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    #16
    I'm totally baffled as to how you keep getting *buntu installed but grub never installs. Either something is wrong with the way you're installing or you have some BIOS boot sector protection turned on or something odd like that.

    This best guide I've seen is Ubuntu wiki page here. About half way down you'll see "Fixing a Broken System." and a little farther down "via the LiveCD terminal." Read that section.

    Basic run-down of the steps:

    Boot to the liveDVD/USB.
    Open a terminal (konsole).
    Mount the partition that contains /boot (in your screenshot above - /dev/sda5)
    Run grub-install using the "--boot-directory" option pointed at the above mounted partition and install it to the hard drive MBR.
    Reboot

    A little about Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu: While there is nothing wrong with installing Ubuntu and adding KDE desktop to it, it's not as simple as a one-click. If you search around the forum a bit you'll see some others have run into trouble BUT as far as I can tell that happens when they try to remove the Unity desktop from their systems, not so much using it with both installed. I haven't tried it myself. I can say at your current level of exposure it's good to keep an open mind and try several desktop environments so go for it. However, in the very near future (next year) Ubuntu is planning on breaking away from the open source video standard (X and Wayland) and creating their own video system (Mir) that no one else including Kubuntu will be using. At that point it will not be possible to have Unity (Ubuntu) and KDE (Kubuntu) desktops on the same install. Not a big deal at the moment because you'll want to upgrade by then anyway so you can decide down the road which DE you prefer.

    Regarding the "wipe and restore" approach: As a Linux user, this is rarely a required duty. In the Windows world, so much of what's going on within the system is hidden from the user that there's often no way to repair a problem and paving your install is the only solution. Not so with Linux. Nothing is hidden and almost all problems can be solved. My point is: Wiping your hard drive clean and restoring the entire thing because of a grub install issue is equal to using a bulldozer to squash a cockroach. You'll learn more if you don't do that again and instead focus on problem solving > Just my Two Cents.

    A final bit of advice and I'll stop acting like I'm your Dad : I, as many others on here, advocate a separate home partition. This allows one to re-install or change your Linux distro without endangering your personal files and settings. Clearly, you're familiar with backups so it's not so much about file protection as it is about convenience. If you're interested on how to do this now without re-installing (again) post a new thread.
    <EDIT> Never mind the above paragraph - I re-read and saw you addressed this already.


    Let me know how the grub-install goes.
    Last edited by oshunluvr; Jul 04, 2013, 09:02 AM.

    Please Read Me

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      #17
      BTW: With over 300 GB's of hard drive space you could install like forty distros at once. Not that anyone would, but once you get grub working you might consider making space for a couple more installs so you can try others or have Ubuntu along side Kubuntu to see if there's any difference or personal preference.

      Please Read Me

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        #18
        Success! I'm writing to you from the laptop in Ubuntu via wifi. I read over the link you gave me. The information was good quality and helped me understand. Thank you for that and for your patience in my efforts to grasp this.

        Originally posted by oshunluvr View Post
        I'm totally baffled as to how you keep getting *buntu installed but grub never installs. Either something is wrong with the way you're installing or you have some BIOS boot sector protection turned on or something odd like that.
        I researched it and found out what it was. Turns out we can thank Lenovo's sheer genius EFI boot system that's designed to make it difficult to install any operating system other than the one the laptop came with. I'm kicking myself for not suspecting this before. Lenovo has a dirty little history of making their laptops difficult in this way. They're marketed toward people who don't tinker like we do. They're for the general public, in other words, people who just use what came on their PC, maybe adding some applications, and who have no desire to understand much about it. I usually have a policy of only buying "No OS" PCs and then installing what I want. I do that to avoid all that crapware manufacturers muck up systems with. Sticking to that policy would have served me well this time. But this laptop was available as a steal and I scooped it up.

        Turns out there's a guy who's been through all this with the exact same Lenovo that I have. He was good enough to provide instructions to the public for solving the problem: http://jacobfogg.blogspot.com/2012/0...novo-z570.html
        He had spent hours upon hours jumping through tech hoops to make Ubuntu work. I'm grateful he's documented his solutions and will write him to tell him. I didn't know it, but wifi hassles awaited me after I got Ubuntu to work. He documented those, allowing me to get online wirelessly without the same hassles he went through.

        Now I have a decision to make. I could do one of these three things:
        1. Find the commands to migrate Ubuntu over to Kubuntu
        2. Install Kubuntu as an additional distro, giving me the choice of Win 7, Ubuntu, or Kubuntu at boot
        3. Wipe out this Ubuntu install and install Kubuntu in its place.

