Rather than just loading Fedora and continuing as usual, I’ve decided to take a look at some of the other distros, starting with Ubuntu.

I started out by downloading and ISO of ubuntu-6.06-desktop-i386, and burned it to CD. I then restarted the notebook and let the machine boot from CD. After several minutes I was sitting at a sleek looking Gnome desktop with an “Install” icon on it. I started the install, and was taken through the usual keyboard, language, and time settings, and then prompted me create the first user on the system.

The next step was to allocate disk space to Linux. The default was to erase my entire disk and let the install create and allocate partitions for me. Since I have Windows XP installed, I selected “Manually edit the partition table” and hit next. After a minute of scanning the disk I was taken to a screen that showed my partition table.

When I did the first XP install I left 22 gigs of space free for installing Linux, which I selected in the partitioning tool and split into a 1 gig swap partition (”New Partition #1″) and a 21 gig root partition (”New Partition #2″). I clicked next and told the install to go ahead and write the changes to the disk.

After a minute or so, I was taken to the next screen where I was to select the partition I wanted to allocate to “/”. The drop down list didn’t show my newly created partitions though. Figuring I must of done something wrong, I went pack to the previous screen. My partitions were there, but they were not tagged as having the filesystem types I thought I had assigned. I removed and recreated the partitions, taking extra care to assign the proper filesystems.

I clicked next again, said okay to the changes and was taken to the partition assignment screen after a minute or so. Again, the drop down list didn’t show the partitions.

I tried a couple of more times before giving up and searching the Ubuntu forums for an answer. It turns the partition tool in the installer is known to be buggy - you can’t manually edit partitions.

At this point my first attempt at installing Ubuntu ended in failure.

Next up: Kubuntu from DVD.

Not playing WoW on a regular basis means I can go back to running Linux on my primary desktop at home again. I had been running Fedora up until I started playing WoW last fall, and still have it running on a variety of machines. I am also interested to see what Ubuntu is like - it’s been getting a lot of buzz.

I cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription this week. I’ve been playing since October of last year, but have become bored with it over the last couple of months. Lately I’ve reduced my playing to flipping auctions in the AH - something I started in February, and have made about 15,000g doing it. Having reached 60, and become “rich” in the game, it’s time to move on - I want the time back. There’s too much to do in a day already, without committing countless hours each week to a game.