A story and some questions about Linux.

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Ok, this is my tale and the questions along with it

Recently I made a leap, I actually took the time to download a live-CD (Ubuntu). I booted it up and had a moment of pride that I didn't end up doing something wrong. I showed my sister, she just got annoyed XD. Then I showed my dad who wasn't very impressed and just commented that booting off a CD is slow and that I should try downloading it. Next I tried making a CD for OpenGEU, didn't work. I made another CD and it still wouldn't boot, so I deleted it and redownloaded the file then made a CD, still didn't work. I decided to just forget it and not bother with OpenGEU, since I wanted to make a CD just to experience the intristing look of it (I thought it looked shiny ). So today at school in computer class I booted my disk on one of the computer not connected to the school's network (to not get in trouble) and played around on it some more. Lord and behold the kid on the computer next to me boots Fedora on an external hard drive at home. He gives me some advice on installation an an external hard drives, though somewhat unclear.

These are my Laptop's specs.
Model- Gateway M-6850FX
Processor- Intel® Centrino® Duo
RAM- 3GB
External Hard drive- Toshiba 320GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
Video controller- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2600 Graphics (Ubuntu could detect it)

Now I begain asking questions. Should I use Ubuntu or try some other live CDs first? How do Sabayon Linux, Linux Mint, and VectorLinux? Any advice on installing to an external hard drive? Three tests with a Ubuntu live CD are my only expirinces with Linux.

Go to this website, they generally have straight forward guides on how to setup and boot whichever linux distro you prefer from a memory stick/flash drive or whatever you want to call it.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Start with Ubuntu. IF your needs grow, its easy enough to reinstall and keep the same /home partition (which is like C:\programs files and C:\documents in windows)

Sabayon is very polished and nice, but it installs way too much crap by default, so unless you want to spend a couple hours dredging through their package manager removing stuff before you install, go with something else. It also seemed a bit on the slow side for me, but that's probably just because I had KDE with Compiz. Linux Mint is supposed to be Ubuntu but a bit easier because some proprietary stuff is already bundled (how do you make Ubuntu easier?) I've never tried it. VectorLinux is nice. It's a fast, east installation and is lightning quick. However, it's more intended for crappier hardware than you have and tends not to be kept as up to date as other distros. I'd recommend Ubuntu to start off with, primarily because any problems you run into have already been found and solved by someone else on the Ubuntu forums.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/move-wubi- ... /#more-507

that how to install ubuntu on a hard drive using Wubi. Just use ubuntu or linux mint like fuzzy and orwell said. Linux mint has most of the stuff preinstalled, like flash.

So I'd first install wabi? Can I just install it normally and list its drive as F:\ (how my computer sees my external hard drive), or is there a chance it might sneak up and wipe my internal drive?

I tried to install Sabayon to an external HD and failed epically. I broke the bootloaders for ALL THREE of my operating systems (this is the only time I've ever managed to make OS X unbootable) and even broke rEFIt, my boot manager. You may have better luck, but proceed with caution and ALWAYS MAKE A BACK-UP.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= ... ostcount=6

Follow the instructions there. You can do a regular install to your external hard drive. I've never tried this. So make backups of your stuff

You can disregard my post that had something to do with wubi. just follow the guide in the ubuntu forums or look around the forums for what you're trying to do.

edit: or ask lau or dussel, they both seem to be more knowledgeable with things concerning linux than I

Seconded, they've both been around the Linux scene longer than the rest of us. Lau was even there back in the day when Linux was actually hard to use.

Ok, I have an idea how I'll work this. Tomorrow at school I'll take my boot disk and USB hard drive to my computer class and get help while using one of the classroom's computers to do the work on while I get help from the kid I met that uses Fedora. There's a chance I'll be able to disconnect it's internal hard drive and get the dirty work done there. If I do all the installation there will it then work on my laptop with out nuking my Windows drive?

If you get it installed to an external HD and the BIOS on your home machine supports booting from an external drive, it shouldn't touch what you already have there.

To honest: I still do not understand the nature of your problem: If the kernel does not boot from a CD on your laptop, you may have a look into the bios-settings. Some bios mirror them self or the VGA into the RAM. I experienced that the kernel will not boot with such a setting, because the kernel suddenly misses some of the RAM. It is perhaps worth to have first a look into the bios for such settings.

You should be able to install Ubuntu to your external... just make sure you can boot from USB. Often times it's better to put it on the internal drive, but Windoze doesn't like being shuffled around, so meh. Just mount the USB external before you install.

Now, if you're worried that it will eat your windows install for lunch, yea I know the feeling, had it happen before. Just phisically remove the internal drive, then throw ubuntu on the external. Once you've done that, your linux bud at school can run you through modding grub to see both HD's, it's deceptively simple.

Ubuntu is what I reccomend to all linux n00bs. It's quite simple, though you do have to nab a few packages to get youtube and such up and running. It's also got the power under the hood for when you get a bit more comfortable and want to play around and see what linux can really do for you.