http://www.pcmech.com/show/os/903/

personally, i'm not a big fan of ubuntu, and find it insanely constricting, but then again, i don't think Gentoo is a good place for linux n00bs to start...heh, what, with its manual install and all

What if I don't have an extra hd laying around? Is it possible for me to partion a section just for linux, or am I out of luck?

Yes, I did look through the guide you linked to, but he said that you needed another hd so I wasn't sure

You need to partition your hard drive. Too bad the only free partitioning tools are for linux.

there's an ubuntu live CD if you just wanna try it out (no install)

or you can partition your hdd using a tool such as Partition Magic, which allows the resizing of partitions with no data loss

or you can always pick up a cheap, small hdd for like $20 off ebay or something, lolz

Let us say I was able to obtain one of these partitioning tools. How do I make sure that I do not overright some of my files by installing Ubuntu? Does the partitioner (right word?) move all of my files so that they are safe on my windows partition and then create a new clean partition for linux?

Sorry for spelling out the contractions, but for some reason firefox has made the apostrophe key a shortcut for opening the find feature. I wonder how I disable that....

Edit: Sorry, Kllronhj did not see that part of your post. I will look into that.

http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/system_performance/pm80/index.html

thats pretty much the best partitioner you will find, runs from windows

when you partition the drive, just resize your windows one and leave at least 10gb, closer to 20 or 30 if you can spare it, UNPARTITIONED!!! do NOT format it, do NOT partition the extra space

WHEN you install ubuntu, you do a manual partition table edit (don't do the take over entire drive option), and make one partition somewhere between 512mb and 1gb, and set that as your swap partition, and the other as a ReiserFS partition set as '/' - root

optional: make a fat32 partition to act as a transfer drive between linux and windows, linux can READ ntfs, but not WRITE to ntfs, and windows can't read OR write to any of the linux partitions, hence the reason its in FAT32, i have a 1gb fat32 partition set as /shared in linux, and G: in windows to act as said transfer, whereas my friend has an 80gb FAT32 partition that he uses to store all his music and data on, so that both windows and linux can access w/ read/write the bulk of his data - although that isn't a viable option unless you are starting w/ a clean drive

And for those who REALLY want the "true" linux experience, check out Linux From Scratch in which you completely do everything yourself....

So I should shrink my windows partition leaving 30 GB for Ubuntu. Then when I am installing Ubuntu, I should partition 29 of those 30GB for Ubuntu and the other 1GB as FAT32 for the swap partition? So the only part I need partition magic for is the original shrinking of my winows partition, right?

Mostly right, except 512mb (give or take, depending on how much RAM you have - i made my swap partition 1gb, but i don't think it ever even gets used, lol, as i have 1gb of RAM) needs to be formatted as SWAP (its a type, you'll see it listed). This swap partition is what linux uses instead of a page file, which greatly reduces fragmenting to the point that you never have to run a defrag utility for linux

the FAT32 partition is for sharing between windows and linux



Correct

Alright, I have partitioned my hard drive and left about 30GB unpartitioned. Now I need to download Ubuntu. Go, go Leetchget!

I have 512 MB of ram. I thought the article said something about 1.5 times your ram. So, in that case, should I do 768MB?

lolz, i'm assuming you read thru that article first, right? understanding the entire process makes it much easier the first time

I read through it all and I understood most of it. I plan on re-reading it thoroughly and asking any questions I may have before I actually install ubuntu. I'm excited that I can finally yell at microsoft and not be a complete hypocrite

Edit: Here's a question. It said in the article that you had to burn a disk of this. Would it be possible for me to just put this in Alcohol's virtual drive instead?

haha, go for it - one of the best ways to learn is to jump in feet first

i won't be able to help you TOO much with ubuntu, as i've never really used it, but as i understand it, it is a distro based off of debian, which i did use for quite some time, until i found the all powerful Gentoo

Oh, one more detail to take care of, how are you connecting to the internet? If you are on just an ethernet to the modem, then you have no problems, dial-up or wireless, and it could be harder....

I'm on a wireless. Uh oh

heh, its possible still (maybe)

what wireless card do you have? (you could get extremely lucky and have on thats part of the MadWiFi driver in the kernel, otherwise you'll prolly have to use ndiswrapepr - which is what i have to do)

There are two things under Network adapters in my device manager.

1394 Net Adapter
Sis 900-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter

I am 99% sure that it's the second one. It's funny how all of the hardware in my computer seems to be Sis

um....neither of those are wireless cards....

the 1394 is firewire

the sis is an ethernet card

Perhaps my definition of wireless was wrong. My set up is as follows: Downstairs, where the cable modem is, I have a linksys router. Upstairs in my room I have a linksys ethernet bridge which is plugged into my computer. Perhaps this means I don't have a wifi card and I'm not technically on wireless internet? Is this set up the same (to the computer) as plugging it in directly to the modem?

Edit: Ubuntu just finished. [leetchget promotion]With Leetchget, I got like 600Kb/s so it only took less than 20 minutes.[/leetchget promotion]

if your computer only sees an ethernet out (as it sounds) and you required no other software (such as a linksys app) to set it up, then you are perfectly fine!

Easiest way to find out is to just go ahead with the Ubuntu install and then see if you have internet connection or not

I never had to install anything on this computer to get it to work so I think it should. Also here's a question. It said in the article that you had to burn a disk of Ubuntu. Would it be possible for me to just put this .iso in Alcohol's virtual drive instead?

Edit: I was browsing through Partition Magic and they have an option called "install another operating system," which "creates another partition for installing another operating system." Does it make sense to do that even though I have already partitioned the empty space. It can partition for Linux. It has the formats: "EXT2 and EXT3"

umm...you cannot use a virtual drive, as you cannot boot to it (virtual drives only exist once windows has started, therefore your virtual drive won't work in linux either, because it doesn't exist outside of windows)

don't use the partition magic althernate OS....remeber i said you'll make the main 28-29 gb partition as type ReiserFS - that is not ext2 or ext3