Help.....
 

What kind of wireless card do you have?
What have you done to look for support?
Can you not use ethernet to connect to update the distro?

'Help...' is a terrible way of naming a forum post. And the content you gave us was not helpful in the least. You're asking a question of people that are voluntarily giving their time to help you and you've given us nothing to work with.

Well too start with, I'd suggest that you work out how you're gonna want to partition your hard drive.

Oh and Kubuntu is the distro I'd suggest.

Anyway, get the distro downloaded (and the md5sum checksum). Get the "md5summer" verification app (for windows) and install it.

Run the md5summer app against the distro download - the result should be the same as the md5sum checksum from the mirror that you downloaded the distro/iso file from.

Correct?

Good, then if you have a windows partitioning tool like partition magic great. If not get something free, like Ranish Partition Manager.

decide how big you need to have the partitions you want (it's a personal thing and also will depend on the size of the hard drive - Oh and if the hard drive(s) are SATA ones then there may be other problems I can't explain as I've never had/used SATA hdd).

OK, so for example your hypothetical 80 gig device, is gonna have a windows partition (say 30 gigs) - obvious, then I'd have a data partition formatted as FAT32, I dunno maybe 5 or 10 gigs (I think I'm correct in saying that there are still issues in writing to NTFS partitions?????). Call that partition whatever you want, but it can easily be mounted by linux.

So after the windows and the "data" partition, I'd go for about 15 gigs for the / a.k.a. "root" partition (thats 3) I'd make all of those "primary" partitions, I'd extend the 4th partition and make 2 logical ones, the /swap partition (which I'd follow common wisdom and make it 2 x the installed RAM) the rest of the hdd would be for /home.

Ok, the basic stuff of the windows for, well, windows. The /root partition for the main linux install, the /swap is probably a requirement and the /home is where you actually do most of your stuff within linux.

The reason I suggested that "data" FAT32 partition, is so that if you have any issues during the linux install i.e. the wireless driver, then you can download it under windows, save it to the "data" partition and then boot into the linux install and then just copy/move/run/install the package from there.

The partitioning thing? Well kubuntu might be able to do that for you, but you'd have to be able to follow the "advanced" partitioning facility (no insult intended if you "have the knowledge" you'll be able to follow it easily, otherwise you might have to check out the help files of dig around places like the kubuntu/ubuntu forums and similar).

So once you've got the partitions sorted (don't forget to back up/defrag etc windows install prior to changing a partition), you can just boot the install disc (the one that you downloaded, then checked the md5sum to confirm it's a complete, uncorrupted download, burned according to your burning software instructions, etc etc).

You would have to tell it where you want the main system i.e. the /root in it's appropriate partition.

Once you've finished the installed fire up the linux install and see what you get. If you're lucky, it may have installed the appropriate wireless drivers and it already up and running. Or not.

If you can run the wireless, then run the updater, if not double check the name of the wireless chipset, boot back into windows and google for it. If you find one ok, then download it, move/copy it to the "data" partition (along with any instructions or howtos that might be available), boot back into linux and install it "in the usual way" - instructions etc.

Is that the kind of info you're looking for ???

regards

John

Thanks BIG JOHN
 

You don't need to wipe windows - you can shrink the windows partition to leave space at the end for a linux install (or any other install for that matter)