Installed Ubuntu as complete linux novice

bSlick

Well I installed Ubuntu yesterday, its my first experience with Linux. Here's what Ive found so far -

On installation I was surprised that it seemed to find and install all the devices on my laptop, I thought I would have to go searching the net for various drivers but no everything just worked straight off the bat. I presume if it can do this for my laptop it can do it for most/all pcs/laptops. I dont really understand this as I cant see how the ubuntu install cd could have enough space for the hundreds/thousands of drivers that are out there. But I was fairly impressed that it worked.

Then I tried using firefox, its the 3.0.8 ubuntu version that came with the installation. This was not a good experience, the search bar isn't working, the back/forward buttons aren't working and any changes I make to firefoxs' settings such as font size or home page dont get saved when firefox is closed so I have to change them again when I use it the next time. Firefox is bascially unusable to me without these features.

Then I tried to create a folder but I recieved an error message saying "Error creating directory: No space left on device". I then created an empty file, which worked. However when I typed one letter into the file and tried to save it I got an error message saying "There is not enough disk space to save the file".

I dont understand why this would be happening as during installation I just followed the default options. And I presume taking the default options will always work as in every other application/program Ive ever used.

When it came to the section on sizing partitions, there was an advanced option that lets you set the partition size manually but I just went with the default option that was already selected as I presumed it would be grand to get started with and it could be always changed down the line. But I was wrong and it wasn't grand to be started with as it seems Ive completely used up the partition just with the installation of the OS. Thats a bit of a joke tbh, surely the default option should be giving a minimum of an extra 5 gigs space to play around with.


I typed df -l into terminal, I dont really know what it means but I saw it on some forum somewhere when I was searching for answer to my problem. It returned the following

---

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 2403420 2298888 0 100% /
tmpfs 1547860 0 1547860 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1547860 108 1547752 1% /var/run
varlock 1547860 4 1547856 1% /var/lock
udev 1547860 152 1547708 1% /dev
tmpfs 1547860 468 1547392 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1547860 2392 1545468 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
overflow 1024 16 1008 2% /tmp

---

So that is my first experience with ubuntu/linux. The two most common tasks performed on a computer, creating files and browsing the net aren't working correctly and require fixes. I read someone say of linux before that half your time is spent searching for fixes and answers for basic functionality that has been standard on windows since windows 98. My initial experience certainly seem to bear that out. For as much as there is to dislike about Microsoft and Internet explorer at least when you load up windows for the first time IE will work and you can create a text file.Im going to stick it out with linux for another few days but I can't say Im too impressed with how things have gone so far.

ciano1

I installed ubuntu a while back as a noob.
Spent ages trying to set up all the codecs and internet settings but eventually got sick of it because of all the problems I had with it..

Then I installed linux mint and found it to be much better..
Its basically ubuntu with a slightly different interface but with all the codecs and stuff pre-installed..

I'd say before going back to windows, take a look at Linux mint

Blowfish

Thats a bit of a joke tbh, surely the default option should be giving a minimum of an extra 5 gigs space to play around with.

afair, the partitioner by default will create a partition equal to the amount of free space currently on the drive. Going by my rough calculations, it seems that your partition for Ubuntu is 5.5gb. Considering that a Vista install will take about 15gb, I don't think it's unreasonable that Ubuntu is struggling with 5.5gb.

p.s. The problems with Firefox is exactly the same issue. The reason it's not saving changes etc. is because there is no space to save them to.

bSlick

Blowfish wrote: »

afair, the partitioner by default will create a partition equal to the amount of free space currently on the drive. Going by my rough calculations, it seems that your partition for Ubuntu is 5.5gb. Considering that a Vista install will take about 15gb, I don't think it's unreasonable that Ubuntu is struggling with 5.5gb.

p.s. The problems with Firefox is exactly the same issue. The reason it's not saving changes etc. is because there is no space to save them to.

