[ubuntu-za] Switching to Linux (was Ubuntu Tea shirts)

[pops at cairnsgames.co.za]

I wish I had a good story to tell about switching people to Linux, but unfortunately I have 
instead been faced with a few days of frusrtration.

The problems have come with setting the dual boot. Easy, I tell everyone, just use the install 
disk (here is one for you) and when it asks you about disk partition, just give Ubuntu about 20 
GB and you can play with it as much as you like.

Well I was the first guinea pig myself. Ten days ago I got my new desktop and happily 
installed Feisty on top of Vista without a problem in the world. Everything was working like a 
dream - even Vista and even if a Vista dream is like a bad nightmare. But all was not rosy 
because the machine had an ASUS motherboard instead of the 965 that I had ordered. The 
supplier insisted on taking it back and replacing it.

So here I have the new machine and I did exactly what I did last time. You know what I mean 
- when it comes time to partition the disk, the install program comes up with a little bar and 
you can move the cursor to give so much to Vista and so much to Feisty. Except that nice 
bar does not come up and I geta choice between using the whole hard disk for Feisty or 
doing a manual configuration. Well I try the manual configuration, but it seems that my 
installer does not see the Windows system at all - so I can I give it a partition if it aint there?

Onto Ubuntu forums to be told that I can't use the installer with Vista and that I have to 
partition the disk using the Vista tool. I have trouble believing that (heck I did it myself not ten 
days ago) but all other research seems to confirm it. So I use the Vista configuration tool ... 
and it will not allow me to give Vista less than 73 GB. I only want Vista as very much a 
secondary engine for special programs and don't see why I should give it half of my valuable 
hard drive.

Frustrations are not finished yet. Off I go to my son with my faithful install disk. He develops 
games for fun and wants to use Free Pascal on Linux for an extra platform. So we shove the 
disk into his XP machine and wait for the partition window to come up ... and it doesn't. So we 
watch the rugby instead and then he tries to partition the disk using other tools and I left him 
to it.

Phone call from my boss. I had given him a Feisty disk to install. He says that the wiindow I 
told him about does not seem to come up.

.I am still sure that I will have great success as an Ubuntu evangalist If I could only get the 
darn thing to work!

I am sure that my problems are born out of ignorance. I do not understand disk partitions 
very well and am terrified of overwriting existing partitions (well it would not be too serious on 
this new machine of mine, but other people have a lot of time invested in their disks and I 
would hate to destroy that). The installer is just not very clear about what it is doing and I 
have to go very slowly and carefully.

Bill