Trying Linux (Ubuntu) for the first time - Rank Amateur
 

Hi,
I have just assembled a new $200 cheap as chips desktop for the kids, for internet games / facebook and school homework. I have decided to have a go at installing Ubuntu, which seems the most suitable Distro for requirements. I have done this partly because I detest the fact that the OS and Office product combined is going to cost more than double the that of the machine but mainly because I like the idea of Linux, have been meaning to do this for quite a while and am looking forward to the challenge.
The PC config is:
Intel Pentium E5400 Dual Core, 2.7GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2Mb Cache
Elitegroup G31T-M7 Mainboard
G31(NB), ICH7(SB), Onboard LAN, onboard graphics, ami bios.
If anyone can offer me any pointers on potential hardware compatibility problems or a good place to download drivers for Ubuntu or any advice at all I will be very appreciative.

Regards

Jon

Stick the disk in, boot it, try it out (without installing).
Can't imagine any problems - when happy, click the "Install me" (or whatever) icon on the liveCD desktop. Just make sure you have the current Ubuntu (10.04).

Thanks for the reply, that is kind of the plan. Do you know if any of the windows drivers that come with MB are important, I know that much of the utilities aren't. Cant find anything on the ECS website about Linux drivers

Most of the drivers should be built in the kernel and you should not need any. My desktop has G31/33 on board graphics chip by Intel and everything works out of the box on Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS. And hardware should not bother you much if you do not have wireless card and external graphics card.
You should not need any windows drivers cd that came up with the mobo.

Are you using wired or wireless LAN? Wireless LAN is often a problem. There seem to be some obscure situations in which Linux needs to use a Windows driver for wireless LAN (I don't understand the details). There are less obscure situations in which it is best to use a wired connection temporarily to make it easier to find and download the driver needed for wireless (I don't know those details either).

The onboard graphics are at least as likely a source of problems as a plug in graphics card. Try Ubuntu in liveCD mode and see whether the graphics just work or whether some effort is required to get them working. No Windows drivers will be of any use in getting the graphics working. If the graphics don't work automatically, you'll need some more specific advice after you post a description of what went wrong.

How much ram and disk space do you have? I expect a $200 computer wouldn't have much. The E5400 CPU should be plenty for Ubuntu, but if you're seriously short of ram or disk, you might want a lighter distribution of Linux.

Thanks for the reply.
It will be wired to start with until I get it working properly. BTW Wireless LAN problems cannot be any worse than the Windows Vista / IBM Think Vantage problems I had with my T60 when new - about 8 patches in a month were required if I remember correctly

2GB of RAM (FSB 800MHz, DDR2 + can always pickup another 2GB pretty cheap if needed) and a 500GB Hard disk.

I have partitioned the HDD and am installing an OEM copy of Win XP SP2 from a now dead machine. If I get problems with Ubuntu drivers I have 30 days till XP switches itself off to download drivers etc. Once I have Ubuntu set up and working I will just delete the XP partition
I am not sure what the onboard graphics variety is as the mobo manual(in Taiwanese pigeon English unfortunately) doesn't mention it. I will have to wait for XP to finish loading then I can find out.

Regards

Jon

As you are using Intel processor and chipset, you most probably do not need to install drivers manually. It should be taken care off by Ubuntu itself. Intel has good support for Linux. Wired networking should not be too much of an issue if it is on board. Wireless and graphics are the ones that usually create issues. And since you have none, you should be fine. But still trying out a Live CD will always give you some idea on how your distribution will behave with the hardware. Just try the live cd and then see if everything is working fine. And if it is then you do not want to mess it up. Just install.

I have just installed Lucid Lynx on six very different computers: lan, wireless lan, mobile broadband, and about as wide a variety of hardware imaginable, with not one hiccup, let alone a problem on any of them. It's an excellent distro, but the previous advice given here about giving the live cd a spin first is advice that cannot be stressed enough. Some distros and some pc's just cannot get along, no matter how hard you or anyone else will try.
It is also a very good transition os for kids, especially the teen kind who think that if they haven't got Windows 7 then they're seriously deprived. Getting the nextgen growing up with open source, showing them the possibilities and the community, is really important. Even just showing some kids a bit of basic Bash: hit the Enter button and be amazed at the dataflow they've created. Before you know it, they'll be wanting to learn how to write a bit of code to tweak their apps!
One last little thought- it's really good to get the whole idea of Microsoft Whatever OS as the fallback position out of your head- it's of course how we think at first but it's really not at all necessary, and once you fully commit to Linux is when you start a very satisfying learning curve, with a huge community and unbelievably massive amounts of documentation that are there every step of the way.
Really, it's huge. Give it a go.

Thanks to all of you I have got it installed and working very easily. As the computer was brand new with only a non updated version of win xp installed and no apps or data I didn't check too thoroughly on the live CD version first. I just installed Ubuntu after checking the CD integrity directly onto a new primary partition. The only glitches I encountered were:
1) I used a Win7 laptop to download the source files. If you have Winzip or similar installed this auto associates itself to .iso extn. Win7 does not show file extensions (grrrr!!!!) and .iso appears as & behaves just like a .zip file, very confusing. with Win7 deviate from the ubuntu.com instruction and right click on the icon then openwith Windows Disc Image Burner - problem solved.
2) I installed Win XP on a primary partition first then Ubuntu. I used the Win XP SP2 cd to partition / format a 50GB primary all installed OK. When I put the Ubuntu cd in to install this it saw the windows partition as 250GB (50% of the space). I used the Ubuntu partition ap to reduce this back down to 50GB and installed Ubuntu on another 50GB partition all OK. (If this was anything other than a fresh install of XP I wouldn't have done it like this). All worked OK but XP complained next time i booted it and ran Check Disk - then carried on OK.
3) Cant seem to get the onboard LAN working in Ubuntu as yet (Aethos L2 Fast Ethernet Controller). Not sure why, I am about to investigate. The OS is assigning itself a 127. local IP address - not sure if it is a driver problem, DHCP router problem or something i haven't set up in the OS - will endeavor to find out.

All else works, even the DVD burner, onboard graphics and USB printer
Looking forward to learning

This is why the liveCD is handy. Try the liveCD and see if the interface works - probably will, they tend to find everything. Quick google indicates you might need the ATL2 driver. Maybe just try "sudo modprobe atl2" from a terminal session. Hopefully if you are using a DHCP server (router maybe) it'll light up.

No help, but the IP address 127.0.0.1 (local host) is absolutely normal in any installation with networking installed; it's the local loopback and does not use your hardware and does not have anything to do with possible driver problems.

Maybe a prompt in XP that you thought was asking GB was really asking %.

That is supposed to happen on the first boot after you resize the XP partition. So all that ran normally.

Managed to sort out the LAN issue, dodgy LAN cable (embarrassing or what, but it was brand new), once I replaced that all I had to do was type the router address in eth0 under network tools and set it to DHCP and it works.

Regards

Jon

Thats nice to see you got it working. With Lucid, there comes the Ubuntu official manual that you can download with Synaptic. That is going to help you a lot. It is an official doc written with the help of community members and is organized in way that someone new to Ubuntu should find it easy to read and understand. It should make your life easy.

'the Ubuntu official manual that you can download with Synaptic' How can you do this?

thanks Jerry

There this manual for Ubuntu that has been documented by the community. You can use Synaptic to download it. Else you can also download the pdf from internet. Synaptic is the package manager that can be used to install packages.