Linux is trying to kill me. Really.

[Prisoner]

For the past half a year, I've been infrequently been trying to install multiple "flavors" of Linux.

First try was on my XP system. Tried installing Ubuntu, had an ISO straight from the site and settings were perfect for my system. Burned it to a CD at optimal settings, slowest speed possible. Booted from the CD, tried it out with the Live CD or whatever it's called, and loved it. I wanted it on my hard drive, right then and there, until I tried some of the included programs and found they were all missing... Got rid of the disc, didn't try again.

Second Try, about a month later, I got Fedora. Burned to disc and used a USB creator (so if the CD was messing it up, I had a USB to try as well). Tried installing, Partition Manager decided to go commando on my XP partition. Wiped the hard drive, put XP back on, then upgraded to 7 shortly after. It took me approx. 5 days to get everything back in working order, and it didn't help that I was missing drivers that I couldn't find online. Had to do a hunt all over the place to get them back. So by this time, my not-so computer inclined self was very tired of Ubuntu.

Third Try, about 5 hours ago, I heard about Wubi. Tried it, seemed awesome. Installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Installed perfectly, no troubles at all. Partition Manager actually worked on this one! Woo! Then it rebooted. For 10 minutes, the boot screen did nothing but show error messages that I could not understand at all. Finally, it pulled up the login screen, I logged in, and started doing the basic setup. Change the clock, set up weather, get my apps running, etc, etc. It told me that my hard drive is failing (odd, as my hard drive was running Ubuntu and is now running 7). I tried getting some help, it told me that the help files are unavailable. It didn't let me do anything else. So I tried rebooting, and it loaded to the boot screen, did the same 10 minute routine, showed the login screen, and then promptly went away before I could do anything, and gave me a recovery console.

Tried installing the Desktop version, same thing.

Linux hates me. At least it didn't delete Windows this time. I know some of this is probably user error, but still. Come on. An automated installer should do the trick.
(is about to try again)

 

[fseal]

The very BEST thing that I can suggest for playing around with Linux n general or trying out various distros and various install configurations is to get "Virtual Box". It's free and it's INSANELY fast to setup Distro X, Y or Z. Play with it and if you don't like it blow it away and it makes ZERO changes to your main system's partitioning.


Installing is generally a lot easier because the harddware set is fixed. I get sound and video right out of the install with no futzing around far more often under virtual box than doing a native install.

You can also with a little extra work install tools to allow you to drag and drop files between windows and Linux and of course have your windows and linux programs both running at the same time. It's truly amazing

There are a few limitations for power rusing linux but for the most part you can do what you want to.

[Edit] Noticed the developer tag, I do ALL my deelopment on Linux using virtual machines, using WIndows as the host os. Being able to backup and checkpoint build machine configs and have 6 distros installed and startable at a moments notice is a godsend [/edit]

 

[whs]

+1 for the vitual Box approach. I had no problem using it in vBox. Only drawback is a relatively small screen window (about 14" on a 22" screen).
Another option is this. I use that too. It's nice for playing around, but not for serious work.

 

[fseal]

If you install the additional tools you can resize the screen to anything you want (including full screen) and the linux desktop will resize to match

[Edit] Ugh actually I just rememebered that the very latest kernel update 2.6.31 actually breaks a lot of virtual machines dunno if VB is afected but I think it might be. If you install latest ubuntu or FC12, don;t update the kernel :/ [/edit]

Nothing great goes unpunished

 

[whs]

If you install the additional tools you can resize the screen to anything you want (including full screen) and the linux desktop will resize to match

That's good to know. I am not sure whether those tools were around 1 year ago when I used it. But next time, I will give it a try. Thanks for the tip.

 

[fseal]

Actually the tools for virtual box have been getting better somewhat recently, stability is better than it was too. VMWare is more mature but virtual Box is really free for personal use and at home I prefer it. At work I use VMWare because that's what they have.

 

[Prisoner]

I tried VirtualBox a while ago, limited to maybe a half or a quarter of my system resources, which are extremely low for my case.

 

[fseal]

Ah, that's too bad, Yeah you can sort of get away with maybe 52 meg but really 1-1.5 gig is requred for smooth operation, atleast for development. And of course you need that left over for windows too...

 

[smarteyeball]

Another downside to VM distros is that you miss out on the 'eye candy' . While some of can be pointless, others like the spinning cube for example can be quite useful.

Welcome to the world of Linux - where nothing is ever really 'simple'

(Long term Windows usage = complacency and Linux frustration )

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

I personally just woke up and am going back to sleep but I feel like I should post first.

