Ubuntu deadlines causes dead cards.
By Andrew Miller in Editorial
Posted in Linux on
Well, my week could be easily summarised as “hardware hell”. After giving my office a complete overhaul and throwing out 50% of my personal belongings in an effort to down-size and declutter, I decided It was about time I put my new machine together. I ended up with a messy office and three computers in pieces on the floor. Anyone who wants to know the gory details can read about it on my personal blog. Finally, I got the hardware working, but the hard drive I pulled from my old machine had decided it wasn’t compatible with my new machine. So I did a fresh install of Mint Linux on a new hard drive and then copied the /home/spode folder from my old machine to the new one. I installed a few packages that I wanted (VirtualBox, Skype, Putty, Amarok, LastFM) and after a reboot everything was as I had it before. It was a remarkably easy transition, marred only by a few issues getting the Nvidia drivers working. Purging the drivers and reinstalling was the cure to this minor woe.
At the same time, I was reinstalling Vista on an HP laptop that needed recovery. I’ve been making a little more effort recently to play with Vista as I don’t want to lose touch with my audiences - and there were some things I liked and some things I thought were crazy. My initial gripe with Vista having put everything in different places is not as much of an issue as I thought originally, as I just pop up to the search box that appears in the control panel and just type in what I’m looking for - it was very reliable about giving me the bits I needed. I also liked the way it gave me links to where I could download patches and drivers to solve reported issues with my hardware.
So I’ve got this blank install of Vista on this laptop and the wired network, wireless network, sound and video are not supported at all without a driver download. This is where I usually pull a trick out of my sleeve - a USB Ethernet device I have that is natively supported in XP without drivers. This has saved me so much time before - but alas, is not supported in Vista, and never will be (as a Vista report told me later when I eventually got on the web). So I was forced to hunt around the HP website for the right drivers I needed - what I would have killed for Synaptic. After some hefty downloads, I had a flash drive filled with the drivers I needed and I was well on my way. In contrast, on this exact notebook, I boot up an Ubuntu CD and everything (including wireless) is supported out of the box - and people worry about compatibility issues…
I’m sure some of you read my rant (and it was a rant) about the BBC technology coverage, and I had some good feedback - but a few key points stuck with me. Firstly, why didn’t he installed EeeBuntu - the Ubuntu derivative designed for the EeePC? But more importantly, I’d have loved to see him try to install Windows on his EeePC, as I imagine he would have had just as much, if not even more trouble getting things working.
Anyways, there are few things I saw this week that I thought I should link to. Firstly, someone has made a rather comprehensive list of modifications you can make to the Acer Aspire One - the rather nifty
Rated: 90% (2 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Sharon Jackson - September 29, 2008 on 4:11 pm
I tried EeeUbuntu on my Asus but had problems both times with incomplete installation. In the end I gave up and put XP on it. Took a lot longer and there was some fiddling around but it is up and running now. I also got an extended battery and boy does it improve the life. Went to London and back on the train, messed around, wrote documents, attched to my 3 dongle modem and still had juice left at the end of the day. Well worth the money.
Comment by mdz - September 30, 2008 on 2:33 pm
“the article suggests that the bug won
Comment by Spode - October 1, 2008 on 10:17 am
Thanks mdz - I did get slightly misled by that article, and Alan Pope was setting me straight on that. I was about to adjust the article, but I think you’re comment says enough 
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