Well I dont understand why ubuntu would give itself such a small amount of space during installation. Like I said, I just went with the default options all along during installation, like every other newcomer to linux, and I end up not even having space left to create a 1 byte file. There is a ton of free space on the hard drive too. I formatted it and made a fresh install of xp right before I installed linux. There was about 100gb free space for ubunut/linux to partition for itself. It is very off putting to run into these type of stupid hurdles in your first half hour of using a new OS. It makes me wonder how much time Ill have to spend digging around forums for answers to basic functionality in future if I run into fundamental problems this severe in the first half hour. Since my last post the refresh button in firefox, which was working, has also stopped working.

turgon

I assume you are going to reinstall then?

Really you should. I had a huge amount of problems with Ubuntu at first, I had to reboot it once every 5 minutes the first few sessions and I had to reinstall once. But after the first 3 or 4 days of problems it was all good.

bSlick

turgon wrote: »

I assume you are going to reinstall then?

Really you should. I had a huge amount of problems with Ubuntu at first, I had to reboot it once every 5 minutes the first few sessions and I had to reinstall once. But after the first 3 or 4 days of problems it was all good.

Well what's the procedure I should follow then when reinstalling? As the first time I did it, selecting the default options left me with a partition completely taken up by the OS. So should I pick the "advanced" option when it comes to setting partitions.? Is there a guide out there on how to do this correctly?

Edit: Also how do I go about uninstalling the existing ubuntu first? Do also have to delete the partition its currently on?

turgon

bSlick wrote: »

how do I go about uninstalling the existing ubuntu first? Do also have to delete the partition its currently on?

I just formatted the partition.

bSlick wrote: »

Well what's the procedure I should follow then when reinstalling?

In the automatic setup can you not make the Ubuntu partition bigger with you mouse?

I did mine manually. You need 2 partitions, a "swap" partition roughly the size of your ram and a normal one that you set to root ("/"). I wouldnt do it manually unless as a last resort.

An Fear Aniar

bSlick wrote: »

Well what's the procedure I should follow then when reinstalling? As the first time I did it, selecting the default options left me with a partition completely taken up by the OS. So should I pick the "advanced" option when it comes to setting partitions.? Is there a guide out there on how to do this correctly?

Hi, maybe this guide here will help you:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall

I think it's weird that you just followed the defaults and ended up without enough disk space.. I don't hear of it happening much on the Ubuntu Forums, if it had been a common issue Canonical would have done something about it by now.

.

Dartz

He might not have had enough space... or not enough contiguous space. It'll use the largest contiguous space, never mind if it's barely big enough to hold a gnats fart.

You do need to shrink your Windows partition a good deal.... but watch out you don't go the other way, and smash data in your windows partition by formatting it.

diesel118

For beginners i would recommend LINUX MINT there les problems with flash....

bSlick

Well Im gonna give mintlinux a shot and give myself a decent partition size. That is if I can uninstall ubuntu and get rid of it's partition without screwing up my drive.

generalmiaow

I've spent many a day in partition hell but I'm back now, so post your issues and I will have a look if you like. Output of fdisk -l would be the best (if you haven't obliterated the ubuntu partition yet)

Also, I don't have much problems with flash in the latest ubuntu, but mint will solve them anyway with less screwing about, and is kept very up to date.

duffman85

Before you install Linux Mint, read the user guide ->http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/7/user-guide/english.pdf

When you were installing ubuntu you picked the resize option?
If you have 100GB free space it should have installed properly.

As Dartz said you might not have enough contiguous space - i.e. you need one big block of space instead of the same amount of space spread all over the drive.
Run the disk defragmenter in windows to reduce the amount of fragmentation.

Boot from the ubuntu/Mint live cd again - go to system->administration->partition editor
let it load up

then click on any partition where it says ext3,ext4 in the filesystem column
click on the delete partition button.
You are deleting these partitions so hat the ubuntu installer doesn't get confused when you try the reinstall.

There should be an option to resize your windows (ntfs) partition if you want.
then try installing ubuntu again or reboot and try booting from the mint livecd.

