All for a change

I knew I had to do something different that weekend. I wanted to explore something new and exciting. After a long thought, I finally decided. I want to change the operating system in my computer. I take pride in proclaiming I knew more about these operating systems than most of my friends, at least way back during my college and school it was. This time I wanted to try Linux. Vista is too slow to boot. Otherwise, honestly- it is the best I have tried till date, though I crib too much about how sluggish it was. It is easy to handle. Never makes you think hard. I have heard Windows 7 is great too, but to upgrade I had to shell out few grands which i cant- now. So Ubuntu the free Linux OS is the way to go, I thought.

I copied the installation files on Friday while in office and on Saturday I was ready with a LiveCD for installation. I thought now that everything is set, it might take hardly an hour or two to install and set my system to dual boot and I would be ready to enjoy the 'speed' of Ubuntu and feel the difference, the change.


On Sunday, I woke up well early and started installation. I first did not know about partitioning drives so read some articles about shrinking volume to make a new volume. Even though I had more than 60GB of free space, I was able to see only 2GB made as a separate partition. I first did disk fragmentation hoping it would help. The volume after that came to 4GB. I realized Windows might have encountered some blocks files scattered in the hard disk and while shrinking to make a new volume, it had stopped at the first block. I thought if I would format my hard disk and reinstall Windows that would make the blocks to go and I could make a new volume with larger size. So I formatted my hard disk and made a clean installation. Even after that I did not succeed in getting more than 10GB for my new volume. Damn Vista I thought.

Suddenly it dawned to me I can use a third party free-ware to do this, though there is some risk associated. What can happen most, windows may crash. So what, I can reinstall it again I thought. Finally, I downloaded Easeus partition software- a free-ware to partition. The software was so nice that it took me just few minutes and I got what I want, a new volume for Ubuntu. 

Then when I started installing the Ubuntu, I did not know how to direct the installation to the empty drive. Ubuntu through me an error message which was Latin. I aborted the installation and got back to Windows and realized Ubuntu had already made 20GB of my hard disk vanish. After much struggle, I was able to find the missing 20GB and made that into a volume with Easeus. 

I should have said quits to my quest for change and stopped here. I did not. It was already noon and I now tried other ways of installing Ubuntu. This time around it crashed windows. I had to reinstall Vista again and yes, the partitioning too because the factory image did not allow me to create partitioning during installation. Again Ubuntu installation. Ubuntu got installed, but just that after re-boot, I did not get dual boot messages. Ubuntu is installed somehow but I was not able to see it after that.


I formatted my hard disk, installed windows and did the partitioning again. This time I installed Ubuntu from Windows. Finally it worked :)


Now since the factory image of Vista is almost three years old, I had to install all those service packs. It is already late evening. It was a huge download and I was hoping the first set of Windows update would install SP's too. After all the installation, I found SPs were not installed. It was already late night. 

By now, I had lost all my energy to try any further updates. I thought I will go to sleep. End of the day, I looked back how I have wasted my entire day for something I did not even wish for. All I wanted was a change from what I currently have. I did not even open Ubuntu to try how it works. Still I had the satisfaction, I did something different that day. I took the effort to try something new and experience change. 

The next day, as I'm posting this message, I'm on Ubuntu and it has just finished downloading latest updates and installing software now. It is now asking me to select some drives located somewhere for installing something- in Latin. Staring at those messages, I switch screens and save my post. I'm no longer interested in format,  partition, install, un-install operating systems anymore. 

I need change :)

Update- 10 minutes after posting this, system restarted, boot loader vanished, grub spits, me frustrated, re-installed Vista, updated service packs.

Bye Bye Ubuntu and Garb err.. Grub.