Ubuntu 9.04 Install log.

Posting from Windows
After much consideration, I decided to wipe the Debian part of my home system and install Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackelope). The main reason being I love to tinker - I hate leaving well enough alone.
So, I backed up my files (a DVDs worth of tarred MP3s, some pics, and some old writing samples I've lugged around since Win98 was shiny and new) and decided to approach installing from a fresh point of view.
I don't think many people are going to have a spare hard drive lying around, so I (surreptitiously) checked to see what programs I use -- if any -- don't have a version or equivalent available for Ubuntu. For me, the list was short: Windows Media Encoder 9 -- which muxes video for my daughter's MixMax -- is a MS only thing requiring a registered version of Windows to download and use. A lot of Windows-native programs that don't have an analogue can be run with WINE. And you can find out if a program you want to use will work by looking it up in Wine's application database. Unfortunately, neither my WME9 or Full Tilt Poker client (which has a Mac version, go fig) play well with WINE. No big deal; I can dual boot. [1]
First things first, I went to ubuntu.com and download the Jaunty alternate-install disc[2]. Like most distibutions, it came as an ISO file. ISOs are bit-by-bit copys (images) of a CD or DVD -- in this case a CD. XP doesn't handle ISOs natively, and if you don't have a program like Nero that can burn an image to disc, I'd recommend a program like InfraRecorder. From Ubuntu's download page, you can choose which version to download and grab the file directly from Canonical's servers. Down the page is another couple options. I have uTorrent installed on my windows side, so I used the torrent download. For me, this has a couple advantages. The most important for me is built-in MD5 check-summing. MD5 is an algorythm that creates a number (a sum) based on the contents of a file. If the contents of the file are changed even slighty - for example, say from packet loss or corruption during download - there is a large change in the MD5-created sum. By checking the sum of your downloaded file against the sum of the source, you can ensure that the data that was received is the same as the data that was sent. This becomes especially important when dealing with programs and the underlying framework that will run your computer. The difference is multiplied: doing a checksum just at the end means you would have to redo the entire ~700MB download if the checksum was wrong. The torrent protocol's incremental checksum means that you the client (program) can discard corrupt sections as it's downloading -- meaning it only has to re-request 1 or 2 MB at a time instead of 700.
There are other advantages of using the P2P transfer; One, once a file is sufficiently seeded it takes a tremendous burden off of the original servers, and two, it is often faster than the single-point download.
Once the ISO was downloaded, checksummed and burned; I used the disk cleanup and defrag utilities to make room on my hard drive for the install. I come up with 15 GB of free space on my first hard drive. Since this is a dual-boot system, I'm going to use that 15GB to store stuff that I'll want to be able to access from either platform - music, small vids, etc. Since XP can only natively access FAT and NTFS file systems, I'll format that as NTFS and make it a shared folder -- since it is a single-user system, there should be no problem with permissions. If there comes a time where I need more users, I can change that at a later date.
Since I do have a second HD, I'll just use it as my bootable linux partition.
It's 9:38, and I'm shutting down to do the install now.


1> Yes, I already knew all this before. Just like I knew that my particular model of Presario (SR1103WM) doesn't play well with LiveCDs, and needs the noapic nolapic acpi=off flags in order to actually install the Linux kernel. All this info -- and probably the ones for your computer as well -- is fairly easy to find with google.
2> See [1]. One other issue that poppe up on a google search: This presario model -- and linux on Compaqs in general apparently -- have had a problem in the past with kernel panic if the BIOS defaults to something other than the onboard video. We'll give it a try both ways -- it's a bug that's harder to find, and maybe the latest kernel has addressed the issue.