Sooo... now what?

I booted Ubuntu live CD, and the first prompt was a list of options. The first option was 'Install or boot from live CD'.

Yes?

So now it has booted; I have a 'desktop', with 'examples', and 'install' icons.

I guess that means I haven't yet installed?

Does this live cd have its own boot loader/manager?

 

Okay - I'm a little further down the road...

'Prepare disk space'.

???

EDIT: Ok - I went with the default sizing for new partition, roughly half the size of the [only] HDD. It has stopped progress.

Help?

 

I've chosen to install on the largest free area of the disk.

Bad, or really bad?

 

Hi TRS-80 vet,

In answer to post #1:
When you see the first menu presented by the Live CD, there is a 30 sec timeout before it default boots (yes it has its own boot loader/manager) into RAM from your CD drive with no disks mounted. Nothing is installed on HDD at that point.

In answer to post #2:
Sometimes it is a good thing to ask questions before pulling the trigger, eh? Ok,
what if anything was/is installed on the HDD that you chose to partition? For example, if you have WinXP on that HDD and it was installed, it probably was installed to use the entire HDD - was it not?

In answer to post #3:
How do you know that the area of your HDD is free?

Advice:
Browse the TSG/Unix/Linux forum and find a post by saikee - you can use the search facility to do this if any are not apparent in the first two webpages of the forum. Look at saikee's signature where he has several links to topics that might be of interest to you if you are planning a dual-boot with Windows and Linux.

Before doing an OS installation with another OS already on the HDD, it is best to first defrag the HDD (esp. if Windows), backup the HDD to another drive or medium, and then proceed. It is not necessarily a bad thing to choose the largest free area of the disk, as long as the above other items have been taken care of first.

-- Tom

 

Excellent! Thanks for the info!

The box is new [well 7 mo/o], vista pre-install; nothing to lose.

if you have WinXP on that HDD and it was installed, it probably was installed to use the entire HDD - was it not?

I don't know if it was installed to use the entire HDD. It showed me a 64.3 G (of 120G) continuous free space to partition - I'm guessin' the install and use is confined to that section of the HDD.

I forgot to defrag - there were a bunch of pics, that had been sent to the recycle bin; I'm guessin' this changes pic file addresses to include [recycle bin] at the beginning of the address? What kinda' problem or limitation would that present?

GRUB.

?

Lemme' guess - Get Record Utility Boot?

 

Now at boot, I see very briefly that some allocation can't be made.

???

Loading then completes...

 

What did you do? What are booting? What loaded and completed?

GNU GRUB was developed from a previous package called the GRand Unified Bootloader (a play on grand unified theory).

-- Tom

 

What do you mean by 'what did I do'? Why you askin' me that question? I got no clue what I've done.