i have installed mandriva and i have tried to do ubuntu on 3 occasions with no success. i just didnt like the faxt that i couldnt find a 'file manager' in mandriva made me uninstall it. first ubuntu try i got a invalid video card ( brand new dell with nvidia 7300le card, i aint a vidiot but this card works under windows, 2nd ubuntu try was same - bad vid card...i can operate in live mode but cant install. the last time bugs me. i went and made the new disk 6.06 burned it and loaded it including a linux repartition. this time networking would not come up no matter what i did, so i resized the windows partition and formatted the drive...now WHICH distro really does work, with mostly a gui, and minimun of terminal commands. i want ubuntu but i aint gonna queer my hard drive every time i want to load it, help and tkz

Hi, i have a dell Dimension E520 with NVIDIA 7300 LE 256 mb video card... i have run both ubuntu 6.10 and 7.04 on it with almost no problems, never problems with the video card, other than once when i installed the drivers wrong, not that it wasn't detected or anything... i recommend the latter... ubuntu 7.04... it works with my system, very graphical for setup and simple so if i were you i'd try it. Good luck, and be as patient as possible...
furthermore his a link where you can download ubuntu 7.04 32bit standard desktop edition, assuming you dont want to have the 64 bit trouble, as i prefer (not to have the 64 bit trouble )
http://ftp.ucr.ac.cr/ubuntu-cd/feist...sktop-i386.iso

Driver setup shouldn't be that bad, and with ubuntu it should be easiest to install any missing drivers. Just look around and learn to use google.

First, I would try the Ubuntu alternate install CD. Its a text based installer, but *IF* you're having minor hardware issues with the graphical installer, the Alternate Install CD will get you by most of them. 2nd I don't know how long ago you tried to do Ubuntu, but 6.06 is not the current version, 7.04 is. 7.04 handles drivers much better than 6.06.

I'd try to burn a 7.04 Live CD, and run it. See if you can surf the internet. If you can, then it should configure properly when you install. Having problems with the graphical installer, is not an incredibly uncommon thing, thats why they offer the Alternate Install CD. For me, the problem is Dual monitors, it always chokes a Live CD. I also second mitchellman's suggestion to stay with the i386 distro, and don't mess with the 64bit right now.

IGF

PCLinuxOS

http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/ ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

the d/l site had 6.06 and a guarantee thru 2009, 7.04 seemed to be like a beta version and was only offered support for 1 year, thats why i went with 6.06 thinking it was more stable than the new one...but i'll burn a ver 7 disc and see , tkz for the advice!!!

Easy mistake... Dapper (6.06) is the LTS (Long Term Support) release. Those are not "guarantee" times, but "support" times. There is no guarantee with any software at all (read the license!)

What happens is, there is a new version out quite frequently. When the old one expires, you get the newer one. The LTS release is mainly for business users who want to buy a support contract. After install, you would have a lengthy upgrade ahead of you.

The main reason for getting the latest version, is to support newer hardware... out of the box. You could have got dapper installed, in text mode, then obtained the driver, but you are better off with feisty (7.04)... really.

This is the thing with open source... pre-alpha is unstable, but useable... mostly (Enlightenment Desktop Shell). Alpha is quite good... good enough for a Windows 1.0 release anyway (The ATAPI dev stuff in cdrecord)... While beta is a commercial release (re. Firefox 0.9x). By the time 1.0 comes around, things are pretty peachy. (Note... examples are off the top of my head and people will disagree.)

A Linux distro will be a mixture from all camps. However, there is discernment... Beryl is too unstable to be a defaelt, but Compiz (Beryl's parent) is fine... but Sabayon uses Beryl as standard. (Ubuntu folk like to use beryl on the desktop anyway.) Enlightenment is self-proclaimed "pre alpha" but is the standard for YellowDog (think: PS3).

Debian actually has a release called "unstable", which is the recommended version.

Welcome to a new and more dynamic world.

The link i gave you earlier is to Ubuntu 7.04 live cd 32bit, probably what you want... BTW i use Beryl it's cool, and not so glitchy, just add toolkits to java, and it's all good

I sent for x86_64 versions of Ubuntu 7.04 (1 CD), Suse 10.2 (6 CDs), and Fedora Core 6 (6 CDs). I tried them all yesterday. Ubuntu produced nothing on my monitor except signal-out-of-range messages. Suse couldn't make the type of my swap partition 82, and I couldn't get past that point in the install process. FC6 worked, and I'm using it now.

I see that several of you have pointed out that Ubuntu has a text-install CD, but I only had the one disk to try.

This is a distro I don't use anymore and don't recommend. Its bloated for no reason, takes too much memory, and took way to long to load in the first place. I suggest you stick to figuring out Ubuntu.

I agree 100%

IGF

This error message comes from your monitor... it probably means the xorg.conf monitor settings are wrong. It may be that you need the alternate install CD. I see you have chosen to disregard advise to use the 32bit release.... which is nuts; that's the default. Unless you are trying to make it decimal 82 instead of hex 82.What did it tell you when you tried to create the swap.Well done.

While fedora is no longer my first choice, I have found that it tends to install where all others fail.

Some vital fedora links...
www.fedorafaq.org
www.mjmwired.net

Yes, that's where the message comes from, and yes, the xorg.conf setting were presumably wrong, since "Xorg -configure" gets them wrong, and they were wrong on the FC6 system as installed. If the Ubuntu install disk had given me a text console, I could have fixed it.
Evidently. But it was the free offer, and I was only offered the one disk.
I actually didn't even ask for advice about that. I want a 64 bit system.
I didn't assign the number "82", it was the stupid interface that Suse cooked up. I've partitioned many disks using fdisk and cfdisk. I had to use Suse's menu system to choose the type "swap". When I told it to go ahead and make the partitions, I got an error message saying the type couldn't be set to "82". I deleted all the partitions I'd made and remade them, but then the same error occurred. It wasn't my error -- with no console to use (as I would have in Slackware), there wasn't anything I could do, except quit in disgust.

That's right... the installer has to second-guess your monitor preferences. A fedora-like option to switch to a terminal during the install process is useful, yes. However, fedora comes on a DVD while Ubuntu comes on a CD... thus there are sacrifices. This is why there are different distributions.Ahhhh... that suggests that the partitions are failing some sort of test. Usually you would use expert mode and create the needed partitions with SUSE... or you would tell SUSE to use the existing partition without formatting.

But, if you are happy with fedora... stay with it. I'd suggest waiting for FC8 for the next upgrade.

IMO, 64bit distros just aren't quite ready yet. My PC is quite capable of running a 64bit system, but I've stuck with 32bit for the forseeable future. First, some programs just don't work under the 64bit architecture. Then things that should be absurdly simple(for instance, Flash), aren't so simple. You'll spend a good portion of your day trying to figure out how to make a 32bit browser run on your 64bit distro, just so you can use something simple like Flash... There's other examples, but thats the first one that jumped in my brain.

Just my opinion of course, YMMV.

IGF