yeah, sharing in the windows world uses the smb protocol (called samba in linux). sharing in the linux world is generally done with nfs. i don't have windows computers at home, so i never played with samba, but under the system|administration|shared folders menu on ubuntu you can play with the sharing settings.

 

well it's even easier with ubuntu. they maintain all a repository of thousands of programs that are trivial to install. you also get a gui to pick your programs and install for you automatically (http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/action.html).

 

I was finally able to view the Linux PC from my XP machine by clicking on view the network, then Microsoft, and it was under MSHOME/name of my network.

When I went to access it, it asked for a password and username, and I was never given one during the Live install.

I shut it down earlier, pretty cool how it does it, and it even opened up the CD ROM drive and told me to take out the disk, close the tray, hit enter, then it shut down.

I am certainly going to explore this some more, and will do a full install on another box.

 

Corey, if you ever wanna really get your paws dirty with linux, just boot off that live cd and type "install" at the command prompt.

If you've got a Windows install, don't worry. Ubuntu has a great partition manager, and once you get done, you can use GRUB as your boot loader instead of the default WinXP one. That's a good thing, because GRUB will see both the Ubuntu install and WinXP and configure them for you. Once you get up and running and comfortable with the command line interface (CLI), you can start using the terminal to really see how Linux works.

I have a dual boot of Ubuntu 5.10 and WinXP on my Dell Inspiron laptop that's been installed since it was released a few months back. After fooling with several older distros in the past, I have to say Ubuntu has been the easiest to install in terms of out-of-the-box workability. I'm still tinkering with it today to try to get it how I like it. There really is no limit to what you can do... just gotta figure out how to do it. That can take time, yes, but it's all part of the learning process. You're gonna get frustrated, but it can be very rewarding if you stick with it.

Another distro I've been meaning to try out is SuSE 10. That's supposed to be another really good out-of-the-box distro, that comes with the KDE desktop. I have it downloaded, but haven't had time to get it burnt (it's 5 disks) and installed. Maybe when I get back to work I'll fire it up on my test box.

I love Linux for what it is. I have a lot of respect for the Linux community. I'm not good enough at it to have it as my main OS yet, but I hope to get there one day.

 

I installed Suse by downloading a (I think) 50mb file. I burnt that to disc and then booted it. It will take you to the point where it asks which network card you have. There is quite a bit of info floating around of which network cards use what chipsets to figure out which driver you need.
After that it installed itself directly from a ftp server on the web. That way you'll get all the latest files.
I took quite a while as it was installing and downloading at the same time, but it worked well. With suse I keep running into the problem that after I enable the samba server, the nmb client for browsing the windows network won't work anymore.
Before I enable samba, I can browse my windows computers just fine, after I enable samba it sat there for a while and gave an error message.
I also spend an evening getting my handspring visor to work. I had to create a device in the \dev\ directory and then login as root to allow everybody to access it.
Then I finally got it working. Very rewarding once you get it, and you learn a lot of how things work, which will make the next problem easier to figure out.

It is truely amazing how so many people can contribute to something and then all put it together to make it work as a whole.

 

If you go with the full install, here's a few links to get you up and going:

www.ubuntuforums.org
A collection of HOWTOs - it's for the previous version, 5.04, but most will still work on 5.10.
A good customization guide for Breezy (5.10)

 

Good links.
I just read up on how to setup a printer from my PC so the Linux one will print to it.

I also tried that Open Office thing, and it was pretty good.

 

Wish I hadn't browsed this post, then I wouldn't be downloading Ubuntu. Haven't played around with a Linux OS for sometime, the last time I did I think Mandrake. I remember both fun and frustration, a good learning experience. The one thing that impressed me most was during the install I noticed smoke coming from my PSU
followed by sparks and flame shooting thru the fan. Yah I got the fire out, lots of nasty smoke, the PSU toast literally. Well after replacing the PSU, CPU fan, a couple cables, and replacing a few wires I turned it back on to see what other hardware problems there were. Surprisingly she booted right up and picked up the install right away from where it had left off. Show me a MS OS that can take that type of offroad beating.

