I spent the whole of tonight setting up my husbands computer for him, and no it wasn’t a windows install.

He surprised me yesterday by asking me to get rid of his windows partition, and when I asked why (mostly I was just curious)He said, well I don’t ever use it and I would like the space. Fair enough, so I told him to back up his stuff to the external then I would get it done for him.

First Some stats:

• Gateway GT5238E
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86Ghz
• 4 GB DDR2 Memory
• Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT 1GB DDR2
• 250 Gb SATA II HD
• Intel Integrated High Definition (HD) Audio

So I Slipped in the Ubuntu 8.10 Disk, and rebooted the computer, I proceeded to install Ubuntu by wiping the entire drive, a process of which took all of about 15 minutes from start to finsh. So there I was Facing a fresh install of Intrepid Ibex. The First thing I did was run the updates all 263(I think) of them. Once this was complete I rebooted. Facing a fresh install and with nothing to lose I decided to try downloading the newest Nvidia drivers directly from their website, instead of using the ones the system recommended or using EnvyNg. this process was quite smooth to be honest with you I simply followed the instructions found HERE and it all went off without a hitch. I reboot and the computer was running at the proper resolution. After that I proceeded with my normal checklist of Must installs

• Setting up permanent Network Mounts
• configuring the networked printer
• Installing restricted extras and Medibuntu goodies
• configuring timidity

All easy as pie to setup

Next on my agenda was to copy all of his files back off the external and onto his computer, then it was on to restoring Firefox settings. This process is made soooo easy by using 3 MUST HAVE extensions for Firefox. FEBE, Foxmarks, and Sxipper. Within less then 10 minutes I had his Firefox back to exactly the way he liked it, bookmarks, passwords, toolbars, and all.

For my next task I took to installing Guild Wars, (The Hubby and I love Guild Wars..lol) Now on my own system PlayOnlinux works great for Guild wars, but for some reason I tend to get lag on his computer with it. So I opted for using Crossover games on his system(I already had a licensed copy), and it works beautifully. He can easily switch between full screen and windowed mode using the ALT<enter> Shortcut on the keyboard. The Version of crossover games I’m using for his install is 7.2.0 and it works quite well. (At this point I’m having a blast I just love this stuff, yes I know I’m such a nerd….lol)

After that I proceeded to install all the odds & ends software:

• Banshee
• Latest Pidgin Version
• Pytube
• WinFF
• Frostwire
• Deluge
• gscrot(shutter)
• Ubuntu-Tweak
• etc..etc..etc..

After that I installed and configured Ubuntu-system-panel we have both fallen in love with the menu applet it’s just wonderful.

I finished up by making sure to reinstall all the backed up themes, icons, and cursors then setting up a theme and look I’m sure he’ll be pleased with. His computer is running amazingly well, and looks beautiful with the latest Nvidia drivers. All in all it’s been a pretty fun and productive night for me and I’ve really enjoyed the undertaking 😀 Now when is the last time you heard anyone say that after installing windows….lol.

So Tonight I managed to follow this thread on the Ubuntu forums to get my xbox reading media on my ubuntu install. 😀 I’m very pleased about this as I love listening to tunes while I play my games!

So Ubuntu has me doing things completely legal now..lol. I now buy all my MP3’s from amazon, and I love it. I love that now when I do things there is now fear of repercussions from anybody, but my computer is still my computer! GOOOO FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I spent the day yesterday Trying to decided what to do about my video card (Nvidia 8500 GT), apparently it came with a dud and the warranty has just expired(I only bought this computer last February). But I regress, let me back up a bit.

My Computer started acting kinda funky, then I had a freeze, so I did a hard shut down (with the power button) but then it wouldn’t turn back on, Well it did but wouldn’t get past the BIOS screen. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong. I tried resetting the RAM and nothing, so then I decided too have a look at pulling the T.V. out of the port (which isn’t supported by Linux anyway) and nothing, the comp still would not start. As a last resort I decided to reset the video card and that’s when I discovered it. The fan had completely broken. I mean it was still sitting on the mount but there is no way that bad boy was gonna spin ever again. At first I tried just leaving the side off and running an external fan over it as a temporary solution until I can afford to get a new one. Well that was not happening, the computer still didn’t want to boot up. Well this computer, didn’t come with an on board video card so without a card to replace it, the computer is useless. In the end I pulled the Nvidia 7300 GT of my sons computer as a temporary solution, leaving him with the On Board Nvidia 6100 (It really kinda sucks for his gaming), and put it into my computer. Once I put in the card the computer booted right up with no problem.

