Putting Ubuntu on the laptop

I want to put Ubuntu on the laptop. I intend to put it along side Windows. We will see how that goes. There is another partition on the drive that I don't understand. I believe it was made by a piece of software. It is going by by shortly. The restore partition is nearly empty. Not sure it works at all. This system has been restored once after a virus infection.

First things first. Download the OS. Well, I screwed up and downloaded the wrong OS. I downloaded Ubuntu Server. That is fine, but not what I'm after here. Back to the download page.

Unetbootin is what I use for putting the ISO file on to a thumb drive. I must then figure out the key to hit in order to boot from that key. I gave up using CD and DVD disks because of the sort of mistake I just made. There are so many choices out there that it just costs too much money.

Boot off the USB key. Make sure video, wifi, touch pad, drives, USB, and other bits show up in the "try Ubuntu" bit of the ISO install. Click install. Let Ubuntu shrink the NTFS partition as much as it will. Worry about getting it right later. The resizing partition step is scary because things are getting moved around. This is where you can break the existing OS the easiest.

Then comes the inevitable hang up during install. I then start over and the system appears to run smoothly for a while. The funny thing is that the lockup was not a bad one. I was able to kick off a terminal and execute top to verify that indeed, nothing was happening on the system. This is frustrating, but common.

On a side note. The count down timer on the download and install is fluctuating from 22 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. So, it isn't just Windows and iTunes that is useless in this area. It is just as useless on Linux.

Waiting ... Starting to look like it is going to take longer than the hour and forty five minutes. Glad I have nothing else on my plate. ... Now it says 1586 minutes remaining. Not looking good.

It was stuck on language packs. I clicked skip and things started moving. That is just not right. Was it trying to download all language packs? Was it trying to download English only, but having a hard time? I remember setting it to English when it asked.

First reboot. Always wonder if the dang thing is going to come up after. ... Came up fine, but the mouse pad is not working. Figures something would break. It worked fine when booting off the USB drive. ... OK worked after a reboot. Not sure what happened there.

Next. Run through one of the 10 things to do when after installing Ubuntu sites. There are any number of these sites. I recomend reading though several of them and pick and choose the things you want. I do recomend Gnome over Unity at the moment. Unity just has too many bugs right now. Maybe this will change, but not unless the developers start using the interface.

Run first (over sized) set of updates and reboot. Will it reboot and run? Will something break? ... Few!

Hmmm. It won't let reinstall better video drivers. That is kind of a drag.

Install Kdenlive from PPA (development) repository. Takes a long enough time to be worrying. Tons of scary crap going by on the screen. Check. ... How many frigging libraries does it take for a video editor? ... Half an hour later, it is still doing ... something. A bunch more scary stuff is going haywire.

Kdenlive keeps telling me that it cannot find the MLT modules. It is installed in the normal place. They told me the one I installed is the correct one for the version of the OS I have. Of course, something must not work just because it is me doing it. More tomorrow. Well, I need to pay bills and clean the yard tomorrow. We need to take down the tree as well. Humph. Chores. Bah!

More to come.

UPDATE

Finally got the Kdenlive repo working properly. Something about a key not matching. It only took me all day to get this laptop up and running the way I wanted it.