Waiting on you boots! Thanks for always taking the plunge and trying things out for us.

Ms.A

Excuse me. Would you pick that up for me please?
I seem to keep loooosing my head!

CA810E Intel motherboard
900mhz Celeron cpu
CD-ROM HP CD-Writer Plus (TEAC CD-W45E) I think it's around 20X.
319meg ram
Maxtor 40gig, 7200rpm, 2meg buffer, ata 133 hard drive. The motherboard is only capable of ata 66, I'm not sure what Lindows was running it at.

I had to use the onboard Intel video instead of the pci video card I have installed because Lindows wouldn't see it. Pain in the butt, had to switch it in bios and mess with the cable.

The install after switching the video went fine. Took about 5 min. Came up to a fairly nice desktop but everything was slow. Not horribly but enough to be annoying.

Lindows seen and configured my internet connection just fine. Getting on the net was just a matter of clicking on the browser icon on the desktop.

Setting up email was just like setting it up in OE. Worked fine.

After posting here I tried the Open Office word processor which worked fine.

I had to set up the printer and they had the drivers but I couldn't get it to work. HP 845C usb. I admit I wasn't very patient. Might not have waited long enough.

I also didn't have any sound. It might not have been Lindows, I didn't notice until after I rebooted to Windows that the volume was turned down.

Other than being slow, it was nice enough that I'm going to do a little reconfiguring on my computer to install it to the hard drive with the install version. Running from the cd worked, I don't think I have enough horses to do it right.

If I remember right Lindows wants a Windows partition to install to so I have to set one up. I'm not sure exactly how that works but I'll let you know when I'm done. If you don't here from me for a couple of days you'll know why. LOL

boots

Maybe one day when I'm really bored and have absolutely nothing to do I will try playing with it and seeing just how far I can go before I have to start making some adjustments.

Ms.A

Excuse me. Would you pick that up for me please?
I seem to keep loooosing my head!

Game Rig....Web Rig.... 3rd Rig ___

System Requirements: PC with 800 MHz or higher processor, 256 MB of RAM or higher, Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution video card and monitor (3-D graphics accelerator card for some games, screen savers, etc.), CD-ROM drive (with BIOS set to boot from CD). Note: LindowsLive! does not support Click-N-Run.

I'm sure boots will be back to let us know, but it seems to me that if you need the bios set to boot from the CD, you would put the CD in and then reboot the computer.

Boots, you're amazing how you courageously jump into things! I'm always a scaredy cat.

Gouldini, good luck on your renovations. When you're done you'll get good use out of the desk you showed us.

Sincerely, Nancy

I got Lindows installed to the hard drive and working. I need a break so I'll give a detailed account in the morning. I want to make sure I don't confuse things to much. LOL

More soon.

boots

From what I was told there is a conflict between the pci video card and the motherboard. Not anything that can't be worked around and the card works fine in Windows but can be hard to work with in Dos. It also appears that after the initial start up screens Lindows wants to default to the onboard video rather than the pci video card. It offers no choice. That applies to both the run from cd version and the install version. What happens is that after the initial Lindows startup screen the monitor would fade to black and stay there. Not even a cursor. It works fine with the onboard video.

What I did was to go into bios and change the boot video to the onboard. Saved the changes then turned off the computer, switched the monitor cable to the onboard video and removed the pci video card. To keep the install as simple as possible. Most people won't need to make any changes to the bios except to make sure the cd-rom is set to boot before the hard drive.

Please understand, I know next to nothing about linux so take the below with a grain of salt.

To use the run Lindows from the cd-rom version just make sure your cd-rom is set to boot before the hard drive, put the cd-rom in and reboot. It takes a few minutes to get to the desktop. Like I said above, on my computer it was slow but workable. As far as I could tell it didn't bother or impact the existing XP install at all.

I had to take a sightly different approach to the install version. From my previous trys I found that Lindows either wants to take a whole hard drive or a partition of the existing OS, in this case Windows XP. I seen no option to install to unused disk space. I might have missed it. On a previous install attempt I had 8gig of unused disk space just for that. Lindows is quite willing to use a Windows partition. You will lose any data on the partition.

