[SLUG] Re: ubuntu query

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

> hi john i live at eastfield and recently bought an athlon3800 dual
> core 939 with X300 Radeon PCIExpress it has a 200 gig Maxtor 6720 hard
> drive, i saw your campaign in the library recently and decided to give
> ubuntu a try. in my handbook there are some worrying notes like-:-
> plug and play only works with widows 2000 and xp -later says- ATI
> RS480 chipset  ditto.and so i did the boot up and seemed ok. but a
> third of the way through loading the modules it got stuck on 'starting
> hotplug system' is there anyone in users group who would care to ring
> me on 01723 586445 with some advice or a talk through? i can call back
> to save their phone bill, i'm a pensioner and wonder if i overreached
> my capabilities this time anyway- seasons' greetings- john baldwin

Hi John

Thanks for getting in touch, I'll copy this to the mailing list and
ask anyone else with advice to email you and copy to the list.

I'm glad you wrote, too, because I've been having a discussion about
what older people do with computers. You back up my argument, so
thanks for that :-)

The advice I've heard previously from group members when asked about
distributions that don't install well is "try a different
installation".

It depends what you mean by 'give Ubuntu a try' too.

You can run Linux as a live CD, which means it runs off the CD and
doesn't write to your hard disc, so your Windows is left intact. The
Ubuntu disc, afaik, can do this but Knoppix is the king and is likely
to sense all of your hardware.

If you want to install Linux, that's a wholly different thing. Then
you need to decide whether you'll keep Windows as well and dual boot,
or whether you'll use Linux entirely.

It's probably good advice, since most distributions nowadays are
available in a live CD version, to try the live-cd thing until you
find one that senses all your hardware correctly and seems to work,
then consider installing that. At the very least, you'll need to back
up your Windows before you start with anything like that, but I'd also
advise reading up on it a little first. Alternatively someone in the
group might be willing to attempt an installation for you, assuming
you waver any risk.

I've been collecting information about different distributions here
<http://www.johnallsopp.co.uk/distributions.php4>.

If you wanted to pop along to the next meeting and ask questions,
we'll be at the Valley Bar (up the stairs) on Tuesday January 3rd at
7:30pm when, possibly, we'll be having a presentation on Perl
scripting and we'll be looking at some of the future technologies for
2006 including (and depending on the energy of the group members,
possibly that'll be it) a look at the latest version of KDE, the most
popular window manager that determines the look and feel of most
Linuxes. I'm sure if you asked  one of us would bring along some
distribution CDs for you to try.

Cheers
J