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twild
November 4th, 2011, 01:29 AM
I'm a new Ubuntu user, trying to use Ubuntu to give my Mum a more reliable computer to do basics like email, internet, and watching movies. For now I want it to dual boot, until she's convinced Ubuntu will do the job. I have some unix experience with Centos, Solaris, but no experience installing it. I'm comfortable in a bash shell though.

Mum has an old Acer Aspire 5315 (http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/notebook/0000/Acer/Aspire5315/Aspire5315sp2.shtml) laptop, 1GB RAM and a slow celeron processor, a few years old now. Vista isn't very reliable on it... and it's Vista. The machine has three existing partitions, a windows recovery partition, C drive for OS, D drive for data. I shrunk the D drive to make space for Ubuntu, using the Ubuntu installer.

I downloaded the generic 32bit x86 version of Ubuntu 11.10, and ran it fine as a live CD, so I figured i'd install it. The install went fine, and it said it finished, but it was still doing something, some kind of finalisation. Before it had finally said "yes i'm done" the computer shut off. When I run the installer again using the CD it thinks Ubuntu is installed, but there's no boot menu letting me choose between Windows and Ubuntu.

So two questions:
1) How do I check if it's installed properly?
2) If it is, how do I create a boot menu so Mum can choose between Windows and Ubuntu?

Any help would be appreciated :-)

As a footnote, I initially used the 64 bit version, and the install file had AMD64 on it. That ran fine as a live CD, but the install failed half way through, turning the machine off.

critin
November 4th, 2011, 02:09 AM
to do basics like email, internet, and watching movies

I'm assuming your Mom is new to linux, and this is only one user's opinion.
If it was me I'd install the last long term version, 10.04. It's stable with no bugs to interfere and confuse a new user. It's supported and it can be made to look as nice and unique as she would want. For basic uses, it's perfect.

twild
November 4th, 2011, 02:35 AM
I'm assuming your Mom is new to linux, and this is only one user's opinion.
If it was me I'd install the last long term version, 10.04. It's stable with no bugs to interfere and confuse a new user. It's supported and it can be made to look as nice and unique as she would want. For basic uses, it's perfect.

Thanks Critin. I just went to Ubuntu.com and downloaded the latest release, it didn't occur to me to try and old version. I'll give it a go if no-one can tell me what's up with the newest version.

critin
November 4th, 2011, 02:41 AM
The new release isn't as easy to use unless you know what you're doing, (it's very new) which gives new users a bad impression of the whole os. The 10.04 is also a snap to install. :P (Unless there is a hardware issue.) 11.10 requires newer hardware for the best experience. I g ram may not be enough. Like Vista required more than XP did. W7 requires more than Vista, and so on.
I'm using 11.04 with no problems as long as I don't try to use Unity. I have to stick to 2D. I also have 1G on the machine.

twild
November 4th, 2011, 03:58 AM
Oh ok, that makes sense! I've downloaded 10.04 and i'll give it a try this weekend. Thanks for your help!

I may try the newest Ubuntu on my i7 PC with 16GB RAM as well, just because I can. The problem I had when I was running as a live CD was I didn't even know how to start software... there's no equivalent of the start button so all I could use were the quick start icons on the left of the screen.

twild
November 5th, 2011, 11:14 PM
10.04 works fine, thanks for that tip! Hopefully someone can work out why the 11.10 installer fails some time.

Thanks again for your help :)