Xp to Ubuntu

[crferrucci]

I have a older Dell 5100c running xp 2g ram and 40 g hard drive. I tried ubuntu 12.04 with a live cd. It worked great. I was very impressed with this operating
system. Does this mean it will work ok if I replace
xp with ubuntu ?

[offgridguy]

It will work fine. If you have anything on your XP that you want to save, be sure to do so onto
an external device, flash drive, cd, or whatever your preference before you replace with
ubuntu. Depending on what you have been running in terms of software apps. you
may find that you cannot use these same programs with ubuntu. There are a lot of
open source alternatives that work very well though, LibreOffice 3.6 as an example.
Good luck with your install, the prompts are very straight forward, easy to follow,

[AndyOpie150]

I have an old 2003 SONY VIA desktop with an old Wireless card. I had enough room on the hard drive to dual boot (120GB)

Here is a screen shot of Ubuntu 12.04 with the Gnome Classic desktop environment.



"Applications" is a drop down menu of all applications. "Places" is a drop down of all your folders (including system folders) and all attached devices. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to take a screen shot with the dropdown menu showing

With my old small screen of only 1024x768 and the Unity desktop envirnoment, the web pages on all the forums (except here because they auto fit) where to large for the space left (the left side icon Bar/shortcut bar/task bar takes up a lot of space on a small screen) and I had to re-size all of them (or keep having to use right to left scrolling to see everything) and most ended up being eye squint small.

You can usually only run in 2D because of the graphics driver being sub-par in the older computers,so fancy 3D effects don't work at all (unless your able to upgrade your drivers)

With your Hard Drive space you might try Lubuntu. It's supposed to be better for older computers with smaller hard drives and RAM. Try Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu and see which one you like the best.
Ubuntu and Kubuntu have the longest support length, Xubuntu and Lubuntu have the least support length.

Kubuntu has all the bells and whistles, but takes more time to figure out because of it.

Note: The clock and system rings are actually an add-on called Conky-lua (you can change the colors to whatever you like). There are other versions of Conky that display the same info and more, just all in one box instead of the rings.

PS: If you have an old wireless card and need help getting it to work let me know (been there, done that).

[jerrrys]

XP still has some life left in it, why give it up? You can install Ubuntu side by side (dual boot) and have them both.

And welcome to the forums

[AndyOpie150]

I have some applications for Android Phone Brick recovery and a Library which can only be installed on the Windows OS, or I would have Ubuntu on the whole hard drive.

[offgridguy]

I have some applications for Android Phone Brick recovery and a Library which can only be installed on the Windows OS, or I would have Ubuntu on the whole hard drive.

Hello AndyOpie150; I totally agree, although my apps. are different than yours
they are windows specific, thus I cannot do without windows regardless of how
much I like ubuntu.

[offgridguy]

XP still has some life left in it, why give it up? You can install Ubuntu side by side (dual boot) and have them both.

And welcome to the forums

I am curious here, is 40 gb enough for a dual boot ?

[jerrrys]

I am curious here, is 40 gb enough for a dual boot ?

5 gig is enough

I use 36 gig drives and yes I have

[critin]

I am curious here, is 40 gb enough for a dual boot ?

20 and 20 is enough unless you save lots of videos and music.. Might have to move/delete/save a bunch of stuff off windows, pics, music, etc. that quickly fill a disk. Clean and be sure to defrag windows a couple of times before installing the os.

Eventually, you'll want a second or larger disk because those other 'buntu versions look good and adding partitions is so easy.

[AndyOpie150]

I have downloaded a ton of stuff (at least it seems that way) and still have 44GB left on a 59GB partition.

If you have 2GB of RAM you should be golden. Figure out what you can do to minimize the windows partition that you might not ever need again (Once you have tasted linux, you can't go back). Once you have gotten rid of all the now useless apps and utilitys from Windows you can figure out the bare minumum of space required to run it. Then when you install Ubuntu, just slide the partition scale over to that size for the windows partition (leaving the rest for Ubuntu and the swap partition)

I just split my partition to be on the safe side, but I'm now thinking about shrinking the Windows partition down to just the bare minimum to run the software I have installed on it.

I'm thinking of having Windows(minimized) and then have Ubuntu and Kubuntu split between the rest of the space on the hard drive.

I played around with it for a short time, but uninstalled it until my linux knowledge got better. Ubuntu was easier to figure out how to accomplish tasks, but Kubuntu has way more bells and whistles already installed and thus a little harder for my brain to wrap around as quickly. I really liked it better than Ubuntu, just got to get used to doing things the linux way first.

Eventually I will have just the Windows and Kubuntu on the hard drive.