Linux can be unstable and unpredictable. I suggest you wait until the 18th and try the Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 (which will have a WUBI version) and see if thats any different. Things that failed to work for me properly in 9.10 worked fine in the 10.04 Alpha 3.

I was the same way at first to. Toyed around with Linux here and there, Zidane got me into it and taught me things about it.

Anyways, just wait and try Beta 1. Then get back to me.

 

[dmex]

I like to try the latest Fedora and Suse distributions every year or so and see how far their developement is progressing.

Last time I tried fedora I got this and I akin it to "Linux use on the Desktop has died" and amongst a hundred other apt package issues, subsequently formatted the drive completey, Ill try again next year.

 

[Prisoner]

Anyways, just wait and try Beta 1. Then get back to me.

Thanks, will do.

 

[MilesAhead]

I would try Mandriva. I used its predecessor, Mandrake 9.1. It ran great on my Pentium III 550 Mhz PC with 128 MB ram. Of course you need a newer distro for drivers but I would guess Mandriva still has the same lean attitude Mandrake had.

It's really better if you have broadband. You select the packages you want and they come up installed when you boot into X the first time. At least they do with Mandrake or Mandriva "One CD" setup discs. If your internet is slow you might prefer a 3 CD set so that you have enough to get going. You're a developer so you should really bite the bullet cuz you ain't seen such free development stuff as in Linux. On my old 486 16 Mhz PC I was building CORBA servers from free downloaded code!! Your grandchildren would grow old before you could mess with all the development stuff you can get for it for nothing!

Mandrake used apt-get package tool so I'd assume Mandriva either uses that or the next generation of the same tool. Around that time packages started to become standardized and installs were much less of a headache than I suffered in the old Slackware 3.0 days. It became typical for an install to go smoothly and work correctly on the first shot. Unlike Windows, once you got something to work it was usually bullet proof after that. With a UPS and a journaling file system, you were nearly indestructible. Unstable? Are you kidding! I couldn't hard lock my PC once the 2.x kernels came out. Even if X hung I could always hotkey out to a terminal session and kill X, then just start it up again.

 

[Kari]

I agree with those recommending VirtualBox, download here.

Here are two Linux distro's, Mandriva 2010 and GOS, running at the same time on Windows 7 desktop:



Can't complain!

Kari

 

[MilesAhead]

I agree with those recommending VirtualBox, download here.

Here are two Linux distro's, Mandriva 2010 and GOS, running at the same time on Windows 7 desktop:

View attachment 60715

Can't complain!

Kari

If I read the OP's specs right, he has 1/2 GB and you have 4. He should just slice off some HD, make a swap partition and a linux boot partition and go at it.

 

[Kari]

That's true. I missed that, with that RAM dual boot could be better.

 

[Frostmourne]

512MB on 7? That would be one step from going backwards. As for Linux I use it on an old laptop for downloading and a little bit of C programming. I prefer 7, just because its well, 7. GCC works reasonably well too. I can't be bothered with virtualization - 7 has a permanent exclamation mark offline due to the network adaptor, assuming that the program works properly, USB and all.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
with the latest release of VMWARE PLAYER (3.0) you get 3-D support -- hence decent graphics and its FREE. It can also create VM's as well.

So if you want all those fancy Linux desktop effects such as rotating cubes etc etc I'd go for vmware's vmware player.

The main problem with running a Virtual machine is that you won't be able to run DVD or TV cards on them so no Video streaming apps. Audio is fine of course.

You probably won't be able to play some intensive games that make serious use of video hardware either -- but for non gamers using a Virtual machine is exactly the RIGHT way to test all this software out --and eventually if you can get hold of a spare machine you can convert your VM to a Physical machine and run it on real hardware too.

(I'm currently typing this on a full blown W7 X-64 Virtual Machine with fully enabled AERO effects on a X-64 bit SUSE 11.2 HOST system -- no probs whatsoever and it runs at near enough native speed too).

For the curious -- I'm doing it this way round since I need to test a number of features in IE8 that have been giving some problems when accessing a SAP JAVA J2EE server which is accessed via a host Portal.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Dinesh]

When it comes to Linux, I recommend Linuxmint.

 

[Prisoner]

512MB on 7? That would be one step from going backwards.

Hey! 7 runs perfectly fine on my 512 mb system! xD

Well, I'll see if I can try VirtualBox again, I'm getting a RAM upgrade soon, 2 gigs.. so I think I should be able to run it somewhat decently.