Since I knew my wife was going to be gone for a few hours last night, I decided to experiment. I logged on to geekbox (Ubuntu Linux 6.06...kinda. Explanation later) and burned my first iso in Linux (which was pretty darn easy, albeit slow). I burned an iso of Ubuntu 6.10 and had planned to wipe my old screwed up install (it ran, but it was hacked together...nothing was standard) and install a fresh, current Linux image.
I started by backing up the only data I needed from the old installs (fstab, mtab, analog.cfg and bookmarks...all other data was on the data drives) and then booted to the Ubuntu CD. If you want a "blow by blow" of a "normal "install, check out the early posts on Knightmare's blog. I am not going quite that detailed because I am going from memory and the minutiae will not be as accurate.
When the disc image booted, I chose install and made all my choices (name, user name, password, host name, time zone) and moved on. When it came to partition the drive, I had to pay attention because this is where my hardware is different from Knightmare's. I have 2 hard drives with a total of 4 partitions. The first hard drive (hda) holds an NTFS partition with Windows and a partition (hda2) formated with ext3 for Linux. The second hard drive has two fat32 partitions (for ease of use for my wife and that NTFS write is still buggy in Linux).
My goal was to wipe (but not repartition) the ext3 partition and install a fresh Linux image. When the installer asked me which drive, I chose the first one and then I chose hda2 and selected the manual option. Gparted, the partition tool, is pretty slick. I selected the ext3 partition and clicked next and a window appeared asking me if the choices were correct. It had listed all my partitions and had check marks next to the ext3 partitions (swap and /) indicating these were to be reformatted. None of the other partitions had check marks so I clicked next. The new partitions were created and the installation began. I received a message that the boot info would be written where I wanted it (this allows the dual boot when Windows is already installed). I started this at 7 PM. At 7:25 the install was complete and I was asked to reboot, which I did. When the PC was rebooted, I was given multiple choices for boot options: The standard Linux kernel, the safe mode of Linux, Memtest, or Windows. This was just like it was before I wiped and reinstalled except that Linux was the default. I needed to change this. Doing so is easy, if you do not mind the command line a bit.
I booted to Windows (just to make sure the boot manager was working and nothing went FUBAR) and was happy to see my wife did not lose her Windows partition due to my experiment. After rebooting into Linux, I went to the boot file ( sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst) and changed: "default 0" to "default 4" (Windows was the 5th line item in the list, the first is always 0, so Windows needed to be 4) and "timeout 10" to "timeout 5" so Windows would boot in 5 seconds if no selection is made. I this because I thought it unfair to make my wife do anything different to use the PC.
The very first thing I noticed when Linux booted up was that my Windows drives were already mounted ("mapped" to Windows users) so I did not need to refer to my fstab and mtab like I thought I would. Then I installed Automatix and used it to install some plugins that I knew were needed (Flash, Adobe reader, etc) and then installed all the codecs that were legally free so I could use the machine to listen/watch media. I updated the Nvidia drivers and then I copied over my bookmarks and installed the Firefox extensions I normally use. I also installed the Debian Menu script that puts an entry on your menu list of all programs installed, just in case the installer fails to do it. Nice app! I also used Automatix to install a few apps that I could have used Synaptic to install, but since Automatix was already running I used it. There were not many that I installed because I did not want to become obsessed with this experiment.
Later, I tweaked the tool bars (I like a cleaner look than what comes by default), changed the theme to a custom one, and changed the wallpaper and GDM logon screen since orange is not my color (I prefer silvers and blues). I installed localepurge to get rid of man pages and locales that I would never need and cleared up a lot of space. Localepurge, when installed and configured will automatically remove any localized man pages and locales from any install you do, saving space on your hard drive. Another tip is to run "sudo apt-get autoclean" after your updates and installs to clear out any temp files. I also configure an orphan filter in Synaptic to have it manage my orphaned files.
I decided to stop at 9:00 when my wife got home. I still have plenty more to install to cover everything I do, but the two hours I spent gave me a good box that meets about 90% of my daily needs.
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