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wannabesatfreak

24 posts

Geek

#42001 27-Sep-2009 23:43

Hi I just blew away Xp and installed Ubuntu from a disk from DSE (Ubuntu Linux 8.04),

I configured my WLAN and got alot of updates,

I would like to upgrade the Firefox 3.0 to 3.5 but having no luck,

I have googled but the instructions I followed may be out of date?

I am new to Linux and hope to also install Thunderbird.

Any advice?

Thanks, Dean

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264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#258861 28-Sep-2009 08:06

I would do a distribution upgrade if I were you. You will have to do 2 upgrades to go from 8.04 -> 8.10 and then 8.10 -> 9.04, which is the latest version I believe. This should give you Firefox 3.5 (to be honest I can't actually remember what version is in the latest edition of Ubuntu) but even if it doesnt, it's always a good idea to run the latest version anyway.

Instructions are here. They are for the 8.10 -> 9.04 upgrade, but you'll find they should be fairly similar for the first stage.

Welcome to Ubuntu. It's a great OS, and I'm sure you'll love it. If you have any questions don't be afraid to ask. It can take a bit of getting used to, but these days it's getting easier and easier.

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#258956 28-Sep-2009 12:06

Hi Dean, Ubuntu organises its application repositories by Ubuntu OS release. So the 8.04 repositories will include different versions of various apps than then 8.10 and 9.04 repositories.

Except for security patches etc Ubuntu does not typically update the version of apps included in a repository. The upshot of that is that until you move to a later release of Ubuntu you are pretty much stuck with the version of the apps at the time of that release. You can get round this whole issue by adding new repositories into Synaptic - app developers often have their own repositories which they keep more up to date than the main Ubuntu ones.

Upgrading to 9.04 will not get you Firefox 3.5 however - that version of Firefox was not released in time to be included in the 9.04 repositories. Presumably it will be in the 9.10 repositories when it is released at the end of next month.

In the mean time however if you do update to 9.04 then you will be able to install Shiretolo - just search for Shiretoko in Synaptic. Shiretoko is Firefox 3.5 without the Firefox branding. Install this for now and then when you update to 9.10 you'll probably get actual Firefox 3.5 and so will then be able to remove Shiretoko.

You should be able to install Thunderbird through Synaptic as well - just search for Thunderbird.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

wannabesatfreak

24 posts

Geek

#259044 28-Sep-2009 16:44

Thank you guys for your help. I appreciate it. I have now created two partitions, one for XP and one for Ubuntu, so I can run either, while I am learing about Ubuntu. I bit off more than I could chew by jumping in head first!

Thanks again.
Dean

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#259050 28-Sep-2009 16:59

Good plan Dean. That's the same arrangement I've used for a couple of years. I boot into Ubuntu when I get home and Win XP when I get into the office. Keeps life nicely delineated.

One thing I'm loving on Ubuntu is Virtualbox (yeah you can use it on other platforms too). At some point I'm going to dump my XP partition and simply run XP in Virtualbox when I need access to a Windows app that doesn't play nice with Wine.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

wannabesatfreak

24 posts

Geek

#259214 28-Sep-2009 23:48

Hey, just a quick update, I have thunderbird running now on Ubuntu. Have sent and received a few emails.
Dont hit me with techy stuff as I am just starting out :) haha

Cheers
Dean

wannabesatfreak

24 posts

Geek

#260291 1-Oct-2009 18:47

Hey thanks Aaron,

I now have Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090930 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Shiretoko/3.5.4pre
The dual partitions are working well. Using XP for "production" and Ubuntu for playing.

And yes, Ryan, I do love it!

I guess this is a silly question, do I need antivirus? I have AVG free 8.5 on my XP system, but am only using Ubuntu at the moment to learn about the OS, and not really surfing the web as such. I have installed Thunderbird, but I only check email on XP.
I can't say that I have ever had a virus detected on XP, but if you recommend on Ubuntu, what would you advise?

Also I have plugged in my USB external HDD, and got an error message that Ubuntu could not mount the drive. I am not really worried about this, anyway it is a Seagate 320GB External Portable Drive, only bought last week from DSE.

Cheers guys.
Dean

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#260411 2-Oct-2009 02:39

Hi Dean, I don't know of anyone that uses AV on Ubuntu (or probably any other flavour of linux). Viruses just don't seem to be an issue on linux. There are some AV applications however, ClamAV is one that I have heard mentioned as reasonable, albeit a bit slow on the scanning side of things.

Really strange that you're external drive is not being recognised under Ubuntu. I've plugged all sorts of drives of all sorts of sizes and they've all just been supported automatically. I'm assuming it works OK under Windows? Maybe try another external drive from somewhere to see if it is just your drive that Ubuntu is having issues with or all externals.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

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8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#260437 2-Oct-2009 08:26

I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying Ubuntu. Are you using Gnome (comes with Ubuntu) or KDE (Packaged with Kubuntu) for your window manage (doesnt make a difference, more of a curiosity on my part).

