Dual-booting PCLinuxOS with Windows, wiping Xandros OCE 3.0.2
I have been dual-booting my ACER notebook with Windows XP and Xandros OCE (open circulation edition) 3.0.2 for the past 2 years. I can’t remember when was my last login to Xandros, as Xandros has stopped supporting their OCE since few months back.
Most of their package repository was not updated, and if I were to update or upgrade my Xandros, I have to dig into their forum site to manually install the packages that I want to use. Tried to play with Backports, but I don’t think I am that geeky. So, most of the software packages in my Xandros was “outdated” - even my Firefox was stuck with version 1.5.
I tried to install Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon, but found bugs during manual installation, and have to abort the installation process half way through. I was a bit disappointed with that, after reading a lot of good reviews about Gutsy Gibbon and the smoothness of the installation. It did not stopped me from getting my ACER new Linux soul though…
I tried to install Mandriva 2008, using a free DVD that I received with my monthly LinuxForYou magazine, November 2007 issue, but failed to get the installer running as the text-mode installer has a bug, and my ACER notebook does not support graphical installer. Sigh…
Did some homework and surfed Distrowatch to get feedback on the best Linux distro to replace my Xandros, and found out that PCLinuxOS is the highest hit page ranking. I downloaded the cd image of PCLinuxOS, burned it on a cd and run it first as a live cd.
I must say that the process was really easy. Live cd showed KDE with a dedicated button for installation (similar with Ubuntu). Running PCLinuxOS live cd was smooth, and I could get all my hardware running out of the box. Setting up the network for internet was also easy, no problem in internet connection, although I was using live cd.
The installation process for PCLinixOS is also easy. It has a graphical installer, which detected all my hard drive, including the reiserfs partition which Xandros lived. By installing PCLinuxOS, my LILO bootloader which was created by Xandros was replaced by a new and more beautiful GRUB bootloader by PCLinuxOS, and I still can boot my Windows!!!
The best thing about PCLinuxOS is the Beryl 3D (now have merge with compiz) desktop presentation. After upgrading it with Synaptic in my PCLinuxOS, my desktop behave really differently, and I don’t think my XP can do it…
November 27th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I also had problems installing ubuntu7.04 on my inspiron 1420. The installation cd does not detect my hdd and i hv to use the alternate disc. There was no gui n x.org was broken. I had a hard time fixing it. Now 7.10 is out, but I dont hv the guts to try it out as im not ready for any problems that may arises. lol…
November 29th, 2007 at 8:21 am
You know what? I wiped out my PCLOS only after a day of using it. I found few bugs after updating and upgrading it using Synaptic:
1. My Windows Manager is broken. I think Compiz (Beryl 3D) was behind this, as I could not load a proper Windows Manager during the start-up.
2. KMyMoney was also not working. Some MIME files were missing, although I have updated it few times.
So, I headed up to Ubuntuforums, found the solution for the bugs, and managed to install Ubuntu FF (upgraded to GG) yesterday.
And the good news is… Beryl is working!!!
Cheers!
December 14th, 2007 at 1:50 am
They hv improved alot on gg