You can set different drives as the mount points for the different areas of the filesystem.
This was mentioned above.
You can also set your /home directory to be a different drive mounted to that point in the filesystem (in fact it's recommended in many cases).
To install applications you can use Synaptic as people have suggested, or Add/Remove which unlike the Windows things of the same name actually DOES Add and Remove programs.
You can also use the command line like I generally do, but obviously people aren't always keen on that. It's just easier for me to type "sudo apt-get install packagename" than it is to browse a gui.
Also Ubuntu should have installed a nice little Firefox extension called Ubufox which includes a little search engine for the package manager database. Pretty handy.
Anyway, the point of the package manager is to get rid of the problem of dependency issues and incompatibilities. It's not absolutely perfect as there are one or two apps that don't play very nice all of the time (I'm looking at you aMSN).... but for the most part it's a swimming system with very little issues.
Ok, I've tried installing 7.10 and 8.04 and both more or less stop at the same place which is when it starts loading the partition manager thing, it hits 46% and than just sits there, forever.
Okay, so I burnt my Ubuntu disc, booted from it, it gave me a menu, I chose something along the lines of "start or install ubuntu". It gave me some kind of an orange progress bar and an ubuntu logo for a while, then my monitor goes blank, saying "Video mode not supported" like Ubuntu wants to use a higher resolution than 1024x768 (which is my shitty monitor's max). How do I get around this shit? I guess I can get to a prompt of some kind with ctrl+alt+f1, but that's not really at all helpful.
This is a dumb question, but did you try wiggling your mouse? I was getting the exact same thing with my live CD, just wiggled the mouse and the monitor would come back on.
there should be a F-Key for options or something like that. It will give you a little text box showing all the boot arguments that are going to be used. Just try adding that to it. I've never tried it myself but I found someone on the ubuntu help forums that was having a similar problem to yours and that worked for them.
LittleBoots on
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Ubuntu won't let me set this .jpg as a desktop background. I can open it with GIMP, but nothing else seems to want to, and it's not telling me to go download drivers or anything >.<. What am I missing here?
Ubuntu won't let me set this .jpg as a desktop background. I can open it with GIMP, but nothing else seems to want to, and it's not telling me to go download drivers or anything >.<. What am I missing here?
The image may be corrupted. Ubuntu supports virtually all standard image formats on a fresh install (shit like .psd isn't going to work, obviously).
You're using the Appearance program under preferences to set the background, right? And it isn't a file with the wrong extension?
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Ubuntu won't let me set this .jpg as a desktop background. I can open it with GIMP, but nothing else seems to want to, and it's not telling me to go download drivers or anything >.<. What am I missing here?
The image may be corrupted. Ubuntu supports virtually all standard image formats on a fresh install (shit like .psd isn't going to work, obviously).
You're using the Appearance program under preferences to set the background, right? And it isn't a file with the wrong extension?
I was right clicking my desktop, which appears to go to the same place. It was a .jpg, I thought maybe there was a problem with the image but I downloaded half a dozen fresh wallpapers (all .jpgs) and none of them will open either. I used GIMP to save one as a .png, to no avail. When I'm viewing the folder containing them via the background-changer they appear when I change the view to show all files, but aren't apparently considered "images".
Before I told them to open with GIMP they wouldn't open at all, and Ubuntu told me there appeared to be nothing on synaptic that could be used to open them
Ubuntu won't let me set this .jpg as a desktop background. I can open it with GIMP, but nothing else seems to want to, and it's not telling me to go download drivers or anything >.<. What am I missing here?
The image may be corrupted. Ubuntu supports virtually all standard image formats on a fresh install (shit like .psd isn't going to work, obviously).
You're using the Appearance program under preferences to set the background, right? And it isn't a file with the wrong extension?
I was right clicking my desktop, which appears to go to the same place. It was a .jpg, I thought maybe there was a problem with the image but I downloaded half a dozen fresh wallpapers (all .jpgs) and none of them will open either. I used GIMP to save one as a .png, to no avail. When I'm viewing the folder containing them via the background-changer they appear when I change the view to show all files, but aren't apparently considered "images".
Before I told them to open with GIMP they wouldn't open at all, and Ubuntu told me there appeared to be nothing on synaptic that could be used to open them
returns the package name and that the beginning of the line with it starts with 'ii'.
Also try running the command "file" on a jpg and ensure that it gives you some output like:
/path/to/file.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
If those are good, try 'killall nautilus' and change your background again if it doesn't appear already. Also do 'killall gnome-appearance-properties' if yours happens to hang around. For some reason the process doesn't die on my PC for unknown reasons, and if it does the same on yours it may be contributing to the problem.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Everything's fine except for dpkg -l libjpeg62, which returns
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-f/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/t-aWait/T-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==========================-==========================-====
ii libjpeg62 6b-14 The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG runtime library
That's what you should have gotten. The package name is in the name column, and the 'ii' there means that it is installed.
