Hacker News Reader

Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

If you want to run Linux on a laptop you really need to think of it in the same sort of terms as running OX X or something.

I wonder if a better idea would be for the installer in Ubuntu to do a cursory hardware check before installation and let you know what stuff might not work before proceeding.

It can't be good PR and leads to this "Wifi on Linux sucks!" "no it works fine" type threads on tech forums.

Having said that, I don't understand the problem with Linux wiping the Windows install? The only problem I have ever had is with Windows installs overwriting GRUB in the MBR.

You can usually dual boot both OSes with them both being blissfully unaware of each other. So I assume he's doing something weird there.

View on HN

In this instance he says he didn't dual boot, he just installed Linux with the intent of destroying his Windows install.

I have no idea how his previous installs went wrong.

I do know that some machines have weird partitioning, and using the menu install of (eg) Fedora isn't easy in that situation. Since many machines have weird recovery partitions I'm gently surprised at Fedora for that oversight.

But, also, when I started using computers it was hard. I had to learn (I had to read it in a book) what "Ctrl C" meant. I was learning what a VDU was; the difference between RAM and discs; what High Density meant with discs. I had to learn about bat files and ANSI control codes and a bunch of stuff. And if I didn't learn I couldn't just give up and go back to the other OS that was working, because there wasn't one.

People spend years gaining knowledge about an OS and they tinker it to get it just right. It's going to take more than a week to get this new OS install perfect. (Having said that, it shouldn't take a week to get it installed.)

"However, whenever I used to install Linux along with Windows, it'd always mess up my Windows installation a few days later"

That's the confusing part, it's certainly possible to wipe out a partition by accident during install but to have it magically overwrite data at a later date is very odd.

I did this once. I installed Ubuntu on a new laptop, resizing the disk partition as I went. When I switched back to Windows, I realised I had left it hibernated and the partition resize upset it very much.

A day or so later, I tried to install some sound drivers in Ubuntu and somehow managed to uninstall xwindows entirely (I learnt to read and think before typing stuff in off a web site :)

A day later I rebuilt from the windows install disk and left things alone. I keep Linux on my servers, it's much happier there!

I guess he must have tried to mount NTFS partitions with some buggy filesystem driver, like the notorious default-but-deprecated kernel NTFS module.

Either that or he's just confusing MBR and MFT. His English is dubious at various stages, so it might as well be. Still, not a HN-worthy post, I wonder how it managed to hit the front-page -- everyone on holiday already?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com