Moving from Mandriva to Suse

[llebcire]

Hey all-

I dual boot XP and Linux. Right now i've been running Mandriva but haven't been that satisfied with it as of late and am thinking of switching to the new Ubuntu. My question is, what would be the best way to go about this.. would i want to switch back to the windows bootloader, remove the linux partitions and then remake these partitions from free space during the Ubuntu install?

My main concern is wether it is necessary to switch back to the windows bootloader before proceeding (LILO currently) as i have no problem removing the old Mandriva partitions...

I thought I'd reply to this thread rather than start a new one:

Doing almost the same thing with Mandriva, Vista & Grub going to Suse.

Am I to assume that I shouldn't have issues and that the Suse bootloader will overwrite Mandrivas? It is written in the MBR.

*Edit*
Now that I saw the poll of top distros for new users, I'm considering Ubuntu & Mint as well.

Will any distro's bootloader overwrite a prior version?
Thanks!

-Eric

[oz]

Yes, if GRUB currently resides on the MBR and you install GRUB there when doing the Suse install, it should overwrite the current bootloader.

Post back if you run into issues.

[llebcire]

Thanks for the response!

Didn't mean to close the other thread - just edited my post...hmm.

-Eric

[devils casper]

Installer of all distros except RedHat based distros detect other installed distros and setup multiboot without any problem.
If you install Ubuntu, its installer will detect Vista, Mandriva and any other installed distro. Same is with SuSe.
Fedora, CentOS and RHEL installers do not detect Linux distros and setup dual boot with Windows OSes only. One has to setup multiboot manually by editing conf file(s) of GRUB.

[llebcire]

Thanks for the info!

I was able to install OpenSuse 11.2 over the Mandriva install overwriting the Grub.

I am finding some oddities...documents are still there and Firefox is remembering logins from the other OS and still has the Mandriva branding.

Strange!

-Eric

[devils casper]

Did you format /home partition during installation? Post the output of fdisk -l and df -h commands here.

df -h
su -
fdisk -l

[llebcire]

Casper,

I did not format the /home partition during install and as of now I can't post the informtaion you're looking for.

I decided later last night to give Ubuntu a shot as it's supposed to be one of the easier distros for newbies and it killed my PC.

I found Mandriva to be somewhat sluggish in my setup hence the move to Suse.

Suse was quite a bit more responsive but Open Office wouldn't start properly.

In the initial stages of an install I'll always start over if something doesn't seem to install properly - many years of Windows (since 3.11) and corrupted registries have lead to my knee-jerk reaction.

I did a standard install with Ubuntu 10.04 i386. It proceeded to prevent Vista from booting and decided to re-partition my 1tb storage drive without asking...it was also accessing my external 1tb storage for no reason which left me a little uneasy as the drives are mirrored for redundancy. I had a similar problem with Ubuntu in 2007 where it corrupted a Windows boot and modified a storage drive.

I've been saved multiple times with Acronis True Image, today being no different.

I'm in the process of doing an incremental backup, then I'll disable both 1tb drives for protection and give Ubuntu "One Last Try"...If I have further issues with the installer I will never try Ubuntu again as it'll be the third strike.

Thanks!

-Eric

[devils casper]

I am sure that Ubuntu installer asks for Partition Structure during installation. You can select Custom Partitioning, create/resize/delete partitions and assign mount_points.

Check this screenshot :


Note that there is an option "Specify Partitions Manually (advanced)".

Installer gives an option for Boot Loader location too.

[llebcire]

Ubuntu does give the options you mention (thanks for the screen shot!).

I wiped the extended partition, installed using available free space and it worked like a champ!

I'm amazed at how fast Ubuntu is...reboots in a minute or so. Gnome has a very solid feel to it.

Then I took it's advice and updated my video driver...now all I get is a flashing cursor instead of a login screen.

Guess I'll try and fix that tomorrow...

-Eric

[devils casper]

Which Graphics Card do you have? When you press Alt+Ctrl+F4 at flashing cursor screen, does it switch to command line mode?