Ubuntu - is it for me?

[lemonjeff]

Nick,

If your using XP look in system properties/advanced/startup & recovery.
There you can select the default OS.

Jeff.

 

[Nick W]

Jeff,

Thanks, but as that doesn't list Ubuntu as a option, I don't think it can be the right thing.

 

[Nick W]

Thanks to Mike (mr) for pointing me in the right direction

If Ubuntu is your default installation by which I mean if its the OS that boots if the machine is left to its own devices then you can edit the order of the load menu
If you open a terminal window change directory to /boot/grub and then type in the terminal window sudo gedit menu.lst (you could cut and paste that into the terminal window. You will get a text file open up.
Scroll down to about line 125 where the boot options start. You will see different releases of ubuntu and at the bottom Windows. Cut and paste the windows bit and make it the first in the list. First in the list is the default boot.

Bear in mind that this only works if your Ubuntu installation is the default booting operating system.

 

[tnimble]

The order of the operating systems that are boot is determined by the grub boot loader program which is part of the Ubuntu distribution. The configuration can be found in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst. Near the end of this file each operating system has a block starting with a line title=name_in_boot_menu and ends with an empty line. Move these blocks in the order you want and rerun the grub program to active the new boot menu by typing grub as root user in a terminal window.

 

[Dave S]

alternatively, just add a line default = n

where n is the listing you want to boot by default. Note that they start numbering at 0, so if you want to have the third listing boot by default you would add a line "default = 2" without the quotes. I have it just above the timeout line.

My grub.conf is:

# Which listing to boot as default. 0 is the first, 1 the second etc.
default 0
# How many seconds to wait before the default listing is booted.
timeout 30
# Nice, fat splash-image to spice things up :)
# Comment out if you don't have a graphics card installed
#splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.22-r5
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.22-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sdb2

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.22-r5 (rescue)
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.22-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/sdb2 init=/bin/bb

# The next four lines are only if you dualboot with a Windows system.
# In this case, Windows is hosted on /dev/sda1
title=Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Dave