Using Fdisk I took the largest partition I had, a 28 gig logical dos drive , and split it in to a 20 gig and an 8 gig. Formated both FAT32. Restarted with the Lindows install cd in the cd-rom.

When I reached the part where you choose where to install I told it to use the new 8gig FAT32 partition. I just followed the prompts after that and Lindows installed just fine.

Lindows installs it's own boot loader. Works fine.

After I got to the desktop I started seeing what worked. Internet worked fine and it was just a mater of double clicking the desktop icon, everything was configured automaticaly. I'm on DSL and am not sure how easy it is to connect using dialup. Sound worked. It's amazing what turning up the volume will do. LOL. Reset the screen resolution to 800X600.

Lindows did see my printer and it had the drivers but didn't install it. It was just a matter of double clicking the printer icon on the desktop and selecting install printer, follow the prompts.

I haven't gotten to the scanner yet.

I haven't played alot with it yet but I have found one big difference between the run from cd version and the install version, the run from cd version has Open Office, the install version doesn't.

I was kinda curious to see what having a partition ripped out of it would do to Window so I restarted into Windows (by default the Lindows boot loader will boot Lindows after a very short delay, you have to be fast to choose Windows). XP started just fine. Opened Windows Explorer and discovered that XP assigned the Lindows partition the next available drive letter after my cd-roms, said it was a "raw" drive and was most willing to format it for me. I figured this could be kind of danguous and used TweakUI to remove the drive letter from Windows Explorer. Out of sight, out of mind.

That's all the further I've got so far. Hope it helps.

boots

I switched the boot order in my BIOS, and let her rip.

Lot's of HDD activity. Then... Then... I started it revisit my concern about where it was gonna set up temp shop.

This was on my 1.2 gig Primary, TripleBoot. Lot's of partitions holding 3 OS's and launching with XOSL.

Kinda late to worry about any side effects.

It still took a while to load up, and then to my utter surprise... absolutely no surprises.

Well, at least no unpleasant ones and lots of nice ones.

I really like the damn thing.

The name is perfect, Lindows. It really is like a Windows version of Linux. Not really exactly like either one, but it should be perfectly comfortable for anyone wanting to give it a shot or migrate.

I stayed in the Windows Manager the whole time. I really didn't look for a console. And I think that's the whole point.

Users who are GUI comfortable, and that would be any Windows Weened One, should do just fine.

It looks like it's using a KDE interface. It supports the alpha blended graphics like XP and Linux and Mac. The Icons are a Crystal set from Elvarado. The Start menu is Windows like, the tyaskbar is more familiar to Linux.

It's all just kinda cool.

Now I haven't played with it much, (cause really, I'd rather know where it's writing to the drive before I start to config stuff like my connect), but the little booger found my graphics card and didn't get any imput from me.

Old Linux users know what a chore that can be.

Then, it found my sound, and it works just fine. I still, to this day, have problems with that in my RedHat install on this box.

And the whole bit just happened. No warnings, no errors, just up and running... off the durn CD. (Well it's doin' sumpthin with that HDD, but I haven't found a problem... in any of the OS's yet.)

____

I'll be real honest with you. The fascination of fighting OS's and tweaking and twisting stuff to get operational has kinda worn thin with me.

I'd rather just boot and go, and spend my time doing things, rather than setting up or thinking about doing things.

I think for a lot of folks, this one could be a nice fit.

I've heard the same about SUSE. It is suppose to setup very quick and clean. (IOW's it recognizes lot's of hardware, which is the key to little user intervention.)

LurkHere

When I installed Lindows to a FAT32 partition it overwrote the partition but didn't change the FAT. Windows seen it as a raw partition, Ranish saw it a FAT32 but there was something wrong with the boot record. Lindows had installed Lilo and everything worked fine. Except for that 5 second delay to choose your OS. And Windows wasn't the default. LOL

I decided to install XOSL and get a little more control over what was going on and promptly lost the ability to boot Lindows. I suppose the fact that it was installed on a FAT partition messed things up. Or maybe the person who installed the XOSL?

