Taking the Ubuntu Plunge

For sometime now, I;ve wanted to get better aquainted with Linux. I now have a need to setup a personal machine to handle non-work related tasks. The only computer at my diposal is an old Dell Inspiron 3200 that I got at a “Fire sale” — which pretty much means it was gonna be thrown out.

No way this think meets the specs of an XP install… Pentium 233, 256 Ram, 4GB hard drive. An ancient, slow machine, at best.

I;ve heard time and time again that you can brathe new life into old machines with Linux. We’ll just see about that. Won’t we?

I’ll track my experiences here so that any other newbie here can track along, and maybe learn from my mistakes.

That said, let’s get Ubuntu.
 
As of this writing the current version is 6.06. So I downloaded via bitTorrent the CD-ROM image named: ubuntu-6.06.1-desktop-i386.iso

That clearly means I need another machine, with a CD-ROM burner.  Check.

When you burn an iso file, it is called a disk image. When you are buring an ISO image, make sure the burner knows that you are burning a previously created image. As far as I know if you just add the .iso file to the disk as if you were buring a regular .doc file or ,mp3 file, it will not work. THe ISO is essentially the whole disk already bundled up into one file.

All right. Let’s give this a try.