Well here goes, Linux for me mam!

ic1male

ic1male

ic1male

Caporegime
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Between them, Mother and the grandkids have trashed Windows Vista on her home PC. I've been asked to reinstall it so I am going to try them out with Ubuntu 10. That should stop the sods downloading all these free game trials with oodles of spyware if it restricts them to Flash-based web games only. :)

I am a Linux virgin so this will be interesting for me also.
 
I did the same thing for my mum's laptop. I went for Linux Mint instead just because it had a more familiar look and feel for her to navigate around.

I didn't say to her at first that I was installing Linux and she never actually complained all she did was comment that it looked a bit different to normal but just got on with it. It's actually quite nice as the laptop was always having speed issues to random garbage being installed on it.

I honestly don't think I've looked at it since :)
 
Well so far I'm quite impressed. I was able to install Google Chrome from scratch, install the Flash plugin and watch BBC News, viewed my pictures, installed VLC and watched some WMV video. LOL.

It's zippy and looks nice, too. :D
 
open a terminal and enter

Code: 
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

The sudo bit means it's asking for admin rights to make a change to the O/s and as such you will be asked to enter your password. You WONT see the password as you type it.

The rest of that command simply installs various codecs and fonts.
 
If they're into free games and stuff then you're set, since you can get them in the software/package manager (also Chromium, so you didn't have to go through the trouble of compiling it which i think is what you meant).
 
My parents and in-laws have both had Ubuntu on their machines for about four or five years and they've had no problems with it. Apart from buying a Lexmark printer which didn't work due to a lack of Linux drivers. Neither set of parents had much IT experience and I rarely get asked anything computer related. They have even managed to upgrade between releases of the OS without asking for help or advice.
 
Can I install Ubuntu to a removeable USB memory stick? I just want a separate area from Windows from surfing the net without the rigmarole of reformatting/repartitioning my HDD.

If it's possible, how do I do it without Ubuntu installing some kind of bootmgr? Do I need to disable my internal HDD in the BIOS so it can't see it during setup? That way, my laptop will boot into Windows when the USB stick isn't in or boot Ubuntu when I insert the stick.
 
y not just use a VM ?

get something like VirtualBox and install ubuntu in that, works perfectly fine for web browsers.

and if u have 2 monitors, then u can full screen the VM on one monitor and can move back and forth between windows and linux.


u can make a livecd version on a usb stick too if you wanted
 
Cycrow said:
y not just use a VM ?
Click to expand...

I want to keep Windows as clean as possible for me games. :D

How well does VMware Workstation run in Linux? I read that they now support DirectX 9 but you may have to have a Windows host as well as guest to do it.
 
Disbale HDD.... Nope

Just change the boot priority


One of the many solutions to your problem

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

... simplessssss :)

Linux virtual software - one is called Virtualbox

Have you thought about adding a smallish ,cheap HDD to your system and installing Linux on this drive then make this the 1st boot drive when you want to play with Linux and revert back to your normal OS drive when you want to play your games? Saves mucking about with Grub and Boot manager
 
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