One of the great things about open source is that when a serious flaw is discovered it is generally patched pretty fast, and in terms of viruses, no one ever really seems to write them for linux. I believe that most people capable of that sort of thing probably wouldnt want to mess with linux, when it's much more fun to have a go at windows, or at least I could only hope they wouldnt want to mess with it.

With the hdd we may be able to help with a little more info. If you open up a terminal and type 'tail dmesg' in shortly after connecting the drive it may help point us in the right direction at least. Also, if you could run 'fdisk -l' with the drive connected.

xlinknz

1127 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#260459 2-Oct-2009 09:54

Guys

I have been thinking about trying Ubuntu for some time too and I'm soon going install a new hard drive into our PC so the oppertunity presents itself for dual boot

1. The PC is a P4 2.4Ghz, 768 RAM I assume this is more than adequate for Ubuntu ?
2. The PC runs W2K, can I dual boot that with Ubuntu ?
3. How does one setup dual boot ?
4. Should I use Gnome or not I read somewhere it was a pig on low end machines and that there are some better alternatives

Regards

New to UNIX

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#260468 2-Oct-2009 10:12

Hi Robert, your hardware looks fine. With a Win2K era machine my recommendation would be to use neither Gnome or KDE. Instead install Xubuntu which uses the Xfce UI - it has all of the functionality as Gnome but drops some of the CPU-intensive eye-candy.

When you swap your new drive in install Windows first (or copy your old partition across) and then install Xubuntu (or whatever flavour you end up choosing), that way Linux will end up managing the bootup process. Windows boot manager does not play so nicely with other OS.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

xlinknz

1127 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#260471 2-Oct-2009 10:22

ald: Hi Robert, your hardware looks fine. With a Win2K era machine my recommendation would be to use neither Gnome or KDE. Instead install Xubuntu which uses the Xfce UI - it has all of the functionality as Gnome but drops some of the CPU-intensive eye-candy.

When you swap your new drive in install Windows first (or copy your old partition across) and then install Xubuntu (or whatever flavour you end up choosing), that way Linux will end up managing the bootup process. Windows boot manager does not play so nicely with other OS.

Thank you for the reply and advise

Mmmm does Kubuntu 9.04 desktop effects constitue "eye candy" [not sure the 32Mb AGP video card will cope !]

Is a torrent of 'Ubuntu v9.04 desktop i386 CD-iso FINAL' a good way to get Ubuntu ? [shock horror a legal torrent ?!]

BTW on the P2.4/768Mb RAM PC I would have thought Xubuntu was not neccessary but certainly for my P3 750Mhz/256Mb RAM machine !

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#260482 2-Oct-2009 10:37

Personally I dont raelly recommend dual booting. Even on a low end system with Xubuntu you should be able to give half of your resources to a virtual machine and have that running Ubuntu. The main reason I say this is because there are lots of issues that can occur with dual booting that can make it impossible to boot into one of your OS's. Boot loaders can sometimes cause conflicts, and one OS can sometimes cause the other OS to no longer be able to read the partitions. You can still access the files on each others OS's using network drives which are pretty straight forward to setup in both OS's.

I have used both VMWare Server and Virtualbox, and would recommend either as very nice and easy to use VM software tools. Unfortunately I dont think VirtualBox will run on a Windows 2k machine, but it looks as though VMWare Server should. I would say install VMWare on the windows machine, and have Ubuntu (or your linux distro of choice) run in the virtual machine.

As for specs, the requirements for Ubuntu (using Gnome) are suprisingly low, needing only 384MB of RAM, 8gb of HDD, a 700mHz CPU and a pretty basic graphics card.

ald

172 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

SimWorks

#260492 2-Oct-2009 10:57

Hi Robert, Kubuntu will in all likelihood be find on your machine. If you're wondering you could just download and install it - if its not as snappy as you'd like then just trash the partition and install Xubuntu.

The Ubuntu torrent is a great way to get it. If you download the torrent you mention in your post you'll get the default Gnome desktop so if that's not what you want be sure to download the appropriate torrent (the Kubuntu torrents are listed at http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/download).

I hear what you're saying Ryan. I guess my own experience has been trouble free. I've had a dual boot system and never had a problem (as long as you let Linux handle the dual booting part). I also use Virtualbox so agree that desktop virtualisation is also a good strategy.

Best regards,
Aaron Davidson.

SimWorks International Limited

www.simworks.com - New Zealands leading developer of mobile applications

xlinknz

1127 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#260502 2-Oct-2009 11:15

Being new also to Vitrtual PCs if I use VMWare I assume I will need a non Windows partition. I assume VMWare desktop is a freedownload too

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#260505 2-Oct-2009 11:24

Using VMWare it basically sets aside a chunk of your windows partition as a large file, or group of files, that it uses to store data in, so there is no partitioning involved.

VMWare Server is the free edition that you can use for personal use. It has a quite a nice web ui these days rather than running an actual program. You'll find lots of info on it and on installing Linux on a Virtual Machine on the net.

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