        I'll take some time and decide, but I'm leaning toward #2. I could do that and always wipe out an install later if I decide I don't like one of the distros. I do like Kubuntu's layout, look, and organization best.

        I like the Linux/GNU software community. A plethora of volunteers create all the great stuff, people use it, and they give back. I see you've been giving back by helping people on the forum. Jacob Fogg gave back via his blog that was a God-send for me. I intend to give back also. I want to write LibreOffice Writer plug-ins for English-speaking people who (like I do) also write in French and German. I have a utility working on my PC and need to learn how to distribute it. I've already started my research on the LibreOffice forum. That's one of my many reasons for installing *buntu. Another big reason is Windows 8. I'm never, never, never using that awful operating system if I can help it. But don't get me started on my grievances against Microsoft or you'll have a whole dissertation on your hands.

        I used ghosting with Windows operating systems precisely because of what you talked about. Tinkering to fix a problem was more trouble than it was worth. On my desktop, I have an internal physical hard drive just for ghost images. I disconnect it when not in use. About once a month, I reconnect it and create a full ghost image. If something gets buggy, I just reconnect the drive and restore. This also allows me to investigate dangerous web sites like those ones that install rogue anti-visuses/ ransomware. I used to work for a company that fixed computers trashed by viruses, especially ransomware ones. I saw hijacked PCs all the time. It was appalling.

        All right. I've strayed from the topic. Thanks once again for your help. I'm going to go enjoy my 4th. Soon I'll be making my choice on how to install Kubuntu.

        Edit: There is one other distro that intrigues me -- Puppy Linux. Maybe I'll add that to the Grub que. That one is so light on system resources, you can boot it and run it quickly from a flash drive.
        Kubuntu 22.04 (desktop & laptop), Windows 7 &2K (via VirtualBox on desktop PC)
        ================================

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          #19
          Glad you got it figured out. It's always a good idea to include as many hardware details as possible in your initial post. Had I known about your laptop model, I might have stumbled on that info too. Another good tip is to put the details of your computer(s) in your forum signature so everyone can see where you're "coming" from.

          Re. 1,2, or 3: My opinion #2 is the best choice. Chances are 90% or so that you will eventually break a linux install. No offence - we all do it and some of us quite often. It's one of the trade-offs to being able to dig into your system, By installing Kubuntu along side Ubuntu you will still have a working install if/when one gets broken. You really only need 12GB or so for a full install.

          Please Read Me

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            #20
            Originally posted by oshunluvr View Post
            Glad you got it figured out. It's always a good idea to include as many hardware details as possible in your initial post. Had I known about your laptop model, I might have stumbled on that info too. Another good tip is to put the details of your computer(s) in your forum signature so everyone can see where you're "coming" from.

            Re. 1,2, or 3: My opinion #2 is the best choice. Chances are 90% or so that you will eventually break a linux install. No offence - we all do it and some of us quite often. It's one of the trade-offs to being able to dig into your system, By installing Kubuntu along side Ubuntu you will still have a working install if/when one gets broken. You really only need 12GB or so for a full install.
            An Update:
            I decided to go with #3. It wasn't as smooth sailing as I had hoped, but I've got it running. I tried Ubuntu out enough to realize I simply didn't want it. I just don't like it as much as Kubuntu. I don't like all the icons for the apps stacked at the left like a vertical Macintosh widget. I also don't care for what they did to LibreOffice Writer. You can't pull down a menu with the Alt key. You have to use the mouse – ICK! And I think Kubuntu's look and organization is way more appealing. So, bye-bye Ubuntu, hello Kubuntu. At some point I would like to try Mint. I have installed another distro, but not to my laptop. I've installed Puppy Linux to a thumb drive. You're probably familiar with it. It's a no frills, light-on-resources distro. I plan to install utilities to it like memory and hard drive tests so that I can use it to repair Windows computers. I already use the Kaspersky Rescue Disk for that, which is actually a Debian distro with some tools and Kaspersky Antivirus added to it.

            I ran into some problems, which I've solved, but I'll document them for the benefit of anyone doing a search. In one of my searches, someone recommended simply installing Kubuntu over Ubuntu, using the same partitions, swap partition, etc. as Ubuntu had already blazed a trail for. This turned out to be bad advice. After I did that, the Grub menu still showed Ubuntu and Windows 7, but if I chose Ubuntu, Kubuntu would start to boot and then crash. I then booted to Gparted live and wiped all the Ubuntu partitions and reinstalled with the manual option. Somehow it wasn't working again. I wanted a fresh start and, bless me father for I have sinned, but I restored a ghost image so that Windows 7 only was installed and I was back at square one.

