Oh the sweet taste of success.
In my previous post I detailed my trials and tribulations in trying to reconfigure an old Windows NT laptop into a Linux Ubuntu laptop. After all the YouTube tutorials, Google searches, DVD burns, reboots, and frustration I finally found the solution to my little problem. Mind you, I posted this little missive on Twitter January 10th, and it is now January 16th:
It’s the little things they leave out in the instructions that will get you every time. #RandomObservation
No truer words have been spoken… err, tweeted.
I have been emailing my friend and personal computer guru, Susan, off and on about this for going on a week. I had a partial success last night when she pointed out the Ubuntu Installer (as opposed to the Ubuntu Download) which I had overlooked in my initial attempts. The installer and download are two different things. The download is the operating system disk image, which in theory can be burned to a DVD or USB thumb drive and then “live booted” to do the install. I never could get that to work. The damned disk image simply refuses to be recognized by my bios as a bootable device.
On Susan’s advice I gave the Windows Installer a shot. The Installer differs from the download in that it is simply a small Windows program which interactively downloads and installs Ubuntu from within a Windows session. Once it finishes up you reboot to complete the installation. It worked!
Well, sort of.
It did install Ubuntu on my computer, but I never got any of the user prompts that all the tutorials assured me would allow me to set up the system to my liking. My liking, by the way, is the complete elimination of the old NT OS and user files so that this machine is free and clear of all the odd problems that have haunted it for years. Since I was given no user install options, NT still occupied the vast majority of my hard disk, leaving a very small portion for swap space, which I am sure effected the performance (and annoyed the crap out of me).
In one of the many tutorials that I found, the speaker mentioned that he was first making a bootable USB drive to perform the installation. This made me suspect that the DVDs and the USB thumb drive I had created simply were not bootable, and therefore my BIOS would not recognize them as valid boot devices.
Then, today, I found this very short (3min 17sec) YouTube tutorial by SysAdmGirl, and had my suspicions confirmed.
Her short tutorial covered the little things all the other tutorials left out – how to make the frigging install device actually bootable! She’s now my new BFF. (Don’t worry, I won’t stalk you, Sys.)
Once I had the bootalbe USB image the Ubuntu installation worked just as all those other tutorials said it would. I got the glorious option to use the whole disk and man did I take it. Goodbye NT, forever.
I actually danced around the room. (My wife will confirm this.)
I now have a dedicated Ubuntu laptop, compete with the Ubuntu Restricted Extras. Now all I have to do is get the firewall working, load up some software, and I’m good to go.
~jon
Links:
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop: Ubuntu ISO image download.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer: Ubuntu Windows Installer.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/: Universal USB Installer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvnaLxw7fEg&feature=player_detailpage: Ubuntu 12.04: Create Bootable USB Drive to Install or Run Live, by SysAdmGirl