Will Ubuntu work for me?
 

I have the disk for Ubuntu 5.10 and was wondering what I would need to continue doing all that I currently do under windows.
I've tried the live cd and was unable to play DVDs or open MP3s which are the most common uses my system is put to.

I'm a Newb so I need it kept simple in order to keep my computer from becoming a paperweight.

What I do:
* E-Mail
* Browse the internet
* Play java games
* Watch DVDs
* Update My iPod

My System:
* AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
* 256 MB RAM
* Quantum Fireball 20GB HDD
* Toshiba DVD-ROM
* LG CD-RW
* ATI Rage 128 AIW AGP
* Creative Soundblaster Live! Value
* Linksys LNE100TX ver4.1 Fast Ethernet Adapter
* 2Wire 2700 HG-D DSL Router

USB Devices:
* Western Digital Passport 80GB USB Hard Drive
* iPod
* PSP

First of all 5.10 is old (came out last November). You should use 6.06, which came out two months ago.

Ubuntu doesn't come with a lot of proprietary stuff out of the box, but you can install them yourself or get a script like Automatix to install them for you.

Also, Mepis is based on Ubuntu but contains a lot of proprietary software (I think it includes MP3 playback, Java, Flash, and some other codecs).

After installing Ubuntu, download and run Easyubuntu. It looks at your processor type and offers numerous additional items that people frequently want. Just click the check boxes for what you want. Examples of what's covered are 3D drivers, flashplayer, acrobat, MP3 players and DVD movie players. Players are installed with a broad array of codecs. These items are free but don't come with source code which excludes them from GPL licensing.

I also recommend you drapper.If you have an internet connection, you can make anything possible in Ubuntu. an advance welcome to the community..

cheers..

Got it working great
 

I screwed up on the easyubuntu script, but managed to install all of it's components with the package manager. Running AmaroK as my media library manager and it's working great now that the codecs are all installed, but I don't have enough space on my internal hard drive to contain all my MP3 flies, I need to set up my WDC Passport USB HDD as the storage for my MP3s but am not sure how to do it. Probably not even a question worth asking, but I can't seem to get amaroK to use my external drive as it's storage. Aside from space concerns stemming from my undersized HDD everything is perfect, and to think I only switched to Linux because my copy of Windows that came with my system wasn't valid and Microsoft wanted two bills to make it work again. I'm really tired, so that probably didn't make much sense, running on about a gallon of Jolt instead of sleep will do it to you every time.

In a terminal, type "mount". Your USB drive should appear as "/media/sdaX", where X is a number.

Don't know why Konqueror doesn't display my own USB drives when I point it to "Storage Media". Its GNOME equivalent, Nautilus does, automatically. Anyways, the "mount" command should reveal the path.

BTW, welcome to LinuxQuestions and (K)Ubuntu! If you've managed to get that far in that short time, this might be just the right operation system for you.

Okay, now I feel stupid
 

I had it mounted, it was showing up just fine, but I was still thinking windows and loaded the file folder without checking the box to select it. Everything's working perfect now, and I have an extra 80 gigs for MP3s.

As far as finding the right OS for me I'm pretty sure you're right, in just over 24 hours I've got it set up to run Gnome & KDE exactly the way I want it, Xfce is my current project.

I use Gnome for office work and changing things on my system, KDE for all my multimedia application and organization, Xfce for anything that bogs down my computer.

I was really scared about installing stuff when I first set up linux, but found the package managers to be more conveniant and easier to use than thier windows equivilant. Setting up plug-ins is the only thing that's really given me any problems and that was nothing a little searching and a bit of trial and error didn't get sorted out.

Now I think I'm going to do some web searches for tutourials to learn how to use the terminal in more ways than cutting and pasting commands from web sites.

Congrats :)
http://www.linuxcommand.org/ might be a good starter.

X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
Major opcode: 144
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device

What's this? I see the same thing over and over again, so far it hasn't caused any problems, but I'd like to know what's wrong so I can fix it. My first thought is to check my device manager, but I can't seem to find it. Do I need to download one, or am I just missing something?

This is a known bug, if you look in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file you'll see lines like
Basically anything to do with the wacom driver, you have 2 options, either comment them out, or delete them. Do the same forThen you just restart the X server and the errors should be gone.

Thanks
 

Errors gone, all is well.

Good for you!
Another happy Ubuntu user, how nice... user base just keeps growing...

Ubuntu is an excellent GNU/Linux distribution. You'll find that with a little research and a gentle learning curve, you can do anything with it that you were used to doing with Windows.

Enjoy!

IMHO -- Anything new has a learning curve. I was a Windows user for years but never made a transition from 98 to XP. A few years ago I went cold turkey to SuSE and KDE. With the debacle of the SUSE 10.1 release I tried Ubuntu and Gnome. I'd agree about a gentle learning curve. It was instantly useable and took a couple of weeks to learn to love it. I recently had to work again with Windows XP. Once for a new install and the other time to retrieve an XP system from malware death. The new XP install was painful because of missing drivers and the GUI was clumsy and to me illogical. I spent two days trying every trick in the book to revive the XP laptop. This was pain beyond belief. A fresh install of Ubuntu saved the day and with the exception of WiFi everything worked out of the box. What a contrast to installing XP on a new system a few days before. Aquainting my self with ndiswrapper and wifi-radar after stumbling with gnome-network-manager got wifi up and useable for a Windows only user. The happy user of this system never saw Linux before but with a one hour indoctrination is a happy camper. Back to the clean XP install, even a set of 2.1 speakers proved to be a driver problem. Ubuntu live CD just worked but that user being less adventuresome settle in with XP after I got things working. To be honest, I have to question why anyone would hold up Windows as a glowing example of usability. Factory Windows installs from companies like Dell do support all the purchase hardware but a DIY box from components is another story. In that case Ubuntu is the sure thing and Windows is the nightmare.