Elrond's guides for Vista and Ubuntu.

**Elrond** · May 04, 2007, 04:48 PM

About 8 weeks ago I got Vista and I installed Ubuntu tonight - both are extremly good operating systems which I would recomend to anyone.

Because Vista was new I came across a few problems and with help I have managed to solve them and I am half way through this process with Ubuntu. I am therefore writing a few guides to help people with both operating systems as allot of people will use at least one of them in the future even though they arnt used much atm.

Vista Tricks and Tips

Disabling the User Account Control (UAC):

This means that you wont be prompted by Vista to open installation files etc as an admin (which if you only have one user account or if all of your accounts are admins it is very anoying). Vista will tell you that this makes your computer less secure which is debatable as XP doesnt have it and it can probable be bypassed already by spyware.

1) At the bottom of the start bar type in msconfig and click on it when it appears as the only item in the search.

2) Click the last tab "Tools" and scroll down untill you find "Disable AUC" then click on it and then click launch.

3) Reboot your PC

4) When prompted by Vista at startup checkbox never ask again (cant remember the exact words).

Aternitvly you can set windows to elevate all users to admins for security prompts (this gets rid of allot of security prompts without the computer becoming less secure:

1) Type in secpol.msc at the bottom of the start menu

2) Browse down to Local Policies \ Security Options

3) Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.

4) Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting".

Showing all programs being used at once in arc

I couldnt remember the exact name for this so I came up with that name.

Simple enough instructions:

press start button + tab.

release tab then press it when you want to move the convabelt of screens forward.

Note: This takes up quite a bit of graphics card power - dont use this if your computer is only slightly above minimium requirements.

Firefox Profile manager

This works on XP as well.

If I am honest you only really need to do this if you go on 'adult websites', basicly this trick allows you to create, switch between and delete firefox profiles. The profile contains every cookie, history and bookmark on it - if you delete the profile its the same as when you installed firefox.
This has a few obvous advantages and disadvantages.

In the box at the bottom of the start bar (or in 'run' if you are using XP), type in firefox.exe -profilemanager, this brings up the profile manager which is very simple to use. The buttons on it have blindly obvous purposes so I wont explain what they so, it suffices to say that to choose the profile you wish firefox to use, you need to double click on it before you exit the profile manager.

Note: Dont run this when firefox is on - it wont work if firefox is running.

A guide to installing Ubuntu

Go to the ubuntu website and folow the instructions for downloading Ubuntu and burning them to a CD, these instructions are simple and more understandable than any I could write.

Once you have the Ubuntu CD ready you have two options - partitioning your harddrive before you begin the installation or partitioning it during the installation.

If you have vista then creating the partition before installation is allot easier:

In the bar at the bottom of the start menu type computer management, once in computer management click on storage in the side bar, then click on disk management.

Right click on the harddrive you want to use and click shrink volume - select how much you want to shrink it by (30gb should easily be enough). Folow the instructions and you will be left with unallocated hardrive space on the bar. Right click on this and click on create new volume.

You need to create three new volumes - a 200mb partition, a partition which i is equal in size to your RAM ie 2048mb and a final Partiton with the remaining space (this is were Ubuntu will be installed). Partitioning using Vistas manager should not effect the contents on the hardrive (providing there is enough space.

Once the partitions are ready but the Ubuntu disk into the drive and restart the computer.

You will then be given several options - just press enter on the defualt option.

Ubuntu will then load itself - click on installation and go through the options (e.g. choose time zone, keyboard type etc), these require no explainations.

When you get to the partition options choose manual. The edit the partions which you have created:

the 200mb partition should be 'Ext3' and should have the directory of /boot
the partition which is of equal size to your Ram should be 'Swap'
the final partition should also be 'Ext3' and should be /

Once you have finished all the installation stuff Ubuntu will install.

If you dont have vista use a partition manager (e.g. Partition magic) or create the partitions I have mentioned, whilst in the ubuntu installation.

I appoligise for the lack of clarity in some parts of the guide - I am doing this from memory as I cant repeat some of the stages in the guide.

I would like to thank ajimenez3 and Erik for there help with partitioning the hardrives and I would like to thank a person in my computer studies class who gave me the instructions for the partition sizes and types.

**kshcshbash** · May 04, 2007, 05:11 PM

A for effort.

With that said, I have a few notes to add.
Check the md5sum of your Ubuntu ISO before you try and burn it. Check the md5sum of your CD after you have burned it this should do something for you.
Ubuntu requires 2GB of space at minimum. You do not need any partitions aside from a root and a swap
this is a much more complete and accurate set of instructions.

**Elrond** · May 04, 2007, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by kshcshbash

A for effort.

With that said, I have a few notes to add.
Check the md5sum of your Ubuntu ISO before you try and burn it. Check the md5sum of your CD after you have burned it this should do something for you.
Ubuntu requires 2GB of space at minimum. You do not need any partitions aside from a root and a swap
this is a much more complete and accurate set of instructions.

The third partition is only if you dont want to use the entire hard drive - i.e. I only wanted to use 40gb out of a 230gb harddrive.

I also agree that its a good idea to check the disk for errors before you install it.

There are better and clearer instructions on other parts of the internet - I posted my guide simply because there wasnt one at TWC.

**kshcshbash** · May 04, 2007, 06:08 PM

Originally Posted by Elrond

The third partition is only if you dont want to use the entire hard drive - i.e. I only wanted to use 40gb out of a 230gb harddrive.

I also agree that its a good idea to check the disk for errors before you install it.

There are better and clearer instructions on other parts of the internet - I posted my guide simply because there wasnt one at TWC.

I posted one quite a while back.

Edit: I bumped it.

**Simetrical** · May 08, 2007, 07:20 PM

Doesn't Ubuntu by default also require you to retype your password every time you want to do something administrative?

**Elrond** · May 09, 2007, 01:51 AM

Originally Posted by Simetrical

Doesn't Ubuntu by default also require you to retype your password every time you want to do something administrative?

Yes it does and you have to type a username and password at startup - there isnt a way (as far as I know) to get around this.

Having said that vista does a similar thing so I am used to it.

**kshcshbash** · May 09, 2007, 07:20 AM

Ubuntu does shield the user from the superuser account. All actions that root would usually do are sudo'd.

Comparing the security in Ubuntu to Vista is a bad idea on the whole; they have fundamentally different approaches. ;-)