I just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my Dell Latitude C600 wtih an Dlink DWL-G630 wifi card. More to follow.
my first ubuntu experience.
I am an avid kde user, and I've already upgraded my kubuntu 5.10 to development 6 I bought a nokia 770 as soon as I saw one at a store. It runs the gtk libraries, and showed promise. It's development enviornment is supported under ubuntu, and I didn't figure out how to get it to install on kubuntu in the amount of time I had back then. I just let it sit.
I've had some free time lately, so my computers have been getting attention. I've always been appauled at how hard it is to get unstable gentoo to work, and the Desktop BSD on my Dell 800 mhz laptop with rage mobility graphics just wasn't working with my wifi card. (texas instruments acx111)
I downloaded the 6.06 iso from a mirror. the first mirror didn't have it's html file up, but I found what I needed.
While it was downloading, I scpd my home directory from the bsd box to my gentoo box. I also checked out edubuntu and xubuntu web pages.
I then went to get the ppc install disk for my mac, and I noticed that there was an alternative version available, more suitable for network admins.. I want to be one so I got that, but I had already started the x86 download so I didn't stop it.
I tried burning the disk on my emprex dvd burner using k3b, but that didn't work.
I copied the file to my fat32 windows partition and rebooted.
I went to windows, and burnt it quickly, and popped it into my laptop, hit enter, and the computer rebooted. I hit f12 to get the boot menu, chose the cdrom, up came the ubuntu notification of things starting.
I little bit of text went by that wasn't consistant with the rest of it.. but loasing vmlinuz.............. is understandable.
I then realized that something was wrong.. oh no! I had downloaded the livecd version! and was going to have to wait another hour!
I was also concerned about the swap partition being mounted durring boot, I was going to have to wipe it out! That's what made me think I had downloaded the wrong version.
I remembered that I wanted my wifi card in, so I popped it in while the liveCD was in it's early stages. The green light on the card came on to my delight! (link)
I thought about how cool it would be if the install system was like on knoppix.. and then I double checked my .iso file, it was correct!
It came up. There was an install icon on the desktop.
I clicked it.
Then I clicked on the little blue earth, that I recognized to be a non-official firefox logo and I clicked on the network settings. My laptop was in a docking station, with an extra keyboard and mouse. I was using the onboard ethernet. The wifi, wlan0 said it was active! I was estatic! I didn't bother to configure it untill after it was installed.
Way too much for a livecd distro on a 256 mb ram 850mhz machine. I waited, and closed firefox.. the little dinky 24x cdrom drive eventually stopped seeking and I proceeded with the install.
I answered the questions, it felt just like signing up for an online service... but I don't remember a licence agreement.. (not remembering is different than knowing that there wasn't one)
I chose to partition the hard drives myself. I almost always like to let the distro show me what it wants to do, and then go back and tweak it, but I didn't do that.
I knew that I wanted a partion for windows 2000, I have spare licences for that and virtual PC is now free, and I wanted a partition that could be in fat32 that's big enough for at least 1 dvd .iso image to swap from linux to windows.
I gave myself 2048 mb swap, I plan to upgrade to 512 or 1gb soon, and I plan to run vmware server.
I started by making free space in the front of the disk.. and went back and just made an.. NTFS partition at the start of the disk! i was surprized at this option. writing a blank partition is easier than a full one I guess...
I was appauled by the warning notice about my data almost being nuked.. the warning said: do you waish to continue? We recomend backing up your valuable data before...
YIKES.. reccomend is like an option! If it's valuable data, you MUST back it up first. USE appropriate language here guys.. YAOW
I hit ok, and the install started.
I've seen enough installs.. and I hadn't verified the disk before popping it into my laptop.. (I've been ok installing off of slightly damaged media before by just skipping files, and my gentoo cd burn said it had failed the burning process, but I had tried them out just the same... 44percent of kernel loaded and 30 something percent.. hehe cdrtools and emprex don't like eachother!)
So, I came back and saw a little "do not enter sign" and I was saddened, that I would have to restart the whole processa gain.. but no.. it just said that security updates were not able to be downloaded. I remembered that my actioncrap dsl modem flakes out with the DNS all the time, and I had forgoten to edit the resolv.conf. Oh well, I'd just get them on next reboot.
It finished, and gave me the option to keep using the livecd, how considerate! it was the default choice, and the correct one! with a good warning about unsaved .. ooo... theres saying nothing... documetns going away. HA it's a livecd! even saved documents would go away without special care!
I rebooted and ubuntu came up! it came up almost as fast as the BSD I just replaced.
I ran the security updates, my dns failed, and I instinctively wne tfor the terminal.. but thought beter of it, I went to the administration networking section and added the dns server. It took a long time for it to come up.
I tried configuring my wifi card with my wep key, and ID.. but that didn't work.. The ethernet and the wifi are both conenct to the same router, so I thought that that might be why it wasn't working.
I fired up firefox, and went to the documentation.. I want to watch everything... so I looked up the lesser supported formats.
I guessed that I would have to add apt repositories...
3 of them didn't work. Maybe this is when my dns stopped working.
I ran synaptic and there were already more security updates!
download failed, and I did that thing with the networking dns server list.
Those just finished downloading and installing... the taskbar has a pulsating synaptic button on the bottom of my screen, and I'm about to reboot.
