My Fun with Ubuntu

Well I wrote a couple of weeks ago about getting a dual-boot set up with my existing Windows XP box with Ubuntu on top. As I wrote here, that didn’t work out too well. Since then, I have been trying a couple on things but in the end, I think it was Ubuntu’s dislike of being on the second disk on my computer that did it in. I tried to let go of some of the free space on my first disk but apparently that isn’t happening. I still don’t know what is wrong with it.

A couple of days ago, I was introduced to the idea of running Ubuntu off of a VMWare image. I can’t believe that the thought never crossed my mind but it is so simple. I don’t have to mess around with any funky OS install and if I want to uninstall it, I can very easily.

So now I have Ubuntu running perfectly without any issues on my machine. You can get the image here. Give it a shot if you’re interested. I am really happy how this turned out for me and hopefully it will save you trouble in the future.

Installing Ubuntu on an XP Box

I was online tonight and after reading a couple of articles and thinking about this for some time now, I have decided to install Ubuntu on my home computer and dual boot it with my XP that lives there now. I should have done this as a play-by-play blog entry but I think after an hour, I can catch you up.

10:15pm-ish: Burned Ubuntu disc onto CD and shut down computer to boot from CD.

10:20pm-ish: After turning on the computer, it boots straight to XP without regard to the disc sitting in its drive. I wonder how this is…

10:22pm-ish: Changed boot.ini file to have just the default info according to Microsoft’s site. Shut down

10:23pm-ish: XP immediately boots up. YAY!!!!! I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on.

10:45pm-ish: After several changes to the boot.ini file followed by several shut downs, I have no clue. Keeps booting directly to XP. There is no stopping it. I add this “/REDIRECT” to my boot.ini and…

10:46pm-ish: Not sure if it was the “/REDIRECT” or me randomly pushing F-keys while the boot happened but I got to the BIOS info. I can’t see anything in there that specifies booting from the CD drive. I’m not an expert in this at all but I thought it was right there. Ended up not doing anything.

11:00pm-ish: More restarts and more XP screens. Starting writing this down now.

11:20pm: Finally found it buried in the BIOS. BTW, if you push F8, F11, F12, and DELETE, one of those opens the BIOS. Good for me to know.

11:24pm: I have seen the Ubuntu install screen. Happiness is here finally.

11:27pm: The OS seems to be loading. I am answering the questions as to where I am and how I want my drive partitioned.

11:29pm: Used default partition and it took about 10 seconds.

11:31pm: I am asked if I would like to import any accounts from my Windows login. This is really cool. I pick my browser settings for IE and FF and move on.

11:33pm: I have to say that this is pretty easy. I get a “Ready to Install” window. Cool.

11:34pm: Official start time. Let’s see how long this actually takes.

11:44pm: Install done and restarting computer. I hope this works.

11:47pm: I am loading Ubuntu now and am very happy that I finally got this to work.

11:50pm: Downloading and installing updates. Everything seems to be working. I can connect to the internet perfectly. This has been a really easy process once I got past the initial “How to boot from a CD” fiasco.

I’ll have more to come once I get a change to bounce around in here.

UPDATE – I got it installed and everything working. I went to check to make sure XP would load correctly and it did perfectly. I did receive a hardware found message that I read I would see. It finished what it needed to do and did a reboot. This is where the trouble started for me. Upon the load, I see a GRUB Error 17 (or something to that matter) on the screen and nothing happens. It just stopped in its tracks. I push the power button to shut it down and start it back up and same thing. It will boot Ubuntu with the disc in but no Windows. I read online that I need to put something called SuperGrubDisk so I go to its site and get an ISO for a bootable disc. Thing is, my Ubuntu CD that I have in the box won’t come out because it’s running the OS currently. So I’ll burn it from another computer and load it tonight when I get home. But as of now, my computer is a nice paper weight.