Ubuntu Linux

[PCBrandon]

Hi all,

I'm going to setup a dual boot Windows XP and Ubunto Linux on my laptop (specifications in signature). I have no experience with any version of Linux what-so-ever.

I believe my first main issue is going to be hardware drivers. Should I be able to download Linux drivers for my hardware on the Dell website or is there a special website I can get them at?

Secondly, what kind of programs can I use for everyday tasks such as word processing, web surfing, and more. MS Office doesn't work on Linux, correct? Right now I have the following programs that I *think* will work, please let me know if they won't:

Word Processing: OpenOffice
Web Surfing: FireFox
Graphic Editing: The GIMP

Are there any other programs I should use?


Any other tips will help very much


Thanks,
Brandon

[Alaron]

One of the great things about Ubuntu is that it will come with all those programs built in, as well as a bunch of others. And you can easily download a whole host of other linux apps within Ubuntu.

As for drivers, they can always be tricky, but Ubuntu supports a large library of hardware. I installed it on one of my machines and everything worked right off the bat. If you need specific ones, there is often linux versions available if you look.

Nvidia Linux drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
Wireless Linux Drivers: http://support.intel.com/support/not.../CS-006408.htm

[PCBrandon]

I just finished a fresh installation of Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. The dual boot setup by GRUB works great, and I can get into both easily. It looks like my audio and video drivers were installed (kind of cool actually, because I had to manually install these drivers on Windows XP, but not Ubuntu).

The only problem is a relatively large problem. During setup, Ubuntu found both my ethernet and wireless connections. I tried to configure the Wireless adapter from setup but it failed, so I told it to skip it. Now that I'm in Ubuntu, I still have failed to get it to configure correctly.

I'll have a look at that link you gave me for Wireless Drivers... however, would it be a driver problem if it found the adapter at setup?

Thanks!

[faulkner132]

Once you get down to it, you'll find you can do a lot of stuff in Ubuntu much easier than you can in Windows.
Printers and digital cameras, for example, in Ubuntu, you just select the model you have from a list (this is for printers primarily... digital cameras all you do is just plug them in). No need to install 50 MB packages which include a bunch of "bundled" programs you will never use that love to put themselves in your system tray.

[PCBrandon]

Well, I'm typing this from Ubuntu. I still cannot get it to connect to my wireless network, but I can get it to connect to an ethernet connection. The ethernet connection is from the same router that serves wireless.

What can be the problem? It sees the connection in the Network Administration, and I enter in the information (triple checked) and it still can't connect.

It says ESSID, what is that? Is it different from SSID? Because that is what I've been entering in. I'm not for sure if my key is ASCII or hex, so I've tried both. My key is a passphrase, so I tried entering it as just the passphrase and with s: prefixing it. I also told it to DHCP.

Any ideas?

[faulkner132]

There shouldn't be any difference between Windows and Linux. For instance my setup works fine with DHCP.

WEP Security
64-bit 10 hex digit key (randomly generated)
Channel 6
Wireless SSID enabled

Can you take screenshots of your Windows setup and compare to your Linux setup to be 100% sure your configuration is the same?

[rightcoast]

Are you using WPA by chance? That is a real pain to get configured with Ubuntu.

[PCBrandon]

Yes, I am.

[rightcoast]

Google for wpa_supplicant and Ubuntu. There is info out there on getting it done. Some people pull it off some don't. YMMV. Here is a forum post on it:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ant+repository
Keep in mind if you can connect via ethernet you can ignore the part about putting it on a floppy and just wget the package as listed then sudo dpkg -i /media/floppy/wpasupplicant_0.4.5-0ubuntu1_i386.deb and go from there.
Good Luck.