Computer Questions (formally Your Desktop)

For your info: the latest ubuntu version 8.10 (www.ubuntu.com) has now a (one mouse click) utility which will install a complete linux system on an usb stick... and yes you can save updates, programs, tweak it to your liking, just like a normal install... heck you can even use this usb stick to pop it into any pc and install linux on that pc! (its the whole complete system + installer as well) Its pretty nifty, I bought a nice 4GB titanium usb drive (sandisk cruzer) and installed linux on it... now I carry my own system with me in my wallet. (it has all the fancy effects etc as well) Yay!

Just burn the iso (www.ubuntu.com) on a cd, boot from the cd and run the live cd (don't worry its not installing anything) when linux is running you can find the usb create application in the application setting. In the program you best choose to use almost all the capacity... I left a few MB for non linux related files... as you can still use this stick as a regular backup tool too!

Creating such linux install on a stick is idiot proof. But you better format the usb stick first on your xp/vista system with this little handy program http://download.chip.eu/en/USB-Disk-Sto … 76935.html

That one didn't work properly in my case, so I used this third party program. (I guess it has more options...?)

Thanks Talos. WINDOWS VISTA FUCKED ME ONCE AGAIN last night and i can't stress enough how irritated i am (it won't get pass the "verifying DMI pool data" state no matter what, it won't boot in any version of windows (safe mode and all, it won't reach that stage) despite all the bios settings, boot device priority and cable connections all set correctly. I am now downloading the latest ubuntu in order to burn it on a CD and boot from that, i am hoping i can save my data on the hard disk before i proceed and format :sigh: once again.

I know XP SP2 is the best ms os in ages but it won't support my 4 gigabytes of ram so it's totally useless for me.

XP3 since some months.

No matter: any 32 bits Windows will indeed not use the ful 4 GB of RAM, but will merely "see" a little over 3.

I have now installed Vista x64 sp1

... so you booted into linux and then accessed your windows files and made a backup accordingly? If so, that's what I always tell people to do when they can't access their files in windows for some reason.

Suprisingly only very modest hardware is needed. In my case I run everything smoothly, with multiple programs running at once... on a very simpel laptop (1.60GHz with 1 GB Ram and ON BOARD BASIC graphics. (that point still amazes me... a simple onboard graphic card can run all this stuff smoothly) I actually just made a very lame quick desktop recording to show it to you... I will place it on Youtube... it doesn't run very smoothly in the clip (I guess my laptop is not powerful enough to record smoothly, but in reality its smooth, so don't think its not smooth like in the clip)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1_cyCdhFw

I am running all this stuff at once:

Browser
GIMP (which is a kind of photoshop)
OpenOffice (which is a free alternative for MS Office)
A movie clip in a media player
All effects...
A special program launcher...

I has many more effects available, for fun... snowing, rain, fire... etc.

I know; but if only all the major software i use worked in Linux too

Which programs are that, maybe I can help to see whether its possible?

Ouch... in that case stick with MS Windows... these are very specialized programs. Ah well... you might try to dig up some opensource variations... such as GIMP instead of Photoshop, although Photoshop is superior but expensive. Nero 9 shouldn't be a problem... if you just want to burn stuff. Nevertheless its still fun though, just to try it out (linux) ... can't hurt.

Pawel, no problem... you can set up a two system without any risk to your existing system with this nifty program. 'Wubi' ... basically its a program that will install linux inside your ms windows os, just like any other program. You can just uninstall it just like a regular program in ms windows.

So no loss if you would like to try linux without any risk.

http://wubi-installer.org/

Let me know if you tried it...

Yes, you can all do that, just like a normal installed version. Its exactly the same. You can save, download/install programs, tweak it etc etc. Like I said exactly like a real install.

I did it (at my pc at work) and its no sweat... its idiot proof indeed. After you installed it just, you will be able to choose which OS to boot upon starting up your pc. Its the perfect and safe way to try it. After you uninstall it, I don't know why you would do that, hehe, you will have your previous (single OS) bootup process back. You don't need to mess around. Its easy a pie and absolutely safe.

When you run wubi for the first time, just choose ubuntu (there will be a few other choices) but just stick with ubuntu. (unless you have an very old pc, you better choose xubuntu, which is tailormade for older hardware)