Newbie: Ubuntu LiveCD and opening work files

Just wanted to make sure that the file structure on the disk isn't different. Thanks.

Linux has come a LONG way and now will read and write to volumes that you see in it's file browsing application. So if you can see the files then it's OK 99.9999% of all machines I've used.

Sorry, but I can't duplicate ready content here. This area must have tomes of information if you want to see how they added FAT32, then NTFS support.
Bob

so no worries. I think it's safe to say Ubuntu can use all major file systems. The only time you could hurt anything is the same with any operating system and that is if the power goes out when you're writing something to the disk, but you say you're on a laptop so you have a battery in case that happens, and even when that happens it's rare for it to hurt anything. Other then that you are fine.

As far as to "R. Proffitt", I mean no offense by this comment as I am simply making a suggestion as I've seen you make a lot of comments around the forums, but why do you even post comments on all these forums if you never provide useful information? True everyone could search for the info as you always tell them to do, but 95% of the questions asked here could be answered by a simple Google search, people ask questions here because they feel better knowing they are getting up-to-date info from people that know a lot about the subject, or they may be new to whatever they are asking about and need the info simplified. Again as I said I mean no offense, am just asking.

You and I may know that that most of the time if current linux versions show the volume it's OK but some want to get deeper. For that we have volumes of posts and web documents.

The first reply was to give them the backup of discussions where the applications were noted to be compatible. The second was to cover the file systems.

If all that was needed was "yes it will be fine" then I read too much into the questions.
Bob

Well, I figured out that my Toshiba laptop needed a BIOS update to boot from a USB flash drive...so after that I now can run Ubuntu persistent from a 4GB flash. Nice. It is nice knowing that if Vista ever refuses to boot, I will be able to get to my files via Linux. Also, browsing in Linux is pretty fast, etc.

This is my first time playing around with Linux. Some of the threads that I was reading (while figuring how to boot from the flash to get a persistent version of Ubuntu running) seemed like old MS-DOS days with the text commands, etc. I can see why many people just aren't ready to deal with all that. But the graphical interfaces for Linux, such as Ubuntu, are really nice.

Now when Ubuntu boots from the flash, I'm getting errors about errors loading certain applets for the graphical interface. Maybe it is more like the old MS-DOS days than I thought. For someone who has used Widows for years and Vista happily for two years, navigating the world of the various versions of Linux is more work than I expected. Certainly a computer tinkerer's playground.

The Ubuntu 9.04 using the Gnome applets seemed not to like the sound card in my Toshiba laptop. Switched to Xubuntu 9.04. Very stable. I discovered, like many other people have apparently, that when you use a LiveCD version to create a boot flash drive with ubuntu (or any other flavor), the boot creator program does NOT properly create something called the "casper-rw" loop file on the flash drive. I learned how to do that and now I have a very nice flash drive persistent Linux installation. But wait, there's more!

When you use the LiveCD, you can use the graphical interface to mount your laptop Windows hard drive to see your Windows files. After you create a bootable persistent version, however, you need to open a TERMINAL window in Linux and command line mount the Windows harddrive. Or at least that seems to be the case. There's trip down memory lane to MS-DOS again! It works perfectly well and I almost have the arcane commands down pat.

I'll tell you, it's nice having this Linux alternative to Windows for safety back up access and, also, browsing the web without worrying (I think) about viruses attacking my machine. And it was even "fun" grappling with command line parameters again. Sort of.

I found that if you burn the LiveCD to a DVD it's ALOT faster when running the Live OS. (A 1X DVD is as fast as a 9X CD) Just figured you might want to know that so you can speed up things a lil. There's a lot more info here if you wanted to see http://www.osta.org/technology/dvdqa/dvdqa4.htm . Also I'm a strong supporter of Xfce/Xubuntu so am glad to hear you use it now, can run it on nearly any computer and still have visual effects like Compiz Fusion.

Thanks for the encouragement, but now that I have a bootable USB with a seemingly solid installation of Xubuntu, I'm going to stick with that (I'm keeping my LiveCD ready just in case...). BUT I still can't get a straight answer (I've posted on a ubuntu forum and got a semi-useful reply) about WHY the gui when running the LiveCD can mount my latop's Windows hard drive using the "Remote File Services" program offered in the menus. But when I made the flash drive persistent version of that same version of Xubuntu, that same remote file services can't find or mount that same harddrive on the laptop. I can open a Terminal window to find the drive and mount it, but why should I have to do that?

As I have said before, playing around with Linux is like a time warp back to the 1980s in so many ways, although Linux is indeed a powerful OS. The various gui's are nice, too. I actually much preferred the gui on the ubuntu installation, but had problems with it hanging up apparently with something to do with the sound card on my laptop. ??? Xubuntu is good enough, for sure.

>I can open a Terminal window to find the drive and mount it, but why should I have to do that?
There is no reason, you can use classic way: /etc/fstab file add full mount command-line like:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 vfat users 0 0
(of course replace sdb1 and /mnt/sdb1 with your situation and needs
, then mount is short: sth like:
mount /dev/sdab1
No need to find sudo etc.

>Linux is like a time warp back to the 1980
SRY. You simply even do not imagine how computers looked back then. Windows 98 (1998!!!) was without USB at all!

>but had problems with it hanging up apparently with something to do with the sound card on my laptop. ???
So sad grab dmesg command output and report problem to developers. THAT will change something. Crying here will change nothing.