Well here goes, Linux for me mam!

[ic1male]

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.

 

[ic1male]

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.

 

[ic1male]

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.

 

[ic1male]

y not just use a VM ?

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

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.