Well after my experience with that you would think I would be ready to walk away from the computer for the day, but then I had one other thing I wanted to do. When I initially installed Ubuntu Everything was on the same hard drive space, well having heard how Distro upgrades tend to break I decided that I wanted use a separate partition for my home folder. So wanting a clean slate I just decided to back up and do a fresh install then create the partition. Everything on that side went pretty smooth as I followed Aysiu’s tutorial at his website. The one issue I did have is that after rebooting and Logging back In I received this error:

User's $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default sessin and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User's $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users

So I googled it on my hubbys computer and came up with THIS post. Since gnome wouldn’t load I did a ctrl+alt f1 and dropped to shell to run the commands. Then I did

shutdown -r now

To reboot and everything has been running fine since. So that’s the story of my adventure for the day…lol

So I spent all day trying to get Guild Wars working with wine and then cedega. I installed and uninstalled it a whole bunch of times, tried tweaking the settings in both wine and cedega and nothing. I just kept getting a black screen, then my mouse would be trapped and the only way to get out of it would be ctrl-alt backspace.

In the end what worked and I mean just quite simply worked was Play On Linux. I had actually given up on trying to make it work, I downloaded Play on Linux and just wanted to check it out, and was surprised to see guild wars on the list. So I said What the Hell and decided to give it one last try. I clicked the install, and a little window popped up asking me if I had a dvd, I was slightly discouraged as I didn’t I had a CD. So I clicked no then it asked me if I had a cd (ah ha I thought) so I clicked yes. POL then asked me to put CD 1 in the drive, and I did. Then it asked me where the CD was located giving me three options to choose from.

cdrom
cdrom0
other

I chose cdrom0 as that’s where my disk was, and POL proceeded to copy files. Then we went through the same thing with disk 2. After that was done the guild wars installer popped up and POL’s window asked me to click next or ok when the installer asked me for disk 2. When it came to that point and the installer asked me for disk 2, I was slightly confused as the guild wars installer has an “OK” button, which I attempted to click a few times at first but that didn’t work. finally I decided to click the forward button on POL, then the installer happily continued on it’s way to completion. During the final bit of installation I took note of the fact that the POL window told me to close the game to continue once it automatically popped up. (Guild Wars opens Automatically upon install completion). So once the game opened up I closed it and finished the task of deciding whether I wanted Icon’s on my desktop, menu or both (I chose menu only as I like a clean desktop).

Play On Linux was simple and easy, and even gave me a nice update button so I didn’t have to wait for the game to update once it was loaded. I also was able to play in window mode which I like. I spent several hours tonight enjoying myself in Guild Wars 😀 😀 !

So that’s my success story for the day 😀 I hope this post in the least has entertained you, or at the most enlightened you to a very handy piece of software.

Well My Windows Partition Went corrupt on me, and I had neither the patience nor the want to try and fix it, so Instead I backed all my goodies up and then wiped the computer and clean and installed Ubuntu only. So now my computer is Windows Free 😀 😀 😀 !

I’m still trying to figure out why my microphone won’t work, I’ve tried everything, not even the helpful people here could figure it out. I’m holding out though hoping Intrepid will do the trick.

Angel

So today I figured out a bit about Gimp, I knew it would be a bit painful for me to transition when it came to photo editing as I always used Paint Shop Pro on windows, and I never liked photo shop. PSP just worked for me, and no matter what I couldn’t get it to work with wine. But I must admit though it’s a bit different I suppose it’s just a learning curve, “No Worries” I keep telling myself though. “You had to learn PSP also!”. But if you wanna see my first gimp creation (small though it is) click here 😉

So I spent the Past 2 days, formatting both my and My Husbands computers so I could make partitions and then install Ubuntu along-side our vista installations. It was actually quite simple, though a big pain the rear when it came to having to uninstall the unnecessary OEM programs and such on vista and then installing the stuff we need. But actually creating the partitions and then installing Ubuntu was a simple breeze thanks to this tutorial. So It took me about 2-3 hours on each computer to get vista back in prime condition. This includes installing all drivers, and windows updates. What a Pain I tell ya! But the good news is that both computers are now fully dual-booting Ubuntu on partitions and running like a dream. I’ll probably hardly ever use windows for anything except my T.V. Tuner (because it’s not supported by Linux) and gaming. Which means I probably won’t boot into vista very often.

So Ubuntu saved My sons computer from vista….lol. The computer originally came with XP Media center, then we upgraded to vista only to find he couldn’t play some of his games on it due to the tremendous lag by vista. So (since I only had a vista upgrade disk) I inserted the Ubuntu live CD used gparted to format the hard drive to NTFS and then was able to use my original system restoration disk which came with the P.C. to reinstall xp back on the system. It worked like a charm . I plan on installing Ubuntu on the second hard drive and dual-booting. Gosh I just love Ubuntu

I would just like to add that using Ubuntu has made me love using my computer again, I hadn’t just sat in front of my computer, and said “hmmm what can I do??” just for the sake of using the computer in ages, but all the sudden I found myself doing it again. 😀

I have decided that my next pc purchase will be a ubuntu computer from the start, though that might not be for a while. Right now the only thing keeping me from wiping out windows completly is the fact that this computer is in my bedroom and I watch T.V. on it and my T.V. Tuner isn’t supported by linux. I don’t really even bother with gaming much anymore except some of the linux games I’v installed on Ubuntu.