Hello! I didnt realize linux uses different languages. I mean, where can I find the size of hdd I have? Where are the c,d, drives?
Anyway, I am trying to adapt to this new OS but some applications I cannot download by giving me this error:

/tmp/super_grub_disk_0.9774.iso could not be opened, because the associated helper application does not exist. Change the association in your preferences.

What am I doing wrong here? I am just trying to install torrents, formulator (a horse racing program I confirmed is not Linux compatible), and a zip program called winrar.

I guess let's start with that issue. Thanks in advance!

Hello and Welcome to LinuxQuestions,

First of all, like when you are learning to drive you'll need to learn where the pedals and gears are. Linux is not Windows, so don't look for C:, D: or other drive indications like that. You will not find them. Next, forget about installing applications that are for Windoze, unless you can use them with an emulator like Wine.

If I were you I'd start by understanding the differences a little bit. To start with the basics you can start here:
Linux is not Windows

The first 'application' you are referring to is an iso, that's an image that should be burned to CD/DVD in order to use it. There are ways around this but since you're new explaining it will only make your head spin very fast.

The second one winrar (WIN) is a Windhoos program. You can have rar for Linux too (Google is a great way to find it) but I believe it's paying. There is however a program that's free, called unrar for Linux.

Kind regards,

Eric

Welcome to LQ!!

It appears that you have several unrelated questions. Next time around, try to move towards 1 question per thread.

First, tell us what distro (version) of Linux you are using.

When you got that error message, what exactly were you doing?---It sounds like you were trying to open an .iso file, but that will not work. An .iso file is normally an image for burning a CD.

To install SW, always try the package manager first.

A torrent client will surely be available with the pacakge manager.

Linux has its own zip utility, so you don't need winrar.

To run Windows SW, you can often use WINE---or the commercial version: CrossOver.

Finally, the nomenclature of "C Drive" is unique to Windows, and is misleading in that the C Drive might be just one partition on the actual drive. In Linux, the naming is most commonly sdXY, where X is a letter identifying the physical drive, and Y is the partition number. Examples:
sda drive #1
sda1 drive #1, partition #1
sdb3 drive #2, partition #3

To see your drives and partitions, open a terminal, su to root, and enter "fdisk -l" (ell, not one)

You will not get same windows softwares in linux but equivalent softwares that get the same job done. Go through the menus to find out.

File size can be know by right-click properties just as in windows or with If you want to install software use software/package manager under System -> Administration. Or the 'Add/Remove software' option under Applications.

Not sure if we have winrar for linux but again have equivalent software, archiver.

iso files are cd image files similar to nero cd image files(.nrg). You have to burn them. If you still want to see the contents you need to mount as loopback. You probably may have GUI applications too.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by language. Anyway, here are the major filesystem differences:

It uses forward (/), not back (\) slashes.

No such thing as .exe. Linux can tells apart an executable by it's permissions (they include read, write, and execute). Executables in Linux rarely have extensions.

No drive letters. Linux uses "mounting" instead. In this scheme, you basically assign drives to a directory, and changes in the directory are reflected in the drive itself. This allows you to, for example, seamlessly have the folder holding your personal files on a different partition, without you even being able to tell the difference.

The root directory (/) is mounted to the main partiton you specify (I am not sure how this works, probably the bootloader).

"files" are used to communicate with physical devices. most of these are in the /dev directory. This directory contains files that represent your HDDs, partitions, monitor, peripherals, I/O, etc. and reading/writing to these files will physically read/write to their corresponding device.

Instead of each program having its own directory structore like in Windows, Linux has directories in which the same part of ALL the programs go i.e. a directory for the executables, a directory for documentation, etc. This may seem strange, but it actually makes things easier because the shell knows where the executables, docs, etc. are supposed to be and can access them easily.

This is why you can't execute just any Windows program from the DOS prompt, but you can in the Linux command line.

And the Linux command line is by no means as gloomy and purposeless as the DOS prompt, I highly recomment learning it.

Linux is NOT Windows. I tried to switch to Linux unsuccessfully many times until I learned this and how to use the Linux command line. It is not a free Windows clone. It works very, very differently inside. Even the very basic filesystem concepts are different.

For the horse racing game you might want to try Wine (it runs as a layer between the Windows program and Linux, intercepting the program's Windows-specific calls and handling them appropriately).

As for WinRAR, choose a Free/Open Source alternative for Linux. There should be quite a few (i.e. file-roller for GNOME desktop). I personally like to use the command line for decompression (this requires no extra programs, too).

As stated above, Linux is NOT windows. Not even close. I guess you can kind of compare your c: drive to / in liux... but, the whole hierarchy is not the same.

well, my little ascii drawing just didn't show up right, so it's been omitted

There are also many many books related to linux and most likely your particular distro. That along with the infinite amount of info on the net, you will be able to learn linux without too much trouble. If you need help, the people at LQ are very helpful and will be willing to you. Just remember to give details about your problem and always let us know what you've tried

Good luck and don't give up

Let's do this one step at a time. I ran into so many problems, I dont know where to begin but let me start with "how I ended up here".