So everything looks good there. So kill nautilus (an instance of it is responsible for your desktop) and see if you can change it there. I've found that it can choke on thumbnails (especially video) if it tries to create a preview of a video that is downloading.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Nope. Tried killall nautilus and gnome-appearance-properties, before and after installing libjpeg, Still nothing.
Just out of interest, does Ubuntu have default jpeg viewer out of the box? I thought it was odd that it couldn't find anything until I told GIMP to do it.
edit: I should probably mention than when I tell the file browser (from the change desktop interface) to show all files, I can click on a jpeg or png and see it's thumbnail in the sidebar. It just.. does nothing if I click "open".
Nope. Tried killall nautilus and gnome-appearance-properties, before and after installing libjpeg, Still nothing.
Just out of interest, does Ubuntu have default jpeg viewer out of the box? I thought it was odd that it couldn't find anything until I told GIMP to do it.
Ubuntu's default image viewer is Eye of GNOME (the aforementioned "eog" program), and is installed as part of ubuntu-desktop. It goes by the name of "Image Viewer" in the graphics section of the applications menu.
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Anybody have any methods for making certain programs run at boot? I'd love to have Superkaramba and Yakuake. No, copying them from the Applications folder to /home/[User]/.kde/Autostart doesn't work. I get an error message upon bootup.
Anybody have any methods for making certain programs run at boot? I'd love to have Superkaramba and Yakuake. No, copying them from the Applications folder to /home/[User]/.kde/Autostart doesn't work. I get an error message upon bootup.
Try placing the desktop entry in /home/<user>/.config/autostart
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Posts
This was mentioned above.
You can also set your /home directory to be a different drive mounted to that point in the filesystem (in fact it's recommended in many cases).
To install applications you can use Synaptic as people have suggested, or Add/Remove which unlike the Windows things of the same name actually DOES Add and Remove programs.
You can also use the command line like I generally do, but obviously people aren't always keen on that. It's just easier for me to type "sudo apt-get install packagename" than it is to browse a gui.
Also Ubuntu should have installed a nice little Firefox extension called Ubufox which includes a little search engine for the package manager database. Pretty handy.
Anyway, the point of the package manager is to get rid of the problem of dependency issues and incompatibilities. It's not absolutely perfect as there are one or two apps that don't play very nice all of the time (I'm looking at you aMSN).... but for the most part it's a swimming system with very little issues.
Safe mode does the same thing.
I also tried hitting F4 in that menu and setting the video mode to one I know I support, but they all do this.
Try adding vga=791 to the boot options and see if that helps.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
The image may be corrupted. Ubuntu supports virtually all standard image formats on a fresh install (shit like .psd isn't going to work, obviously).
You're using the Appearance program under preferences to set the background, right? And it isn't a file with the wrong extension?
I was right clicking my desktop, which appears to go to the same place. It was a .jpg, I thought maybe there was a problem with the image but I downloaded half a dozen fresh wallpapers (all .jpgs) and none of them will open either. I used GIMP to save one as a .png, to no avail. When I'm viewing the folder containing them via the background-changer they appear when I change the view to show all files, but aren't apparently considered "images".
Before I told them to open with GIMP they wouldn't open at all, and Ubuntu told me there appeared to be nothing on synaptic that could be used to open them
Assuming you're using Gutsy, check that:
returns something like
and that
returns the package name and that the beginning of the line with it starts with 'ii'.
Also try running the command "file" on a jpg and ensure that it gives you some output like:
If those are good, try 'killall nautilus' and change your background again if it doesn't appear already. Also do 'killall gnome-appearance-properties' if yours happens to hang around. For some reason the process doesn't die on my PC for unknown reasons, and if it does the same on yours it may be contributing to the problem.
aptitude install libjpeg
That's what you should have gotten. The package name is in the name column, and the 'ii' there means that it is installed.
So everything looks good there. So kill nautilus (an instance of it is responsible for your desktop) and see if you can change it there. I've found that it can choke on thumbnails (especially video) if it tries to create a preview of a video that is downloading.
Just out of interest, does Ubuntu have default jpeg viewer out of the box? I thought it was odd that it couldn't find anything until I told GIMP to do it.
edit: I should probably mention than when I tell the file browser (from the change desktop interface) to show all files, I can click on a jpeg or png and see it's thumbnail in the sidebar. It just.. does nothing if I click "open".
Ubuntu's default image viewer is Eye of GNOME (the aforementioned "eog" program), and is installed as part of ubuntu-desktop. It goes by the name of "Image Viewer" in the graphics section of the applications menu.
Try placing the desktop entry in /home/<user>/.config/autostart