I haven’t created a blog post in a while, and Ubuntu is definitely to blame. I started experiencing some problems with Windows Vista that really bugged me, and decided to partition my drive and give Ubuntu a try. I have to admit that getting everything to work wasn’t as easy as I thought, but now that it works it’s amazing.

Installing Ubuntu itself was extremely easy. It took care of partitioning the drive and everything. It was getting everything to work that was a challenge. I am sufficient with computers, but one area I do not have a lot of experience in is using Command Line. Unfortunately, most installation and configuration in Linux requires you to use the Terminal, which is basically the Windows Dos equivalent. It’s difficult, but I am learning and getting the hang of it so it’s all good.

The first problem I encountered in Linux is that I could not connect my Bluetooth mouse. The OS recognized it, but there was an error connecting. I was able to find a fairly simple solution online however.

The next problem I faced is that I could not enable the extra Desktop Visual Effects that Ubuntu is famous for. By default there were some Ubuntu-supported drivers installed for my video card, but I had to install some additional software and enable some restricted drivers. After doing that I was able to get them working without a problem.

The third probem I faced was getting Ubuntu to find wireless networks. In order to get this working I had to install some software called ndiswrapper and use some Windows drivers. I followed many tutorials and most of them were not useful, however after about 6 or 8 hours I finally got it working.

The next thing I am working on will be to get a virtual machine to run all of my Windows apps through Linux. So far I really enjoy Ubuntu. There are some amazing 3D effects, and even with this it is still way quicker than Vista. The thing I noticed the most is that as soon as I login and my desktop appears the system is fully loaded. In Vista the system is slow for a few minutes while the loading finalizes, but in Ubuntu it has finished loading… menus and applications load instantaneously.

I will get some more content up soon, but for now I am still playing around with Ubuntu

Regards,
Chris