Uninstalled XOSL and lost everything. LOL Got the "Insert boot floppy in drive a and press enter" thing. Booted from the XP cd and tried to fix the mbr with the Recovery Console. No go, Windows was gone to. I then though what the heck, I'll put XOSL back on and see what happens. Sure enough I got Windows back. Hats of to the XOSL people.

I didn't really like the idea of Lindows installed on a Windows partition so I decided to put it on my second hard drive. Copied all the stuff from my second hard drive to the primary and wiped the second hard drive.

Booted with the Lindows cd and installed it to the second blank hard drive without a problem except that it got rid of XOSL and installed Lilo in its place. No prompting, I'm not sure if this is normal or not. Everything works fine.

It appears to be a normal Linux install, here's how Ranish sees it:

MBR
PRI Linux ext2fs 64,299 KB
PRI swap 1,044,225 KB
PRI Linux ext2fs 6,217,155 KB
PRI unused 7,560 KB

As far as I can remember from when I was messing with Redhat that seems right.

I think I'll wait a day or two before putting XOSL back on, see if I can get it right this time.

boots

I sure hope it gets the space right. I'd want to know more about how it puts it's fingers in the pies before I messed with it much.

____

I think the whole point with XOSL, is that it anticipates getting blown away, and being able to recover. (Where as some other systems try and prevent it.)

There are a couple of tutes on XOSL at the site and a good list. It might be on yahoo groups.

But I think the idea with RH for example, is to not have a separate boot part for the linux install.

That's an option in RH, but maybe Lindows isn't that sophisticated.

____

I'm hedgeing because I don't remember. I loaded all that up back when I configed this thing, and have not had a hickie with any of it yet.

LurkHere

Once it was installed, I was online instantly. The only problem is that if you want to do anything with this OS you have to join the CNR wharehouse and download everything you need. You can't even watch a video without first downloading crap from their place. To me it really isn't worth having. Not a bit more friendly user than Mandrake 9.1...

Personally, I think Lindows is a dieing OS. Good in theory, but is going to cost people to much in order to stay up to date. So the free versions of linux is still going to rule over Lindows.

Ref Renovator's LindowsLive "run from CD" . . .

"You know...that disk has got to be making a 'ramdrive' or something."

Yes, it did something. That might be part of the explanation for my 'wasted space.' I'll definitely not do THAT again.

My experience:
http://www.lurkhere.com/forum/DCForumID14/862.html

j

http://www.linspire.com

I have not downloaded or used Lindows and I thought I was too late to get a free copy. But,

http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5150931.html

(BTW A friend intends trying Knoppix to run Linux from CD. Does anyone know if that would also create the wasted space problem?)

Ref Knoppix "run Linux from CD." I had no problems with the Knoppix CD - no changes to HDD space, etc.

Janusz
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.

I remember Maxtor was selling some HDD with Lindows pre-installed. Not sure which version or which HDD that is ...

Cozmo

Downloaded 4.5 full version for free with coupon last night,

using coupon LINDOWS.

This is the full version not the cd run version although I found that one as well if anyone still wanted it.

1.) Add Linspire to your shopping cart.
2.) On that page, simply click the Apply Coupon button.
3.) When asked, enter the following coupon code: LINDOWS
4.) Then click the Update button. This will apply a $49.95 discount.
5.) Then click the Update button.
6.) Next, simply check out!
7.) Once you’ve completed checking out, go to your "My Products" in My.Linspire"
and then goto "CD Downloads" ,then download the ISO file and burn it and install it..

I found this posted in many other forum similar to our group here.
So I am assuming its a legal download. But as they say use at your wn risk.

Cozmo

Windows Xp Home
sp2-updates
Celeron 2.4Ghz (512 Ram)
48xcdrom (gen)
48 dvd Rw Memorex
256 Vid

Was there any expiration date being passed around with this coupon on those other forums?

Game Rig....Web Rig.... 3rd Rig ___

I recieved no errors and I followed the process
as a legit coupon with no short cuts.
And purchased and gave a reciept.

The good news is I am not finding this listed
anywhere on warez or crack sites I just looked.
So it might/should? be a Viable Coupon.
But no mention of expiration or source.

But... Id say use at your own risk until and answer is
given from Linspire.

Cozmo