Help to remove Ubuntu, so I can put trisquel

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forest
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Iscritto: 10/19/2012

Now that I know a little more about what free software really is, I want to remove Ubuntu from my laptop so I can put trisquel instead. Unfortunately I am no programmer, no IT specialist, and no expert. I have not been able to find an easy way to remove ubuntu. Does anyone happen to know an easy way to replace ubuntu with trisquel?
Thanks!

aliasbody
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Iscritto: 09/14/2012

Hello there :D

When you run the installation of Trisquel it will ask you where you want to install Trisquel, and (normally) one of the options will be to replace Ubuntu by Trisquel, you can choose this one (but remember to backup your important information because it will be lost). After that just let the installation finish and you will have a beautiful Trisquel installation instead of the Ubuntu one :D

Hope it helped.

lammi87

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Iscritto: 07/27/2012

You can go to YouTube and watch some videos about how to burn a GNU/Linux distro to a CD/USB, how to boot from it and how to install the actual OS. The installation is similar with most of the distros. Future hint: You can view YouTube videos without flash (non-free software, avoid) in HTML5-mode. Just go to www.youtube.com/html5 and start "HTML5 trial".

Remember to back-up your important files before installation and install Trisquel to the partition where Ubuntu is installed. No need to remove Ubuntu first.

Magic Banana

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I am a translator!

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Iscritto: 07/24/2010

Did anybody tell you to backup your data first? ;-)

To avoid this step next time you will want to try another GNU/Linux system, choose, during the installation, a partitioning scheme where /home is mounted on a separate partition. In this way you can keep it unaltered while adding/changing the system (and several system can use the same /home). Of course that requires a "custom partitioning" at every new install where you check/double check/triple check that the /home partition will be used but *not* formatted (an unchecked box in the graphical installer).

lembas
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Iscritto: 05/13/2010

Hello forest, great idea! If you open a terminal window and input

mount

what is the output? To see if there is a separate home partition.

forest
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Iscritto: 10/19/2012

Wow, everyone is so helpful, kind, and knowledgeable! One of the reasons I love the free software community. All of these are great tips and very helpful. And I had no idea about HTML5-mode on youtube!

As far as the output from "mount", below is what comes back on one of the 3 laptops that I will be converting to trisquel from Ubuntu. Currently it has Windows XP (it came with it) and some older version of Ubuntu:

/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ld/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=ld)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

I may still need to remove Ubuntu on one of the laptops before installing trisquel though. This is because it has four operating systems: Windows Vista that it came with, older version of Ubuntu, newer version of Ubuntu, and then gNewSense that I could never get to work (couldn't even get it to go on the internet through a wired connection)... On that particular laptop I may need a way to uninstall either one of the Ubuntu versions or gNewSense (Vista was impossible to remove - our college IT guy tried and failed...). That's because when I tried to put trisquel on it, it told me (in the bios, I think), that you can't have more than 4 operating systems at the same time.

But first things first. Monday I will try to replace ubuntu with triesquel one laptop at a time. I'll leave the laptop with 4 OS for last.

Thanks again very much!!!

lembas
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Iscritto: 05/13/2010

Looks like there is no separate home partition, so you need to first backup anything you wish to save off the hard disk and then go ahead with the install. I too suggest when installing, do make a separate home.

You can have as many OSes as you wish on one computer but you cannot have more than 4 primary partitions (if using the popular MBR scheme). If you've already have 4 primarys, you need to remove one and make an extended partition. Then on the extended partition you can make as many logical partitions as you wish. I've never seen on OS you cannot remove.

Here's more info on that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#PC_partition_types

forest
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Iscritto: 10/19/2012

Thank you for the advice and the link lembas! I don't doubt that YOU can remove any OS, but I am a caveman in this regard - my area of expertise is not even close to computer operating systems... Still, I am doing better than many of the rest of my colleagues who don't even know what GNU/Linux is... I will try all those things that everyone recommended and I will be back here if I get too stuck.

lembas
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Iscritto: 05/13/2010

Hehe, I was a caveman too once. Live and learn they say. And I agree you're way ahead of the curve.