PhillC's Journal: Transient Linux Love

After proclaiming success with my Ubuntu Studio install yesterday, the wheels all feel off last night.

Feeling confident, but not entirely happy, with Ubuntu Studio I decided to experiment a little. I've quickly learned that fucking around with Linux leads to fuck ups, especially if you only partially know what you're doing.

I wanted to try KDE. Ubuntu Studio comes with Gnome, but of course KDE is available from Synaptic. The problem is that there are about a million different packages with "KDE" in the title. Instead, from the terminal command line, I typed apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. That all worked fine and KDE packages were duly downloaded and installed. The problem is, it seemed impossible to switch to KDE from Ubuntu Studio Gnome. Choosing the desktop windows manager at log-on didn't produce the desired result. While it looked like KDE was loading, everything suddenly switched back to Gnome.

Looking at my installed packages I determined that there were specific Ubuntu Studio Desktop packages. Right, they'd best be removed then. Not an entirely smart idea. After the next reboot, selection of KDE and login, many things had now disappeared entirely! The Applications menu was completely empty to start with.

I wanted KDE. Don't ask why, I just did. Thinking that I'd not really installed much in this OS instance yet (mostly just the ATI driver package and that was pretty straight forward), I decided to give a KDE specific distro a chance. But which one? After spending some time over at Distro Watch and checking out various distribution's websites, I decided to try Mandriva 2008. It wasn't a Debian based distro, which probably would make life harder as the Kapital Moto TV server runs Debian. I simply saw this as a chance to expand my Linux knowledge.

With the ISO downloaded and burned to CD, I started the fresh install on my external hard drive. Things were looking good. Mandriva 2008 loads as a Live CD, but then installs persistently in about 15 minutes. There aren't many options to choose - language, keyboard, timezone and partitioning information are about it - except it does ask a few questions at the very, very end of the process about the GRUB bootloader.

Once the install was complete, I rebooted and was ready to experience the rapturous joy of Mandriva 2008. It wasn't going to be that easy! GRUB failures. Total GRUB failures. Nothing would boot. Not my Windows OS on the built in hard drive, not my Linux OS on the external disk. So, rinse and repeat, this time choosing different GRUB options at the end of the install process.

No joy there though. I gave it a third chance, choosing LILO this time. Nope. No booting. So, back to the Ubuntu Studio disk it was. The good news here is that Studio now boots again from the external hard drive. Sadly, Windows still doesn't. GRUB has royally screwed my Master Boot Record. Booting into Linux, loading Firefox and turning to Google found the answers I needed. Fortunately I still have my original OEM Windows XP install disk. Boot into this, select R from the first menu and at the command prompt type fixmbr. Easy as that. If it doesn't work for you (if you've stumbled over this post and have a ruined Master Boot Record), just try Google as I did.

With Windows back, I was still stuck with an unwanted Ubuntu Studio install and a tea coaster Mandriva 2008 disk. I'm downloading Kubuntu right now, determined to give KDE a chance.