Ubuntu Install problem

[NutterzUK]

Hi there,
In short, here is my problem, i'd really appreciate help with if possible.

- I'm at uni, the internet is terrible so I can't download the "windows installer" as it needs to use a downloader, which is blocked. I can however download the ubuntu .ISO and boot from it.

- I have three drives, a 80GB ssd, and two 1TB WD Greens.

- When I install, it automatically selects one of the WD greens and won't let me change it. It says it has no OS on it. The only way I can change is by selecting to specifiy partitions myself. It then gives me a list, which doesn't look much like a partition list, and makes it difficult to work around. If I select my SSD, it says this is not a " Root ", and won't let me install. I'm not wanting to muck around too much as my data is pretty valuable to me.
- I then tried installing it on my WD green anyway, it said "resizing partitions"... and then about an hour and a bit later... was still on 0%. I didn't want to reboot whilst it was doing this, but eventually had no choice. Nothing got lost so that's ok.

Any ideas on how I can get the windows installer without the downloader, or how to install it side by side on my SSD with the normal boot choice when it starts up? Also, any tips on optimisation for an SSD would be great.

Cheers.
Steve

 

[Ryan-3]

For the hard drive situation, just disconnect any drive you DON'T want it on, leaving the one you want as its only option. This way on startup, it will give you 10 seconds to choose on the DualBoot option.

As for the installer, I have no idea, sorry.

 

[JonJ678]

Ubuntu used to allow quite a lot of flexibility during installation. It's quite possible they no longer let you pick the hard drive you want to use.

Check the iso is ok by calculating it's md5sum (you need a program called md5sum.exe, or similar) and comparing with here. Installing from a broken iso isn't going to work well. It probably offers a disk check when you boot from it, let it run that as well.

The nicest approach to installing is to boot from the cd, something like "try ubuntu without any changes to your computer", then run gparted. This might be called partition editor, it'll be in one of the menus. Then rearrange the partitions however you like, hit apply then go to sleep. If you chose to resize or move a partition it'll do it, but it'll take a few hours.

Then install ubuntu. Hopefully it'll let you pick the partition you want it on, otherwise unplug all the other drives then go again. The main partition is called "root" or /, you can consider this to be equivalent to C:\ if it helps. There's good reasons to use several partitions for different purposes, but sticking everything on / will do.

I daresay there's enormous quantities of instructions and guides on the ubuntu forums as well.

 

[NutterzUK]

Thanks Jon and Ryan. I did what you suggested Ryan, and left just my SSD in. I also did as you suggested jon, and checksummed the disk. If i'd known about that before my windows 7 installation would have been a hundred times easier. Thanks. I then browsed the site and downloaded something called wubi. I was messing about so long I think this was the second time i'd tried this. Instead of downloading the ubuntu data though it pulled it from the .iso I made earlier and left in the drive, and installed it "alongside" winows. Now I have the option when booting... and it's just time for me to explore ubuntu. I've had it before, but never used it properly much.
I'm a computer science student, and although it's not on my syllabus, I think it's really important for me to broaden my horizons and learn some new things. Most of what we learn isn't all that helpful in the real world, other than programming.

 

[JonJ678]

Sounds good. I've never played with wubi, as I don't quite trust windows not to destroy it. A couple of guys I know use it with great success though, seems to be one of the cleverer things ubuntu have got working.

Always good to have computer scientists on these boards. If you start messing around with it, especially if you do so as root or typing sudo whenever a command didn't work, you'll break it really fast. Or at least I did, and repeatedly. If you install it "properly" you still get the dual boot choice when you turn the computer on, it'll automatically add an entry for windows. If you install with a separate /home partition, then you can generally break it, then reinstall using the old /home partition. This leaves you with your application settings and other data intact, saving many headaches. I don't think wubi is able to do this.

Bash is awesome. It's a surprisingly powerful interpreted language, well worth reading through the tutorials on it. You'll pick it up very quickly if you're used to writing in anything else.

Finally Ubuntu is great for an introduction, but it's not so much fun if you want to play around with it lots. When you lose patience with it, Debian is the natural distribution to move to. Gentoo or arch are likely to be far more interesting again, but I've not made it past Debian yet.

Learning to make linux do things is a good way to spend part of a summer, have fun