As of my buying a laptop and fixing it up i somewhere forgot to save some money for an OS. Since I've heard so much good things about Ubuntu, i wanna try it out before i go and put it on my new laptop. So I'm going to try it out by putting it on my old IBM thinkpad 600, there is no files needed to be backed up or anything as i barely use it. Its currently got windows 2000 loaded on a 5 gig HD. How can i repartion and delete all files on the HD to put Linux on it? Thanks
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OS change from Microsft to linux.
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swatbat
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The installer for linux will let you erase the drive and do a full install on it.
If you want to test it out though just get a "live cd" from on of the various vendors. That will let you boot to it from the cd and play around a little without installing it.
If you want to test it out though just get a "live cd" from on of the various vendors. That will let you boot to it from the cd and play around a little without installing it.
The install cd IS the live CD. Just download the iso file from ubuntu, burn it to a CD, pop the cd in the drive and restart. Make sure your laptop is able to boot from the CD (you might need to change this in the bios or press a button on start up (like F12 on some machines)). Ubuntu should start right up. You will not loose any data using the live CD unless you want to 
Good luck and have fun
Good luck and have fun
swatbat
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The install cd IS the live CD. Just download the iso file from ubuntu, burn it to a CD, pop the cd in the drive and restart. Make sure your laptop is able to boot from the CD (you might need to change this in the bios or press a button on start up (like F12 on some machines)). Ubuntu should start right up. You will not loose any data using the live CD unless you want to
Good luck and have fun
To clear this up some the ubuntu cd is a live cd as well as an installer. Not all linux distros do this. That being said ubuntu is a good start for someone that wants to play around with linux some.
One thing you will want to be aware of, is Ubuntu doesnt seem to enjoy laptops much. Make sure you can adjust your laptop brightness and that its fan cooling does power on when it gets hot. Ubuntu doesnt do that on my Toshiba A105-S4254, only Fedora Core is compiled and runs correctly.
:-/ Still?
I tried OpenSuse 10.3 and I was surprised how well it worked on my PC laptop. Screen resolution, 3D acceleration, power management, sleep and hibernate, and wireless all *just worked* right after install with no fussing around on a relatively new 945MG (Merom supporting version) chipset/broadcom wireless laptop..
That's so odd, because I have the exact same model of laptop and Ubuntu 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10 worked perfectly out of the box.
Whatsisname
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Just remember that it is not by any means a replacement for windows, so don't think of it that way as you begin.
ubuntu 7.04 (and the upgrade to 7.10) runs flawlessly on my MSI laptop, wireless worked out of the box (granted the connection manager was a tad flakey, but that might have something to do with me pfaffing about with it because i was used to having to do that).
My desktop though is a completely different story, 7.10 64 bit wasnt happy with my 8800 GTS (i went 32 bit, partially for playing doom 3 and other non 64 bit apps), then ubuntu in general kept fucking up with my wireless card (yay including beta drivers in releases). One wireless ethernet bridge later i am free from the hell that is wireless networking
bottom line, the only real problem with linux on a laptop is the wireless lan support, which is hit or mis, if you are lucky everything works out of the box, if you arent lucky, well, you better get your compiler out
also, anyone running ubuntu on their laptop, check out to see if you are affected by the loadcycle bug!
Linux in general hates laptops in my experience - and Ubuntu gives out more than the usual level of hate from what I have seen. The newest release was pretty much unusable on my HP laptop. After messing around with it a while, I just gave up and let Windows have the disk space back. Not sure how it will work for you on the IBM.
To be fair a more dedicated user probably could have worked out the issues I had, so don't take that as discouragement. Linux is just a toy for me as it can't run... well it can't run much of anything I need natively. This results in me giving up faster than most
To be fair a more dedicated user probably could have worked out the issues I had, so don't take that as discouragement. Linux is just a toy for me as it can't run... well it can't run much of anything I need natively. This results in me giving up faster than most
Yer, Dell and Linux have been spot-on for quite some time (just the wireless broadcom being a bit hit and miss uptill 2 releases ago).
Other laptops also are pretty good. Most of the time the install is hampered due to ACPI quirks between laptops. ACPI can easily be disabled for the install to complete.
