[quote=“hansioux”][quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]
gdm has an option menu that lets you change the desktop before login.
I didn’t see that menu on lightdm .
[/quote]
I haven’t had time to install 14.04 yet, but in the past versions you could always change the desktop environment before light in by clicking a picture representing that DE next to your user name.
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]
NVIDIA hasn’t had problems for a long time on my pcs either. I think the kernel headers are now recompiled on startup or whenever required.
I got something like this in the back of my mind. It’s the kernel-headers dkms or so.
But I might be wrong. Anyhow, when you update your system and there are the wrong kernel headers in the repros, or they are missing, that happened before, your NVIDIA configuration was screwed up leaving you with a black screen.
Just use the arrow key on boot up and boot into the previous kernel, then fix that problem.[/quote]
yup, I think you are right. i used to get black screen every time my kernel updated, and had to go into ring 1 mode and reinstall the driver. Now, everything is taken care of.[/quote]
Thanks, I didn’t see that, however I am not sure if that menu was there before installing flashback.
I installed sudo apt-get gnome-shell rebooted and did not see the menu. When installing flashback, I changed to gdm.
I changed it back to lightdm and the menu is there.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm if you are using gdm and want to go back to lightdm.
The other way around sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm.
Saves me a handfull of libs.
warning for all newcomers
[color=#FF0000]Never copy and paste code directly into the terminal without pasting it into gedit text editor first.
[/color]
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]
Thanks, I didn’t see that, however I am not sure if that menu was there before installing flashback.
I installed sudo apt-get gnome-shell rebooted and did not see the menu. When installing flashback, I changed to gdm.
I changed it back to lightdm and the menu is there.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm if you are using gdm and want to go back to lightdm.
The other way around sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm.
Saves me a handfull of libs.
warning for all newcomers
[color=#FF0000]Never copy and paste code directly into the terminal without pasting it into gedit text editor first.
[/color][/quote]
i think it’s pretty smart to not show the icon and the menu when there there’s only one choice. lightdm is a good move, it’s pretty and functional.
i usually copy commands into my firefox search box first and then copy that into my terminal.
My disk has C and D partitions, XP is on C, a lot of data on C. I have plenty of space.
What does it mean to “delete a NTFS or existing ext4 partition” ? Will this affect anything in C or D?[/quote]
Don’t do anything right now.
You could potentially delete all your data.
I’ll be back in two hours and explain to you.
For now: if you want to use the D partition and they are on the same harddrive, safest would be for you to insert a xp cd and delete the d partition.
Then use the free space to install ubuntu.
If you use the ubuntu partitioning gparted, you better know which NTFS partition is your D and which is C.
If you do know and sure about this, click on the one to delete and delete it. It will then show as free space.
Then click on it and click on the + to create a new partition. Change the number in the dialogue to 1500 MB and use the drop-down menu to mark it as boot. There is another dropdown where you can choose ext2, ext3 or ext4 file-system. Choose ext3 for the boot. That’s what I do anyway. Ext4 is good too.
Confirm and now you see the new partition plus the other remaining free space.
Click on the free space again and click + create at least 8000MB partition, mark it as \ which is root.
Choose ext4 and confirm.
Next click on free space, click on + create a partition with the remaining space minus about 1000 to 4000MB mark it ext4 and mark it home in the dropdown menu.
Confirm.
Last click on the remaining free space and click + in the dropdown menu mark it as swap area.
Confirm
Make sure the checkboxes behind those portions are checked.
Underneath of that you’ll see a dropdown menu where to put the boot-loader.
Make sure you got that hard-drive.
Then you can start the installation process.
Better wait till some more people are here to help.
I’vegot to go now.
If you have only one hard-drive with two partitions on it, then you should see something like
dev/sda1 NTFS
dev/sda2 NTFS
Depending on your system there might be some hidden recovery partitions also.
Whatever changes you make, it will affect the drive you clicked on, (highlighted, selected).
If you choose to resize the c partition in order to use the empty space, it’s important to do a disk defrag within windows for several times.
Make sure that the resizing takes place well within the empty space available, otherwise files might be lost.
If you want to use the D partition, just select it, in the above case, it’s most likely sda2, however better you know the size and empty space of that partition for having an additional cue to which is which.
Just click on it (highlight it) and click on (-) to make this space free space. [color=#FF0000]All data will be lost once you confirm to make all the changes.[/color]
To make it easy, you could just choose to install Ubuntu onto that free space.
Better you create your own partition layout.
You’ll need a boot partition minimum 500MB, however after some kernel updates that partition might run low on space forcing you to delete some kernels in a year or less. Therefor make it 1500MB
Then you’ll need a root partition with is marked as / . It should be minimum 8000MB better times three so 24000MB or a little more. No more than 90000MB.
Next is your home marked as /home. Whatever is left minus what you want as swap area.
The swap are is in case you run out of ram, in which case Linux will use that space to move data from the ram onto the swap area. Whenever this happens Linux gets slow but keeps functioning.
[color=#FF0000]/boot[/color] 1500MB ext3 or ext4
[color=#FF0000]/ [/color] 25000MB ext3 or ext4 this is root
[color=#FF0000]/home[/color] 4000 to whatever 50000MB ext3 or ext4 that’s where your pictures documents videos etc. will be.
That’s on my HP laptop with vista and Ubuntu 12.04 dual boot.
I did not crate a home partition for that one though.
So just
/boot
/ which is root + home
and
swap
Make sure the partitions except the NTSF are check-marked before you continue with the instalation.
How big is your D partition and are there any important files on it?
If none go ahead and delete it.
In ubuntu 12.04 it still says delete and add not, + and -.
So click on the D partition and delete it. Then start creating the ubuntu partitions by add and the popup menu.
Good thing would be if you had a 500G external HD.
Then, you could make a complete image backup first and if something gets screwed up you’r back to where you started in no time.
However, if you are confident that you know which is which and you understood how to create the partitions without touching the C drive, then there shouldn’t be any problem.
Just make sure not to highlight the c partition and/or to checkmark it.
In this case, your partition table should look similar to mine.
You can choose to create an additional home partition as described earlier, but you don’t have to.
In that case the root partition should be the biggest. / 90G or so.
Gparted uses the MB unit, so don’t get confused with the numbers.
boot 1500
the rest minus 2000 for swap is root and home
Or 20000 for root and the rest for home and swap 2000-4000
/boot 1500
/ 20000 or 25000
/home 78000
swap 2000 0r 4000
somehow like this adding up to 112G
[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]Good thing would be if you had a 500G external HD.
Then, you could make a complete image backup first [/quote]
I do. That sounds like the best and maybe easiest option. Would I be able to copy files off of that image once I get linux installed?[/quote]
Most open source recovery disks do not allow you to recover individual files. They only can restore the whole disk as it is including the files.
There are third party softwares however that can use these images to recover files.
Why not just boot into the life cd full desktop, mount the c and d partition, stick the external usb drive into the usb, and copy the files you care about over to that usb drive. Then do a backup if you care about your windows install and then install Linux?
