I have the Ubuntu server, with Kubuntu desktop installed on a separate hard drive.
Have been playing with settings and although there are some neat things in Linux, such as the auto setup of the web connection, etc, it still feels very mushy, like a slow flash site. Why did they have
to setup this kind of a Vista-like interface? It
sucks.

I will play with it for a while longer. Despite some, as I said nifty things, this may not be the OS for me. Maybe
will convince myself that this is worth the hassle,
otherwise I will need safe uninstall
procedures. Did hose it once, but of course that
messed up the grub login options and couldn't even get
into Windows, so had to reinstall Ubuntu again. Have
read the postings on changing the boot sequence, to
put Windows as the first (default) OS, but have no
idea how to edit the Grub settings.

Grub's configuration is always a text file in /boot/grub directory in most Linux (Ubuntu and Kubuntu inluded) or /boot in Red Hat family. It is always called menu.lst for the former and grub.conf for the latter.

You need root privilege (Admin right in MS systems) to change any system file in Linux. This you can get in terminal by
and then called up gedit (for Ubuntu or kwrite in kubuntu) in terminal by command
In Linux you can play tunes with Grub. Here is a Grub song that I play.

Thank you for your help, but back to basics: how do I even find terminal, or kwrite? Also is the mushy (on a fast machine) feel of Kubuntu normal? I really, really dislike this feel and also the unneeded mouse over displays everywhere. As far as I know grub was installed in the boot sector of my C drive.
Also, is there a way of disabling grub and simply formatting within Windows the 2nd drive, on which Ubuntu was installed?

Every Linux carries a terminal mode just like every MS Windows has a Command prompt or Dos prompt. Everything you see from a desktop is made from commands or scripts in terminal mode.

You tell people that you have Ubuntu and the standard editor of Ubuntu is gedit, clickable by Application/accessories/terminal.

Kubuntu is Ubuntu using KDE and the equivalent gedit in KDE is kwrite.

If you are not getting crispy display that is a mismatch of the hardware driver in the video, which is another matter of editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Normally if you use an up to date Linux its hard detection should be as good as a XP or Vista as far as the video, mouse, keyboard and nic are concerned. Linux does use generic drivers and traditionally the installer picks the drivers without the need to consult the user. You can always reconfigure or fine-tune the system later.

If you want to get rid of Linux just use a Live CD, which is what Ubuntu and Kubuntu installation CD is, and use cfdisk to remove the LInux partitions. That is a 5 seconds job. Don't waste time to amend Grub if your sole purpose is to nuke it. You can only remove one boot loader in the MBR by overwriting it with another.

You can then restore Vista MBR which is described as Task B7 in the last link of my signature.

Try using Gnome(Ubuntu), instead of KDE(Kubuntu). I personally find it 1000x better/faster than KDE. As for finding a terminal, its in your K Menu somewhere, not sure exactly where.

To disable grub, easiest thing to do is boot your XP disk in recovery mode, and run fixmbr and fixboot. That will clear grub from the MBR. As for reclaiming your disk space, I'm not sure how to do that from within Windows. You *could* download a Gparted Live CD(more or less a free Partition Magic). Gparted sees every file system I've ever heard of. Use it to format your Linux drive to NTFS, then reboot, and Windows should then see what was your Linux drive.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php

I'd encourage you to stick with it however. There's a lot of distros out there, and I know you're not the first person to dislike Kubuntu(cuz I'm the same way, HATE it). If you don't like Kubuntu, I'd recommend downloading Ubuntu, and trying it. Its a different desktop GUI, and in my opinion, faster and easier on the eyes.

http://www.ubuntu.com

You ask a majority of the people here who've used Linux any length of time, if they are using the first distro they installed, and I'd venture a very large majority would say NO.

IGF

Thank you both. As I said, I am trying to get to understand and even like Linux,and forums like this one can be a big help in that regard. By the way, I wouldn't dream of using Vista. I am using XP Pro.

Is there a way of actually hosing the grub install, without using Windows recovery disks? I could simply format the (present) Linux drive through Windows, using the Seagate utility. The only problem is recovering the normal Windows boot order.
I will try your suggestion as far as:"If you are not getting crispy display that is a mismatch of the hardware driver in the video, which is another matter of editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf." , but actually it is not really the question of a crispy display, but rather the jerky, non-positive, mushy scrolling, clicking and everything else. The display itself seems fine.

Also, Kubuntu desktop was recommended by a friend. I might try Gnome, instead.

Did try to edit the boot order by changing the 0 to 4 through "kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst." Wouldn't let me save the changes. Tried to run the command "sudo su", to gain root priviliges (which I thought I had anyway) to no avail.

I am not sure why you would identify the KDE interface in kubuntu as slow and mushy; I run kubuntu on a 7 year old laptop and KDE not only runs at a speed comparable to that of Windows XP (which came loaded on the system), but it also runs Beryl at an acceptable speed in spite of the old video card.

Now when I first set up kubuntu on this system, even though I had provided a swap partition for it, the system did not use the swap partition - didn't mount it and didn't know it was there.

This led to performance issues after the system had been running for awhile, but those problems went away when I figured out what was happening and enabled swap.

I suggest you take a look at that possibility.

I guess this would be worth looking at...Where? How?
At this stage, with 1GB of RAM it runs, I suppose OK, but it is jerky and mushy. Quite an unpleasant feeling, as I said, it reminds me of one of those crappy, all-flash websites, or a car with an automatic transmission. Browser (Firefox) scrolling is particularly jerky and unpleasant.

With 1 Gig, you should be OK unless you are doing something that really sucks the RAM. But to look at it quickly, open a shell window and enter the command vmstat. Read the manpage (man vmstat) to learn what you are looking at.

You also should run the top command (from a shell window) to see what processes are sucking your CPU. What you describe makes the most sense to me if you have some program running that is hogging the CPU.

Thanks. I will look into this tonight. Now have to stay in Windows for a few hours (work). I assume that by shell, you mean the 'run' window... Also, if you look at my earlier posts, do you have an understandable procedure to change the boot order?

the shell, is the terminal, which is in Kmenu>Sytem and click on Konsole,
to change th boot order, open the terminal and type sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu/lst an dchange the order

Thank you! I will post the results of my quest later

As far as memory usage, I am gettingrocs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
0 0 0 712464 8944 153372 0 0 605 78 208 928 31 4 55 10

Obviously no swap file.

Command: sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu/lst, or sudo kwrite /boot/grub/menu/lst,
or even sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst, or sudo kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst
doesn't work...