Dual Booting An Asus Eee Pc

[Richb2004v2]

Due to having several problems with Linux I am contemplating either going back to XP or dual booting XP onto a memory card. I don't really want to abandon Linux. The proceedure for performing the dual boot looks very complicated, so I was wondering if anyone here has achieved it, or if you think it will be a headache.

[dave_boo]

Due to having several problems with Linux I am contemplating either going back to XP or dual booting XP onto a memory card. I don't really want to abandon Linux. The proceedure for performing the dual boot looks very complicated, so I was wondering if anyone here has achieved it, or if you think it will be a headache.

It's fairly easy if you install Windows to the SSD drive and then Linux to a SD card. You set up two different MBR, the Windows one on the SSD, and the Linux one on the SD card. When the Linux card has the MBR installed, you ensure that there's an entry for your SSD's Windows install. Configure your bios to boot from the SD card first and you'll always have the choice between Linux or Windows. Remove your SD card and it will boot straight into Windows.

[Richb2004v2]

Due to having several problems with Linux I am contemplating either going back to XP or dual booting XP onto a memory card. I don't really want to abandon Linux. The proceedure for performing the dual boot looks very complicated, so I was wondering if anyone here has achieved it, or if you think it will be a headache.

It's fairly easy if you install Windows to the SSD drive and then Linux to a SD card. You set up two different MBR, the Windows one on the SSD, and the Linux one on the SD card. When the Linux card has the MBR installed, you ensure that there's an entry for your SSD's Windows install. Configure your bios to boot from the SD card first and you'll always have the choice between Linux or Windows. Remove your SD card and it will boot straight into Windows.

is it easier to dual boot with Windows on the SSD drive? I have Xandros on there now. I guess its easier to put XP on there anyway though and then put Linux on the card. I wonder if it would be a good idea to go dual boot XP and Ubuntu instead of Xandros. There is apparently a specific eee version of Ubuntu. Or should I go with XP ans Xandros? What do you think?

I will go and buy an 8gig SD card today, as I don't think a 4gig memory stick will do it.

[Richb2004v2]

After much playing around I have finished up today with the pre-installed Xandros and Ubuntu eee running dual boot on my laptop. Thats not really what I wanted, but its a bonus in a way. I started trying to install XP from an external DVD drive, but it wouldn't have it. It gave me a message saying something like 'LPTD Missing'. So that was the end of that. I then figured I would install Ubuntu eee on a 4 gig SD card. That sort of worked, but I have to leave the SD card in otherwise nothing boots. I mistakenly thought that if I removed it that Xandros would boot automatically. Never mind, I do have the option on boot up anyway.

Ubuntu looks very nice but does have one or two problems. My web cam does not function with it, where as it is fine with Xandos. The sound is also very low on Ubuntu. Also I can not for the life of me find out how to create an Internet connection to test my ongoing mobile modem problem.

I see pages of info on Linux but it is never completely clear. I don't know what a 'sudo' command does and therefore don't feel confident to enter the stuff given on the net.

Is there anywhere on the net that I can learn this stuff and other fundamentals? Are there any technical manuals available? I can't understand how you go about learning this stuff as it seems to be assumed that I already know it. I have heard it said that Linux is for enthusiasts and I can quite see why.

[dave_boo]

After much playing around I have finished up today with the pre-installed Xandros and Ubuntu eee running dual boot on my laptop. Thats not really what I wanted, but its a bonus in a way. I started trying to install XP from an external DVD drive, but it wouldn't have it. It gave me a message saying something like 'LPTD Missing'. So that was the end of that. I then figured I would install Ubuntu eee on a 4 gig SD card. That sort of worked, but I have to leave the SD card in otherwise nothing boots. I mistakenly thought that if I removed it that Xandros would boot automatically. Never mind, I do have the option on boot up anyway.

It appears that you managed to muck up your SSD's MBR. Easiest way to fix that is to open a terminal inside of Ubuntu eee and type in

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/root /dev/sda

This of course will reinstall your 'grub' (a boot loader) onto the SSD. Now that will still freak the computer out if you have to reboot, forget to have the SD card in, and attempt to boot into Ubuntu, but it will at least let you boot Xandros without having a SD card in.

Ubuntu looks very nice but does have one or two problems. My web cam does not function with it, where as it is fine with Xandos. The sound is also very low on Ubuntu. Also I can not for the life of me find out how to create an Internet connection to test my ongoing mobile modem problem.

I'm not sure what the problem is with your webcam; the drivers should be in there. Try and open Skype and see if it's working. If it's not, please type in the following inside a terminal and I'll try and help you.

lsusb -vvv

If you're looking for capture software, try out UVCView. The sound, and I'm sorry but I'm going to refer you to a terminal again can be adjusted with the following command.

alsacfg && alsamixer

Technically the alsacfg shouldn't have to be used, but I still like doing it. The alsamixer is a ncurses driven 'mixer' for your soundcard. Right and left arrows will take you to the section you want and up and down arrows adjust gain (or whatever it's called!) For your cell phone modem, make sure that you have 'pppd' and 'kppp' installed. If you're still having problems, post your experiences.

I see pages of info on Linux but it is never completely clear. I don't know what a 'sudo' command does and therefore don't feel confident to enter the stuff given on the net.

First, 'sudo' simply means "Super User DO". It's a way of making system changes without being logged on as root, and thus theoretically improving security. I've ranted about it in the past on this forum, however doing so again would not be productive to helping your problems! This link provides quite a few of the common Linux commands. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Is there anywhere on the net that I can learn this stuff and other fundamentals? Are there any technical manuals available? I can't understand how you go about learning this stuff as it seems to be assumed that I already know it. I have heard it said that Linux is for enthusiasts and I can quite see why.

This link, while older, still provides a good starting point. This wiki is a bit more up to date. Don't be afraid to tinker; it's gotten rather hard to actually break a Linux install (usually resulting in a kernel panic--last time I saw one of those was early 2000). Unless you do something drastically boneheaded (i.e. issuing the command 'dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda'<--although doing that several times is an excellent way to wipe a disk!), you will be able to recover from all sorts of things that would leave a Windows user reinstalling. I hope that you created a seperate partition for your /home, this makes screw-ups much easier to get over. If you decide that you just want to reinstall, you simply don't format your /home and tell the new install to use it.

[Crushdepth]

Is there anywhere on the net that I can learn this stuff and other fundamentals? Are there any technical manuals available? I can't understand how you go about learning this stuff as it seems to be assumed that I already know it. I have heard it said that Linux is for enthusiasts and I can quite see why.

It's pretty easy to find books on Ubuntu at computer bookstores, if you have one in your vicinity (avoid the really long ones!). There's even an 'official' Ubuntu book.

[unomi]

Also the 'man' command is your friend

It is basically a help resource for unix.

for example you can do `man sudo` to see a description of what sudo does.

The documentation can be a bit obtuse for a beginner but once you get into the terminology you will be surprised at how well documented it is compared to windows.

http://www.linuxhq.com/guides/

These are fairly old and there should be a more up to date version with your distribution, they should help you with basic commands and syntax but references to applications should probably be considered interesting for historical purposes only.

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Hardy

seen this?