NotMe

You didn't make the Ubuntu partition big enough basically. See in the screenshot at the bottom there is a slider that lets you choose how much space to give to Ubuntu. The default is 2.5GB which is a bit small and seems to be what you have.





It's a bit stupid that 2.5GB is the default when it's not enough to run Ubuntu properly alright.

bSlick

NotMe wrote: »

You didn't make the Ubuntu partition big enough basically. See in the screenshot at the bottom there is a slider that lets you choose how much space to give to Ubuntu. The default is 2.5GB which is a bit small and seems to be what you have.





It's a bit stupid that 2.5GB is the default when it's not enough to run Ubuntu properly alright.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about, the 2.5gb option is presented as the default so that's what I selected.

Well I have linuxmint downloaded and burned off now. So Im ready to get rid of ubuntu. From what I understand this is the procedure -

1) First reset the MBR back to what it was before I installed linux using a method from this guide - http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p18.html#If_you_are_about_to_uninstall_Ubuntu
2) Boot from the ubuntu livecd
3) Use the gparted tool to completely delete the ubuntu partition
4) Reinstall ubunutu?

Is it as simple as that?

An Fear Aniar

There would be no need to reset the MBR, because Mint will install its own GRUB bootloader anyway. That's if you're using the same partition you had Ubuntu on.

You can use the Mint Live CD to arrange your partitions, it's essentially the same as the Ubuntu installer really.

.

generalmiaow

bSlick wrote: »

1) First reset the MBR back to what it was before I installed linux using a method from this guide - http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p18.html#If_you_are_about_to_uninstall_Ubuntu
2) Boot from the ubuntu livecd
3) Use the gparted tool to completely delete the ubuntu partition
4) Reinstall ubunutu?

Is it as simple as that?

Just 2, 3, 4. (Or using the mint cd instead of ubuntu which is highly advised!) Create a new partition of a big enough size, plus a swap partition of 2gb or so after deleting the ubuntu partition, make sure that partition has a mount point of / and the format box is ticked, then proceed as usual.

Most of the weird stuff you were getting with firefox would be due to low disk space. It would be good to know the total remaining space of your disk when ubuntu decided to give itself only 2.5 GB - did you use the "use largest contiguous free space" option or something else?

In the latter case, free space refers to literal disk space not allocated to a partition, rather than the sort of "free space" recorded by a file manager (that is, how much of an existing partition does not have data on it). Duffman8 has provided a way around that.

turgon

I found the Ubuntu installer partitioner less than satisfactory tbh.

When I was doing the final install it froze twice on the Partition phase, so I was left with a bunch of free space but for some reason it would not automatically install there. Instead I had to go, as a I said, the manual route.

bSlick

Well the partitioning worked fine, have Linux Mint installed now with plenty of space and everything's working fine. The overall interface seems alot nicer than ubuntu.

Just some questions -
1) All linux software/apps available to a distribution are stored in the distro's repositories and you download them using the package manager or the terminal...as opposed to windows where you go to an app's homepage and download it from there. Is this correct?

2) How would I get and install apache, php and mysql?

3) Is it possible to use photoshop cs4 in linux through some method or other? What about earlier versions of photoshop like cs2>

4) I went to appearance->visual effects and clicked normal. A dialog popped up saying enable driver? and NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver. I click enable and it says downloading and installing driver but it never progresses beyond 0% and eventually quits says desktop effects could not be enabled. I am using a Quadro fx2500m. Anyone able to tell me what's going wrong here?

5) What does sudo apt-get mean?

6) I mounted my windows partition as /windows when resizing it and it is now available in the base directory of linux filesystem. So this mean I can work with the windows files just the same as if I was running windows itself?

turgon

bSlick wrote: »

1) All linux software/apps available to a distribution are stored in the distro's repositories and you download them using the package manager or the terminal...as opposed to windows where you go to an app's homepage and download it from there. Is this correct?

Yes. Its one of the best features imo.

bSlick wrote: »

2) How would I get and install apache, php and mysql?

