Red screen when loading Ubuntu normally? + other noob Q's

[Trifid]

Its a rainy day and I have wanted to try Linux for a while and I finally cracked after someone mentioned Ubuntu and noob friendly in the same sentance.

Anyway, I downloaded it and burnt the image to a cd and put it in on restart to try. I selected the first option to boot from CD or install and after it does all the checks it goes to a red / brown screen and stays there. I then tried checking for errors on the disk and came back good, but it still does it. I then tried on safe mode version and I am now in Ubuntu . Is there something I need to do to get it working normally?

Also, I had a look on the add/remove applications but I can't find SATA drivers. Is there something I need to do to be able to access my hard drives?

This is the error I get:

error: device /dev/sda1 is not removable

error: could not execute pmount

How do I set the resolution to a decent one and the refresh rate? - before I get a headache. I have found it under system but it is not applying.

Thanks for the help.

More stuff: - How do I get middle click scroll to work? And the back button on my mouse?

 

[Hate]

im guessing you downloaded dapper, this has wonky sata support - try and find the beta version of Edgy, this has a later kernel and thus better sata support - I had the same problem with my work machine.

 

[Trifid]

I've found out it is because my drives are formatted in NTFS. Since having a look on forums I'm not sure if I want Linux.

For instance:

run the following command in your favourite terminal:

I'm not sure what my favorite panel is.

 

[Hate]

favourite terminal?

ubuntu just uses a standard terminal, gterm i think

there are custom ones that people like to use, but they are all the same linux command line.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

HAte has it right. People might also say htings like, "open up your favorite text editor..." when they mean to say open up a text editor. It's a bit of a colloquialism.

BTW, my favorite GUI text editor is gedit and my favorite CLI text editor is vi.

 

[Una]

there are custom ones that people like to use, but they are all the same linux command line.

<Pedantic> Depends what you mean, there are many shells out there bash,csh,zsh etc.. The way they are is slightly different.

 

[Hate]

yeah, but in a newbies case its more than likely good ol' bash

new version of ubuntu uses dash, which breaks quite a few scripts I like to ruin :s

 

[BillytheImpaler]

More stuff: - How do I get middle click scroll to work? And the back button on my mouse?

In Firefox to use middle click scroll
go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced then check "Use autoscrolling"

To use your foreward and back buttons in Nautilus (the windowing system) and Firefox, check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=28374