Sounds like you're doing well so far. Just a little bit of advice...don't install the nVidia driver from nVidia...there is a better one on the Ubuntu cd that you have to install manually.

It sounds like you're well on your way. One thing I would recommend is creating a shared FAT32 partition somewhere because linux doesn't write to NTFS. That way you can dump files you want available to all OS's on that drive (like mp3, jpegs, docs, etc).

If you want to print some documentation, but your printer is broken, you could print them to pdf using PDFCreator for Windows. It's an open source ghost printer. Then you could put all the pdf's on a CD or USB key and read them from Ubuntu if you needed them.

Most linux installs take 15-30 minutes. But it will most likely install everything you need. You should have a working graphics card with reasonable resolutions, just not 3D acceleration and the bells and whistles. You should also have your office, email, web browsers, etc all installed by default. Chances are that the hardware you'll have problems with is your modem, which is probably a winmodem and maybe your printer. Most everything else will probably work out of the box.

Thanks! Perhaps I will make my Media NTFS partion (music and video partion) a Fat32 after the install...It uses about half of the 300G Sata, and I have Acrobat Professional for Win; most of my documentation is already PDF.

are you sure you can make 150 gigs into FAT32??

last i heard 32 gigs was already pushing it...

The only thing which has a problem with making a FAT32 partition bigger than 32gigs is the Windows XP. It disables the option for formating in anything other than NTFS for partitions bigger than 32 gigs...for no good reason.

The actual limit for how big a FAT32 partition can be is 2terabytes, IIRC.

i'm not a multimedia guy but why not try using only linux for multimedia stuffs ?? i would prefer to tame linux from windows and not the other way round ... it doesnt matter whether accessing linux from windows works perfectly or not in the short run , linux is the main while windows is transitional ...

land your support in the efforts of "multimedia in linux only" even if the bridging tools are newly baked ...



//my 0.2.cents


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32

It does look like 2 TiB is the limit for the partition size. But there is a note at wikipedia that the scandisk will only work on up to 124.5GB FAT32 drives. So if you want to keep it defragmented, you might make it only 120GB...

Did you install grub to the / (root) partition? I assume BootMagic is a third party bootloader. So you'll want to chainload linux by telling BootMagic to boot grub from the / partition.

Yes, I do want to chain from the dos/BM to the Linux partition, and yes, I forgot that grub would have to be in the dos/BM. I'm back in windoze now and can see that grub is not in the dos/BM, but of course the rest of the linux files are not visible to me while in win.

And since no sata partitions at all got mounted, how can I locate and copy the grub file from the sata/linux partiton to the dos/BM? It was the installer who put the grub in the wrong place, and I still think I need to understand the whole mount/'mount point' concept. |Can anyone explain this to me in a way a disgruntled win user could understand? The Bible isn't much help.

Besides grub, does anything else have to be in the dos/BM partition? I think the whole boot part is in the sata linux partition.

a mount point is simply a directory which is used to access a certain storage resource, such as a disk partition...

let's say i have a 20GB hard disk connected as my secondary master drive... the whole thing is just one primary 20GB ext3 partition (for simplicity's sake)... in order for linux to access the data on this partition, it needs me to "mount" the partition somewhere... so basically, i need to have a directory which isn't being used, and then i need to tell linux that i want to mount the first partition on my secondary master drive into that directory... usually, we mount things in subdirectories of the /mnt directory, but you can use pretty much any directory you want...

so first i create a mount point, i can call it whatever i want...now i tell linux to mount the first partition, which is of type ext3, of the secondary master drive on that directory:now that the partition is mounted, i can access the files in it by going into /mnt/music_files like normal...

i hope this example helps clear things up a little bit...

BTW, the naming scheme for the drives is like this:

Primary Master = /dev/hda
Primary Slave = /dev/hdb
Secondary Master = /dev/hdc
Secondary Slave = /dev/hdd

the number that follows the letter determines which partition on the drive we are talking about...

to see the partition layout on your drive from within linux, you can use this command:to see which partitions you have mounted, use:to see the space usage on said partitions use something like:here's a link that might help: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/mounting.html

just my ...

EDIT: i think for SATA drives /dev/sd* is used instead of /dev/hd*...

thanks win32sux! I think I'm getting the whole mounting bit. the link helps a lot. now I'll just try to get back into liinux to test it out, and try to get that latest installation mounted with a bit of practise. in a way I'm glad i learned dos over 10 years ago...i still like dos, so am certainly not afraid of command lines

now just to get grub and anything else i need into the dos/BM...

I have been using Linux for about six years now, and seriously think if you are having problems with mounting, partitioning, etc., then you could try Mandriva first and maybe switch to Ubuntu later!
Reasons: Mandriva has very "user-friendly" graphical partitioning tools, and also mounts all the Windows stuff automatically by default. This does not keep you from using a command line if you wish, and there are plenty of tools to change just about anything you could possibly want. That way, beginners can get a properly working system up and running without studying potholes and short-comings first. After it runs a while and you feel comfortable, maybe you may want to switch to a debian-based system like Ubuntu, or maybe you just want to stay with Mandriva. Whichever way, you can't lose anything. I know some folks will not like this answer and say "How can you ..!" or suggest I'm trying to start a distro-war, but this is what I think as an experienced user. Remember, its not a very good idea to try rollerblading before you can walk... Here at home are 4 PC's and two are on Ubuntu and two on Mandriva, so I know what I am saying.

My own PC has a setup pretty much the same as you suggested in the first post, but a little different: I have a common FAT32 partition on both(!) drives. The common partition on the first drive is where all my office documents, pics, private data, development stuff, etc. goes by default. The common partition on the second drive is also in FAT32 and just backs up the the other one. It is a mirror of the first. That way, if any drive goes broke, my data on the other drive is left untouched. Every so often I copy my stuff from the main common partition onto an external media. That way, if the entire PC blows up or gets stolen, my data is not lost.

So, have fun with Linux! Its not really much more difficult than Windows, its just different! Coming from Windows you will be in for a few pleasant surprises. If something can't be done, its probably a case of not knowing how rather than Linux not being able to do it.
Helmut