I answered this in your other thread, using information fro the How to Geek, here.

bSlick wrote: »

5) What does sudo apt-get mean?

Its the terminal command for managing packages, asfaik
Link

bSlick wrote: »

6) I mounted my windows partition as /windows when resizing it and it is now available in the base directory of linux filesystem. So this mean I can work with the windows files just the same as if I was running windows itself?

Yep.

BopNiblets

My Mint partition is 4.83GBs and everything works fine, I keep all my media on another drive and a Windows 7 partition on the same drive as Mint.

"sudo" means "super user do" I believe.

An Fear Aniar

bSlick wrote: »

3) Is it possible to use photoshop cs4 in linux through some method or other? What about earlier versions of photoshop like cs2>

CS4, possibly you could get it working to some extent using Wine... it's got three Gold ratings in Jaunty so possbly:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=14318

For CS2, install Wine Doors, it handles the installation and setup for CS2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-Doors

bSlick wrote: »

4) I went to appearance->visual effects and clicked normal. A dialog popped up saying enable driver? and NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver. I click enable and it says downloading and installing driver but it never progresses beyond 0% and eventually quits says desktop effects could not be enabled. I am using a Quadro fx2500m. Anyone able to tell me what's going wrong here?

You're not doing anything wrong. It should install for you automatically. Try it again, if that fails, go into Synaptic and install nvidia-glx-180. If that doesn't work, go to the Nividia driver page and select your driver:

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

You will get a .run file, which is sort of like an .exe installer, folow the directions given on the site.

If that doesn't work, try Envy:

http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

bSlick wrote: »

5) What does sudo apt-get mean?

sudo gives you temporary administrator powers, for about two minutes or so. apt-get invokes the Aptitude package manager.

Type:

man apt-get

for more information.


.

kleefarr

Thinking of installing linux myself soon.
Would it be a good idea to wipe the drive first using Seagate tools or similar?

An Fear Aniar

kleefarr wrote: »

Thinking of installing linux myself soon.
Would it be a good idea to wipe the drive first using Seagate tools or similar?

Do you not want to dual boot for a while first or is it a spare machine? Also, try a Live CD first to see if it will work on your hardware.

.

kleefarr

Was just going to use as a single machine. Will have another running W2K.

Blowfish

If that's the case, you don't need to wipe it first. Just nuke the existing partitions using the installer and you'll be fine.

kleefarr

Ok. I'll try that. Thanks.

bSlick

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

You're not doing anything wrong. It should install for you automatically. Try it again, if that fails, go into Synaptic and install nvidia-glx-180. If that doesn't work, go to the Nividia driver page and select your driver:

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

You will get a .run file, which is sort of like an .exe installer, folow the directions given on the site.

If that doesn't work, try Envy:

http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

Cheers man, synaptic worked, visual effects are working properly now.


Have to say, I'm liking linux alot now, I'm converted. Just glad I didn't give up after the inital bad experience. If I can get photoshop working, I can't see myself spending much time on windows.

An Fear Aniar

That's good to hear bSlick. The most enjoyable part for me is using the package manager (aptitude). Have fun exploring all the free software available:

http://www.osalt.com/

http://www.browsefast.net/

http://www.getdeb.net/

.

John The Bad

I'm using Linux Mint now after 7 months on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. As much as I like Ubuntu, I think Linux Mint is the best distro for newbies.

A word of advice to Linux newcomers: remember, you're getting this software for free; this isn't a product you just purchased so if it doesn't exactly work as you hoped at the first try, take a breath and start figuring it out. The internet is great for this -- most times, someone else will have stumbled across the same problem as you and will have a fair idea on how to fix it. Be patient, you'll get there. But try and not have the attitude of, "this isn't working out of the box, therefore Linux sucks!" Remember what I said; you're getting this for free.

An Fear Aniar

John The Bad wrote: »

Remember what I said; you're getting this for free.

It's not so much about the price, it's the fact you're installing it on a machine that was designed to run another operating system (and using devices mostly designed to run with windows drivers).

