Newbie upgrade from 2006

[Guest snurfle]

I've been dual-booting 2006 and WinXP for about 6-8 months.

I originally installed Mandriva so I could play with Linux, and I must say, I am hooked! It is a great OS, and I have yet to find it lacking.

Here is (are) my problem(s):

 

I set aside a partition on my HDD (40 Gb out of 120 Gb) for Mandriva.

I am using Lilo as my bootloader.

I still have WinXP as my 'primary' OS; I have 2 kids in school who need to have all the games, etc. that windows offers, as well as a wife who is scared of a new OS, and I still have to use IE to remote access my company's intranet. (No VNC allowed.)

 

As I said, I've been using Linux as a total noob, and I have certainly hosed a few things in the past 6-8 months... I manually updated KDE a few months ago, and managed to lose some functionality; I had a nasty learning curve when it came to downloading/installing/creating shortcuts, and so on and so on. Basically, I have trashed about 25% of my Mandriva just from learning how NOT to do things.

I tried using Ubuntu on a friend's machine, but decided... Yuuch.

 

That being said, I want to wipe it (Mandriva installation) clean and start over. Especially now that 2007 is available. But here are my concerns:

 

1. I want to keep the XP installation alive, but I'm a little nervous about Lilo somehow "losing" XP if I try to un/re install Mandriva.

2. I don't really want or need to keep anything in the current Mandriva installation; I've backed up anything important. But I don't know if a fresh install will keep my current settings, or just let me blow it away entirely.

3. Is the new KDE coming out any time soon? I don't want to blow it by upgrading in a week if I can wait.

4. I'm not 100% for sure the best way to approach this. Can anyone offer me some advice or hazards or just a smack on the back of my head?

 

Thanks.

Edited November 17, 2006 by snurfle

[ianw1974]

The easiest way, is download the 2007 CD or DVD and then boot from it and install. When it comes to your partitions, you can allocate them and Mandriva can then format them and overwrite them. Choose Custom Partitioning for this when it comes to it. I'm sure you remember which partition was what when you first set it up, so you'll be able to do this.

 

Otherwise, look in your /etc/fstab first before you upgrade and make a note of /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3, etc, etc for each of the partitions, then you'll get an idea of what to choose for what when you do a new install.

 

2007 should detect and see if you want to upgrade, you can choose new install at this point.

[Guest snurfle]

Thanks for the info.

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but:

Lilo will be OK with all this?

I'm really nervous about losing my XP; have been since I dumped windows' NT loader.

I had actually wanted to re-partition another 20Gb or so for Mandriva; my fear about losing XP has prevented me from doing this.

 

Forgive me for being overly cautious; I don't want to have an angry family!

[ianw1974]

Lilo is normally OK. I've not had any problems with it, and I have a far more complicated set up with software raid partitions, and I even managed to keep all this by installing Fedora over the top of Mandriva! And then back again :P

[Guest snurfle]

OK. Thanks.

I guess I know how I'm spending my weekend!

[jagwah]

You should be ok as ianw1974 says, it's easy as, I've done it several times without any problems, just make sure when you select Custom Partitioning you don't delete the WindowsXP partition ;) and/or any other partition you may have windows stuff on.

 

I had actually wanted to re-partition another 20Gb or so for Mandriva

 

If by this you mean that you want to resize your Windows partition to gain and extra 20GB, well, people do it, I was never quite confident enough to try it, but never really needed to anyways. Best be prepared and back up the stuff you can't afford to loose just incase, then the worst would be you'd have to do a Windows reinstall if it went down the toilet.

 

Good Luck ..., have fun ..., you'll be fine.

[Guest snurfle]

"Good luck, you'll be fine."

 

And so I am.

 

Mandriva 2007 up and running, as is XP, and all is right with the world.

 

Thanks for all the confidence, guys.

 

Now... to show off the level of my "newbieness"...

 

Is there a simple-to-follw guide for "here's how to install an app that is not in the list in control center? Case in point... Firefox 2.0 is a tar file, Google Earth is a bin file. I have no clue why they are that way, or what the different format means in Linux.

I've managed to fumble my way through downloading, opening, making a "shortcut", etc. for several apps, but it seems like there should be a simple 1.2.3. guide somewhere... to be honest, a lot of the commands in a terminal window are still like incantations to me, and I'm just typing them in "because it says to".

Edited November 19, 2006 by snurfle

[jagwah]

Well, this is what I do for Firefox, just extract the contents, (you can just right click and select open in new tab) then copy the firefox folder to where ever, I always put it in,

 

usr/local

 

making the path usr/local/firefox

 

(others may put it elsewhere for various reasons, multiple users etc, but I have no problems with it there)

 

To run it, I right click on the desktop, select 'create new/link to application, give it a name, firefox is good :D , you can also click the square to the left to select an icon, then click the 'Application' tab, beside the command box, click the 'browse' button and navigate to 'usr/local/firefox' (or where ever you decided copy the firefox folder) then click the file 'firefox', then click ok, resulting in '/usr/local/firefox/firefox' being inserted in the command box. Click ok, then double click the firefox icon that will be created on your desktop, and your away.

 

If it doesn't run when you double click it, open the usr/local/firefox directory, then press f4, which will open a konsole, then type in

 

./firefox

 

hit enter, and see if it gives you any errors, mine always needs a version of libstdc++ to be installed, so I just install libstdc++5-3.3.6-3mdk.i586 from the installation DVD and all is fine.

 

Google earth, open a console and type

 

sh nameofbinfile.bin

 

where nameofbinfile.bin = the name of the google earth file, press enter and that should do it. (I think)

 

 

You may find some of this stuff useful to have a read through,

 

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=10614

 

have fun

Edited November 19, 2006 by jagwah

[jagwah]

I've managed to fumble my way through downloading, opening, making a "shortcut", etc. for several apps, but it seems like there should be a simple 1.2.3. guide somewhere... to be honest, a lot of the commands in a terminal window are still like incantations to me, and I'm just typing them in "because it says to".

 

Stick with it, it will come with time, it does become easier/more natural eventually. I know how totally alien it may seem to you at the moment, but it does get better. And if you make it through the tough bits, you'll be better off for it.

 

Oh, you can also get GoogleEarth through the Mandriva software manager, you would have to set up you repositories, and then just search for google earth, and it will install it for you, you can also do that for firefox, but I don't like some of the things that Mandriva have done with it, so I prefer to just get Firefox directly from Mozilla.

Edited November 19, 2006 by jagwah