My Linux installation adventure

[Mark Harris]

Total duration: 11 days
Thursday 27 February
Download iso for Ubuntu 64 bit v. 13.10
Friday 28 February
Buy DVDRW disks
Attempt to create Windows rescue disk
Discover internal DVD drive on laptop is not functional
Sunday 2 March, 12 midnight
Confusion over wifi provider's billing cycle results in blocked access to internet
Tuesday 4 March
Pay wifi provider current + next month in advance
Trip to the local computer shop, buy external DVD drive (USB)
create Windows rescue disk
Decided to use the whole drive for Linux, so that was unneccesary
burn iso to DVD
success
Discovered that the laptop will not boot from external DVD, although it is selected in Boot menu
Return to computer store for 8gb memory stick for alternative installation
Tuesday 4 March, evening
wifi provider shuts down regional internet for maintenance. They have a history.
wifi provider finally recognizes payment, removes blocked access, but too late (see above)
created perl script using LWP and URI to attempt to connect on 10 minute cycle
prints error message on failure, success on connection
Wednesday 5 March
scream at wifi provider's customer service. Somewhat satisfying but ineffective
running monitor perl script until success
...waiting for connectivity
Friday 7 March
connectivity restored at 2014-03-07 10:37:40
The actual installation of 13.10 from memory stick was fairly painless.

I hit a little bump configuring mySql, but I was able to resolve it.

I assume this narrative might amuse some.

 

[Virneto]

I assume this narrative might amuse some.

Not at all

but what I see is a 2 step installation:

1 - "Thursday 27 February - Download iso for Ubuntu 64 bit v. 13.10";

2 - "Friday 7 March - connectivity restored- The actual installation of 13.10 from memory stick was fairly painless.";

So, why would the windows rescue, laptop discoveries, network issues, etc. be part of your Linux installation adventure?

was it your first installation?

 

[Mark Harris]

Well, yes, only 2 actual steps, interrupted by the rest of the narrative.

No, I had installed Ubuntu 11.04 last year, but the keyboard on my laptop went dead, and when it came back from the service department Windows 7 had been reinstalled. The 11.04 install was a nightmare, hardware incompatiblities. I much prefer programming Perl in a Linux environment.

 

[Virneto]

I bet you'll love the kick of trying other distros!

pretty much all of them are friendly environments for programmers.
That's one of the reasons I love "the penguim"!!

have fun!!

 

[MikeyD]

Sounds like you may needs a new ISP

It sounds like you're knowledgeable enough that I'm with @Virneto you should give some other distros a try I love CentOS for network admin and programming/scripting because its RHEL compatible, comes out of the box (or usb) with most essential compilers/build tools like build-essential, gcc, g++, etc. and it incredibly stable.

The first 1-2 years I used Linux I was distro-hopping monthly/weekly and just backed up the stuff I cared about (mostly source code and school work) to an external HDD, but its all personal preference.