 

I guess that OS was really smokin' eh

 

I've installed ubuntu this week as a dual boot on my laptop (Presario R3000, P4 2.4GHz, 512MB) and it runs like a charm. The wireless connection is working with wep through the ndis-wrapper. That's a neat piece of software which allows the use of ndis drivers (windows, OS/2, netware also I recall) which come with any network card.
Uprgrading to the latest firefox (v 1.5) took some reading, but I actually learned a lot about the operating system in the process. On the topbar it shows cpu speed (which I can now slow down to a lower MHz with the click of the mouse), CPU Temp, wireless network strength and some other things.
Skype works good too, and I am even playing radiostation in the ASF format. This has come a long way from the last time I tried linux.
I changed the sound juicer CD Ripper so it will write MP3 format at 320Kbps through lame so that's all set up too.
If it wasn't for the PLC programming software which requires windows, I wouldn't even bother with the dual boot setup. The game package comes standart with Yathzee!!, one of the few games I actually like to play on occasion.

 

Sounds good.

I still have not installed it on the old PC my brother gave me.
I wonder if I should go for a dual boot boot on the PIII 500 that I tried it out on from the CD?
That is the PC that is in the guest room that is hooked up for now.

No glitches running two OSs?

Did you go for the huge install which was a few GB, or did you get the install that you can make an ISO out of like I did and burn it to a 700 MB CD?

 

I did the install from a approx 615mb iso file, burnt onto cd. Worked like a charm, it resized my winxp partition. As it dit that it looked like it froze, but the hd light kept flashing so I knew there was action. After about 30mins or so it came back that it was done.
The first time I booted XP after that it kicked in an automatic hd check, all was fine after that.
The neat thing is that when you grab the software installer, you can select anything of the ubuntu servers and it will download and install it after you hit apply. Really quite slick.
I even downloaded some GPS software, but my laptop doesn't have a serial port which makes it a bit more trickey. I have a usb -> serial adapter which does get recognized. Haven't had the time to sort it all out yet.
Ubuntus approach is a major software update every 6 months or so, but they won't update firefox for example in between those periods. It is apperently hard for them to keep everything stable by updating all the little things constantly. They focus on major updates on a regular basis.
I spend some time reading up how to install firefox 1.5, and was dealing with some minor issues which i figured out by searching around.
As you deal with more issues you'll quickly learn a lot, at make future issues minor inconviences.
I use thunderbird for email, and the only problem there at the moment is that links in the email don't open up firefox. I am sure I'll find the solution to that too.
I really do like the feel of it, and the updated firefox runs a lot faster then the original which comes with ubuntu.
Corey, you probably would use the Gaim messenger for your AOL account. It's also installed by default, I've just never gotten into that part.

If you get around to it, and have questions, just post here. I'll be keeping an eye out for this thread. Can't guarantee I can be helpfull, but I'll try.

 

If you do go dual boot, make sure you defrag the hard drive before you install, because there have been instances where the ubuntu partition manager would overwrite some windows files while resizing the hard drive, due to them being spread out all over the drive. So just make sure you defrag it before you try the dual boot and you'll be fine.

 

I never did that, cross my fingers all went ok. Windows XP booted fine, so if anything went missing I can probably reinstall the affected application.
There isn't a whole lot of data on my laptop, I keep that on my desktop.

 

Since you can still boot, you should be ok. If you wanna be cautious, go to My Computer, right click on C:, click on properties, then tools, and click "Check Now" for error checking. Select both options, and click ok. You'll have to reboot for it to do it's thing, which will take about 30 mins or so. If you have any errors or missing files, that utility should pick 'em up.

 

It did that automatically after I booted into XP the first time after resizing. No problems there, so I guess I lucked out.
Maybe Murphy didn't know about this opportunity to screw me over.

 

I think this is quit neat. Check out the corner with cpu temp and speed.
The CPU speed applet allows you to change the speed of your cpu if it supports it.
Quite handy to save batteries on laptops when your just doing simple stuff.

 

That is cool! I haven't fooled around with Ubuntu enough on my laptop to notice that. Seems like the software would take advantage of the Speedstep technology built into the processor, and underclock it when it's running on batteries. Windows XP does that for you by default unless you change the power management settings to do otherwise.

 

The only thing which I wasted way to much time on is Gaim. I cannot get the chat link to come through into Gaim.
I have the gaim-remote plugin enabled, and even when I used gaim-remote from the command line with the link included it won't work.
Maybe somebody can invite me into the room or tell me what the room is called when I manually enter it. The pluses in the link give an error, and when I replace them with spaces then they disappear.
My handle is BCYota4Runner .
I've also tried Gaim for windows, and the links don't work either. Too bad, because it even works with a ICQ account which I used years ago.

 

Ironically if use icon under my avatar Gaim will open a window for messaging. Weird, I guess it must be an internal thing or maybe a version difference between gaim & gaim remote.
Some people claim that the links work for them.