Rather than hassle with GRUB, I've got an old 1.6GHz box here I think I'll try it on...
There goes another grand up in smoke...
Cheers,
Alex
Ubuntu Studio released
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- KVRAF
- 2362 posts since 24 Jan, 2001 from In your head...
Wow good info (for a linux n00b like me) Thanks mate
Rather than hassle with GRUB, I've got an old 1.6GHz box here I think I'll try it on...
There goes another grand up in smoke...
Cheers,
Alex
Rather than hassle with GRUB, I've got an old 1.6GHz box here I think I'll try it on...
There goes another grand up in smoke...
Cheers,
Alex
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- KVRAF
- 12555 posts since 7 Dec, 2004
well grub is now pretty well the standard boot loader for linux, lilo used to be. it isnt much of a hassle to configure it, since there are scripts for auto-detection and creation/writing of the config file/mbr. every operating system requires a boot loader, that is part of the pc design.
this is all very basic pc stuff that windows covers up and windows users do not know exists. understanding the basic boot process is no more difficult than understanding how to operate the power button, and no less important either.
a quick explaination of how it works is, usually the system starts up and the cpu is reset. the controller chips load some data from the bios and then the IP (instruction pointer) in the cpu is set to the address in memory where that program code was loaded. the cpu starts executing the bios program and interacts with the controller chips on the mainboard in some vendor-specific way to initialize the hardware. after that process has finished, the bios program decides which drive to boot from and then loads the "MBR" program from the first sector on the drive. the MBR is a small program used to load the operating system. in a typical MBR (for example, the grub MBR) the source disk for the list of operating systems (the config file) and any background graphics or other data is located. that data is loaded into memory (some bootloaders are multi-stage, so another larger program might be loaded here depending upon the bootloader) and then the booting program can execute and do whatever it needs to do in order to start executing the actual operating system.
it is possible to write a terminal emulator directly to the mbr on a floppy disk for example so that when you boot with the floppy in the drive your pc becomes a dumb terminal connected thought the serial or some other port.
you can try using a utility to dump the machine code (strip the headers) from a com file (a 4kb intro/demo, for example) and write that to a floppy mbr to run the demo directly that way.
when you're using windows you're oblivious to all this fun stuff and you end up thinking of the pc more as a "toaster" rather than a big calculator which you can program yourself.
this is all very basic pc stuff that windows covers up and windows users do not know exists. understanding the basic boot process is no more difficult than understanding how to operate the power button, and no less important either.
a quick explaination of how it works is, usually the system starts up and the cpu is reset. the controller chips load some data from the bios and then the IP (instruction pointer) in the cpu is set to the address in memory where that program code was loaded. the cpu starts executing the bios program and interacts with the controller chips on the mainboard in some vendor-specific way to initialize the hardware. after that process has finished, the bios program decides which drive to boot from and then loads the "MBR" program from the first sector on the drive. the MBR is a small program used to load the operating system. in a typical MBR (for example, the grub MBR) the source disk for the list of operating systems (the config file) and any background graphics or other data is located. that data is loaded into memory (some bootloaders are multi-stage, so another larger program might be loaded here depending upon the bootloader) and then the booting program can execute and do whatever it needs to do in order to start executing the actual operating system.
it is possible to write a terminal emulator directly to the mbr on a floppy disk for example so that when you boot with the floppy in the drive your pc becomes a dumb terminal connected thought the serial or some other port.
you can try using a utility to dump the machine code (strip the headers) from a com file (a 4kb intro/demo, for example) and write that to a floppy mbr to run the demo directly that way.
when you're using windows you're oblivious to all this fun stuff and you end up thinking of the pc more as a "toaster" rather than a big calculator which you can program yourself.
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- KVRAF
- 2362 posts since 24 Jan, 2001 from In your head...
Gotcha -- yeah I have used lilo before in a dual boot config with XP & an early Redhat release about three years ago. I had a bad time and abandoned it (mainly due to graphics card driver problems), but I want to try again now that new linux utilities appear to be a bit more 'n00b friendly' 
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- KVRAF
- 2278 posts since 8 Apr, 2003 from Texas
Check out Wubi:adj wrote:So, real quick -- if I want to create a dual boot system -- XP on one and linux on the other and install Ubuntu Studio, what are the recommendations? Which linux is best?
http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntuset ... index.html
It allows you to install Ubuntu Linux with a double-click to a virtual partition on your XP drive so you don't have to format or repartition anything. You can then dual-boot into Ubuntu or XP. Uninstalling Linux can be done through Add/Remove Programs control panel in XP.
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- KVRAF
- 2362 posts since 24 Jan, 2001 from In your head...
WowLBN wrote:Check out Wubi:adj wrote:So, real quick -- if I want to create a dual boot system -- XP on one and linux on the other and install Ubuntu Studio, what are the recommendations? Which linux is best?
http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntuset ... index.html
It allows you to install Ubuntu Linux with a double-click to a virtual partition on your XP drive so you don't have to format or repartition anything. You can then dual-boot into Ubuntu or XP. Uninstalling Linux can be done through Add/Remove Programs control panel in XP.
That's way cool I reckon!
Thanks -- I gotta check this out
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- KVRAF
- 2362 posts since 24 Jan, 2001 from In your head...
CoolD-Fusion wrote:Trying it as we speak
It seems like it is downloading the ubuntu from the net so i am happy that i have a 7mbit connection
I am installing it now and it's dloading at 65Kbps - not bad for where I live
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- KVRian
- 1258 posts since 25 Nov, 2003 from London
I got it running under VirtualBox, and it looked nice, so I thought I'd have another go installing on my desktop. I'd tried a few times, this time I managed to get my hardware detected ok by removing my USB/WIFI adapter. Also looks like it won't run on my system unless the hard drive is on the first IDE controller - so I swapped it around and it works fine now. I haven't had much chance to play with it - I'd like to get wireless working so I can get rid of a long ethernet cable. I also couldn't manage to get it onto a widescreen resolution - even after running the Gnome setup again - might be able to hack the config file, but I've also heard ubuntu is a bit fussy about what resolutions are available.
As for the audio apps - didn't have much luck getting sound out of them - I think I've sussed ALSA for midi routing (nice!) and think I need to look into Jack a bit more. Zynsubaddfx worked straight off though.
There's so much I want to try now - eXT2, other desktops, seeing if I can access all the ins/outs of my soundcard, WINE and VST's, etc, etc, but so far I'm pretty impressed.
As for the audio apps - didn't have much luck getting sound out of them - I think I've sussed ALSA for midi routing (nice!) and think I need to look into Jack a bit more. Zynsubaddfx worked straight off though.
There's so much I want to try now - eXT2, other desktops, seeing if I can access all the ins/outs of my soundcard, WINE and VST's, etc, etc, but so far I'm pretty impressed.
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- KVRAF
- 5687 posts since 11 Feb, 2005 from Bordeaux France
On my system, I had a problem with Grub. I installed UbuntuStudio on my second HD. My 1st HD is a SATA disk with XP. The Ubuntu installer did an installation of grub on it, but at the boot, I had an error message "GRUB error 21". So I had to manually restore my MBR with rescue tools. Did anyone had this problem.
You can't always get what you waaaant...
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- KVRer
- 7 posts since 15 May, 2007 from Rosario
Does this package include some utility to work with rex files?
