Need help before I even start....

Hodgins Family ehodgins at telusplanet.net
Sun Sep 18 14:12:35 UTC 2005


Good morning (at least it is here!)

Step 1 is to get your friend to go here 
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/distro/ubuntu/iso/5.04/  This is an Ubuntu 
download mirror for the current distribution.

Ask him/her REAL NICE to download this iso:  ubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso 
(I'm assuming that you have a Intel based machine.)

You want to know 2 things:
i) is the machine able to boot off of a CD (if it doesn't, there should be a 
file on the CD called SBM that you can write to a floppy that "encourages" 
many machines to boot off of a CD.
ii) does the machine have enough RAM, nice enough video, etc. etc. to make 
the install worth while for you. No point in going through the learning 
curve if the end result is not worth using!

If you can get the live CD to boot do yourself a favour and watch the screen 
as the the OS is loading...the gibberish is a kind of like a linux 
fingerprint of your hardware and will make more and more sense to you as you 
read what other folks on the web have to say about their systems: hda?, 
fsck?, fd0?

Assuming that i) and ii) work out OK AND before attempting an install, I'd 
suggest getting (yet another!) file off the web: you want DBAN. This floppy 
based program "cleans up" hard drives by writing and rewriting stuff all 
over them...nice way to sanitize an unknown drive. It has a hidden benefit 
as well: the prgram can take hours to run. That's hours of constant reading 
and writing. If your drive is on its last legs (it might be :-( ) DBAN might 
help to put it out of its misery BEFORE you waste too much time.

Good luck!

Rob 





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