Ubuntu.

After years of threatening to throw various Microsoft products out of the window, a mate has got me running Ubuntu as a parallel OS. It seems to do everything I want, the free aps look good enough and my web book thing seems happy enough to run it without problems even though it's running 'inside' Windows.

Before I go the whole hog I need a few questions answering: I've used Ubuntu 1 to upload a few photos from Windows with the intent of d/l to Ubuntu once I've got rid of Windows. 6Gb of stuff later and I can't access them from the Ubuntu OS even though I can see them in Windows. Any suggestions?

Secondly, is it possible to remove Windows in it's entirity without formatting? Or at least shrink it down to the smallest possible partition?

Finally.... is there anything I should take into consideration before I throw caution to the wind and go for it....?

Can any Mac user help.

I have just acquired an educational version of CS5 for my iMac and have tried to open a photo from iPhoto library, but the CS5 comes up with a message saying that it 'doesn't support this type of file'

Any ideas please.

Never had that problem before. I know that's not much help.

Unless they've improved significantly in the last couple of years, I'd say explore ever single possibility you can think of before getting a mobile internet dongle. I've had a couple and they were both rubbish. If it really is the only option open to you, I'd check all the networks for coverage (they usually have a postcode search) and go with the one with the strongest signal rather than the cheapest.

First time I've ever logged on and not showing me the usernames online at the bottom page. No settings changed as far as I know. Strange.

Maybe every single user has ticked the 'hide your online status this session' box.

I was gonna type that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but it's hardly original, possibly not even true after Dalky sprung to mind.

From the mods board...

I see......

Nobody using Ubuntu then?

Never even heard of it.

Not day in, day out, but I have used it.

However it's a good OS, solid if a little bloated, but no where near that of Windows.

You may like it though if your not too computer literate you may end up frustrated with it, depends how open you are to new ways of using your computer.

Where did you "upload" them to? Difficult to advise when you give no clue as to what you did with them!

You should be able to shrink the partition down, assuming it's fat32 or ntfs format, which seems most likely. There may be something in Windows, or you can try using "gparted" from within Ubuntu - ideally this would be through the "live" version that you may see if you boot with the Ubuntu disk in the dvd drive, as this ensures the disk isn't in use while you work on it. Make sure you have a backup first!

There's likely no reason why you shouldn't be able to install Ubuntu to a second partition on your computer, and then Ubuntu will allow you to set up Windows as a second choice from the boot menu, so you get to choose which of the 2 to boot when you switch the machine on. Installing Ubuntu will probably give you disk shrinking options as part of the installation process, allowing you to shrink your windows partition and add an extra one or two for your Ubuntu. I suget you do a bit of reading up on disk partitioning for Linux as ideally you would want to split your remaining disk space into several partitions, splitting the user areas off from the system areas, thus giving you more resilience to user errors filling the system disk and crashing the system. As a minimum, it's worth splitting /, /home and /var onto separate disk partitions, as well as some space for swap. It's difficult for me to recommend specific sizes for these areas, as I'm not familiar with the way Ubuntu organises itself, nor how much disk space is required for each area as this will differ fromone installation to another, and deends a lot on your personal usage as well.

Just used [url=http://www.partitionwizard.com/=#0000BFPartition Wizard[/url to create a partition on my laptop, very easy to use and FREE.



Video [url=http://www.partitionwizard.com/video-help/create-partition/create-partition.html=#0000BFhere[/url for creating partition, and [url=http://www.partitionwizard.com/video-help/moveresizepartition/moveresizepartition.html=#0000BFhere[/url for resizing.

Ubuntu. Sucks massive donkey balls. You will hate Unity. It doesn't know now whether it's trying to be a phone / mobile device or a desktop and it doesn't really manage to be either (IMO).

I recommend xubuntu. Lighter (less memory use, processor, etc), faster, prettier, less-annoyinger. All Ubuntu software will work with xubuntu. Everything that made previous versions of Ubuntu nice to use is all there, including access to the repositories for automatic software updates. For most issues that you come across you can look for the Ubuntu answer and have a reasonable expectation that it will work in xubuntu too.

If you're using Windows 7, and depending on which version it is, that can shrink its own partitions. I have Win 7 Enterprise from work. Noddy versions might be crippled so this might not work if it came bundled with your PC. I was moving my home installation to a SSD last week and it was a discovery for me then.

Start -> Contol Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.

That's easy to find isn't it?

You now have a window with a list of your partitions in front of you. Select the relevant one. It's probably C:. Right click on it -> Shrink Volume. Give it a new size. Disco. It does it there and then without a reboot too, which for someone who's been out of the MS world for a while was a complete surprise to me.

[size=150THINGS NOT TO DO WHEN DICKING ABOUT WITH LINUX![/size

If you get ed off with it and decide it's not for you then don't delete it from within Windows. More to the point, if you do make sure you have some kind of boot disk handy that you can repair it with. Either the Ubuntu or xubuntu live cd will do it, or the Windows 7 CD can too.

It replaces the Microsoft boot loader, which is the thing that knows how to load an operating system from a disk. There's still a bootloader there but now it probably gives you a menu allowing you to select Windows or Linux. This thing requires the Linux partition to exist to work, so if you delete the Linux partition and expect to still be able to boot into Windows you've got a surprise waiting for you.

No issue at all if you have one of those CDs around to boot from. Repairing this on a machine with a fscked CD drive and no support for booting from USB is fun though.

Start > Right click Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

Still obtuse but less steps.

You're complaints about unity sound very similar to what my manager says about it.

Windows 8 will be much the same from the looks of things.

Having had a play with the developer preview a few weeks ago, I found it nothing but horrific.

A horrid mash between a phone and desktop interface my first thoughts being that it won't work for business use.

Apart from it being utterly horrible.

Windows 7 is fine as it is, 8 is pointless guff that isn't very user friendly and has a number of pointless features.

Speaking of OS's after using it the last few days, OS X is brilliant, it's so simple to use!

Many businesses are only just upgrading to Win7 from XP, they'll miss out Windows 8 just like they did Vista and M$ know this,
expect a new business OS to be launched after Win8

I quite like the look of the metro UI and I can see the logic of unifying the OS across both tablets and PC devices tying in with their windows phone 7 interface. It has a standard desktop environment lurking underneath for those that like it anyway

No, it has 'app' which looks like a real desktop but it's not really - and it makes no sense to unify the GUI as they require a completely different approach dependant on the device; it should not be one size fits all.

Unless you try and integrate with a Windows domain. Then the migraines begin!

There were enough nightmares in trying to set them up so that when a new person came along to use it it wasn't in whatever fscked up state the previous person left it in.

Not ideal when most of your computers get used by at least ten people a day.

Nice to use, complete to support. My "platform doesn't matter" rant that I go on now and again with anti-mac people only applies to using it yourself, not having to support the ba5tard things.

Ok, so my 'borrowed' Dell laptop died last night. The screen went black, wouldn't respond to anything, and now all I can see is the screen flash on roughly every 2 seconds for an instant. I'm guessing this is a card or screen issue? Seems pretty fooked. Won't log on, keep getting blue screen of death - not that I'd want to work on it with the screen flashing at me.

To complement that, my work Lenovo is sporting a nice crack down the screen and keeps fading out to white. It's not worth my job going through work (not got a very good history with laptops) so I've ordered a replacement, found one for £70.

Now looking for laptop around the £300 mark - only to be used for browsing, some software - no really heavy use but a decent chunk of memory would be good. Anyone know of any bargains to be had at the moment? Thanks...