February 27th 2008
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Internet, Linux
The last few years has seen the unprecedented intrusion of Linux into the desktop computer operating system market. While Microsoft still continues to dominate the OS market with it’s many incantations of Windows, Linux (along with Apple’s Mac OS X) has walked into Microsoft’s house without even wiping its feet. Perhaps the most publicised or most widely known flavour of Linux is Ubuntu and its many forks. This is probably the distribution that has made the most waves in the houses of the average Joe around the world. One of the major aspects of any Linux operating system is the perceived complexity of installation and general use. 
Ubuntu and many other flavours are challenging this view and with the adoption by Dell of Ubuntu, are challenging Microsoft’s dominance over the market. One piece of software which hopes to step up to the challenge and convert the faithful Windows users to Ubuntu is Wubi.
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer currently in beta that takes the risk out of installing Ubuntu alongside an existing Windows partition. It runs Ubuntu from within Windows from a disk image. Its aim is to get the Windows user aquainted with Linux and Ubuntu. Anything that prevents me from wiping my hard drive or braking partitions gets a thumbs up from me. But, does it do what it says on the box?
Installation
On running the Wubi executable, you’re presented with one screen where you choose which drive to install your choice of Ubuntu or one of it’s forks. One click and it does it magic. It downloads the required disk image and then works even more magic. Afterwards you’re required to restart. If the post finishes here, it means I broke it.
Using Ubuntu
Unfortunately, on reboot and selecting Ubuntu from the menu resulted in several freezes when trying to active the swap partition so I didn’t actually manage to get into Ubuntu. I was surprised however that the experience provides the experience of Ubuntu but without the risk of installing it as an inexperienced user. As it is in beta I am not surprised that my experience failed however I have high hopes for the software and its part in the spreading of Ubuntu, and Linux in general, into homes around the world.
Conclusion
Wubi allows the quick and risk-free installation and uninstallation of Ubuntu and its many forks which makes it an ideal piece of software for those not experienced with partitioning and the like.
The ease of installation and uninstallation surprised me and even though I didn’t get to actually use the installed OS, it would appear that if the experience is just the same as installing Ubuntu manually, it could be an invaluable tool to convert people to the world of free software. Go and give Wubi a test drive today: download.
June 5th 2006
Life, Linux, Technology
So, as one person returns to Windows, so do I. After 16 hours of endless IRC chatting, recovery console commanding and generally scraping the ‘Dell‘ logo off my laptop I decided to go ahead and just reformat my harddrive and reinstall Windows XP.
I’ll tell you, I’ve never been so happy to see to the Microsoft logo come up on my screen. It took just over an hour to reformat my drive and install wonderful Windows XP. If you haven’t read my previous posts on this issue you won’t know that while trying to install Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) on my laptop it corrupted my hard drive which meant that Windows would not boot. I managed to transfer my personal documents through numerous trips back and forth between a Knoppix live CD on my laptop and my desktop computer but it was so slow and I had to keep reformatting my USB stick every time I wanted it to work in Knoppix again - for a reason unknown to me. Having a fresh install of Windows was really nice and without the extra Dell shite they provide it was even better. Besides having to reinstall my audio drivers (after talking to a nice Indian woman for 10 minutes) everything was great.
Thanks to a friend I managed to take my Thunderbird profile with me so I lost no e-mails or e-mail account information, for which I’m greatly thankful for. I’ve reinstalled Firefox and all the other applications that are essential and also I’ve managed to navigate through the maze of unending upgrades via Microsoft Update - oh, what a strain on the eyes and the internet connection.
So, I have my laptop back. But at what price? Well, I’m not going to be touching any linux distribution any time soon; niether on my laptop or desktop computer. I’ve also learnt that no matter how many times the install goes right and you’ve backed up, when you don’t back up it’s guarenteed to go wrong. Stupid me. I still like Ubuntu though and I’ll continue to use it specifically the live CD.
So, thanks to everyone that replied and anyone who meant to but didn’t find the time :D. Problem resolved, although not the way I wanted it to get resolved.
June 3rd 2006
Blogging, Life, Linux, Technology
Update: I’ve now managed to actually copy my precious documents off my laptop via numerous trips to and from my laptop and desktop PC. After staying up until 01:30 this morning just to actually get it to boot into Windows, I’m now stuck with an error that says “autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK” and I can’t proceed any further. If you’ve had this before please leave a comments with your solution. Thanks.
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Well, I gave installing Ubuntu 6.06 a go on my laptop around 30 minutes ago and now I believe that all my partitions on my harddrive are now unrecoverable. During the installation I resized my Windows partition minus 8GB (enough to still leave me 15GB of free space for Windows). I told the partition manager to create two new partitions - one ext3 partition of 7GB and one linux-swap partition of 1GB, more than what the instructions asked for. I then proceeded to the next step and it gave me options to mount the root. Unfortunately, the partitions I had just made didn’t show up in the drop down list - only the Windows partition did. So, I went to the previous step and that was when I swallowed my heart. Error symbols and the window showing my NTFS Windows partition was now a FAT16 partition. And that linux-swap partition I had created was now a NTFS file system and the ext3 one was now a FAT16 filesystem. I have to say that I did want to die. This is my damn laptop and I’ve only had it just over a bloody year. I exited the Ubuntu install and restarted the laptop.
Bad PBR
I only assume that is something to do with the boot record. I then fired up the Windows Recovery console, and wrote a new master boot record (MBR) but to no avail. I then fired up the console again and checked if the Windows partition was actually in the boot record. It wasn’t. I’m now running the in-built diagnostics to try and determine the problem but all this time I’ve been writing, it’s at 5%.
Please, please, if you’ve encountered this before, or know someone who has, please help me. Cheers guys. I’ll update when I can - if I can.
June 3rd 2006
Internet, Linux, Technology
I’ve been playing around with the new combined install/live Ubuntu 6.06 CD and am jumping on the bandwagon and am going to talk about this extremely popular linux distrubution.
Although I couldn’t get the live CD to support my resolution of 1440×900 I still loved it. The user interface has been improved since the last release and is now slightly shiny and orange. I like this. The icons have also had a revamp which I do like but you can feel that it’s still Ubuntu. You can know run the hard drive installation from the live view of the OS and the installation process has been improved vastly by being layed out better and providing fewer options but with better descriptions. I’ve previously talked about how the installation of Ubuntu has caused hassel for me, especially during the hard drive partitioning, but this version is so much better in this section. I’ll definately be installing the Ubuntu desktop OS when I free up enough space or come into posession of a new hard drive. Hint, anyone?
Besides the desktop release of this distrubution I also found a server release - news to me. This is basically the Ubuntu distribution pre-installed with LAMP (Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP). Now, I’d be really interested in this - if only I had a spare computer - to serve as my server because it’s much safer on Linux than Windows. Plus you get added Linux-ocity. I’ve ordered my CDs for this version, have you?
Check out:
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Ubuntu and many other flavours are challenging this view and with the adoption by Dell of Ubuntu, are challenging Microsoft’s dominance over the market. One piece of software which hopes to step up to the challenge and convert the faithful Windows users to Ubuntu is Wubi.
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer currently in beta that takes the risk out of installing Ubuntu alongside an existing Windows partition. It runs Ubuntu from within Windows from a disk image. Its aim is to get the Windows user aquainted with Linux and Ubuntu. Anything that prevents me from wiping my hard drive or braking partitions gets a thumbs up from me. But, does it do what it says on the box?
Wubi allows the quick and risk-free installation and uninstallation of Ubuntu and its many forks which makes it an ideal piece of software for those not experienced with partitioning and the like.