Vista Who?

**nickthegreek78** · April 3rd, 2007

I am a new Ubuntu user from Clearwater, FL , I had always run Windows and recently bought a new Sony Vaio C 240 Core 2 Duo with Vista installed and I had so many problems I decided to seek an alternative . A friend at work suggested Ubuntu and I in fact deleted Vista completely, Home Premium, and I wish I had been converted to Linux a long time ago! Although it takes a little getting used to ( 2-3 days) I am so happy to run a computer on my terms, free from the bondage of MS. No more crashes, no virus worries, I couldn't be happier with my new laptop. Everyone in the Ubuntu community has been very helpful and I look forward to communicating and learning from all of you.http://ubuntuforums.org/images/smilies/guitar.gif

**1/0** · April 3rd, 2007

I'm not from FL but I read your post and just wanted to say congrats and welcome. I hope you'll find GNU/Linux good and I think you've done a wise thing deciding not to dual boot.

One thing: Don't give up if you get a problem. Look for indications in log files etc. and search. Log files is one of the best things in Linux. You can log everything and that way solve problems. If you don't find the answers you're looking for, just ask.

Also keeping a liveCD close by, such as Knoppix, is really gonna help you to troubleshoot.

**feravolo** · April 3rd, 2007

Hello:

One thing that you should keep in mind is if you already paid for a "Premium" copy of Vista, you just as well should keep it installed on your computer.

Go ahead and use Ubuntu as your main operating system, but keep Vista as a backup, along with the live Luinx distro (e.g. SLAX or Knoppix). If you haven't already loaded your computer to the extent that you don't feel like reinstalling everything, here is what you can do.

For example your computer has a 100GB disk drive, use 10 or 20GB for vista, 2 or 3 times your ram size for a linux swap partition and the rest for Ubuntu. Loading Vista on a FAT32 partition will allow you to exchange files between the Vista partition and the Linux partition when running Ubuntu. It will also allow you to use your Live CD to read and write files on either partition.NTFS file formats have incompatibilities with Linux and you may be able to write to them by default. although there are (buggy) tools out there that claim to be able to read and write to NTFS. If you are using Linux you aren't going to care about the using NTFS file protections.

As far as Live Linux CD's go I happen to like SLAX which is based on SLACKWARE 11. The distribution can be customized using the available modules. There are several versions, the "Kill Bill" edition includes programs designed to be compatible with windows. The "popcorn" edition fits on smaller USB key drives, your notebook computer should be boot-able from a USB port. To get SLAX got to http://SLAX.org ; All you have to do is download an ISO image and burn a disk.

Keep in mind people like my self that have been in the software trade for years don't dislike windows. We just dislike the how much that we have to pay for it.

If you already paid for it go ahead and keep it around since Direct X10 is going to be a great for extreme gaming and if you have to do own your income taxes.

Peace
Mike F

P.S. Just Some Bonus Info: I was just at "Mega-Mart" and the Vista Home Premium Update Version was $169.00 (4/3/07)

**Bordy** · April 3rd, 2007

nickthegreek:
Welcome to our forums, and I am glad you searched us out

In case you haven't read up on us, check us out at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam . We are all in FLorida, and you are welcome to join our group for discussion, help, advocacy, etc (we take all skill levels... I am a linux noob myself).

In case you are interested, from that wiki page there is a new members section describing what resources we have. Check that out, and I hope to hear back from you soon

Chris

**nickthegreek78** · April 3rd, 2007

Thanks for responding so promptly everyone, I do have a question. I read in another forum that Ubuntu does not recognize Core 2 Duo by default and only utilizes one processor, is that correct? In addition, I found some instructions to fix this issue by changing the shell structure in the terminal. I want to know if it has worked and I was wondering if there was any kind of widget, etc, that would show this and monitor the speed of the processor, I had a widget when I was first using Vista that did this. I took advice from both of you and downloaded both Knoopix and Slak just to be sure. I also would like to know what app you are using for bit torrents and how to use them. I used Automatix and installed Bit tornado but I am not quite sure how to use it, any help would be greatly appreciated.

**nickthegreek78** · April 3rd, 2007

Bordy, I registered with the mailing list Thanks

**Bordy** · April 3rd, 2007

First bit of help: stay the heck away from Automatix. Good for installing, but seems to be a bit of a chore when updating things.

**lamalex** · April 3rd, 2007

for the 2 processors, do a uname -a in terminal and if you see SMP then you are using both. if not you need a SMP kernel, which we can help you with if you don;t have it. im pretty sure edgy has smp by default.