Okay, after many wasted hours, I’ve solved all my problems.**  I found this article, which outlines the problems that were caused by the installer.  Basically it couldn’t find the internet with the server down.  So then it commented out everything from sources.list, which wouldn’t let me run updates.

The solution to this was to download and install kubuntu with the alternate text based installer.  Install was pretty much just the exact same thing.

** I have still yet to enable dual displays however, everytime I screw up now I don’t have to reinstall.  Yes yes, I know you should have known this earlier, whatever, now I do.  The following command will solve the hang at the progress bar.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -high xserver-xorg

So now I guess I’ll still fiddle around with the dual displaying, hopefully I’ll get it and then post up a how to.

I’ve never been one to blog but I feel that I have to, after all I do pay for this space and get very little use out of it. Recently I spotted an article on digg about using Gparted to edit my windows partition and install linux so I can dual boot. Great, I thought! Now I can run both OSes, effectively.

Granted, I am VERY new to a linux environment. But don’t get me wrong, I’m a PHP developer. Now you might sit back and wonder how a php developer doesn’t know linux that well, its because I’m self taught and have never really had a reason to learn linux until now.

As of Friday I decided okay, I’ll give it a try. Partitioning my hard drive couldn’t have been easier, deciding what distro to use caused me a little trouble at first, I originally installed SUSE Linux 10.1, had it up running pretty well, though I didn’t play much with it. Then I learned that dual displays was next to impossible with it. Since I am pretty new to Linux I’m not comfortable editing my xorg.conf file, because I’d, more then likely screw things up…. which I keep doing now, but anyways.

I then downloaded kubuntu, got it installed. Up, updated, my first goal, install firefox. I downloaded it, couldn’t figure out how to get the damn thing installed. Then my friend tells me I should be using apt-get, which for the life of me I can’t get to work. I later found out the server was down. I’m still firefox-less right now.

My next order of business was get my dual display running. This still hasn’t happened. I’m guessing I’ve got to get drivers for my NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600, install those, find drivers for my Samsung SynMaster 910t, install those then get everything settled in. This caused me more problems, I though okay I’ll just use generic drivers, WRONG. I go to reboot x-server and kubuntu hangs at the progress bar.

I reinstall.

Okay, maybe I used the wrong drivers lets try again. Nope, still hangs… I reinstall again. And again, and a few more times. Let’s listen to some music on my usb hard drive. WHOOPS no MP3 codecs. Okay, after doing some searching I figure okay what the hell, EasyUbuntu, sounds easy. Maybe I’ll kill two birds with one stone, get those NVIDIA drivers up and those codecs… nope.

X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
Major opcode: 144
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0×0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
Major opcode: 144
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0×0
Failed to open device

But easyubuntu loads, sweet, FINALLY something works, I choose the driver and the codecs, click okay… it runs I’m excited, I’ve been getting rather frustrated so something that works is kind of exciting. Baby steps, baby steps. Nope the moment I get an error in the Konsole.

Package libqt-perl is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package libqt-perl has no installation candidate

Damn. More errors in easyubuntu log…..

error:
E: Couldn’t find package gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
error:

Great. I decide to give the dual displays another shot, because well, its weird going from 2 to 1 especially where the text on the samsung is so garbled. Broke it, reinstall, what the hell, scanning the mirror is hanging, crash, reinstall, hang hang hang, damn. Now I’m getting errors in the installer. Turns out the SERVER is down that it scans, how the hell am I supposed to know that? Good thing, it checks for that or good thing the software isn’t so reliant on the internet being up. That seems to be my biggest problem. If the server is down I can’t get anything.

Now okay, I’ve reinstalled a few more times, I’m guessing the server or what not is still down, who knows. I’m actually quite surprised I haven’t give up on it yet. This time for some reason I can’t get software update to run, the last 100 times a little icon in the task bar told me to run updates, this time, who knows…. I’ll attribute it to the server being down. Maybe though, I’ll just reinstall. I’m getting good at it.

Major Questions?
Why am I an idiot and can’t get firefox installed… it should seem so simple?
Why does it always seem like the server is down or what?

Hmm…

Installed this thing… just seeing what it does… you never know I might actually use it.

Hah, turns out I don’t… way to go me.