Running on ubuntu 9.04




WOW! I had been trying to use Ubuntu or some version of Linux for some time now and have not been able to make the switch. And now, for the past few weeks, I have been running on Ubuntu at home. How did it happen?

A lightening strike! No, No quite literally a lightening strike. Let me explain.

Like many homes now days, we too, have a desktop and laptop. Both were running on Windows XP. A couple of months back, the performance of our laptop started to degradem and I thought it was time for a re-install. So I started off with the Windows installation, which I must say is pretty straightforward. Well, straight forward, provided the CD/DVD drive works. As in my case, the installation stopped half way through as the CD could not be read. This left me in a lurch. I now had a laptop but no OS installed on it. The windows re-install had aborted in the middle which left the system unusable.

The alternatives at this point were to

  • Contact the support center.
  • Replace the DVD drive
  • Try and boot from an alternate source.

I left this at that point because I primarily used the desktop at home and did feel the urge to shell out more money for the first two options or have time to look into the third .

And then lightening strikes....

It is monsoon time and thunder-showers are pretty common. My desktop wouldn't power on one day and I figured out that the telephone line was the culprit. Lightening struck the building and via modem, hit my motherboard. I took the hardware to the service center who told me that it would take 2 weeks to repair it.

This got me in researching into the third option. How to get my laptop booted without the dvd drive. After scanning through a lot of sites, I found an easy, direct option to get the USB bootable with Ubuntu. I had found some help with Windows too, but I failed to get my USB to boot the windows XP version.

I must say, the system is behaving very well. Will post some pictures of my desktop in future posts, god willing.

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