I’ve wanted to try to install Linux on a computer for years – ever since a friend told me about it back in 1998 – just to say I did. I’ve never actually done it though. I played around with Ubuntu a few months ago, but couldn’t remember how to set up a computer to boot from a cd and didn’t want to risk damaging any data on either of my two working PCs.

Today I finally dragged out my old gateway and thought I’d give Ubuntu a go on that. I was able to download the image file from the Ubuntu site and burn it on a disk. I played with it a little on my laptop – just to see how it would work. I don’t think my dvd-rom is that good, however, because it seemed to go very slowly.

I just booted the old gateway computer with the Ubuntu CD (figured how to change the boot-order) and when it tried to install came up with several hundred error messages. I guess either the CD image didn’t burn correctly or else the computer is just too messed up. Pity. I really wanted to try it out.

Edited an hour later – it never worked on the old computer, but I am using the live session option with my laptop to write this. Got online and am exploring the operating system. I might just install it on my laptop if I can figure out how to partition the second drive.