Gemma wrote:Hi everybody,
I have spent the morning downloading the 13.0.2a file - mainly because my computer experience does not stretch to understanding the kinds of things you recommended to sort out my log-in problems with partitioning ... which is a mystery to me. In short, there are "fatal errors" on the image I burned on the disc (for some reason Ubuntu will not burn on CD-RW discs). I have no idea why, and did not know how to use the MP5 to confirm/check the quality of the file I took so long to download (it took 4 1/2 hours).
If I understand what you're saying correctly, what you have is unfortunately a bad download and you'll need to download the 13.0.2a iso again if you want to use that. If you want to make sure that there will be no errors during downloading again, you can use the torrent provided in the download page instead of downloading from sourceforge.
Gemma wrote:I did try to log into the root of the computer, but this only gave me access to something like "root@" and it did not understand the list of commands given.
Just type the commands provided to you. If you don't understand what they do, you can do a google search for them, or even learn how to use man (manual) pages. For example by typing
man mount you'll learn everything about what the mount command does.
Gemma wrote:I felt quite lost and really wondered why I was bothering with all this stuff.
You might feel lost, but everyone was at the exact place you are at some point. As to why you're bothering, I'm guessing you want to learn new stuff and try different things.
Gemma wrote:I am quickly coming to the opinion that Linux is for people who have a real understanding of how computers work, and not for the likes of me: I have tried several flavours of Linux, and I have had no success with any of them so far. I got Ubuntu to work, but found installing programs next to impossible, and my 3G modem would not work with it - which is my primary aim in sorting out a new OS.
Perhaps what you need to do, is realize that linux is a completely different operating system than the one you were using before. That means that it will certainly require an effort to get used to how things are done, but that doesn't necessarily mean that things are harder to do in linux, just different. You mention installing programs being impossible, but really, installing anything using a package manager in linux is far easier than installing any piece of software in windows for example. You just have to get used to it.
Gemma wrote:May I ask HOW you set up the disc partitions non-automatically?
The program that is running in the installer to setup partitions is called cfdisk. You generally use the arrow keys to navigate and select with the enter key. Left-right arrow keys navigate options and up-down arrow keys select partitions. It's really easy once you get the hang of it. If you feel intimidated by it, you can use a distribution like parted magic to create the partitions as you like them and then just install salix on them. You could probably do the same thing under ubuntu (which you're saying you have already installed) using an application called gparted, that's the one parted magic runs anyway.
