The comments continued on his other posts, as well:

http://www.zmogo.com/gear/the-new-year-linux-resolution-day-2/
http://www.zmogo.com/gear/the-new-year-linux-resolution-day-3/
http://www.zmogo.com/gear/the-new-year-linux-resolution-day-4/

I dont see any reason to shoot the messenger either. It’s arrogant and childish not to offer help when someone asks, and if you dont believe that, then you clearly have a ego problem and should just bow out and let someone help who cares, and who isn’t an elitist noob hater.

We are suppose to be helping each other in this world, not bringing others down while at the same time reveling in our own supposed OS prowess. We might think that makes us ‘cool’ man, but it does just the reverse as it shows how pety you are by wanting to capitalize on someones mistakes instead of helping them.

This is precisely why linux is failing and has way lower market share than it should ( except obviously on servers ), as very few except for geeks are going to tolerate a prevailing attitude of ‘haha your stoopid , lame and go back to windows’ mentality; they dont have to they will just use the superior, easier to setup and use windows OS, even with the risk of virus attacks ( virus scanners are not free anyway! ) and its because the apps and games they need just work there and they dont have to send time trying to figure out an OS that essentially is pre-relase quality ( all of them ). You can hate windows all you want, but at least its releases are mostly solid , and in part its due to superior QA and a desire by all to succeed collectively, instead of rolling their own all the time thus causing severe quality problems beause everyone is split between them all ; but oh well its free isn’t it . You sometimes get what you pay for , which for some of us is alot of wasted effort where time spent elsewhere would have been far more rewarding ( and usually is ).

Linux has no chance ( nor does it deserve one , though those using it do ) until theses issues are completely resolved. A house divided will not stand.

Grub should work on an external drive, but an OS newbie shouldn’t be installing an unknown OS in a strange configuration. Use vanilla hardware and the most mainstream setup you can get.

The fact of the matter is Ubuntu needs to be installed by someone knowledgeable in order to get past any driver issues that might crop up. I’d say the same about Windows or OSx86. Once Ubuntu’s set up, there is likely to be no problem.

As a homework just remove /boot/grub/stage2 and reboot your pc.
second task is to read man grub

I put VCR, but I could have written “microwave oven” or “blender”. I mean, I do not agree with the popular conception of a computer as a home appliance. Computers are something more complex. Despite most of the people use them for a couple of simple tasks, a computer is more than that.
Corporations already realized that and that’s why it’s more common to see smartphones and ultraportable computers.
They aren’t cheaper than desktop computer for the consumers, but they are for the manufacturer. And people buys them because they cover their needs.
Most of the homes should have a smartphone, a media center and a playstation instead of a computer, and everybody would be happier
I mean, computers (and mostly PCs) are designed for a different thing. If people just want a household appliance, maybe computers aren’t for them.

Please, don’t read this as something elitist. I’m not saying “we can use computers, they can’t”. I’m saying that for a person who wants something with reduced functionality that just works and needs no knowledge for its use, computers are not the best solution (even computers with Windows).

Forums are good for most things but let more than a day go by and your post can get buried – just wish the various Documentation sites were better coordinated and more in depth.

Cae:
You got USB thumbdrive to work? UNetBootin and the thing in the menu both result in “Missing Operating System” then it falls back to my internal drive. I contend the whole ordeal is a big load of fail. All I wanted to do was put Intrepid on a thumbdrive so I could run alsa-info.sh and find out what changed from Intrepid to Jaunty that broke PulseAudio for me (and get it fixed).

In the end, a full Ubuntu installation is really a nice system for novice users: it is simple, has nearly all features one would need, and is resistant against common malware. Perfect for home users. But the installation should be done by someone who already knows the pitfalls and has the patience to work through this. So far, I don’t quite see any change in this.

Btw. having Ubuntu on a USB flash drive rocks. I found an 8GB flash drive for EUR11 and installed Intrepid on it, together with all kinds of apps, tools, codecs and whatnot to have a full system available. Very useful to check how some laptop would actually work under the newest release, and already have tools available to diagnose problems and find workarounds. The “Method 1″ section at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent was very helpful for this – thanks to whoever put this together.

However I understand (even though I don’t share the manners) of some people when someone who is used to standard installations of Windows or Mac want to install a dual boot system without learning anything of the basics of that, and claim “my grandma should be able to do that”, as if the hobby of old women would be installing OSes instead of kitting.
It’s too common to see people demanding things to free operating systems that they don’t even ask in their proprietary OSes (I mean, they are fine if installing a hardware raid in Windows XP requires a floppy disk and several trial and error steps with BSOD included until they find the right driver, but they scream “it sucks!” if Grub did something wrong).

And let’s face it: The vast majority of people buys OEM or pays someone for the installation and configuration of their computers. Even when the Windows machines are blasted for a horde of malwares, they pay again for the re-installation or cleaning.
But they want to install Linux without hassle.
Computers and operating systems are cutting edge technology. Not a VCR.
There are some things to learn and with free software that’s the price you have to pay to enjoy something that gives you freedom.

So, ok. I don’t agree with people who call idiot a new user with problems. But I also find quite disrespectful to say “this is a hell”, “say whatever you want but this is not ready for prime time” or things like that.
With free software you get an incredible opportunity to take part of something new, exciting and revolutionary. In the process you may find bugs, of course. But you can report them, or even fix them!

So if someone can do away with the “advance option” and recognised that this is just another option (like Debian does) that the installer should present to the user and let the user decide (with a smart default, of course:).

Nothing should be hidden from the user.

I tried installing to an external drive one time. I think it was Feisty. I ended up with GRUB on the external drive (sdb) and deleted from the internal drive (sda). I had to plug in my external drive to boot the internal drive! That sucked. Since then, I remove my internal drive before doing that.

There is a bug* still open in Ubuntu on GRUB installing to the wrong drive if you have some IDE and some SATA drives. On my mom’s computer, GRUB installed wrong for that reason. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but the first drive (according to BIOS) was hd1 and the second was hd0. Changing the grub drive map didn’t help. I ended up locking version on her kernel because every time the kernel was updated the menu.lst would break. That was with Dapper, maybe Edgy as well. It’s been fine since then though.

* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/46520

That’s all to say that we’re not shooting for the usability of OSX. We’re shooting far beyond it, where Everything just works, not just hardware with one logo on it, where everything Just works, not after you frigging fiddle with it and check forums and irc channels and error logs, and where everything just Works, instead of making you work around it and it’s bugs and poor user interface and lacking features.

Or as I tell people, I’m just too dumb to use Windows.

This is the one reason Linux cannot succeed – Folks, not everyone is as savvy as you are with Linux, and making Linux easy to install / use is not going to cheapen your experience in the slightest. If you want to strip out GNOME and replace it with the most arcane terminal window manager, feel free. We all benefit from making Linux easier to use and work. Being elitist pricks helps no-one.

There is no ways for grub to boot something, what is located on other hard drive. Even lilo cant do this.