Monday, January 19, 2009

Ubuntu Installation Update

I finally managed to seriously try a non-windows OS recently.

To update, I have installed it on 4 machines at home. They are all still in dual-boot mode as I haven't completely figured out how to get rid of Windows without screwing everything up, but 2 of the 4 now default to Ubuntu. It's progress right?

Machine 1:
Dual Xeon Pentium 3 Processor with a speed of 1.6 Mhz (is that right?), 512 MB Ram. It's an old Dell Dimension 530 workstation that I bought on EBay. After installation I quickly realized that the graphics card (Diamond FireGL2) was incompatible. Joy. So I'm currently debating whether to get a newer, compatible graphics card.

Machine 2:
IBM Thinkpad (can't retrieve the specs at the moment). 256 MB Ram. This is my son's computer (he's 6) and the initial inspiration. It was old, had the remnants of corporate security on it, and was a perfect test subject for my trials.

I still haven't been able to get the internal wireless card working (Intersil Prism 2.5), but I did have an old Linksys PCI card lying around, so there is internet access. Tonight I was trying to diagnose the reason for no sound and apparently messed something else up in the process (hopefully I'll learn something from all of this). The latest error on restart was of the GDM variety, though I can't recall it specifically.

Machine 3:
Dell Inspiron 4300. P3, 1.8 Mhz. 512 MB Ram.
This has been my work-horse for the past 7 years. Over the last 2 or 3 though, I've used it mainly to work remotely. In the beginning, I had JDeveloper (9 I believe) and Oracle 9i Server running on it at the same time. That was painful. Overall it seems to run just fine with Ubuntu. Though I probably won't be doing any performance testing (Oracle) with it soon.

From oraclenerd

Machine 4:
Dell XPS, T5350 (I think) Dual Core Processor. 3 GB Ram.
This is my main "work" computer and has Windows Vista installed on it. I installed Ubuntu (dual, default is still Windows as it's shared) last week. Downloaded JDeveloper 11i (.bin file) and managed to install it successfully (w00t!). Next up I want to install Oracle 11g Server using this post as a guide (thanks Mr. Norris).

Performance on this machine rocks. Vista out of the box took up 1 GB of Ram. Ubuntu is running at about 400 MB. I have had no problems on this machine and look forward to learning more here...

From oraclenerd

And if you've got any resources you can link up for me, please do.

4 comments:

Cd-MaN said...

Good to hear that you worked it out (at least partially). Again, noting down the error message would have helped :-). Also, ubuntu has a very active user base, so searching for "ubuntu + error message" or "ubuntu + stuff you want to do" will more often than not give you the solution.

Regarding the wireless card I found a negative report, but then it seems that somebody got it working. Hope this helps.

Also, in the beginning I used the Ubuntu Guide wiki a lot.

PS. One of my first moves is to install the restrictred extras package (you have to enable the multiverse repository for this). It brings you all the usual stuff you would need (flash, audio/video codecs, etc).

Jake said...

Glad to see you're making progress. It's a hobbyist's O/S, and as you've found, old stuff isn't a guarantee to work.

Classic, your mileage will vary stuff.

Overall, I've been happy with my install. I thought I did a reformat when I installed to clean up the old Windows stuff (somewhat). Can't recall exactly.

cdman83 is right. The 'tubes provides more information than you'll ever need. I find it tough to filter out the best tips sometimes.

oraclenerd said...

@cdman83

You are absolutely right...I need to post my error messages then perhaps this blog will actually serve one of it's purposes! I'll do better going forward.

Thanks for those links. I have found the Ubuntu community to be very, very dedicated and helpful. I'm just learning to decipher the new language.

Tom said...

Installing Oracle on Ubuntu.

http://www.pythian.com/blogs/654/installing-oracle-11g-on-ubuntu-linux-710-gutsy-gibbon