Help me pick a sexy distro :)

[juane414]

Hey guys,

So I'm currently running Vista x64 on my laptop. I have an external hard drive that I would like to install Linux on if possible. I know you can boot for USB pen drives, so I assume there is a way. Does anyone know how I could get this to work? If so, could you explain it or reference me to a thread that does?

Also, I would like to have a nicer looking distro, perhaps something running KDE... I know very little about Linux, so a more forgiving distro might be better, but I don't need something with tons apps and tools already installed. I just need something fun, small, fast and easy to learn with. Do you think Kubuntu would be my best bet?

And... will there be any hardware conflicts with this, or will it mess with my Vista partition in any way? I seem to remember having a dual boot setup in the past that messed up my Windows installation after I uninstalled Linux... which forced me to have to reinstall Windows. I would like to avoid this in case I want to get rid of Linux.

Do you think my best bet would be to just copy an image of the Linux OS to my external and then mount it with daemon every time I wanted to run it? What are my options?

Thanks in advance for the help

 

[MRD]

If you want sexy looking you need compiz-fusion. You can install it in any distro... not sure which come with it preinstalled. Maybe Ubuntu?

Dual booting is easy, and it won't mess with your vista partition. Just make a second partition for Linux (or several, some people use a /boot, swap, and /, but it's not required). Then use Grub to dual boot. If you remove Linux and Grub, you'll need to put in the Vista cd/dvd and run fixmbr from the recovery console. That will fix the master boot record (outside of all the partitions) so that vista can boot w/o grub installed.

So there is no real danger of killing your vista partition unless you screw up royally and tell it to write to that partition during install.

 

[juane414]

Great info MRD, thank you.

Do you know of a way to dual boot with an external usb hard drive?

Its probably easier to shrink my internal partition and add one for Linux, but I'd rather keep my internal partition Vista dedicated.

 

[Krogen]

Great info MRD, thank you.

Do you know of a way to dual boot with an external usb hard drive?

Its probably easier to shrink my internal partition and add one for Linux, but I'd rather keep my internal partition Vista dedicated.

Do you know if you can set your laptop to boot from a USB device?

I think the easiest way would be to set USB as the 1st bootable device in the BIOS and then install GRUB and Linux on the USB hard drive.

 

[juane414]

Yes, I can set my laptop to boot from a USB device.

Will it work to just select my external drive as the destination partition for the installation, or do I need to do something special? In other words, will it work just like installing on an internal drive? Also, grub is integrated into most distro install packages right?

 

[MRD]

You can install Linux to a thumbdrive and then boot from that if you want.

 

[juane414]

You can install Linux to a thumbdrive and then boot from that if you want.

I've thought about that actually. I have two thumb drives, but they are only 1gb each. I do have a SD card usb reader and 8gb SDHC card though... maybe that would work

 

[Outcast_Aussie]

Just boot into windows and then insert a K/Ubuntu disk and choose install as a windows program.

If you don't like it then choose uninstall from within windows.

Splendid

/rings bell

NEXT !!

 

[MRD]

Actually, you can't usually boot from sd cards. This is a BIOS issue. In general, computers are not able to boot flash cards unless they work through usb. Apparently, this is a nontrivial issue for the BIOS people, although I must admit it's over my head.

You can, however, boot the usb and have that mount a root fileystem on the thumb drive using syslinux or something like that (or maybe grub). This is getting complicated... I could do it probably, but it would take some reading. I wouldn't recommend it for a linux newbie.

I'd suggest buying a cheaping usb thumbdrive with 8gb or so of space (like 10-15 bucks) and isntalling on that.

I think the best option is just adding a partition for linux on the hard drive, but if this makes you nervous, then buy a thumb drive or 2nd hard drive.

 

[SeanBest]

I got Ubuntu, no idea how to use Compiz though ... ?

 

[MRD]

I think the newest ubuntu sets up compiz-fusion by default, but I can't swear to that.

Don't bother usuing it though unless you have decent 3d accelerated graphics (nvidia preferred, but a higher end ati card will perform ok too).

 

[Shelnutt2]

In Ubuntu you can enable compiz fusion by going to the appearance settings and change it to the highest option, I don't remember the exact words used. Also you might want to install the compiz fusion control center, so you can tweak more of the options, if you want.

Also almost any modern graphics card will be fine with Compiz-fusion. Even modern integrated graphics will work. Ablet you probably can't be watching a movie and rotating the cube.

 

[Dapman02]

Sex and linux shouldn't be used in the same sentince. Personally, I would grab ubuntu and find a good looking Theme to go with it.

 

[curtis1552]

He wanted KDE so he should use Kubuntu.
You 'should' be able to install directly to the external HDD. Also make sure to install the bootloader there too. The only hiccups I've heard about are when the BIOS has problems with the external HDD.

 

[juane414]

This is all great information guys. Thanks for the help.

So If I use an 8gb SD flash card through a USB reader I can boot from that right? Also, can I install the boot loader (which is grub right) on the USB device as well, or do I have to install that on the internal drive?

Basically I want it set up so that when the Linux USB device is not plugged in, the laptop will be exactly as it is right now... no extra boot files or Linux files on the internal hard drive.

 

[MRD]

If you mean using a usb adapter, then you can probably boot it (most modern computer bioses can). There are two parts to grub. There's the initial boot code that resides in the mbr and the part that contains the grub configuration files. You can split them up if you want, but I wouldn't if you have a removable drive. If you install on the mbr of the main drive, and the grub.conf file is on the usb drive, the system won't be bootable unless you rewrite the mbr again (takes about 5 minutes, but annoying, and requires a disk). If you want you can put both on either drive, but you'll have to change the boot order to boot off the usb stick if you do this.

I think the ideal solution is to put grub on the mbr of the main hard drive and put the /boot partition at least somewhere on that drive, even if the rest of the install is on the thumb drive, but if you don't want to, you can just go into the bios to change the boot order each time.

 

[Cheator]

Wubi is also a good idea. It means you won't have to worry about boot loaders.

 

[MRD]

Actually yeah, if you're really scared of messing with partitions, that would be a good option.

 

[juane414]

Wubi looks cool. Would it work for Kubuntu as well, or only Ubuntu? Would installing with Wubi add Linux as a boot option or do I run it as an application from within windows? It looks like exactly what I was hoping to find.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Wubi looks cool. Would it work for Kubuntu as well, or only Ubuntu? Would installing with Wubi add Linux as a boot option or do I run it as an application from within windows? It looks like exactly what I was hoping to find.

As I understand, it just runs as an application but I don't know from personal experience; I've never been able to get a completed download to try it out.

An alternative: virtualbox, it's open-source, fairly lightweight & easy to setup. There are versions of virtualbox for Windows(x86 and AMD64). Ubuntu or? would go nicely as a Guest in virtualbox, and would only require a fews GBs of disk space, similar to Wubi.