Linux and the Robert the Bruce approach.

Bit of a success out of failure tale here folks. Having made the move from Windows to Linux,I wanted to see what I could install a decent Linux distribution on.


Early attempts on a 486 did not fare well, although some helpful suggestions as to usage did come out of the discussion, so there something else for a rainy day.

I burnt a copy of PClinusOX for an install on a PIII with 512mb RAM and an old 20gb HDD along with a CD ROM and started the install, but something went wrong and the install stalled during format. I stupidly, as it turned out, killed the install process and tried again. This time nothing happened I concluded that I had broke the HDD in some fashion.

I piled the bits up in the corner and went for a coffee. Clearly I needed to reformat the disk, OK thinks I, lets see if Windows can help wit this one. Get my copy of XP and use it to format the disk, at worst I figure it will mean a dual XP and Linux boot and I can live with that.

Get XP running and it starts a reformat to NTFS. Six and a half hours later and 51% formatted it announces that it can't do that! I suppress a scream and think again. I still have an option to format to FAT on the XP disk, this has to be worth a shot and I recall from mm posts that Linux can read FAT, so out with the XP disk again and this time try FAT, lo and behold it works and really fast too.

I then tried to install Xandros, if this seems an odd choice I have had good experience of installing this distro when others have not wanted to know, Xandros installed withn no problems and I found to my delight that I had a working Linux distro. I played around with Xandros for a little while and liked the similarity with Windows but not enough to hang onto it for any time and it soon came off in favour of Ubuntu with KDE, my PClinuxOS CD could not be persuaded to install - another time maybe. Ubuntu installed on my newly regenerated disk with no problems.

The point (and there is one believe it or not) is that when I first tried Linux I would have stamped my foot at this and declared Linux a pile of cow poo and huffed my way back to Windows - which bizzarely is no less complicated. But some experience and a bit of luck 'n' work means that sitting in the living right now is a old machine perfectly capable of doing internet browsing and email and probably a fair bit more besides, I using it for this post.

Since it was built out of left overs it cost me nowt. I may add a DVD burner which I think is in the spares box and maybe an £11 wireless card if needed, could make a server with the addition of some more storage or just a back up machine if my main rig goes wrong. All good nothing bad and smiles all round.