            I had Jacob Fogg's instructions and figured they would work for Kubuntu exactly as they had for Ubuntu. No such luck. There were bumps along the way this time. Like before I made space for Linux via the Windows drive utility, leaving it unallocated. I installed Kubuntu with the manual option. As Ubuntu had, Kubuntu installed and then, thanks to Lenovo's sheer genius design, only Windows would boot up. I knew that was no big problem. I had Mr. Fogg's instructions this time. I used this code from his Step 2 (Step 1 was install):

            sudo -i
            mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
            ==> changed to: mount /dev/sda7 /mnt
            mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
            grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
            ==> changed to: sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

            mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
            mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
            mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
            chroot /mnt update-grub
            umount /mnt/sys
            umount /mnt/dev
            umount /mnt/proc
            exit
            All that went perfectly. Grub was installed. Now time to move onto Step 3, install Kubuntu into Grub. So I did Mr. Fogg's code:

            mkdir /media/ubuntu
            mkdir /media/winBoot
            mount /dev/sda6 /media/ubuntu
            mount /dev/sda1 /media/winBoot
            We're good. It all worked. However, then I did this line:

            cp /media/ubuntu/boot/grub/grub.cfg /media/winBoot/grub/grub.cfg
            That one didn't work. I got an error. I figured it must be that grub.cfg is in a different location in Kubuntu than in Ubuntu. That turned out to be the case, so I modified the command to reflect where it really was, but still got an error.

            I rebooted to see where I was. Now I had the opposite problem. I was able to boot into Kubuntu, but not Windows. The boot choices were Kubuntu, some kind of Kubuntu diagnostic, or Windows Recovery.

            I decided I must need to edit Grub's menu.lst file. I had done this before with Ubuntu 8.04. However, when I researched it I learned that Grub was no longer using that file. All my old notes would be useless. I found some complicated instructions on how to edit it and quite frankly was pulling my hair out. However, I did get some conflicting information in my search. Numerous sites said all you needed to do was to update Grub. I decided to do that before coming here to ask for help. Here are the commands:

            tommy@tommy-Ideapad-Z570:/etc$ sudo update-grub
            [sudo] password for tommy:
            Generating grub.cfg ...
            Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.8.0-19-generic
            Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.8.0-19-generic
            Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
            Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
            Found Windows Recovery Environment (loader) on /dev/sda4
            It worked! Now the Grub menu offers Kubuntu, a couple memory tests, Windows 7, and Windows 7 Recovery.

            I'm honestly not sure why updating Grub worked this time and not before. I had udated it with Jacob Fogg's code.

            It's running great. I definitely like this distro better than Ubuntu. I've already started customizing it to my liking. I've swapped the Ctrl & Caps lock key, something that's a must for me. I imported my LibreOffice profile from Windows into Kubuntu. It imported perfectly except my icons for my custom toolbars don't show. No big deal. I can put them in with the customize feature.

            I'm wired to the network now. My next step will be to get this thing working wirelessly. That's a big deal for me. I go on public networks a lot when I want to get out of the house and when I travel. I've been careful with Kaspersky Internet Security to protect me, but I think I'll be better off just using Kubuntu.

            I've been learning some of the terminal commands – or I should say re-learning some of them. I had a Unix class over a decade ago and learned some, but didn't keep using them.

            I'll likely be around on the boards when I have questions, and hopefully I'll be able to answer some too. Thanks for the help.
            Kubuntu 22.04 (desktop & laptop), Windows 7 &2K (via VirtualBox on desktop PC)
            ================================

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              #21
              Originally posted by Tom_ZeCat View Post
              An Update:
              I decided to go with #3. It wasn't as smooth sailing as I had hoped, but I've got it running. I tried Ubuntu out enough to realize I simply didn't want it. I just don't like it as much as Kubuntu.
              you really weren't reading what was said. there really is no need for constant reinstall at every sign of trouble. Google runs ubuntu servers. imagine having them reboot and reinstall all servers for every little issue.

              All you had to do to install Kubuntu in Ubuntu is
              1. open software center, find and install Kubuntu desktop
              2. logout (maybe reboot) and login but on login select Kubuntu desktop.
              3. remove Ubuntu desktop using one command (for example for 13.04: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/tag/pure-kubuntu/)

              instead you used afore mentioned buldozer again.

              Linux is not Windows! http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

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