More Linux...
Oct. 10th, 2009 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sally_mariaAs I had a day off today, I decided it was time to do some more fiddling with my Linux setup on the laptop.
After some discussion with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alitalf, I'd decided that the best solution was to put a new larger hard drive in the laptop, as I hadn't been able to free up enough space from my Vista partition to make using Mint a particularly sensible long term prospect. (Yes, I might have been able to make Vista give up more space by hitting it harder, but the drive was still only 80Gb.)
I'm fine with software upgrades, but I don't do hardware. Fortunately alitalf was able to take time out of his busy schedule at Oxonmoot to fit the new drive, and I came home to the chance to start again with a completely empty 320Gb drive. Of course, at this point, the Mint CD, which had already done two Wubi installs and one normal one, decided that it wasn't going to play any more. :-(
I'd been thinking of installing another disto, now I had the extra space, so I went ahead and installed Kubuntu, (the KDE desktop version of Ubuntu) from a Live CD I'd made back when I was experimenting in August, and then I could burn a new Mint CD. KDE is strange, I find - I've heard it suggested that it's more like Windows, and I suppose it does have the whole single panel and menu at the bottom by default thing - but I'm not finding it as easy to get to grips with as Gnome, even so. One day, I'll have to start using it exclusively, and then maybe it will "click" for me.
So now I have my Mint install, and it's working really well for me. I haven't missed Windows for weeks, and while I'm still going to keep it on the desktop, for when I really need it, I'm very happy to stick to Linux for my day to day computer use.
When I set up the laptop, I'd set up most of the space as a data partition, so I could use it from any distro that I had installed. I'd not made a very good job of it, though, because the way I'd set it up meant I could only read and not write to it. By going into root, I managed to force it to work by just granting permission to everything in sight, but it didn't seem like the correct way to handle the situation. Also, it didn't mount automatically, which meant I couldn't use it for files the computer would want to access on booting, like Dropbox and the wallpaper randomiser.
After some more research on the Mint forums, I discovered how to auto-mount the drive, and also how the echo command works - useful knowledge for the future, I hope.
Now it's mostly just a question of working out the fine details, the best applications for this and that - and then there will be a new version of Mint...and generally, a lot of things to tinker with. :-)
After some discussion with
alitalf, I'd decided that the best solution was to put a new larger hard drive in the laptop, as I hadn't been able to free up enough space from my Vista partition to make using Mint a particularly sensible long term prospect. (Yes, I might have been able to make Vista give up more space by hitting it harder, but the drive was still only 80Gb.)I'm fine with software upgrades, but I don't do hardware. Fortunately alitalf was able to take time out of his busy schedule at Oxonmoot to fit the new drive, and I came home to the chance to start again with a completely empty 320Gb drive. Of course, at this point, the Mint CD, which had already done two Wubi installs and one normal one, decided that it wasn't going to play any more. :-(
I'd been thinking of installing another disto, now I had the extra space, so I went ahead and installed Kubuntu, (the KDE desktop version of Ubuntu) from a Live CD I'd made back when I was experimenting in August, and then I could burn a new Mint CD. KDE is strange, I find - I've heard it suggested that it's more like Windows, and I suppose it does have the whole single panel and menu at the bottom by default thing - but I'm not finding it as easy to get to grips with as Gnome, even so. One day, I'll have to start using it exclusively, and then maybe it will "click" for me.
So now I have my Mint install, and it's working really well for me. I haven't missed Windows for weeks, and while I'm still going to keep it on the desktop, for when I really need it, I'm very happy to stick to Linux for my day to day computer use.
When I set up the laptop, I'd set up most of the space as a data partition, so I could use it from any distro that I had installed. I'd not made a very good job of it, though, because the way I'd set it up meant I could only read and not write to it. By going into root, I managed to force it to work by just granting permission to everything in sight, but it didn't seem like the correct way to handle the situation. Also, it didn't mount automatically, which meant I couldn't use it for files the computer would want to access on booting, like Dropbox and the wallpaper randomiser.
After some more research on the Mint forums, I discovered how to auto-mount the drive, and also how the echo command works - useful knowledge for the future, I hope.
Now it's mostly just a question of working out the fine details, the best applications for this and that - and then there will be a new version of Mint...and generally, a lot of things to tinker with. :-)
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Date: 2009-10-11 07:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 08:37 pm (UTC)I suspected it wouldn't mean a lot to many people, but I had to do something to prove I had a brain, in between the two completely shallow fangirl posts. ;-)
If you ever want an explanation, do ask, I'm more than happy to talk about it. The struggle may be shutting me up...