live dvd XUbuntu

[jimpierce7]

this is what the read ne in install says.............

About the Smart Boot Manager image
----------------------------------

The file `sbm.bin' that is available in this directory may be useful
to you if you are not able to directly boot the first CD because your
BIOS may be too old and may not support ISOLINUX.

Then, instead of booting on the CD directly, you create a Smart Boot
Manager floppy image by using the sbm.bin disk image. You can create this
floppy with rawrite (under DOS) or with dd (under Linux). Now you can
boot on this floppy disk and it will detect your CDROM and let you boot
on it bypassing any BIOS limitation.

What is SBM ?

Smart Boot Manager or briefly SmartBtmgr (SBM), is an OS independent
Boot Manager - a program that is loaded by the bios before any
operating system and allows you to choose which operating system to
boot.

SBM is included in Debian in two ways, the package bmconf allows us to
install and configure an old version of SBM and sbm wich is the latest
version of SBM with an installer.

What's the use of SBM on the CD then ?

SBM includes an IDE driver that allows us to boot the cds even on
machines with a BIOS that wouldn't support booting from CD, provided our
CDROM is an IDE one, that is, so you can make a SBM floppy and boot from
it and then tell it to boot from your CDROM.

Also, there are some cases where the BIOS would allow booting from the CD
but isolinux fails to boot from there, in this case you can either boot
using a CD other than the first, as the others don't use isolinux, or you
can make a SBM floppy and boot from this floppy and then tell SBM to boot
your CDROM.

How do you make a SBM floppy ?

If you have SBM installed on a box you can run sbminst. Otherwise you can
put the sbm.bin floppy image that we provide with our cds onto a floppy
just like you would do with a rescue image.

[sudodus]

I get 9 folders.
.disk
boot
casper
dista
install
isolinux
pics
pool
preseed

and a md5sum twxt document and README disc defines file.

This looks OK

Did I get it right, that the Kubuntu DVD boots, but not the Xubuntu DVD?

[jimpierce7]

yes, that is right. Do I have to remove the Kubuntu first? And I can't get the bin file to do anything. I'm going to bed. 5 gets here quick. I have Ubuntu downloading now. It still has 8 hours to go. Not much upload speed I'm guessing?

[sudodus]

I have not used SBM. Have you tried the standard Xubuntu desktop iso file or Xubuntu alternate iso file for the version 12.04.2? Not a DVD, but one of the official CD image iso files. I tried the Xubuntu desktop iso yesterday, and it worked as it should

[sudodus]

yes, that is right. Do I have to remove the Kubuntu first? And I can't get the bin file to do anything. I'm going to bed. 5 gets here quick. I have Ubuntu downloading now. It still has 8 hours to go. Not much upload speed I'm guessing?

I suggest that the next thing you write about is the computer. If you describe it, you will get better advice about what to install and how to install it.

If you have an old computer you need an Ubuntu flavour with a light desktop environment. Otherwise you can run any flavour. You choose between speed and eye-candy.

- Lubuntu is lightest.
- Xubuntu is light.
- Ubuntu and Kubuntu are heavy but have more eye-candy.

If you have low RAM (512 MB or less), you need the alternate iso, otherwise the desktop iso is better.

So please specify

- computer hardware specs, at least cpu, ram and graphics chip/card.

- what operating system(s) you have and what you want (for example dual boot)

-o-

Have you installed Kubuntu? How is it running? Or are you only running it live from the DVD?

If you need to remove Kubuntu depends on what you have on your internal hard disk and how much free space there is.

Please mount all partitions that can be mounted (use the file browser to mount the partitions on the internal drive), run the following commands and post the output in a reply (from Kubuntu, if that is the only linux system that is working)

sudo fdisk -lu

sudo parted -l

df

[mastablasta]

Do I have to remove the Kubuntu first?

wait! what?

do you have Kubutnu installed on computer? and you want to install xubutnu to it now? just open muon software center and search for xubuntu desktop. click install logout and select xubuntu desktop on login.

[jimpierce7]

I have a Dell Inspiron 530s that runs Vista. 3g ram. I figured out my problem downloading Ubuntu, downloading straight to Roxxio instead of a folder. BIG difference in download time. Kubuntu is only running on the DVD, but the DVD helper in downloaded.

I'm going to see if Ubuntu works and if it does, I'm going to just run it along side Vista for the time being.

[houseworkshy]

"If you have low RAM (512 MB or less), you need the alternate iso, otherwise the desktop iso is better." from sudodus.

