Information : Installing Ubuntu In your system

I was searching for a decent Linux installation as I was planning to move away from windows. (Still I will need windows to play my favourite games:D ).

I had posted a thread here asking which is the best linux distribution available. Well, didn't really recieve much inputs there. I had tried doing the same in other forums. Most common names were Fedora, Suse and Ubuntu. So, I decided to try out each and every one of the above operating systems.

I decided to start with Ubuntu because it was the smallest installation package available. I gave the download when I went to sleep and the next morning my Installation disc was ready. I have AMD Athlon 64 bit PC, hence I had downloaded 64 bit version of the CD. For a strange reason, booting used to stop after some time. Then I decided to try out x386 version. I did the same thing again. Kept the OS for downloading in night and the next morning the CD was ready.

This time, my CD booted! Well, this is one amazing installation CD. IN the sense that, the CD can as well behave as a LIVE CD (Doesn't require Hard Disk To boot). So, it was more like installing Ubuntu using Ubuntu!

The user interface is great and the simplicity of installation is astonishing. Put the CD. It will boot itself. Choose [COLOR="Blue"]Start Or Install[/COLOR] option and let Ubuntu boot itself. Just clicked on setup icon and I was guided to Partition manager. I carefully chose my partition table without effecting my current Win XP setup and the installation proceeded perfectly from then on.

I had real anxious moments as the installer crashed and my windows was not coming up. I tried reinstalling Ubuntu and it worked! Along with Ubuntu my Widows too came up in boot options!

The operating system is really good. It comes with minimal installations. (Which is good enough for a home PC unless you want to do some development work). It has a very good ADD?REMOVE programs utility which lists all existing downloads possible for Ubuntu. Beleive me, the list is too vast. Far too vast to discuss here. Just think of a software, you have it there. The only catch is, you need to have internet connection to get all the additional softwares. Since installation disk is small, you'll have to connect to net everytime you need a new software.

I'm still exploring the possibilities. But so far, the operating system simply rocks!

If anyone has ever installed this OS, please share your experience too. If you haven't tried yet, it is time you tried this wonderful OS!

Cheers!
Kalayama

I tried once installing Solaris in Patten but totally message up my hard drive .. Solaris won't come up properly complaining about display drivers...

Is there any help for Dual instalaltions since I would like to try this on my PC

Well, even I did dual installation. (Windows XP and Ubuntu). I already had Win XP in my machine. Since the installation disk of ubuntu is also the Live CD, when you boot with CD, Ubuntu actually comes up. Now, from Ubuntu you will be installing Ubuntu.

During installation you will have to allocate a partition (In fact 2 partitions, one for OS install and one SWAP partition. SWAP partition can be ver small in size like 300MB) for Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a partition managaer that come up and you decide on the partition. Make sure you have any one of your Windows Partition is free. (I have a 80GB Hard disk with 4 partitions. I decided to use 3 partitions of 20GB each for Windows and 20 GB of Linux partitions). Be very very careful here. If you format the wrong drives, you windows will go for a toss.

Once you allocate partition, Ubunutu installer will finish off rest of the jobs with ease. Note that you should have net connection at home to get full powers of Ubuntu. Most of the additional softwares will have to be got from net.

If you just want to try the OS, you don't need to install it. Just put the CD in the CD-ROM drive and the OS boots without hard disk !

Anyway, have fun installing Ubuntu, and if you get stuck up anywhere, feel free to ask!

Cheers!
Kalayama