The first thing to do is get a Linix Distro or Flavor. This is basically the team or organization who packages the installation disk(s) that you will be using. Some are easier to use than others so you should visit the DISTROWATCH link on my links menu and read about the differences before you get one. For me UBUNTU version 6.1 (newest) seemed to be the way to go. This distro was recommended to me by a friend and is supposed to have an easy to use program install "wizard".
After you pick your Distro, you have to get it. I went to UBUNTU's web site and selected the desktop version. This took me to their download page which had several links to choose from. Most were .EDU sites. UBUNTU is about 700mbs and all the sites were slow. The best I could do was about 60K/sec so it took me about an hour and a half to get it (the slowness is because of the mirror sites not my connection so be prepared to wait).
When I finally got the ISO file downloaded, I had to create an installation CD out of this single large file. I used the freeware program IMGBURN to do this. Once you install IMGBURN all you have to do is RIGHT CLICK on the UBUNTU-6.10-desktop-i386.ISO file and select BURN WITH IMGBURN option and it will create a bootable CD ROM for you (you have to have a blank CD in your CD Writer too).
On November 1, 2006, at 1:00pm, I started my download from one of the mirror sites. At 2:30pm, I had the 700mb ISO file. Five minutes later I had a burnt CD that looked just fine. I got no errors downloading and none when burning. I put this CD into my soon to be Linux box and turned on the power. The CD started to spin. Then I looked at the screen to see what was happening. I then saw the ERROR message "CHECK SUM DOES NOT MATCH. SORRY". Nothing. Stopped. So I powered down and tried again. I got the same ERROR. I repeated this several time and kept getting the ERROR (Definition of crazy - repeating the same action expecting a different results on each repeat). Ok now I'm mad and two hours into this project. I went back to my Windows machine and did a google search and found no answers except that I could have a bad CD. I started to burn a new CD and try again but I had to leave. So I went to a different Mirror site and started the download again. Two hours later I had another ISO file and this one was 6 bytes bigger than the first. What the crap? I put in a new CD and burnt the second ISO. It burnt just fine but so did the first one. I took this new CD and put it in my soon to be Linux box and powered it on again. This time it worked. No ERROR message. I was on my way and it had only taken about four hours to get this far (to be fair it was not UBUNTU fault, it could have been mine, my ISPs, or the mirror sites, who knows but it almost stopped me).
Next the Installation Process.
2 comments:
Sounds like a fun start.
* I have never used imgburn...I used deepburner (www.beepburner.com)
* Bad checksum errors are a b@tch. Use an md5 checksum checking program before burning to avoid this mistake. The hash key is usually with each download.
* Avoid college web servers...they are notoriously slow. I downloaded my iso from a bittorrent site and it downloaded very quickly.
So far, so good!
Just stumbled across this blog after you have finished and was curious about Unbuntu as I am considering swapping linux distributions after hearing so much about it. I am a Windows, Linux (Mandrake/Mandriva - a previous best for Windows converters for desktop use) and Unix (HP-UX developer by profession) user and came across the ISO problem a while back. The solution other than downloading the whole CD or worse DVD again is to use cwRsync which is a version of rsynch for Windows that uses cygwin - http://www.itefix.no/phpws/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=6&MMN_position=150:150. This allows only the missing/non-matching bits to be downloaded hence instead of having gigabytes to download you may only need a few kilobytes. It saved me on more than one occasion from having to re-download a whole Mandrake/Mandriva DVD.
Anyway another 28 days to catch up on.
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