OK Ubuntu....I will bite!

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

So......Im ready to give Ubuntu a go, but have no experience with linux.....(outside of Android devices).

And thought a slightly vague subject topic would leave scope for the onslaught of questions im going to have to ask!

Was thinking of going with a bootcamp partition on my old 13" macbook over virtual machine, due to this being a 2Ghz intel core 2 Duo with just 3GB Ram.....this a good option?

I assume I would just make a windows partition in bootcamp and not bother with downloading the windows support files, then reboot and install Ubuntu onto the partition with the ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso i just downloaded?

2

you're going to cause yourself a lot of pain with that, just download mint

3

I have installed Ubuntu on a acer One laptop for my barber & he loves it . I have tried running it as a VM on my laptop & for some reason it's as slow as hell , But in a clean full install though it fly's . I personally run Ubuntu & windows on 2 seperate machines but try it as a VM it may take some getting used to though.


Sorry about any spelling or grammer mistakes "they kicked me out of school" 

4

just download mint and put it on its own box, or bootcamp it like my plan with ubuntu?

As I don't have a spare machine sitting around at the moment.

5

First, im the last guy you need to apologise to about spelling or grammar! :)

 

I had a VM running XP on my macbook, and that was painfully slow, so its put me off the VM option.

6

The unity window manager can be a ressource bastard, so if you are going with ubuntu I would recommend the lubuntu variant. It is ubuntu bundled with the LXDE window manager which is very good for older PCs.

7

Run it from a USB stick thats another option you may find useful before you slap it on your full machine there are plenty of versions about though, I do mean of linux i only installed Ubuntu as thats what he wanted . But try the others aswell you can try gnome , openSUSE & Fedora to my knowgledge but you will also need the LinuxLive USB Creator to make a bootable USB stick ;-) , Hope this helps 


Sorry about any spelling or grammer mistakes "they kicked me out of school" 


8

QFT! I'm liking the LXDE gui. It has some minor bugs, but overall it's cool. It's pretty much windows XP and even if you have the resources to run Unity this is just so much better (IMO) I'm staying with it.

9

oooh like the look of this USB option!

Will report back!

10

I have run a large variety of linux distros, I even decided once it was a good idea to build Gentoo from scratch (don't do that unless you have a lot of time and patience).  I recommend checking out distrowatch.com and look at what the community thinks.  Then I would still install Ubuntu.  I agree with running it off the USB stick.  Then it would be a good idea to play around with the window managers such as Gnome, flux box, etc. I have never used the one mentioned above, LXDE but it sounds interesting and if I get some time may install it.  After you are familiar with Ubuntu then you can branch out to other distros.  The reason I say this is because the Ubuntu community is very good and I am sure you will have lots of questions.  You will find the answer most if not all of those questions.  As a side note I would probably let Ubuntu partition your hard drive or just install on another machine if you are a little weary about it.  Gparted does a good job.

11

well it is a mac so if you want a distro based on ubuntu that looks like OS X try this.

12

So turns out im unable to make a bootable USB that will work on the Mac :(

using the following guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How%20to%20install%20Ubuntu%20on%20MacBook%20using%20USB%20Stick

I get stuck at part 9, and just get "Operation not supported" in terminal when I try to execute.


13

I cant help you with mac "sorry" as i have yet to rebuild my netbook and install hackingtosh on it so i can mess around with OSX and linux , But i have run linux from a usb in windows ;-)