Windows Drives Mounted!

Another chapter in my Ubuntu adventure can be closed. This morning I finally successfully managed to mount one of my shared drives on my media machine, where all my music, videos and photos are kept. A victory!

Here's some links I used to get this accomplished:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountWindowsSharesPermanently#head-fb089c2083e67c8d4de440e5c598792c4cf7c642

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=280473

Now, I've got Rhythmbox up and running, scanning my music and playing it! Sweet! Now, let's see if I can improve the sound any...

Anyway, one step done, several more to go.


Publish Post

Ubuntu Installation Successful

I shut down the Live CD and waited for the reboot.

The Windows logo appears. What? What happened to Ubuntu?

I quickly realize that the drive I installed Ubuntu on is a slave drive. A quick trip into the BIOS to change the priority of the drives fixes this.

Reset and reboot.

Bingo.

I get the boot menu where I get to select if I want to boot good old Windows or experience the new frontiers of Ubuntu.

Just to make sure Windows work, I click that first. After all, my work is all stored on there, if it doesn't work, I'd be toast (almost, I do have backups, fortunately, I just wouldn't want to deal with the mess of restoring everything).

It works.

Reset and reboot, selecting Ubuntu this time. After about 45 seconds or so, I'm past the login screen and I'm at the desktop.

The first thing that happens before I even get around to see what's around is that I'm prompted to download and install ATI drivers for my ATI graphics card. Very cool. I didn't even have to go ask for it.

So, after another few minutes and another reboot, I'm back to the desktop. I open up Firefox and yes, the Internet is working which means my network connection is working.

Sweet! I head over here to my little blog and notate what's going on.

What's next in the world of Ubuntu then? Well, several things:

1. I need to find out exactly what's in the installation package. What can I already do, what do I need to download.
2. I need to get my network configured if it's not already. After all, I store tons of music and photos on a network drive and I need to be able to access all of that.
3. Can I actually do any work here? Time will tell.
4. Will I be able to connect my shiny new PocketPC phone in any way?
   
5. Will I be able to use all my other hardware such as my webcam, printer/scanner and so on?
   

As you can tell, the adventure has hardly begun. What will the next few days hold? Time will tell.

Joining the Linux Revolution

My first introduction to Linux wasn't a very successful one. In early 2007, I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu, hoping to try it out and see what it was like. I didn't get very far. I couldn't get the thing to boot and I left the disc to gather dust.

A few months ago, my interest was reignited when I got the latest PS3 version to successfully install on my PS3. It was cool to see that hey, this doesn't look so bad and there's more to it than blank screens that leads to nowhere. So, when I heard that the latest version of Ubuntu was released just weeks ago, I decided to give it a shot on my desktop.

To help you understand my situation a bit more, I do quite a bit of computer work at home, primarily in the areas of web design and graphic design, writing and a bit of gaming here and there. So, I was thinking, what if I can do what I do on Windows XP just as well on Linux?

So, I've looked around a bit, read about Wine and a few other things and I finally took the plunge today. In fact, as I sit here and write this, Ubuntu 8.04 just finished installing from the Live CD.

Now, this is not a hard break with Windows by any means. I happened to have a sprace 20GB hard drive sitting around so I figured, what better thing to do with a piece of hardware that might not be used otherwise than to experiment with it. So, that's exactly what I have done. I still have my Windows XP drive and the I have my Ubuntu installation. Can I live without XP? Time will tell, right?

Anyway, it's prompting me to reboot so I guess it's time to take a peek and see if I still have something that functions.

2Tall Tales Introduction

Technology is all around us. It's in our homes, on our bodies, in our cars, at work. It's part of all aspects of our lives in one way or another, from the alarm that goes off to the stock purchase and the work we do at work.

For me, technology has always been an important part of life. Since my late teen years when the computer games of the Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 occupied much of my time to these days when cellphones, PDAs, web design and computers in general, I have always had a great deal of interest in what technology can do. So, what better place than to share this than here.

2Tall Tales will at least initially be an outlet for my interaction with technology of various kinds and what I do and don't do with it, my opinions and experiences. I'll cover everything I find interesting and that somehow is connected to technology. In short, you might read posts about things from video games to black holes.

Of course, my aim is not to tell any tall tales but rather 2tall tales! :) Let the fun begin!