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Posted

Well I've downloaded my ISO, burnt it to a disk, got a little laptop ready to be de-microsofted. What do I do now?

 

Is it a case of putting the disk in, clicking next a few times and everything will work fine, or will I be editting config files and rebuilding kernels?

 

Laptop is mainly used by Daughter for IM, myspace etc, and has so much **** on it it takes like 20 minutes to boot up now.

Posted

Loads real Easy!!

Almost as 'straight forward' as MS - (well in theory at least)

 

Wireless cards can be a bit of a git for it though, we have not been able to keep one stable on it.

 

I tried loading Ubuntu on a lappy but did not have enough memory I think you need 192Mb to load (128mb to run)

If you have an older laptop, with lower memory It was suggested to me to try Xubuntu (from the same site) as this will run on 64Mb, but I've not tried it yet.

Posted

Tis a recentish laptop - well a Toshiba Satpro 6000, so getting on a bit now, but has a 1GHz cpu and half a gig of ram, so should be good for the full version of ubuntu. Wireless card sounds like it could be a problem, more so with this laptop as the wired network port doesn't work anymore, so it's got to be wireless!

Posted

I tried ubuntu on my pc but couldnt get the wireless to work, tried everything but no luck so tried kubuntu (basically the same but with KDE instead of GNOME) and the wireless card worked perfectly without any messing around. Might be worth checking to see if its known to work in ubuntu or kubuntu

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Well tried Ubuntu on my laptop and it all works fine. Posting this wirelessly right now. Just popped the CD in, and once I'd convinced my ageing Satpro to boot from CD it was fine, just asked me a couple of questions in plain English (even plain Welsh if I wanted it!!) and then it just worked.

 

Had a little trouble with the wireless, but that was my fault, didn't realise that SSIDs were case sensitive, and that the WEP key needs a dash every 4 chars, once I'd done that everything just works. Dead happy with it.

Posted

Yeah - it can take a little work, but you'll get to know the ENTIRE operating system (eg UNIX + the GUI)

 

Plus it's free, Open Source, and not MS

 

Plus....you know the 'cool new transparent windows' thing in Vista?

Screenshot.png

Posted

Nah, you want to try playing around with beryl or compiz (there's loads of vids showing them on youtube), then you'll get an idea of what real transparency and a compositing window manager should look like! :D

Posted

if you haven't already done it, try installing the gnome-network-manager program whcih lets you choose between wireless networks and wired networks form the taskbar. Quite a good little widget. The main problem I have had is getting the touchpad to work properly.

Posted

How you getting on with it eifion? I'm thinking of wacking it on as a dual boot on my pc once I have got a new hard drive.

 

I ran Red Hat a while ago, but after a powercut it blue screened in a way the made windows look stable! :eek: :eek: :eek: - I wasn't impressed!

Posted

Seems OK so far, does everything I want to do with the lappy, email, surfing, IM that sort of thing. Haven't needed to hunt for drivers or open a console window or anything. Might look at the graphics drivers at some point as the video player makes a flickery line on the screen.

 

One thing I've noticed is that the icons and menu text displays does look a hell of a lot clearer and easier to read that XP was. I did try Ubuntu back in the days of Hedgehog, installed but couldn't get it to do anything. It seems now that Linux is at long last getting equivalent in usability for non-geeks that Windows does, ie it just worked on my lappy straight out of the box so I'm happy. Duaghter loves it as it's different and cool and not MS.

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