For the price of some charred oinky ribs I had a friend of mine come over and install Ubuntu on my ailing magic elf box.
It didn't go as smoothly as one would hope.
Finally after about five hours of work it came up and connected and seemed to be acting fine, but wouldn't connect to the printer (online forums were less than helpful, their solution was to get a non-Lexmark printer) and wouldn't share files (yes, the proper software is installed).
Not fifteen minutes after he left the damn thing dropped off the network and won't reconnect.
I'm going with his suggestion to get a bigger hard-drive so that Windows XP and Ubuntu can both be installed. That way I can play with Ubuntu to my heart's content and still have access to my files and printer the rest of the time.
Good thing I still have the laptop!
Getting There
10 months ago
5 comments:
Glad you posted this. I was wondering if it would work out for you.
I have a dual-boot set-up on a relatively weak machine running Win7 Ultimate. They co-exist fine - I have large hard drives.
I have to make a decision at boot but I find I don't use the Linux side often enough to get real familiar with it - though when I do play with it, I don't have any real issues for or against Linux - and Ubuntu seems to be a good flavor for the regular user.
Even as a "geek" - though I use 'em, not repair 'em (can. don't care to if I can avoid it) - I can't find enough justification, can you say "convenience and laziness"?, to switch over.
You may find it not worth the bother, especially if computers aren't your hobby.
If you just want a bump in performance, maxing out your RAM is a good place to start.
Computers: Love 'em; hate 'em. At the same time.
Keep at least one going - need your scribbles to complete the day.
Q
I'm still hopeful that I can get it to work as a dual boot system Matt.
Yep Q, I went and got a 320G hard drive that should be big enough for both systems and right now I'm pulling my hair out just to get XP to work again. The RAM has already been maxed, it's an old machine so it will only take 2G.
Thanks for dropping by!
I suspect you'll find 2G probably isn't enough...there comes a time...
We may have about the same era box. Mine only holds 2G and I have to resuscitate it more often than should be necessary. Doesn't help that I have a fully-equipped work box to compare it against
But I'm glad to hear you got everything back up again
Q
Eventually I will have to replace the old elf box, it is positively ancient according to industry standards nowadays but it is still plugging along.
Thanks for dropping by Q!
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