After receiving advice that Ubunto would be a good starting distro for the Linux newbie, I started looking for th .iso for download, and read along the way that Xubunto would be a good bet, in my case, since I'm running an old PII 450Mhz with 128MB RAM.

I've finished downloading it now, but the LiveCD is WAAAAAAY too sluggish. Even so i beared with it and started the install program. Everything went fine up until when it started the partitioning tool.

First of all it stopped for a while on 41%, but after waiting for about 30 mins, it started moving again...only to stop again at 67%(Checking Filesystems). Funny thing was that it didnt actually stop: the CD Drive was still busy, and if I moved the mouse the pointer would follow...with a big delay.

Now I don't I should partition the disk myself, or if that wouldn't solve anything, or even if theres a better way (perhaps a version that runs from the Terminal)...

I also ask for an easy to follow explanation, since I'm quite the newbie when it comes to Linux...

Thanks in advance

Disk partitioning is not just a linux thing.

I would suggest you get a separate tool and do the partitioning first. All you have to do is create free space. You do not need to format until you are doing the install. There are free programs, or you can get a pay one. Q-parted works well enough, and is free. I have also used Partition Magic, it is easy to use, but it is a purchase item. Your choice.

BTW I have a old laptop, a Compaq 1245 I installed Xubuntu on. I used Dapper Drake 6.06. Yes, you will find running the live CD slow, this is primarily due to the slow CD rom drives, about 10x slower than a hard drive, and everything is compressed. I have only 96meg of ram, and it worked for me as a live CD and after install.

As for the HD, I would suggest you create at least three partitions, one for / ( the OS goes here ) one for swap ( 2x your ram ) and the rest for /home. Your stuff goes in /home. If you want or need more guidance, post back.

Thank you...I've spent this afternoon looking for solutions and I was running kind of low...I even tried a method from their site, but it backfired: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...on/FromWindows

I did as they told for Win98, but after I exec'ed the command, it stopped at launching the kernel...

I will try that, or borrow PMagic from a friend...

EDIT: Oh, sorry, forgot to mention I'm running windows, so QTParted isn't an option :S...Any ideas?

you never said how much memory you have. i have a really old toshiba laptop that wouldn't boot from rom and only 16 megs of ram. i found a boot manager on floppy that help point bios to boot from rom first. due to very low memory, it took about 2 hours to install dsl. (i just wanted to see if it would work). after the install all ran fine, kinda sluggish but understandable. this was my truely first linux experience. i tried several distro's and even distros on floppy (which kinda rock by the way). i reccomend you do the partitions before the install and then just have some patience. you could also try a smaller live distro to and experiement that way.

Thanks for the advice...I've also downloaded DSL, I might try that next.

Well, I just Defragged C:\, and I'm gonna boot Xubunto again, but this time I'll partition from the LiveCD...

PS: Oh, and I DID mention my memory on my first post, it's 128MB RAM

sorry....guess i missed that....i've read these post so many times....just to learn and hopefully give helpful advice. good luck to you.

As I stated in a previous post, I'm trying to install Xubunto for the first time...and as lots of other users with low end machines, the setup seems to be quite slow, up until a point where it really freezes...the Partitioning Manager.

So I created a 2GB EXT2 Linux partition, and a 258MB Linux Swap partition.
The swap one did the trick, allowing me to run the Live CD much faster, but it seems to ignore the EXT2 one, when it asks me if I want to format the disk OR manually partition it (which won't do, as the setup freezes there).

My question is: could this be happening because the EXT2 partition isnt a Primary one? The part program says I shouldn't convert it to primary because Win98(my OS) doesn't work with two primary partitions...

Thanks in advance

I does not matter to linux if the partition is primary or extended. Either will work.

Windows will not boot from a second primary partition, it will only boot form the first primary partition. Windoze has no ability to read or write ext2 or swap, so as far as windoze is concerned, it will boot and operate without issues on the first primary partition, and can not see the rest of the drive.

Just for interest sake, my main machine has W98 on the first primary partition, and I have an extended partition, split between one partition for W98, and ext3 for / ( mandrake 9.2 ) swap /home for mandrake 9.2. On my second drive I have Mandriva 2006, my main distro. All boot fine. W98 can not see the second disk, or the 9.2 install. Just the way I want it. I can share files on the D windoze drive, I made it fat32. In windoze speak, D is the first formatted area on the extended partition.

I'm not suggesting you try and make it complicated, but to get you to think about how you will use the two operating systems and the disk resources.

The freezing is troublesome. That is not at all normal. 128 meg is enough memory, that is all I have on my main machine, and I operate an old laptop with 96 meg and Xubuntu.

Usually when you install there is no need to format before you start the install, since you can do it with the installation CD's. Since you have formatted the one partition already, try using the manual approach. I think it should give you an option to format, or not format a partition. It wouldn't hurt anything to format the ext2 partition again, but you should be able to bypass the formatting and process to install.

Freezing can be caused by defective memory, or even a drive going bad. I'm sure there are other hardware failures that can cause it also.

The other cause could be the install CD. How was it burned? Did you do a md5sum check? Have you tried it in another machine as a live CD?