My main computer crashed (virus destroyed the registry) and I decided to use my spare pc. A hand me down Sony PCV RS530G which is a pretty good system.
I have music, video, picture files in the old pc that I wanted to transfer to my Sony. So I used my hdd to usb adapter but the Sony cannot read it. Some file system error. Someone suggested to try Ubuntu 8.10. He said maybe it will read it.
So I dl'd the iso and loaded it. I got this menu (confusing layout). I should have picked the first option but it looked like a title and not an option. None of the other options I can use except the install Ubuntu. I found out that I should have used the livecd instead of install. I dont know what livecd meant.
I dont mind learning Linux and having it as a second OS. I planned on it anyway. But again I got confused by the partition thing. Why Linux took about 90% of disk space away from Windows, I dont understand. Now I cannot add stuff to windows because of space issues. So I did the next mistake by deleting the partition. Now, I cannot boot back to windows. I get this grub loading stage 1.5.
All I want is to be able to dual boot Windows and Linux. How do I fix this? I don't have a recovery disk for Windows.
H E L P

yeah, that was a mistake...

If you don't have files that you need on either computer... (seeing as linux is freshly installed and your win partition is gone...) I would just start over, with a new install of both

Take your HDD and split the space in half. half for win, half for linux using the windows install CD. Install win first. (You can get windows boot manager to boot Linux, but it's a little more complicated than the other way around.) Anyway, after winblows is installed, then run your linux install. On the install, make sure you select the empty partion for the install and your on your way. Ubuntu will install the grub boot loader which will give you an option between windows and linux.

Again---one question at a time:

First, be sure any important data is backed up before going any farther.

The typical Linux installer gives you choices on how to set up the partitions. It appears that you selected an option which resized the Windows partition. But things are probably still OK....

The normal Linux installation installs a bootloader in the MBR---replacing the Windows loader. When you removed the Linux partition, you lost the configuration file for the Linux bootloader (GRUB). The easy solution is simply to install Linux again. But first, you might want to resize the Windows partition.**

You can put the Windows bootloader back by booting from a Windows install disk---rescue mode---and entering "fixmbr". If you don't have your own install CD, then you should be able to do this by borrowing one.


**I don't know all of the options that the Ubuntu installer gives you, but--one way or the other--you need a minimum of 3 partitions: Windows, Linux, and Linux Swap. Most Windows systems start with one partition filling the whole drive, and so a common first step is to re-size the Windows partition to make room. You can probably do this by booting the Linux CD--in liveCD mode, but you can also get a standalone bootable CD containing GParted---I recommend having this regardless. One way or the other, you probably want to increase the size of the Windows partition before proceeding. Tell us how big your hard drive is---and how much data you have---and we can give specific recommendations.

GParted:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

That's one of the problem. I can't backup because Sony will not read the external hard drive.
I don't have one. Everything is in the hard drive these days. The restore for the Sony pc is f10. But it will not come up anymore after the partition issue.
120 G HDD.

don't understand this--You mean the Sony laptop running Windows will not read an external drive??
Regardless, you can run from any Linux LiveCD and do a backup that way.

The vendor will sell you an install disk, or you can borrow one from another Windows user. Also, try a Google search using "restore Windows MBR". I think there are other ways....
As a last resort, a repair shop can restore the MBR. It's a 5-minute task, so don't let them keep the computer or try to do anything fancy/expensive

I would set it up as follows:
A. (preferred)
Windows ~15GB Primary
Linux ~15GB Primary
Linux swap 4GB Primary--at the end
Extended Partition: All the rest (this might be automatically created when creating a logical)
Shared data: ~50GB (eg formatted FAT32) Logical
The rest unallocated---for future changes

B.
Windows ~50GB or larger if needed, including all you existing data
Linux ~40GB
Linux swap 4GB
Spare--unallocated: all the rest

If you don't want to move your data around, choose B.

That was because my hdd was from the pc that crashed. I know it's not the hard drive that's why I am trying to transfer some of the files to the Sony. Sony is not reading from the usb it's saying something about file system issue.
I will try to transfer through cd live. I think I am commited to Linux now. I can't find the Windows XP anymore.

I tried to reinstall and in the booting part, it did not find the Windows boot anymore. I did before now it's gone.
And that's not the only problem. But first things first. I need my windows back. My wife having a problem using windows, she'll be even more frustrated with Linux.
At least save my files from the other hard drive. That's my first priority.

I don't know if this will help but when I messed up my Windows PC trying to migrate Kubuntu over from a Wubi installation I too lost my Windows boot and (in my case) F11 restore option.
After a complete Kubuntu re-install I found an addition to the Grub bootloader menu at the end with some unrecognised Windows reference.
On selecting this it triggered the restore option that used to be invoked by pressing F11 before it all went pear shaped.
This enabled me to reinstall Windows to a now very reduced partition with just the few options that I need when I really can't find the equivalent in Linux.

That's awesome! I think I will try f11 next time I reboot. The other problem is that whenever I reboot, I lose all the profiles I have created here in Ubuntu. At first, I installed a bunch of programs already and created bookmarks in Firefox. But rebooting takes me to a prompt with several errors while booting so when I end up in Ubuntu desktop, it's all new as if installed for the first time each time I reboot.
I first have to figure out how to recover my windows. I am even thinking about uninstalling Linux and just start over.

If you do get Linux installed, this is a really good tutorial, although not Ubuntu specific. For that you should check out the Ubuntu forums.
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

As mentioned above, Linux isn't necessarily harder, just different, so it will take a little time for you to get used to the differences.
Don't give up; there's lots of good people to help you here.

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