LinLog

I got the upgraded system up and running with a minimum of hassle the other night. So today, I decided to use the new hardware as an excuse do an experiment in changing Linux distributions. I've been a Slackware user since about 2001 and I've never seriously used any other distribution. In fact, up until I built those Xandros boxse for Sarah and my mother, I hadn't even tried to install any other distribution in years. Come to think of it, it's been a while since I installed Slackware - my current installation has survived three version upgrades.

So now starts my experiment in Kubuntu. Being kind of a chicken, I decided to maintain my existing Slackware installation, just in case. To that end, I moved what little data I had off the 8GB partition I used for /usr/local and used that as the root for Kubuntu. I reused my existing partitions for /home and /boot. I'm also starting out in Kubuntu with a fresh user account and will slowly migrate my data over from my old account.

The Kubuntu install process was not quite as nice as I would have hoped. Next to the Xandros installer, Kubuntu's text-based installer seems positively primitive. Of course, aside from the lack of visual polish, the installation was pretty painless. The only sticky point for me was the partition setup. I found the partition configuration tool to be a bit hard to use. For one thing, I was unnerved by the fact that the "confirm" function was labeled something like "write partition table," which was a bit scarry because I actually didn't want to change the partition table. There was also the unintuitive screen for setting up each individual partition, which forced me to pick a filesystem for partitions I had no intention of reformatting, and the partition list with cute little icons, but no key as to what they mean. Not a big stumbling block, but not encouraging either.

The only real problem I had during installation was a lack of space on /boot. I only have a 10MB boot partition and I've never needed more for Slackware. In fact, with Slackware, I can keep three or four old kernel images in /boot without worrying about space. However, Kubuntu has a 4.2MB initrd image that it puts in /boot, so I had to free up a little space. It turned out that doing this was as easy as switching virtual consoles, mounting the partition, and deleting a few older files.

Now begins the real work. I'm currently typing this from my virgin Kubuntu desktop. My first order of business will be to get my Ralink RT2500 wireless card up and running so that I can put away the 25 foot ethernet cable I had to run downstairs to do this installation. After that, I'll copy the configuration for my extra mouse buttons and my Microsoft Natural Multimedia keyboard. We'll see how it goes from there.