Hi,

Case 1: My case is that I tried Ubuntu 6.06 Live CD and it worked fine (except that it failed to mount my HDD partitions; I think because they were NTFS). Then I installed the distro on my HDD as dual boot with Win XP. Linux failed to boot into GUI and always remained on the command prompt. Even startx and init5 did not work.

So I had to reinstall everything back and now I have just windows XP.

Case 2: I have Ubuntu 6.10 Live CD and again it works fine. This time it did not read the HDD.

My question is that if the Live CD works should the installation on HDD necessarily work?

My HDD is 100 GB SATA.

Please help.
Thanks

-AJ

I had a very similar problem to you. I had a live CD, Ubuntu 6.06. It ran fine on my machine, but when I would try to partition the HD it would not work (which was okay since I really only needed one partition, I just wanted to play around). I decided to install with just one partition, but it didn't work. (I no longer recall the error, I think it was when it was trying to format the disk, which previously had a Fedora installation).

I was told to try Dapper Alternate (not this version is not a live CD). Since Edgy had just came out I thought I would install that instead, so I downloaded Edgy Alternate and this worked (however you use a text install, it was familiar to me since it was almost exactly the same as the debian installer. It is fairly easy to use, since you see all of the same options as in the graphical, it just isn't as "pretty", hovever I like it better). I am told that downloading and installing sever edition would work as well, and then you have to "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" to get a GUI. I think my problem was a lack of memory to do the graphical install, even though according to the documentation I had just enough to squeeze by.

SO I guess this is a long answer to your question, No, just because the live CD works does not mean it will install on your machine, but if it works you can probably run the system, just do not use the graphical installer, get the alternate without the it.
I hope this helps.
jdw

I agree that using the alternate install CD is the way to go. Further, Linux and NTFS are not compatible. Your live CD works in RAM and does not use the hard drive, but uses the CD instead. That is why it works even though the drives use NTFS. When you install, you need to alter the hard drive so a non-NTFS partition exists, using ext3 or reiserfs as the file system. This is possible with the alternate install CD.

Awesome! So I will download the alternate CD and install using the text mode and then just use the command - apt-get install ubuntu-desktop to install the GUI later.

I think that would work for me.

Thanks guys.
AJ

If you use the alternate CD it should install ubuntu-desktop (ie Gnome) automatically, I had meant to say that using the Server Edition would require you to install the desktop separately. The install is in text mode for both these options.

I do not understand how difficult is the text mode? Do I need to type in a lot of commands to install it or is it just as easy as graphical but without the graphical interface navigation?

Thanks a lot for your help.

AJ

There is almost no difference. If you are familiar with the old-time DOS applications, it looks like that. You are given choices, and generally speaking, do not have to type in much that you would not have to type in anyway in a GUI environment. (Some hardware configurations require special commands, but those are the exception, not the rule.)