That's a bit strange though I haven't given a recent Xubuntu a spin recently. I've just tried Xfce sitting on Debian Wheezy live ( which is the latest stable one ) a spin on a single core 512 machine and it was fast using very little of the resources available, only around 28 % of available RAM ( though it may be counting the 128 in the card too ) and that was live with the file system sitting in there. If Ubuntu is based on Debian and Xfce is the same in both what uses the extra RAM?

It was a test proir to putting it on someones machine for them. Also tried out video, gimp, office, flash and various other bits and it was still nippy. I'd taken several distos round to choose from, mostly light ones like bodhi and antiX and the Wheezy was just a "be nice if it can". Oddly the officially light ones made the fans do vacume cleaner impressions and the cd/dvd drive grind, could be something peculiar to do with that particular machines compatability (they'd all worked fine on mine ), we didn't persevere as it sounded damaging. Will be buying a new dvd/cd before installing anyway despite Debian not having had that effect, it's probably due as that drive installed Ubuntu 8.04 when it was fresh and it wasn't new even then. Think the machine dates from when XP was Microsofts latest.
Bit of an aside there. The pertinant bit is that if you want Xfce and Xubuntu won't then Debian Wheezy might.

[sudodus]

"If you have low RAM (512 MB or less), you need the alternate iso, otherwise the desktop iso is better." from sudodus.

That's a bit strange though I haven't given a recent Xubuntu a spin recently. I've just tried Xfce sitting on Debian Wheezy live ( which is the latest stable one ) a spin on a single core 512 machine and it was fast using very little of the resources available, only around 28 % of available RAM ( though it may be counting the 128 in the card too ) and that was live with the file system sitting in there. If Ubuntu is based on Debian and Xfce is the same in both what uses the extra RAM?

It was a test proir to putting it on someones machine for them. Also tried out video, gimp, office, flash and various other bits and it was still nippy. I'd taken several distos round to choose from, mostly light ones like bodhi and antiX and the Wheezy was just a "be nice if it can". Oddly the officially light ones made the fans do vacume cleaner impressions and the cd/dvd drive grind, could be something peculiar to do with that particular machines compatability (they'd all worked fine on mine ), we didn't persevere as it sounded damaging. Will be buying a new dvd/cd before installing anyway despite Debian not having had that effect, it's probably due as that drive installed Ubuntu 8.04 when it was fresh and it wasn't new even then. Think the machine dates from when XP was Microsofts latest.
Bit of an aside there. The pertinant bit is that if you want Xfce and Xubuntu won't then Debian Wheezy might.

It is the installer of the Ubuntu desktop iso, that need that amount of RAM. The alternate installer needs less, and gives you the same system (in this case Xubuntu). After installation Xubuntu runs with less RAM.

But Debian with XFCE needs less RAM than Xubuntu (and probably has a leaner installer too). I think the Ubuntu kernel needs more ram than the debian one, and I think more services are running in Ubuntu based flavours. I think Xubuntu offers a better user experience without adding packages and tweaking (at the cost of using more RAM).

[houseworkshy]

Thanks for the info Sudodus. I was guessing it was something like that, the live version includes some none free stuff like codecs whist the main one doesn't, the graphic installer is similar to Ubuntus' several years ago ( the 7's and 8's ) ; text with a few drop down menues but no slide show. I've actually put Wheezy into my machine twice now using the standard iso; on one drive with a root account and on the other drive leaving the root password blank so that it disabled the root account and installed sudo instead. Still playing with it, only put it/them in last night, just feeling round it but so far very nice. Really like the multi-architecture feature and it has some things which I'd only associated with Ubuntu like app-armour.

Xubuntu won't really need much in the way of tweeking and just adding a meta package like "ubuntu-restricted-extras" will sort most of it out. So yes it may be easier. As Ubuntu is already in just, as said above, install Xfce.
Then reboot and at login use the dropdown menu to choose to use it. You'll probably find a few duplicated menu entries as you will now have both UI's installed, don't worry about that yet. Test that all works as you like, if it does then it is a matter of removing KDE. It's not quite so simple as just uninstalling it if you want to remove all of it, but not hard, so search the forums again for that if it's what you choose to do. As an aside if KDE works okish ( and it's a beauty of a UI IMHO if you have the RAM for it, can easily configure it into practically anything, there's a light version too called razor-qt which ain't bad ) then Xfce will run very fast indeed.