What is the best inexpensive or usedd pc for linux

[MASONTX]

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Tiugerdirect and Newegg have off lease machines of varying power and cost. Check them out, or look in your local classified. Be sure to go to the Fedora (or other distro you want to try) home page and verify the recommended specs, as opposed to the minimum specs. Wiki's and other resources often quote minimum specs from severeal versions ago, while the distro's home page should have info on the current version.

[linuxflunki]

The reason i wanted a diffrent box is because of all the trouble im haveing to duel boot vista and yes im at it again only because for some reason samesung makes it nearly immposible to use linux with the note tab i use thats thhe ther quisten is there a distroi that is great at duel bootingwith win im at a loss to as how it can be so diffacult to get this to work if it werent for syncing phone and tab i would just have a complete linux pc but i cant do that unless i get a second box for linux or windows
Thanks dc

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[Syndacate]

The reason i wanted a diffrent box is because of all the trouble im haveing to duel boot vista and yes im at it again only because for some reason samesung makes it nearly immposible to use linux with the note tab i use thats thhe ther quisten is there a distroi that is great at duel bootingwith win im at a loss to as how it can be so diffacult to get this to work if it werent for syncing phone and tab i would just have a complete linux pc but i cant do that unless i get a second box for linux or windows
Thanks dc

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Dual booting is quite easy with any modern distribution which uses GRUB (which is pretty much everything realistic).

So Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora should all work perfect for dual booting Vista and a Linux distro.

So if we just put the idea of purchasing a new computer on hold for a second, why not tell us what problems you're having dual booting and maybe we can help?

Dual booting in modern distributions, without fancy stuff, is quite simple. Just install Vista FIRST, then install any common distro, and make sure you install the boot loader to the MBR (ie. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda2 or any particular partition). When GRUB is ran, it will detect the vista installation, and add an entry for the chain loader to start it up.

[Siddly]

Probably not, the slowest box I have used it on was a dual-core AMD64 with 8GB and it ran well.

It depends on the requirement. If the intention is to test various distros it's worth a try before investing in a new box.

Boxes multiply here, as I upgrade I redeploy the old hardware.

[linuxflunki]

Well this is what happes everything goes good after the install for 2-4 reboots and then grub wont load and it puts me at a grub recovery prompt not a shell just a blinking linei go through theeverything stays intact just the boot option wwwwwwont load and it leaves me with no options that i know of i probably could fix it somehow but i dont know due to pure noob ignorance so i just figured that it was a duel boot problem cause when its a vista or ubuntu designated box i dont get any errors and everything runs smooth so im sorry if this is a stupid quistion or mabey evan thread i just dont know what my options are

Thanks
Dc

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[Syndacate]

Well this is what happes everything goes good after the install for 2-4 reboots and then grub wont load and it puts me at a grub recovery prompt not a shell just a blinking linei go through theeverything stays intact just the boot option wwwwwwont load and it leaves me with no options that i know of i probably could fix it somehow but i dont know due to pure noob ignorance so i just figured that it was a duel boot problem cause when its a vista or ubuntu designated box i dont get any errors and everything runs smooth so im sorry if this is a stupid quistion or mabey evan thread i just dont know what my options are

Thanks
Dc

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It's not stupid, don't worry .

That being said, it's also not normal to see the behavior you're seeing - not a by a long shot. So usually it'll work or it won't work. The concept that it's working for a little bit and then failing means corruption.

So the question then is why is it getting corrupted - I'm not sure. So it doesn't sound like the MBR is getting overwritten if you're getting a GRUB shell, as it means that GRUB is still there. An interesting thing to try would be to see if you manually type the lines that are in the GRUB entries (when you first do the install), try typing them at the GRUB prompt manually. That is, take a picture of all the options/lines for one entry, then when it dies and throws you to GRUB's shell, type that all manually. That will tell us a lot more. Either the partition table is getting corrupted (possible, but rather unlikely), or I believe GRUB2 re-scans at boot-up at some point, b/c I've had my entries change/get lost....so it's possible that a bad scan is for whatever reason yielding no entries (which will throw you into that GRUB shell). Also, could be an issue detecting HDD's, but I doubt it, as you're getting the GRUB shell, and I'm assuming you're installing the MBR on the same drive as the OS's....

So yeah, try to boot it manually from the shell, see what happens. It might be a simple issue with GRUB re-scanning on boot-up of the Linux distro and coming back with an empty list for its list entry config file (for some reason). Also, are you using a GPT or MBR partition layout?

[linuxflunki]

I tried some of those commands already and it doesent do anything Its whatever partition type that ubuntu sets up stock

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[Syndacate]

I tried some of those commands already and it doesent do anything Its whatever partition type that ubuntu sets up stock

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk HD

I'm not sure if you can do GPT through Ubuntu's live CD, it's probably MBR.

You need to try all the commands (and some of them depends on previous ones) in an entry. Those select the disk, partition, path to the kernel image, parameters, etc.

[Jonathan183]

I'd suggest a boot from live CD/pen drive and post the output of

sudo fdisk -l
sudo blkid

and you may find something like supergrub is able to boot the system

[linuxflunki]

well the only thing i need windows for is my tab but i think i can use the software avalible from the diffrent repositiories and i tried to do it again but i realized how much faster and smoother ubuntu is so what the hell oh and
btw my reg code wont work so f*** bill gates and thats all no duel boot thanks for all your insight and help i do apreciate being part of such a kind and helpfull forum
thanks
dc