Is your laptop hard drive nearly full

agurney said:
Before commiting, it would be worthwhile trying various flavours of Linux in a virtual machine to see how you get on with them. VirtualBox and MS VirtualPC are both free and work well with existing Windows systems.
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You don't even have to go to that trouble with Ubuntu - it comes with Wubi, which lets you run Ubuntu sessions under Windows.
 
In the past I Have simple copied the HDD data from one Disk to another, and installed a New HDD I have found 250GB a good platform for my laptop. (installing a fresh copy of XP) to run Nobletec and GPS inputs aswell as SSB Weatherfax - lots of info lots of time but I made it all work.

Although it is an interesting idea replacing the CD ROM drive on a laptop (very easy on Desktop) I recall external DVD rom drives being rather expensive.

Check out www.novatech.co.uk and www.ebuyer.com for all yoour computering needs
 
elton said:
Wubi is great! Just download it, run the installation, and Bob's your uncle. You now have a dual-boot machine, defaulting to your original OS. Removing it is equally simple and safe.
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Or one of the many available Linux LiveCDs, look out for them on magazine cover discs, or download an iso and burn it yourself.
 
elton said:
Wubi is great! Just download it, run the installation, and Bob's your uncle. You now have a dual-boot machine, defaulting to your original OS. Removing it is equally simple and safe.
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So, if I download Wubi and install it I end up with Ubuntu (Linux) and can either boot into Ububtu or Windoze?
 
Major Catastrophe said:
So, if I download Wubi and install it I end up with Ubuntu (Linux) and can either boot into Ububtu or Windoze?
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Not quite. Wubi lets you run Ubuntu from within Windows, so you start Windows first, then Ubuntu. It's a good way of trying out Ubuntu, but there is a performance (and boot time) hit so if you like it a proper Ubuntu install is the way to go. It coexists with a Windows install very happily.
 
Ubergeekian said:
Not quite. Wubi lets you run Ubuntu from within Windows, so you start Windows first, then Ubuntu. It's a good way of trying out Ubuntu, but there is a performance (and boot time) hit so if you like it a proper Ubuntu install is the way to go. It coexists with a Windows install very happily.
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I installed version 9.04 on an old P3 machine recently, and it is a proper duel boot. The Linux file system resides in a Windows file (which can be simply deleted if necessary), but Windows doesn't start at boot unless told to.
 
elton said:
I installed version 9.04 on an old P3 machine recently, and it is a proper duel boot. The Linux file system resides in a Windows file (which can be simply deleted if necessary), but Windows doesn't start at boot unless told to.
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I used to run BeOS like that, how big is the Ubuntu file? It says 5GB HD space required on the Wubi download page
 
elton said:
I installed version 9.04 on an old P3 machine recently, and it is a proper duel boot. The Linux file system resides in a Windows file (which can be simply deleted if necessary), but Windows doesn't start at boot unless told to.
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Thanks. My bad.

Puppy Linux (which is great for older, slower PCs) works that way too - it lives in a couple of files which you stick in your existing files system somewhere. The whole thing is about 100MB!
 
Ubergeekian said:
Thanks. My bad.

Puppy Linux (which is great for older, slower PCs) works that way too - it lives in a couple of files which you stick in your existing files system somewhere. The whole thing is about 100MB!
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IMHO the problem with puppy etc is that it's too bare bones to impress a windows user.

I keep banging on about it, but one of the benefits of PCLinuxOS is that it comes in all different flavours.

One of them is Minime which is only around a 300MB download.

All the PCLinuxOS variants come with a built in remaster (LiveCD or USB) script so that you can start with Minime for example, add Opera or Firefox and then burn it to disk or USB.

It also has closed repos, all the apps are packaged by the PCLOS team so that there are no dependency problems.

There's also a neat "update-notifier" which keeps the machine, errrr, up to date continuously.

It's probably not geeky enough for hardened 'nix jockeys but it's perfect for the curious windows user.
 
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