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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 45515 Location: yes
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dougal
Joined: 15 Jan 2005 Posts: 7184 Location: South Kent
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 07 10:50 am Post subject: Re: Linux looks like a good alternative |
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judyofthewoods wrote: |
... I even managed to share files with Vista on my hard drive, external USB hard drive and USB flash stick, ... |
Judy, since you have an external USB hard drive, my suggestion would be that the simpest, safest thing would be to boot Linux from that, if at all possible, rather than mucking about with dual booting off the same partition (which requires everything to play nicely).
So...
- discovering about booting from usb (can you? how?)
- repartitioning the external (so you have a backup area and a Linux area?)
- then play with whatever, in the safe "sandpit" partition you have created...
An alternative would be (to avoid altering your current "daily bread" system) to investigate "virtualisation" (use a z if you like on Google) software - again with the intention of keeping your experimentation within a fenced-off "sandbox".
Things have moved beyond VirtualPC, but nevertheless -
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToConfigureUbuntuForMicrosoftVirtualPC2004
Not my area, but hope that helps. |
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Jb
Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 7761 Location: 91� N
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OP
Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 4661 Location: Yorkshire
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tahir
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 45432 Location: Essex
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OP
Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 4661 Location: Yorkshire
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MarkS
Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 2626
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 45515 Location: yes
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jema Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 28118 Location: escaped from Swindon
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oldish chris
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 4148 Location: Comfortably Wet Southport
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OP
Joined: 28 Jul 2006 Posts: 4661 Location: Yorkshire
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 45515 Location: yes
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Gervase
Joined: 17 Nov 2004 Posts: 8655
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MarkS
Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 2626
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James
Joined: 11 Jan 2006 Posts: 2866 Location: York
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Posted: Mon Dec 03, 07 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Linux looks like a good alternative |
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judyofthewoods wrote: |
I have also found what looks like an easy enough step-by-step instruction (for Ubuntu - including all the commands to copy and paste) to hopefully get my USB Speedtouch Modem working on next boot. |
try this:
https://www.squeezedonkey.com/wiki/linux/index.php?title=Main_Page
its a program thats been written specifically for speedtouch USB modems running in ubuntu. Download it, click on the downloaded box icon on the desktop and ubuntu will automatically install it. All you need to do is enter your name & password. Its extremely easy, and very straight forward.
Another chance to get your hands dirty on the command line cruelly taken away from you!
If you've got vistas, its a piece of cake to partition off a little bit of your hard drive (on my laptop I have a 15 Gb linux partition, on my old pc I have a 7Gb partition). It takes a few minutes and a re-boot. Ubuntu needs around 4Gb to run, pluss some space to play with, so will happily run on 7Gb.
But as dougal says, if your BIOS allows booting from USB (press F12 during boot-up to find out), your best off just playing with linux on your external hard-drive
puppy didnt work as well for me as ubuntu on my Toshiba sattalite laptop. Consequently, I'd go for ubuntu. |
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