Windows to linux - was part of Slow Windows

[Bob Eager]

I have the advantage of working there - well, for another four months.

[Vir Campestris]

Then your kernel is broken.

I've written power-on test code that doesn't even assume the RAM is working, but still gets an error message out. It's hard, but not impossible.

(note - I'm not claiming Windows is any better - or worse - than Linux here)

Andy

[Huge]

[34 lines snipped]

It *is* simple. I've done hundreds of Linux installs, and never had a failure.

Perhaps someone up there hates you?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Dont be silly. The kernel is barely operating at this point

You write to a hardware port. You wait to see if it responds. If you go away yupu may miss the response. You cant wait for the hardware to interrupt, because it may not be there at all.

So you lock everything. Remember this is a one off event. Installation

So have I but that was for hardware *I knew was present*.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Looking at bug reports that's where it will fail if the target hard drive is faulty or too small.

Or sometimes if installing off USB.

Essentially it apparently is merely copying files over at that point.

[bert]

Ah that may be a clue. The hard drive is only 30gb and full of Windows c*** at the moment. I had assumed it would re-initialise it at some point

[Santo Brown]

Very badly implemented if it doesn't just say that there isn't enough space to install on tho.

[Vir Campestris]

Huh? You never had to run a GROPE?

Andy

[Bob Eager]

I did a lot of work on an operating system for the ICL 2900 series (no, not VME). The GROPE routine has a lovely name for the function called to test each port/stream/unit. It was "FEEL FOR".

[Huge]

Mint certainly won't let you proceed if it thinks there is insufficient disk space. I've never tried to install it on a shared Windows drive, tho. I just nuke Windows. It's the only way to be sure.

[Johnny B Good]

I've never liked the clumsy idea of multi-booting so only ever use a clean drive (or nuke and repave). Mind you, it does rather help to use a spare 'testbed' machine you can practice on without thought for the consequences of accidentally wiping any existing NTFS or FAT volumes.

I rarely go with the automated partitioning option unless it really is just to do a quick test. I prefer to manually setup the partitioning, even to the extent of specifying a 500MB /boot, a 20 or so GB /, an 8GB / swap and whatever is left over on my 120 or 180 GB SSD for a /home partition, taking care to avoid wiping the existing /home partition.

The latest 'Best Practice' recommended by most Linux enthusiasts is to basically let the installer use the automatic option (that rather despicable practice of putting all your eggs in one basket single giant partition space so popular with OEM winXP/Vista afflicted PCs).

These days, even the OEMs are waking up to the need to utilise more than the bare minimum of three partitions (100MB system, drive C of whatever's left over after subtracting the 15 or so GB's worth of recovery partition

- ideally, a hidden one at the end but sometimes unconscionably in- between the system and 'drive C' partitions and not always hidden) so I'm a little aghast at this advice.

There may be some merit in relegating the /home partition to a folder in the root, especially when an SSD is the target storage device but I draw the line at combining the /boot and /swap partitions into this single huge partition space.

The 400 odd MB of 'wasted space' in a /boot partition is neither here nor there afaiac and I much prefer the use of a dedicated swap partition over that of a swap file for performance reasons even though, if the system starts really hitting the swap partition, you're looking at a considerable performance hit anyway. I just prefer the performance hit to be as minimised as possible.

When I upgrade the SSD to a 256 or 512 GB unit, I'll relegate /home to a folder in the root (but I'll stick with seperate /boot and /swap partitions just the same, thank you very much) and simply do a 'clean install'.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Santo Brown escribió:

Hello, Woddles.

Wodney nyms in the last few weeks:

"" "John James" "Simon Brown" "Jacko" "Simon263" "John Chance" "Ratsack" "Hank" "kshy" "JHY" "Blano" "Santo Brown"

[Windmill]

I haven't been keeping up, but traditionally Linux didn't overwrite existing stuff without asking.

[dennis]

I've known it to but it was about 10 years ago.

[bert]

So I went there and eventually found the Linux Mint download. Had I been a really dumb Windows user I doubt I would have succeeded. Downloaded the latest version - it would have been nice to have seen minimum system requirements somewhere. Dumped the image to dvd and booted up One error message in initial boot Something about Bios error Timer not connected.... Two other errors Not loading blacklisted module ipv6

Wrong chipset detected 9125 resolution only works with .....

Got as far as a nice green Linux Mint screen then nothing. Mouse was still active but nothing else. Left it for a couple of hours or more but nothing So Linux experts where do I go from here? I deleted a lot of old files and defragged the disc to give some 15gb spare.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , bert escribió:

A group that is actually appropriate for questions about Linux, where there will be plenty of experts on hand to help?

Jeez.

[dennis]

There are plenty of linux experts here, they keep popping up and telling everyone to install linux as its easy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is a 'restricted boot' option on linux mint install.

Will boot with the minimum hardware needed to install.

There are some options for getting it to boot on troublesome hardware here.

"Note: If no matter how many times you try, you cannot boot or install with the open-source drivers, try one of the following solutions:

At the boot menu of the live DVD/USB, press Tab to edit the boot arguments and add "nomodeset" at the end of the line. Remove "quiet splash --" from that same line. Append "nouveau.noaccel=1" at the end of the line."

Note that you may also need to tweak bios settings on some hardware.

Remember that most users will NEVER have installed windows from scratch on any computer. It comes 'pre-installed'

Unfortunately you can't buy (many) systems with linux pre-installed.

If you just got as far as the plymouth splash screen:

...then essentially the kernel has loaded OK, and some screen stuff worked, but it was unable to start the main X-windows server and present the GUI.

That is nearly always some issue between the video hardware and the initial default driver load.

The instructions that are given above disable the 'don't show any messages on booting' (quiet splash --) and also stop the video drivers from being too smart (nomodeset) and (nouveau.noaccel=1)

With luck that should allow booting into some VGA like screen resolution, at which point if you have got Nvidia hardware, you can install nvidia's own drivers for the screen.

Nvidia support on older hardware ain't that great in linux. I had similar issues on an old Acer laptop with a very early Nvidia chipset. The problem is that the chipset is obsolete, the nvidia drivers didn't work great and neither do the nouveau reversed engineered ones. I too had to resort to tweaking the initial boot parameters.

And because its all obsolete no one is really that interested in fixing the issues.

Try those fixes and if it doesn't work, give up.