My Sony Vaio Laptop is getting on a bit. So I’m sure it felt better after having a new HDD and a fresh install of an OS.

My OS of choice, not Windows, Kubuntu!

Part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) was released this week. Being a Linux OS means that it has some major differences compared with Windows. You can do the same things in Ubuntu that you can in Windows, but to begin with it doesn’t seem right. Being a Windows user since 3.1 at school, and my first PC running Windows 98SE, Linux and Kubuntu definitely took a little getting used to. Thankfully you can try Ubuntu, or Kubuntu by running a Live CD.

Visit www.ubuntu.com to Download the Live CD.

Back to my Vaio – The HDD swap was easy (unlike changing one in a MacBook Pro) and I was straight to running the Live CD. During the step-by-step installation it partitions the drive for you, or you can do this manually. My 120gb drive is partitioned into 3.

1. / (root) – 20gb : This is where the OS goes, doesn’t need much space and after the install still over 15gb free.
2. swap – 2.1gb : This is like windows swap file, I have 2gb of RAM so need at least that so I can Hibernate.
3. /home – 98gb : This is like the “My Documents” folder on steroids. All user accounts sit in here with all of the preferences as well. If you need to reinstall the OS, all of your preferences and files are separate.

Job done, Kubuntu installed. Nvidia drivers installed. Google Chrome (Linux Development build) installed.

Wordpress post, complete.