I'm in constant terror that I'm going to render my system unable to boot by just looking at a dialog wrong in gnome. It is really poorly designed user interface guidelines for saving changes without letting people know what they changed and can't think to revert it.
A wonderfull thing about ubuntu is the sudu use. I feel much safer using ubuntu in a production envionment than any other distro.. (kubuntu that is) Sudo just feels right.. people don't need to know the root password..
However, I need to set the root password. It was not an install question!
aaron@chirp:~$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
Sorry.
aaron@chirp:~$ sudo passwd root
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
sudo: 2 incorrect password attempts
aaron@chirp:~$ sudo passwd root
Password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
aaron@chirp:~$
ok, I rebooted. .and I get the same "ubuntu cd detected" dialog stuck across my disply.
I'm also not fond of the default font in ubuntu. my gentoo and the kubuntu looked fine methininks? but this gnome one doesn't look good.
2.6.13 to .15 I hope the wifi got better!
alsas, still no error messages when the wlan0 fails.. it still says it's active, doesn't say why it didn't connect. REALLY FRUSTRAITING.
again.. every time I attempt to edit a setting or a preference, I'm scared that I'm going to have a cat walk across the keyboard and render my settings screwed up in a way that I can't get back to normal. (Gnome is not catresistant, kde and windows are, osx is not)
the expando dialogs show just a little bit too little information, downloads were failing because of a dns error and it didn't warn me untill I expando'd it. I had no idea there was a problem other than it said it was downloading 1 of 46.
just like I think the expando firefox save file dialog should have a place to type the path in.
I installed the flash player, the name makes it look like it'll play shockwave, but of course it wont.
I'm dying to see if sound works, esd did not look installed
(I heard sounds, but I'm wondering if it's limited to 1 device)
accelerated video drivers were not installed for my rage. I am very sad.
I saw no way to change it with the gnome tools. I'll have to edit it manually.
I'm very curious about the docking station undock functionality. it just plain didn't work in bsd.. i think it crashed it... I'm hoping to see something hopefull (hehe, not even hoping to find something that works) about the docking station.
My manual DNS entry went away byitself.. Are people starting to think that computers are smarter than people?! I added the dns server because the dhcp on actioncrap doesn't work!
bah!
it took me a second to find the search tool in synaptic. I hit the lower left one.. and I didn't see any place for me to type.. I guessed that the tool bar one would work and it did.
I was appauled by the battery meter not showing by default. Some people have crap laptops with NO BATTERY. I was scared my battery was gone, then I found that I could configure it to always show thte state of the battery. whew.
DNS errors all over the place, even though I re added the server.. I wanted to reboot without the docking station..
ok.. this text editor had the default action of "save" when I hit close. NO!!! that is not catproof.
I shutdown the machine.. that went plenty ok.
rebooted, plenty ok
now about the login screen where you can only see one field at a time.. i guess that is safer. but sometimes I might forget who I'm loging in as.. but.. that's the point! I should know who I'm logging in as! so, I'll take the one prompt login.. but I think it's a bit cumbersome, winXP style is still better.. convinience outweighs minimal security improvement.
The network settings dialog locked up when I told it wifi should be default. LAME.
I know i gave it the correct wep key and server id. the act light on my dlink dwl-g630 did not even turn on.
woah! I plugged my cable in with frustration.. and went to the network toolbar.. wlan0 showed up! but it was disconnected. I had told it a static IP address.. but it was showing signal strength! yay! recieve 3 packets, sent 6.. this looks promising to me. maybe I don't have my mac address entered into the router... (I've had this card for a while, and it should be in there...)
That was it! there should be an error message telling people what other kinds of common errors there could be. like mac-address I reset wlan0 to be dhcp instead of static.. the router was still restarting.. still no error message or usefull status information...
the activity now says that wlan0 is still disconnected, but recieved 248 packets, sent 237 packets.. and signal strength is moving like it's really reading something.
The ip address is still being read as the static one that I gave it earlier. that might not work, it might not be in range. .but I switched it to be dhcp! I also dissabled the eth1 interface.
network settings dialog.
I gave up on the wifi, and told my default gatway to be eth1.
well, the window closed by itself when i clicked ok!?! what!
I needed to configure DNS!
I reopened it and clicked accidentallyk on search domains and typed in the ip address of the dns server.. Oops.
I deleted it and tried to do the same with the correct spot to put it.. it didn't go in! I had to click add.
Ubuntu and gnome do a good job of putting the most often needed stuff in accessible places... but the reality is that most people also need a little bit of the non-common stuff too.
Hopefully that gets ironed out soon.
I just installed Xchat.
my request for help with the touchpad .. just turned into me making a graphic joke. I found the qt-synaptics program on my own.. just how to run it.
qsnyaptics looks promising.. it just didn't work out of the box. I have to enable X shared memory config
I've read that changing the pointer device from imps2 to ps/2 helps with the evil pointer stick movement. Search for trackpoint. I never found tracpoint config stuff. I just played with echoing stuff to /proc something or other.
The D-link DWL-G630 network was a pain in the arse. it turns out that in addition to updating to the new kernel, all that I needed to do was move a symlink to point to a different firmware revision. acx100.sourceforge.net was the right site to go to for that.
I still don't have the "restrictedformats" working properly, but I haven't restarted X yet.
So far, this is the most functionality I have ever gotten out of a linux distro. Everything looks like it will work. It's just that gnome is not a viable desktop enviornment. I'm going to migrate to KDE next.