.

John The Bad

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

It's not so much about the price, it's the fact you're installing it on a machine that was designed to run another operating system (and using devices mostly designed to run with windows drivers).

I agree. That is another, very important reason why you should be patient with Linux.

turgon

+1 to the patience.

I personally was considering ditching Ubuntu after a failed install, but I kept at it and am reaping the rewards now. The OP had a very similar same experience.

bSlick

Yep definitely pays to have patience. I'm won over now. One thing I really like is that lack of bloat, so that the OS loads up in no time, whereas with windows xp even on a fresh insall I would be waiting 4 times as long for it to load up. And the load up time only gets worse the longer you use it. That's alot of wasted time over the coarse of the year.

The only issue for me is that although I got photoshop running with linux on wine doors, there were problems in that alot of the hotkeys weren't being picked up and it is too inefficient to run photoshop without them. So I'll still be using xp for photoshop work, although I want to learn some basic editing with the gimp so that I'll be able to do quick edits without loading xp.

MonkeyTennis

as a total newbie about to switch over, im worried about skype and webcam working ok.. any thoughts on this?

I need it to talk to my daughter who lives abroad to its a must have

gillo_100

Hey just thought I'd leave some of my experiences here also.

About half a year ago I installed Ubuntu, but to be honest never got into it that much, also I didn't do a very good job of installing it, I never partitioned drive and it was just on same partition as XP and also for some reason GRUB didn't seem to be loaded on my computuer.

Anyway after reading this thread decided to have a go of Mint.
So got rid of Ubuntu ( wasn't really sure how to do this as all I could find on internet about removing it was reformat partition it was on, but as that was my only partition that option was out so I ended up just deleting it in Windows, probably not the best idea). Then I installed Mint this time partitioning drive. 50gig for /windows which also has various programs and other stuff. 10 for /, 4g of swap and 96 for /home. I also have a 1TB hd with films and music on it, just left that alone.

All seemed to go fine except, when tried to boot XP got ntdlr missing, took a while to fix this ended up using XP disk and got it to repair. So now I can happily dual boot away.

Some problems, can't get some stuff running in Wine, CS3 and Matlab are two main ones. I might be able to get away with Gimp. Also I know there are alternatives for Matlab but I'm used to it and won't be changing for a couple of months anyway so probably just boot XP when needed. Secondly I don't have access to the 1TB hd from windows anymore, it wants to format it. Any ideas? it was originally formatted as NTFS.

Blowfish

MonkeyTennis wrote: »

as a total newbie about to switch over, im worried about skype and webcam working ok.. any thoughts on this?

I need it to talk to my daughter who lives abroad to its a must have

Skype is fine, I use it all the time. With hardware like webcams, easiest option is just to google the model name + Linux and you'll soon find out whether others have got it up and running or not

John The Bad

MonkeyTennis wrote: »

as a total newbie about to switch over, im worried about skype and webcam working ok.. any thoughts on this?

I need it to talk to my daughter who lives abroad to its a must have

My advise, don't get rid of Windows straight away. Install Linux Mint as a dual boot (or better still, from within Windows -- I think you can do this with Mint). I have Skype working fine on my installation but I haven't gotten round to buying a webcam yet.

onzlo

if you really want to try linux you should try the wubi installer. it only adds a dual boot option and if you dont like it you can uninstall it from the control panel in windows, also this does not require any major patitioning it only reserves memory for it.

hope this helps

An Fear Aniar

gillo_100 wrote: »

Some problems, can't get some stuff running in Wine, CS3 and Matlab are two main ones.

For CS3, try installing it using PlayonLinux:

http://www.playonlinux.com/en/

It does all the winetricks and configuring for you.

turgon

bSlick wrote: »

So I'll still be using xp for photoshop work, although I want to learn some basic editing with the gimp so that I'll be able to do quick edits without loading xp.

Forgive me if this is totally ignorant, but could you achieve a lot of the Photoshop stuff in Inskcape?