U7.04 Step 2: Boot and Install

Ubuntu 7.04 Install Step 2:
Boot and Install
On to the fun stuff! After downloading and Burning to CD I booted the live CD on my HPzv6000 laptop and pressed F4 at the boot menu to change the VGA mode to 1024x768 (even though I would later need to up it to 1280x800 to fill the screen). I've just had really good luck using the max resolution on flat-panel monitors because some old hardware doesn't appear to tell the Ubuntu CD what the acceptable resolutions are, so it defaults to 640x480, or something else that isn't supported. Either way, it did the trick!

It booted into the live mode, and of course didn't recognize the wifi card, but thank intellectual property rights and lazy hardware manufacturers for that. I plugged it into one of the free ports on my wireless router and it quickly recognized the internet and got an IP via dhcp. (yay!)

I double-clicked the install, not caring if anything else worked in live mode, because I'd be using a different partition anyway.

Following the steps I kept clicking "forward" until I got to the step that tries to partition my drive for me.

Because I pre-planned when installing windows on it, I had a 30GB partition waiting for Linux. (and another 20GB partition for a FAT 32 system that would share files between Linux and Windows).

After configuring the partitions (a 1024MB SWAP and the rest of the 30GB for an ex3 "/") I clicked next, and it actually showed my two accounts (one for myself and one for my wife) from Windows XP. I chose to migrate both of our Firefox settings and our "My Documents" folder. (photos and music are primarily stored on the machine I'm using to post this, which currently runs XP Pro.)

I set up my account as the default account, gave it a name (penguinshark, since I've got a shark-themed network and I want to distinguish between the windows version "tigershark" and the linux version "penguinshark"... kind of lame, since the rest are real sharks, but hey, the only thing cooler than a penguinshark would be a ninjashark, but we all know ninjas are not fans of open-source, so you take what you can get.), and I even told it I want to participate in some package surveying thing. (had to click "more options" or "advanced" or something to get to that checkbox.)

After reviewing all the settings I clicked "Next" and when it started formatting, partitioning, and installing I realized I should have been documenting it, so here I am, documenting after-the-fact trying to remember as much as possible.

I apologize to you three reading this if I left anything out.

U7.04 Step 1: Download Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Ubuntu 7.04 Install Step 1:
Download Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
Of course the first step in installing anything is to legally download it. (Store-bought CDs are so 2005).

I chose the torrent file from the Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Release Page for a desktop 386 system. (my hp zv6000 laptop, with not a ton of hard drive space, and even less RAM, so we'll see how this works)

Here I am about 15 minutes later with a nice ISO file and no ISO burner... So I head over and download ISO Record v 2 and realize I've already downloaded it. So I'm going to log out, log in as an admin, and install ISO recorder, burn the CD and get ready to install Ubuntu on an empty partition on my laptop!

(No, I am not an admin on my own machine at home, and no, I haven't had a single malware problem since. Run no-script in Firefox and set yourself as a limited user account and you almost couldn't damage your windows machine if you tried... it's almost like running linux with a start-bar, but there are actually vendor-provided drivers... it's crazy I tell you, crazy.)