Weekend Liveblog: Switching my home computer from Windows XP to Ubuntu
I’ve been using Ubuntu as my operating system at work for about 2 years now. I really love it. I’ve tinkered with making it the OS on my home computer, but since I do a bit of gaming I keep putting it off (as gaming support in Linux tends to lag behind Windows a bit).
I’ve been getting more and more fed up with Windows lately, however, so I’ve decided to give Linux another go. I’ll be liveblogging the changeover for you below.
8:00 AM: I turned on our media server, which is an old computer with a decently large hard disk, and started transferring files over (music, documents, pictures, etc.)
8:30 AM: Started downloading the Ubuntu 8.04 RC via torrent. I also took a glance through some of the programs I have installed and checked them against the Wine AppDB to make sure that the Windows-specific things will still run OK.
9:15 AM: The Ubuntu download is finished. Still transferring files to the backup machine.
9:20 AM: Started burning Ubuntu ISO to CD, finished morning coffee
9:30 AM: Burning complete. Still not done transferring files, but I think I can live without the ones that are left (famous last words, probably). One last check of the Windows file system to see if I’ve forgotten anything. Ah one more file to move over then - my archive of the NIN-Ghosts album. Should just take a few minutes.
9:40 AM: Everything seems to be in order here. Let’s boot into Linux. All this needs is the CD in the drive and a system restart. When I put the burned CD into the drive (while still in Windows), it popped up a helpful menu:
We want the “Demo and Full Installation” option
9:42 AM: Well here we are inside of the Ubuntu Live CD. When booting from the disk I chose the “Try without making any changes” setting. I’ve got a desktop environment, can get to the internet (obviously), etc. It’s nice and snappy, just the way I would expect from Ubuntu, even while running off of the CD. Let’s go whole hog and start the installation. All this requires is double-clicking the Install icon on the desktop. The installer asks a few questions: language, time zone, keyboard layout, then we come to the partitioner.
9:52 AM: Since we want a full wipe, I chose the second partion option (Guided - use entire disk). Then I put in a bit more information (my name, login name, password, and computer name). Finally, the system presented a summary window with an Install button. Time to click it.
9:55 AM: Standard progress bar, going through partition formatting, installing the system, etc. It’s moving really quickly.
9:58 AM: Progress bar at 50%. Note that I’m updating this post from the computer that’s being worked on, i.e. while Ubuntu is being installed on the hard drive.
10:05 AM: Installation complete. In order to switch from the LiveCD to the actual installation I need to reboot. Here we go!
10:07 AM: Booted to the desktop. Immediately a notification came up that there were software updates available (not a surprise, considering this version of Ubuntu is still in development). Only a few of them, they installed rather quickly. While this was running, I got another notification that restricted drivers were available for my system. These are non-free (as in they don’t use Open Source code, not that they cost money to use) drivers. In my case it’s the video card driver. I ticked the enable box, and the system installed the driver for me. This requires a computer restart to use (rare for Linux)
10:13 AM: Rebooted. Let’s install some new stuff with Synaptic. I want the Ubuntu Studio desktop (I just like the dark theme), the Ubuntu Studio Graphics package, and the all-important Wine for running Windows software. It took about 3 minutes on my connection to download the files, and a few more minutes to install them. While this was going on, I downloaded the Windows installer for EVE online, the main game I’m playing these days. Note: EVE has a Linux version available, which is great. The problem is that the shiny graphics of the “Premium” version don’t work in that one. Instead I’m going to try running the Windows version with Premium graphics under Wine. The installer is a big file (1.2 GB), so I’ll be downloading for a few minutes here.
10:25 AM: EVE still downloading :) Went ahead and grabbed the Steam installer and started working on the instructions for getting that running. I had to use the command
nice -n 19 wine Steam.exe
to get around a crash at 26% when updating on the first launch.
10:47 AM: I’ve gotten a few other windows-specific EVE tools installed under Wine. They run OK, although there are some minor graphical issues. I can’t tell if these might be because I installed the Ubuntu Studio theme but haven’t restarted yet. I’ll do that as soon as the EVE download completes (yes it’s still crunching).
10:55 AM: System restarted, everything looks quite nice. Installing EVE now. This has easily been the slowest part of the whole process ;)
11:05 AM: EVE is installed and working, sort of. The premium graphics tend to hang. I think there is an issue with either my video card driver or the DirectX installation. Other than that, everything is working great. I’m moving files back over from the server now, so it’s time to grab lunch and wash the car. Not a bad experience at all.
