Sep 28 2007
Major geek fun: Playing with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibon, risk-free
OK, from the beginning. "Ubuntu" is a version of Linux that's very user-friendly. Why would you want to install Linux on your computer? Because real men, when we're not getting drunk, killing each other online or…well, you know what the other thing is…like to waste time f***ing around with useless stuff, that's why. Linux is an operating system, like Windows or MacOS, but everything in it is free, as in you don't have to pay for it. If you like installing new programs just for the heck of it and tempting fate by seeing just how far you can push your computer before you really screw things up, you'll like Ubuntu. On the other hand, if you're still using Internet Explorer and Outlook because you're too afraid to try anything new, you can stop reading now. (*cough* Dad *cough*)
Here are the steps to installing the brand-spankingly absolutely newest version of Ubuntu on your PC without any risk whatsoever of turning your desktop into a doorstop.
- Download Wubi and install it. It's brain-dead simple. Really. Just follow the directions. What's great about Wubi is that it makes a big file on your hard drive that pretends to be a new hard drive, then installs everything inside there. So, if you ever decide that Ubuntu isn't your thing, all you have to do is uninstall Wubi and your PC is back to normal. The alternative to using Wubi is…well, complicated. And potentially dangerous if you screw up. This step will take a few hours because it has to download a CD-ROM's worth of data.
- Once Wubi had downloaded the big honkin' file you need to install Ubuntu, restart your computer and you'll be given a choice to boot into either Windows or Ubuntu. Choose the latter and it'll automatically start installing your new operating system. Again, this will take a while, maybe half an hour or so. (Maybe it's just me, but I like to watch it install.)
- When it's done installing, restart, and again choose Ubuntu.
- Assuming that it was able to automatically configure networking, the first thing Ubuntu will do is tell you that there are some updates available. Isn't that nice? Install them and restart. Again, about half a hour right there.
- At this point, you've got a perfectly good version of Ubuntu running on your PC. Now it's time to grow a big, hairy pair of ubergeek balls and push Ubuntu to the limit!
- Restart your PC and boot into Windows. Backup your Wubi folder. (I'm assuming you have huge hard drive with lots of empty space left.) This will take about 15 min.
- Reboot into Ubuntu. Open a terminal window (Applications menu –> Accessories –> Terminal). Type this: sudo -i to log in as superuser (a.k.a. "root").
- Type this, the magic incantation: update-manager -d
- There will be a button to click to update to version 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibon. Blindly follow the instructions. It'll download the 1,400 files to begin the upgrade process.
- Once the files have been downloaded, Ubuntu will spend the next 2-3 hours installing them.
- Voila!
- If Gutsy Gibon works for you, you can delete that backup of the Wubi folder you made in Windows.
Bonus info: Ubuntu configures itself to fetch whatever files it needs from a server close to you. There are dozens of servers all over the world to choose from, some are fast and some are really, really goddamn slow. If you find that fetching the Gutsy Gibon files is taking forever, you can cancel the download process and try a different server. (System menu -> Administration -> Software Sources) Then, do the update-manager -d thing again and it'll pick up where it left off, only faster (hopefully). By switching severs, I was able to turn an estimated 5 hr. download into a 25 minute one.
I have to admit, whenever I write up a post like this one, I always wonder if anyone is going to find it useful, or most vistors just say to themselves, "Oh geez, there he goes again with his geek talk that has absolutely nothing to do with Japan."
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9 Responses to “Major geek fun: Playing with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibon, risk-free”
I just installed mine yesterday I just wish I new about Wubi beforehand
I attempted to install wubi on my wife`s old NEC notebook w/ ME…ugghh.
Wish I had read the following before trying to download directly to desktop…
Windows Millenium has a unique boot mechanism which is not accessible with Wubi.
Wubi can not make changes into it, so it can not break it, but it can not use it either.
Wubi works with windows 98SE, 2000, XP, and 2003.
We will detect and prevent installation on windows millenium in next releases.
If you want to try ubuntu, you can perfectly use the CD you burned and carefully follow each step.
If it does not work, you can try the live cd (Desktop edition)
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.
It worked for me except I am getting a "Failed to initialize HAL" error. Any ideas?
@Nick: I got the same error, both times when I upgraded my PC at work and a laptop. Some Googling turned up info about it having to do with USB plug & play. The service that automatically detects USB devices isn't starting due to some error. Luckily, I backed up my Wubi folders on both machines before upgrading so I could go back to Feisty Fawn. These days I'm too busy learning Java (as I type right now at 2:45am) to mess with Ubuntu bugs.
I also had problems in Gutsy Gibon with network interfaces. I couldn't get wireless to work on my laptop, and I didn't feel like screwing around with that either.
So the lesson learned was don't upgrade unless you're all gung-ho about submitting bug reports and spending hours and hours in online forums looking for solutions to problems.
Thanks Rich. I've been messing around with it too and am going to revert.
Hmmm….I have been using Feisty on my tablet via Wubi for a little while now. The tablet came with XP on it and no CD drive so it was a great way to set up dual boot. Still, a few things didn't work right so I hoped to try upgrading to Gutsy. I was going to wait until Wubi included Gutsy officially but what can I say? I'm impatient. I spent about a day downloading and installing the distro upgrade and now when I boot into ubuntu it sits on the startup screen for a while and then dumps me to a "BusyBox v1.1.3 Built-in shell" with a prompt of (initramfs). Hmmm….maybe shoulda stuck with Feisty
I did this (actually before finding this article) and then because of my "big, hairy pair of ubergeek balls" I started screwing around with everything and somehow hosed my video card drivers (nVidia). Now when I boot to Wubi, I see the splash screen while its loading, then just a flashing unresponsive prompt. Since there is no GRUB in this configuration, how can I force Gutsy to boot to a login prompt? I assume from there if just modify my driver back to 'nv' I should be able to boot again. Any ideas?
I actually don't mind reinstalling all over again if need be, but is there a Wubi version yet that uses Gutsy? Even if it is unrecommended and unsupported?
you can quickly resolve the wireless issue, on my wireless router(netgear) you can create an exception on the DHCP , you need to pick one IP address and fill out the MAC address of your PC. Once you have done that and the keyring manager has picked up the wireless access key you should be up and running