches.[/code]

[chris20]

Thanks for the info that's very handy to know.  At the moment I'm using a mixture of point and click on the desktop gui and command line. I was pleased I'd managed to ftp the files to the pi and get them playing on retropie but I'm still battling with ubuntu to get it to recognise my usb wireless adapter, I'm heading down the lines of using Ndiswrapper with the original windows drivers but haven't cracked it yet

[slackline]

Wifi used to be a bit of pain under GNU/Linux five or more years ago and I've spent time pulling my hair out trying to use ndiswrapper and wasting money in internet cafe's to download drivers when I first arrived in Australia and stupidly updated something on my laptop which broke things, but it should be fairly straight-forward now as most chipsets are supported.

Linux (the kernel) hardware compatibility lists (HCL) abound, I quite like the layout/UI of this one.  You need to find out what the chipset is of the device there are various ways of doing this, the most general is 'lshw' (if installed) but there is also 'lsusb' and 'lspci'.

You can get lshw to output to html that you can open in a browser to make it easier on the eyes, you do this by using the '-h' flag and then pipping (using '>') to redirect the output to a text file, e.g.

Code: [Select]

sudo lshw -h > /home/chris20/tmp/my_hardware.html

This assumes you created a user account called 'chris20' and that the directory 'tmp' exists within it if not you can make the directory before hand...

Code: [Select]

mkdir ~/tmp && sudo lshw  -h > /home/chris20/tmp/my_hardware.html

The '&&' allows you to run commands consecutively but if an earlier one fails the rest aren't executed.  The '~' (tilde) refers to the current users home directory, so if its your user 'chris20' its almost invariably '/home/chris20' if you've su'd into root then its '/root/' be wary of doing anything as root as you can screw up your system (and never ever use 'rm -rf /*' as it wipes everything, I made the mistake of using 'rm -rf *' on my laptop after a boozy lunch in the pub and deleted 5800+ files from my Dropbox directory, which they were able to restore a week later).


If lshw didn't give you enough detail you can try 'lspci -v' (in this case the -v flag means 'verbose output') and it will tell you if a kernel module is being used for the device, for example here's the output for one of my ethernet ports on my computer, the last two lines tell you the module and if its being used...

Code: [Select]

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Motherboard
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 26
I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
Memory at ea010000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Memory at ea000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at e8000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/2 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01
Capabilities: [b0] MSI-X: Enable- Count=2 Masked-
Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data
Kernel driver in use: r8169
Kernel modules: r8169

If you don't have anything there for your USB Wifi dongle then the starting point is to work out if support exists natively, otherwise you're right to be looking at ndiswrapper.  Get back on the HCLs  another good one to check is the one for Raspberry Pis HCL which has a lot of USB devices by virtue of almost everything being plugged into it via USB, anything that is supported under 'Debian' should also be supported under Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

Get registered on the Ubuntu forums and ask there, most GNU/Linux forums I've used are pretty friendly and welcoming to newcomers.  Don't take offence if you're asked to provide more information, people need details in order to help solve problems/answer questions.

Other useful places to look for answers to similar problems to yours (or ask questions) are the stackexchange.com sites, in particular...

AskUbuntu
UNIX & Linux
SuperUser
Servefault

There's also one for RaspberryPis

You can always ask here, there are some others who know their way around and I'll try and help where I can but don't have masses of free time these days with work, trying to climb and everything else that gets in the way of life.

<tangent>

As you've a Pi you might want to look into getting it to act as DNS server for your home network that has the added advantage of blocking adverts.  If interested checkout Pih-hole.net.

I use mine for this and also have MPD running with ympd front end (and Android clients) to play all my music back which is backed up to USB drive connected to the Pi (daily backups using rsync and scheduling with fcron), although it can also mount the drives in my main computer and play those.

The Pi2's with a bit more processing power and RAM make great little media-streaming devices so check out Kodi (or consider OpenELEC as the distribution to use on it).  Tons of plugins for watching illegally streamed TV/Films if thats your thing (my brother uses one for this, I just pony up for Netflix for my wife as I don't watch much TV).

</tangent>

[chris20]

That's great thanks slackers for taking the time to write all that!  I had found the chipset using lsusb, I'll work through the rest of your suggestions to get it running.  I've spent a fair bit of time recently on askubuntu.

I have the pi 2 and am trying to decide what to do with it, I've written a couple of standard python games from the projects book which has been good for getting my eye into python, I used R a lot in my last job so understanding the coding side hasn't been too difficult.  I want to do a hardware project with it as I have a breadboard for it, I might try some of the home automation stuff, that's if I can pull myself away from the 1500 games I've got for retropie!

[slackline]

Good luck with the home automation project.  If you can devise a way of tidying up after forgetful/untidy partners who can't take used crockery to the kitchen or use bins I'd be very interested.

Forgot to mention that I find the ArchLinux Wiki to be a really good resource, even though I use Gentoo for most things and the Gentoo Wiki has excellent documentation.

Its probably not a huge issue but the init systems used to get everything up and running are in a state of transition.  The traditional various older systems (e.g. OpenRC) are slowly being replaced by Systemd which aims to be a centralised (almost monolithic) system for doing everything.  This gets some peoples backs up as its somewhat against the *NIX philosophy of having lots of small mulrarised programmes that do one thing but do it well and a lot of hot air and keystrokes have been wasted on petty arguments, but what some fail to realise is that you are never constrained or forced to use the default that a given distribution bundles up, although you do have to then change to your choice which requires additional work so not surprising it bothers some people.

I've recently started learning about it since I opted for ArchLinux ARM for my Rasppbery Pi 2  and it uses systemd by default.  Its not too bad, at all, quite comprehensive and not too hard to work out whats going on or how to use the tools.

Anyway, worth knowing which init system your Ubuntu and Pi are using as it can make a difference when you are adding services to start at boot and such like.  Ubuntu is most likely already using systemd, I've no idea what RetroPie is using though.