All the software you need for free!

Well. . .sort of. It started when I adopted Firefox as my web browser of choice. The appeal of open source software.

Then I started this blog using WordPress which is another great software that is free and works well. Why not wade a little deeper? Now that I’ve got a DSL connection I can download more faster and get up to speed with the rest of the “power user” world so to speak.

In another life (it seems like) I took a Unix administrator’s course because my employer had purchased a workstation to run SCO Open Desktop. With that seed planted, I have read about the various Linux distributions off and on over the years, but never took the plunge. Then I saw that the Ubuntu version of Linux was in the top 25 of the top 100 products of 2005 according to PC World. That really got my attention. This list was not just the top software programs of the year but included all products like desktops, laptops, pda’s, etc.

So, I browsed over and did some research and downloaded a live CD just to try out the look and feel of Ubuntu. Nice! After I did some forum lurking for a day or two I decided to give it a go. Just to be sure, I called a local Linux “fanatic” and he encouraged me to just do it.

Since I couldn’t bring myself to risk my main PC I booted up my backup PC that was formerly used in my offline motorcycle accessories store. At that point the story goes downhill, but I will preface by saying thank goodness for backups!

The following will bore most of my readers, but I want to post it anyway in case it may help somebody in the future.

After booting the PC (originally a Win XP Pro SP2 box by Dell) with the live cd, I launched the Ubuntu install by double-clicking the icon on the desktop. Step 5 of 6 asked how I would like to partition the hard drive. Did I mention I decided NOT to go with a second drive?

It’s only a 40gb drive so I shrunk the NTFS partition by 10gb and clicked “Next” and confirmed my intentions. Problem was I didn’t create a partition on the drive out of the left over 10gb. So I went “Back” and set up the partitions the way I should have to begin with and again confirmed my intentions.

The next screen should have shown an available partition ready and waiting for my new Ubuntu install, but instead I had two blacked out partitions (the NTFS/Win XP and the new 10gb partition). GTParted wouldn’t recognize these two main areas of the disk and neither would Win XP. I got the dreaded “Operating System Missing” black screen. I think what happened was that the MBR (master boot record) and the partition table was corrupted by my double take on the partition utility. The best I could figure, the data was gone.

I really want to dual-boot Linux and XP on my main pc (a white box with XP Home SP1 currently) so instead of just letting Linux have the entire hard drive of the spare pc I decided to re-install XP Pro from the CD provided by Dell. This way I can experiment and get the process right before I hack on my main pc. During the re-install I used the XP partition utility to carve out the 10gb that I want for Ubuntu.

With XP back up and running in it’s most basic mode, I re-installed my backup software (Retrospect 6.5) and started a complete restore from my IOGear Ion USB drive. Then I crashed.

This morning after a couple of re-boots the spare PC looks like its old self again. The only thing that isn’t back to normal is that Norton Internet security said it needs to be activated. Not a big deal.

My next step is to try the Ubuntu install again. Not sure when I’ll get a chance to do it with Thanksgiving coming up but I’ll let you know how it goes.

The lessons learned and confirmed from this are:

Move data to a secure location or make sure you have a good backup before hand
Have the OS install CD handy
Make only ONE change to the partition table and re-boot Windows to make sure it’s ok before continuing

So Open Source software IS no cost, but no necessarily free if you count the learning curve timre. There’s a learning curve with everything though. I guess learning something new is the appeal of this whole project.

I welcome comments and tips!

Especially the linux tips. . . I obviously need help! 🙂