Going to get ubunto

[acechrisp]

Hey everyone, im getting ubunto because im really tired of the games sucking because of vista taking up so much ram. My computer doenst have any drivers for XP so i cant resort to that. So im here at ubunto.

I have some questions that i would like to have answered by people who know what they are talking about and where they get tehre resources.

First of all, my computer is a Compaq Presario CQ 50-215NR.
This computer has initionally 170 GBs of hardrive, but only 139 are accesible trough the C: drive. And 9.85 are used in a seperate drive call the Presario_RP (D:). This is for sytem restores back to factory condition i believe.

I want to install ubunto and double boot it with vista. But use as much space as possible with Ubunto and leave enough space for vsita so i can system restore if things go wrong. I do not have a cd to reinstall vista and yes it is factory windows not downloaded.

I need to know if anything possible can go wrong, if anything can be buggy with my computer and ubunto and whether or not my system restore drive will be erased by ubunto if i double boot it. I can not install ubunto unless I can restore back to facotry condition.

Thanks for the help
-Chris

[tcfan]

Hey, someone else with the same computer as me :)

I too was getting sick of Vista and any attempt to use XP on this machine failed horribly.

Ubuntu 9.04 works great on the machine and you'll come to love it like I have (hopefully). Download the CD image and be sure to backup your data from Vista in case something goes wrong with the install.

BTW, you may not have the physical DVDs to reinstall Windows but if you go to Start-->All Programs, there should be a folder called Recovery or something along those lines. If you have a few blank DVDs lying around, I would create your recovery discs before doing anything else. That way if you need to reinstall Windows, you have the discs. Beats paying HP $25 I believe for them to send you a copy.

[acechrisp]

Omg, thas amazeing that someone with my computer found this thread! Thats awesome, i was actually going to back up everything before hand so I could get rid of vista completly. Thanks alot!

P.S. Are you sure that the recovery discs will install windows, even if im not using the operating system that uses them? I remeber with xp, you needed xp to use the xp recovery discs. SO in all , will those disc i create reinstall windows vista with ubuntu running at 100%?

[Monotoko]

Can i just add, Linux is not Windows, you wont get the same experiance, one thing i have come to like windows for was its gaming, linux has a few of its own games, but for example, The Sims will not play on linux (even with WINE) and i have always found the games to be better in Windows.

This is why i duel-boot, i use Linux for everything else, and Windows for gaming :)

[yeats]

Hey everyone, im getting ubunto because im really tired of the games sucking because of vista taking up so much ram. My computer doenst have any drivers for XP so i cant resort to that. So im here at ubunto.

If you have specific games you want to play, you'll want to investigate Wine, which allows Windows programs to work in Ubuntu. It works very well for some things and not at all for others, and for still more, it requires some hack-work. Check out this link:

http://appdb.winehq.org/

which will allow you to see how well-supported each program is.


I have some questions that i would like to have answered by people who know what they are talking about and where they get tehre resources.

First of all, my computer is a Compaq Presario CQ 50-215NR.
This computer has initionally 170 GBs of hardrive, but only 139 are accesible trough the C: drive. And 9.85 are used in a seperate drive call the Presario_RP (D. This is for sytem restores back to factory condition i believe.

I want to install ubunto and double boot it with vista. But use as much space as possible with Ubunto and leave enough space for vsita so i can system restore if things go wrong. I do not have a cd to reinstall vista and yes it is factory windows not downloaded.


Here are a couple of useful links:

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_f irst.htm

This one just in case you have trouble shrinking Vista's partition:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/

Many things CAN go wrong - make sure you make a full backup before you do this.

Today is the release date for the newest version of Ubuntu, so I actually would recommend waiting a few days to do this, as the servers hosting the disk images are going to be slammed all day :-).

[Saabtite]

Many of your games are not going to run easily on Linux. At least not without alot of cracking and patching. Just a warning.

[tcfan]

Well, the recovery discs are a last resort to installing Windows if you dual boot Linux. The reason is the discs will restore the computer to factory settings, essentially erasing any partitions you already have and going back to 2 (One for recovery, like you see already, and the other for Vista and all the apps HP decided to throw on there). I'm not much of a gamer, more of a web developer so I don't miss Vista at all for anything.

[acechrisp]

Alright cool, you guys are great.

So what im going to do ie back up my system. Follow the the tutorial for dual booting. And I should be set, most of the games i play online are on the wine list, wow, CS:S, Garrys mod, and so forth, so i should be pretty happy. Thanks again guys for the help.

[nexoncore]

I have a similar laptop, the C700EM, I have a semi related issue.

Since we have the recovery partition, if I delete the current active vista partition, will I be able to recover vista in future if I need be.

Long story but I NEED to delete the vista partiton.

[tchalvakspam]

The most important step of all is to test out your hardware compatibility first!

And today is the -best- day to download torrents of the iso, 'cause they'll come fast, with a lot of seeders.

So I recommend downloading the Desktop install & burning a liveCD first, and then booting from that liveCD before anything else.