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General discussion

UBUNTU......

Oct 21, 2005 3:57AM PDT

I have an old dell desktop lying around in my office. Can I take out the hdd that is not working and put a fresh new one in and install Ubuntu? If it is possible to reuse the hdd not working in my dell, can i still install UBUNTU on it?

And also my I ask, is Ubuntu hard to install? Can you descibe what you have to do to properley install it. One otherthing, do you have to activate or register it like windows?

Thank you very much!

Discussion is locked

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More information is needed.
Oct 21, 2005 5:40AM PDT

What Dell? How much memory, what size hard drive, cpu, etc? One question is unclear, is the HDD good or not. You
say it is not working, then say you want to use it somewhere else. ??? Ubuntu, Mandriva, or Xandros are free (if you have broadband) ,easy to install and use. Suse is all of the above except free. But keep in mind, Linux requires a user to learn how to use it. It is easier than it used to be(much), but still takes some effort. It can be frustrating till you learn enough to understand the process. The more you learn, the more you know how to look for the information you need. Hope this helps. chuck

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(NT) (NT) Isn't SUse free. You can use the evaluation copy forever?
Oct 21, 2005 9:11AM PDT
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re: Specs of the DELL:
Oct 21, 2005 11:15PM PDT

SPECS:

- I believe this computer is about 4 - 5 Years old.

Dell Dimension 4300
Windows Xp Home Edition SP1


40 Gb Hdd (Error occurs when booting; a message appears after "2!" beeps saying that "The device on the primary ide channel (this hdd) has an error that occured, we recommend you back up your data or call Dell Support." Then you can press "F1 to reboot?" or press "F2" to enter the Bios. Then from there, I do not know what to do. I am pretty sure that this hdd can not be reused, I may be wrong, so that's why I put up this Forum. (This isn't the exact or precise message, I just summarized what it said that I thought was important.)


Intel P4 1.6 Ghz (Socket 47Cool
256 Md Ram
CD-Rom
Floppy
16mb ATI Rage Graphics Card

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sure...
Oct 23, 2005 7:08PM PDT

Any of the popular distros should work fine if you replace the HD, but despite all symtoms pointing to a bad HD there is no guarantee that the HD is what is wrong with it. Be prepared to throw away some bucks fixing a broken PC only to have it not work.