[Fwd: hello and perhaps some help]

[Jonathan Carter]

sorry, that should be ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com (I left out the
lists part)

Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Hi G-Dawg,
> 
> This would probably be a more appropriate post for ubuntu-users. I'm
> moving it there, so when you reply, just reply to the ubuntu-users one.
> 
> 
>>Now, about my problem - it occured to me today that I didn't want to get
>>rid of XP (which is what I'm running on my desktop), but yet I didn't
>>really want to share my desktop with Linux either, for fear there may be
>>a horrible clash that would happen (and crashing XP twice in one year is
>>an all time high for me; I'd rather not make it three) So I came up with
>>the idea to 'sample' Linux on my old hard drive from my Packard Bell
>>(yeah, I know) However, I have run into problems.
> 
> 
> It's not such a crazy idea. Statistically, by dual-booting, you'll
> improve the stability of your Windows system, simply because this will
> mean that your Windows system will spend less time on the internet, and
> because it will be used less, there's a smaller chance that it will be
> infected by virusses and nasty scripts and trojans.
> 
> 
>>So, frustrated, I stumbled onto ubuntu and saw that not only did it look
>>ridiculously easy (again, I'm a newbie to Linux and I've heard Linux is
>>not user-friendly like Windows), I decided to give it a go. I'm
>>currently downloading the breezy beaver (and really, with a name like
>>that why didn't I try this frist?) I wanted to try something different,
>>but I have a feeilng I will be getting the same error message.
> 
> 
> Breezy Badger :)
> 
> 
>>As for the specs of my computer, I would like this placed on a second
>>hard drive NOT the master (so basically the slave) The slave is a
>>Fujitsu limited with 1.96GB; I am using an internal NIC which is Belkin
>>2003; NTFS; nVidia sound card with Hercules drivers....again, I want
>>this to be on the second drive and theoretically, when I boot from the
>>CD, shouldn't it do what Windows does and ask which drive I want it on?
>>My computer is set to boot from the CD, but at least with Suse, it
>>didn't even pick up that I had two hard drives.
> 
> 
> Hercules drivers? That certainly takes me back to 1991! :)
> 
> When you say slave, do you mean slave on your primary controller? With
> IDE drives, it works like this:
> 
>  - You normally have two IDE controllers on your motherboard, a Primary,
> and a Secondary
>  - On both these controllers you can put two drives, a master, and a slave
>  - This means you can have a total of 4 drives on your motherboard
> controllers
> 
> So you end up with these possibilities:
> 
>  - Primary Master
>  - Primary Slave
>  - Secondary Master
>  - Secondary Slave
> 
> Just like Windows labels disk partitions as C:, D:, E:, etc, Linux also
> labels its disks, exept it starts at "a". So the primary master will be
> "hda" (hard disk a), Primary slave "hdb", Secondary master "hdc", and
> Secondary slave "hdd". The partitions on this disk will then be devided
> into numbers, starting with 1. So if your primary master has 3
> partitions, it will have hda1, hda2 and hda3. In Linux, you can address
> your partitions by refering to their name in the /dev directory. Let's
> say you want to format the 3rd partition on your seconday master as swap
> space, then you would: "sudo mkswap /dev/hdc3".
> 
> Many people have asked me how Windows' numbering relate to the Linux
> one, in short, not too well, since it doesn't make too much sense. By
> default, Windows makes the disk that you boot from C:, then it takes the
> first partition from each of the rest of the disks as D, E, etc. after
> that, it goes through the rest of the partitions and assign them drive
> letters, which means that you might end up with a different drive letter
> scheme each time you boot to another Windows system. So the Linux
> disk/partitioning system especially makes sense if you think of it in
> terms of consistency :)
> 
> 
>>Okay, so sorry about this very long post, but I truly am hoping to make
>>this work. Any suggestions are appreciated and even though I am a BIT,
>>please take the time if possible to explain this as though I'm a five
>>year old. All the searches I've done for this problem either are too
>>confusing or don't address my problem and there doesn't seem to be a
>>solution.
> 
> 
> Just remember, Ubuntu installer asks where you want to install it in the
> partitioning question. You can just choose that it deletes everything on
> /dev/hdb and (check that it's the 2GB disk) and let it auto-partition
> your space.
> 
> -Jonathan
>