Linux Newbie

DC5_ITR

Greetings

I've tried many times to get Linux running on various desktop computers, never with any measure of success. I'd really like to have it dual booting with Windows 7.

Every time I try however, it never gets to the login screen (crashes at like a DOS text screen). Errors are typically something failing to initialise or startup properly. I've tried this on a Dell XPS desktop, an Alienware Area 51 and mostly recently on a custom built machine (ASUS MOBO, Intel i5 chip, AMD GFX Card).

It has worked only once for me and that was setting up a dual boot system of Windows XP with Ubuntu on a HP Netbook!

I've tried Ubuntu and Mint usually as from what my searches on the interweb tells me, these are the noobie-friendly versions to get to grips with. However, any posts looking for help on their official forums with details on the errors get zero replies which leads me to giving up again for another few months.

Can anybody recommend a solid version of Linux that is genuinely user friendly and has good guides, active forum for installation help etc? I'm sure there are some serious Linux wizards around here so hoping someone can get me sorted on this please.

Many thanks.

ARGINITE

Ubuntu or Mint.
Check if a live cd will work in the machine before going any further. If it doesn't then post what happens here and someone will help you.

Johnboy1951

Run a LiveCD and make sure you get to the desktop OK.

You might also look at PCLinuxOS which is one of the original user-friendly distros.

The support forum is smaller but more attentive, so you are likely to get a response fairly quickly.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

Downloads:

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/live-cd/

http://ftp2.ie.freesbie.org/pub/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/live-cd/

Knasher

Not getting to the login screen (and falling back to a terminal) is a red flag for a problem with the graphics card drivers. Can you specify exactly what graphics card you are using and when you get the error (seeing as you specify login screen, does this mean you have successfully completed install?).

PrzemoF

OP, if you hit a problem take a photo or white down last few lines and post it here. Don't try to wipe out and reinstall - that's a waste of time!

CD image verification to avoid bad download/bad burn is always a good idea if things are not going as expected.

DC5_ITR

Thanks for the replies all.

I did try the LiveCD route before and what was odd was that it booted up fine from that but after a successful HD install, that boot failed!

My previous graphics setup was an nVidia 8800GTX in SLI configuration and one of the IT guys here was guessing it might be something like that but said he couldn't help because nVidia drivers were a nightmare to sort on Linux (apparantly).

My current one is a single Radeon with the current mouthful name:

Asus Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II Graphics Card (2GB GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0, 1010MHz/4840MHz, HDMI, DVI-I, DirectX 11.1).

I have an Ubuntu USB key that I ordered recently (but got scared off in when it came to install time in case I destroyed the MBR!). I will try to boot off of that this evening when I get home and see how it goes.

I'll be sure to post here with the error information and pictures if need be!


Many thanks all.

LiamOSullivan

I'd echo mint. If it's crashing during startup with something like ubuntu, chances are you have some not-incredibly-well-supported-hardware, so it could be worth trying Sabayon. Sabayon, in some ways, is more 'advanced' than mint or ubuntu, but it's much more up to date as far as hardware drivers go, I think.

DC5_ITR

Ok, tried booting the Ubuntu "LiveCD" (from USB Key) and it didn't work. Looked like it was booting up and then just black screen. Left it for 20 mins and still nothing. Same thing happened with Mint. The unfortunate thing here is that there was no black screen with white text to even take a picture of or write down what the problem was.

I'd never heard of 'Sabayon' but downloaded it and gave the LiveCD a whirl. The LiveCD of this booted up perfectly and looked very nice and polished. Not one error on the whole boot in verbose mode so this was looking good. I did the hard disk install and it said everything went on fine and wanted to reboot, so I did. It just went straight into Windows - no boot chooser. I opened 'msconfig' in Windows and the only thing listed on the boot list was the Windows option.

Anyone know how to add a boot chooser so I can pick between Windows and the Sabayon installation? If it helps to know, I have the following configuration:

* Drive C is an SSD and only has Windows on it.
* There is another seperate, physical hard drive that is partitioned into various drives under Windows but it has about 200GB of free space that was used up by Sabayon and that's where it installed itself.


Thanks for the help.

Johnboy1951

DC5_ITR wrote: »

Ok, tried booting the Ubuntu "LiveCD" (from USB Key) and it didn't work. Looked like it was booting up and then just black screen. Left it for 20 mins and still nothing. Same thing happened with Mint. The unfortunate thing here is that there was no black screen with white text to even take a picture of or write down what the problem was.

I'd never heard of 'Sabayon' but downloaded it and gave the LiveCD a whirl. The LiveCD of this booted up perfectly and looked very nice and polished. Not one error on the whole boot in verbose mode so this was looking good. I did the hard disk install and it said everything went on fine and wanted to reboot, so I did. It just went straight into Windows - no boot chooser. I opened 'msconfig' in Windows and the only thing listed on the boot list was the Windows option.

Anyone know how to add a boot chooser so I can pick between Windows and the Sabayon installation? If it helps to know, I have the following configuration:

* Drive C is an SSD and only has Windows on it.
* There is another seperate, physical hard drive that is partitioned into various drives under Windows but it has about 200GB of free space that was used up by Sabayon and that's where it installed itself.


Thanks for the help.

Change the boot order to boot the second disk first, and Sabayon should boot. Most likely it install its bootloader on the second disk.

Of ten pressing F12 or another key during POST will give you a selection screen to choose the second disk.
Failing this the order can be changed in BIOS.

LiamOSullivan

^ Beat me to it.

Fantastic to hear Sabayon works!

I think that what's likely happened is that the linux bootloader has installed itself to your non-SSD drive. If you're using a BIOS, you could see if you can choose which drive to boot from. If your BIOS supports this(Really should), I think setting it to boot the other drive should do the trick.

DC5_ITR

I switched the boot order to start on the second drive first and up pops the Sabayon boot chooser menu. It listed Sabayon and even the Windows install on the other drive to boot from. Great stuff!

I've no idea why Ubuntu and Mint etc have always (and to this day) been problematic for me as a 'greenhorn' to get going, but this Sabayon was a pleasure.

Many thanks guys.

LiamOSullivan

That's good to hear.

Knasher

DC5_ITR wrote: »

I've no idea why Ubuntu and Mint etc have always (and to this day) been problematic for me as a 'greenhorn' to get going, but this Sabayon was a pleasure.

Glad to hear you got it working. The difference is because Sabayon ships with proprietary drivers, whereas most distros only ship opensource but have the option to install the proprietary at a later date. If for some reason you were insistant on running Ubuntu, what you would end up doing is installing it though a non-gui interface, manually installing the proprietary drivers though the text interface, then rebooting into linux as normal.

Though now that you have Sabayon running, I wouldn't consider doing that worth the effort.