Ideas for my new FZ21Z

[helloimgeoff1]

Hi there, I'm thinking of dual booting my FZ21Z with Ubuntu 7.10 and Vista Ultimate, but the only thing at the moment that's stopping me is that I want to keep WinDVD BD player, which from what I've seen on these forums so far, can't be got any other way aside getting it off back up disks, which I don't want to have to do for only that application - is there any easier way to get it?

What are peoples views on running both Ubuntu and Vista on a Vaio? Has any one else tried it before?

Thanks, Geoff.

[fubbe]

hi man,

glad to hear that iam not the only one who had the same thoughts. of course u could be able to run ubuntu and vista. in my opinion u should take a seperated harddisc to setup ubuntu, thats what i did by the way, for i didnt want to get any boot and partition problems. unfortunately u cant use the live cd to set up ubuntu, u have to take the command line setup cd, because of your graphics card. ive got the same notebook and i got graphic error messeges using the live cd to install ubuntu. by the way if u install ubuntu u will lose fn function and power saving :(, but possibly theres a possibility to get those functions, tell me if u found something!

[helloimgeoff1]

What I'm thinking is as Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) can read and write to NTFS is use them both on the same HDD, have a 50gb partition for Ubuntu, save all the stuff on Vista, as I'll be using it as my main operating system. I'll read and write to the Vista partition on Ubuntu that way.



Thanks, Geoff.

[pig30n]

Do not use Linux to write NTFS partitions. You will probably end with corrupted data. I did in the past with a full hdd of mp3s. About installing linux ... the main problem is that it puts Grub as a bootloader, on your primary hdd. I don't know about you but i don't like an operating system to stick its nose into my main operating system :). Thus, I use an 8 GB USB Flash drive, installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it (the grub is on it, not on hdd) and i boot from the flash drive when i need linux. Simple.
Here is an useful link on how to do this:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/21/usb-ubuntu-704-persistent-install/

Cheers.

PS: i have the FZ21M model, it should work on the FZ21Z aswell.

[helloimgeoff1]

Oh cool, how does it cope with reliabiliy and other things doing that? 'caus if it's decent, then I can imagine it being really nice.

Thanks, Geoff.

[fubbe]

what about the fn function and power saving, do uve got anything?

[helloimgeoff1]

I won't be using Ubuntu as my main o/s, so missing the use of the fn key and power saving doesn't really bother me. Although there maybe a way to get it sorted - I know pretty much all applications that can be used on Windows can be used with Ubuntu 7.10 - so we'll see!

[helloimgeoff1]

Do not use Linux to write NTFS partitions. You will probably end with corrupted data. I did in the past with a full hdd of mp3s. About installing linux ... the main problem is that it puts Grub as a bootloader, on your primary hdd. I don't know about you but i don't like an operating system to stick its nose into my main operating system :). Thus, I use an 8 GB USB Flash drive, installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it (the grub is on it, not on hdd) and i boot from the flash drive when i need linux. Simple.
Here is an useful link on how to do this:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/21/usb-ubuntu-704-persistent-install/

Cheers.

PS: i have the FZ21M model, it should work on the FZ21Z aswell.

I've done this with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, and I've got it booting off the USB key. It all runs very smoothly, although it's just Ubuntu Live, when I get Vista I'll probably see about dual booting with 2 partitions in different formats, see how that goes. I've got the time and the means to play around with it and get it working how I want it to - I'll keep you all posted on how it goes.


Thanks, Geoff.