I have not had any issue with any dell laptops,IBM,Mac w.r.t linux for some time
Other laptops also are pretty good. Most of the time the install is hampered due to ACPI quirks between laptops. ACPI can easily be disabled for the install to complete.
I have not had any issue with any dell laptops,IBM,Mac w.r.t linux for some time
longblock454
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I haven't had or needed a Windblows machine in 5 years.
Witty lines like Windoze and Windblows underline the neutrality of your post
It was a fair point. It isn't as easy as just saying "time to switch to Linux!" or anything, though I would imagine he knows that.
Just make sure you can do what you need to do with the OS first - whatever it may be. Many people use Linux just fine as a desktop (see above), for me it can never be more than a toy mostly because it can't do what I need. I kinda get the impression that is the whole thing you are trying to do anyway. Though if you are really out of cash for an OS, then I guess you don't have to worry about a choice heh.
digital_exhaust
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Witty lines like Windoze and Windblows underline the neutrality of your post
And it's getting to the point that every time I see shit like that, I immediately assume the poster is either lying, or simply a.....well, you know...
I have used Windows for ever... I've had a Vista box running since the early beta's, and still have two in the house... but since 7.04 came out, I find myself using Ubuntu almost exclusively. It does everything I need it to do, outside of playing nice with my ATI cards.... but I'm not going to run around making silly innuendo's hinting that Microsoft "sucks"...
And really, I know it's been said a thousand times... but you won't see many Windows users trolling the Linux forum here.....
And I've had pretty good luck running Xubuntu 7.04 on my ancient Panasonic laptop.... everything seems to work fine.
Actually it's so bad that you cant post anything there anymore. That's why hards linux forum is basically dead. It gets a few posts here and there, but when a good conversation gets going, the windows fanboys come plowing in and ruin it for all of us. I have several infractions to prove it.
Also.... (how to say this politely?)....... The owners/operators/moderators of hard refuse to create a separate windows forum, and as such we cant really discuss general OS topics in the general OS forum because it has been "deemed" the windows section. (Why not just rename it the windows section then?) As such we cant really talk about anything that doesnt run on windows....
i seem to rememeber you egg it on quite a bit. and btw, if you have a problem with the mods on this forum, take it up with them personally or in the feedback area. all the petty childish bullshit arguments is why i stopped posting here so much.
to the OP: i've heard bad things about ubuntu on laptops as some have mentioned here. i use OpenSUSE 10.3 on my desktop and love it. that and fedora are supposed to work well on laptops with the power management issues. i'd look into those before you look into ubuntu.
pretty much all the regulars of their chosen OS are guily of this to some degree
But I agree with Duby229, this section of the forums need to go like the gaming section... Everything as a subforum with the main section more for general OS stuff
Actually the Fedora kernel has issues with Core2 CPU's in laptops (again associated with ACPI) and an option is needed to be sent to the kernel to disable something that fedora enabled
ACPI is one area that ALL linux-distro's do seem to have an issue with. For laptops and their slight quirks between them it makes it worse...
Windows manages it because during install and post-install their is hardly any ACPI UNTIL the mobo drivers are install
Linux however is different ALL of ACPI and its quirks are catered for in the kernel, the kernel has alot of drivers and options in it, HOWEVER if a distro configured the install medium driver in such a way that it clashes with that machines ACPI quirks then there can be issues
There is really only 3 solutions
1) leave as-is and pass the flag to disable ACPI for those few cases when install fails (due to quirks in laptop ACPI) and then provide perm fix post-install (perm fixes are allways listed)
2) Have the install-kernel not have that on and then at install-time you configure your own kernel (akin to gentoo)... bad idea for general user
3) have a whole load of kernels on the install medium/update path and the correct one is used for a particular quick, again a bit hard due to Fedora and the rest won't have access to every single laptop
#1 is the closest to how windows does it (for the linux world).
longblock454
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I used to be a die hard Windows fan. I had no preference just got sick of m$ and simply said I'm gonna try something else. Since then (my last Windows OS was early 2000) I've really come to appreciate Linux and only since started to talk shit towards Windows. I'm not a gamer, Linux can do just about everything else just as good or better IMO. For what I do at least.
BTW, I run Fedora on several different laptops without issue.