Tech Talk (09/06)
Fun and Games with Ubuntu
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
As I said in my
last article in the Monitor, this one would be about my experience
getting Ubuntu up and running on my new Asus laptop. I had been running
version 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on my old laptop. Since it seemed to be quite
successful I decided to use it for the initial install on my new
computer. Perhaps I should point out that Canonical, producers of Ubuntu,
turn out a new version of their OS every six months! Compare that with
Microsoft and its multi-year production cycle. Hardy Heron is a
long-term support version with guaranteed support until April 2011.
That’s three years from its original release date. In the meantime,
version 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) was released in October 2008 and will be
supported for two years. However, the latest version is 9.04 (Jaunty
Jackalope) which was released on April 23, 2009. Since I was starting my
installation the end of March, I decided that installing Hardy Heron
should be fine. A bad guess, as it turned out.
The process of installing any Ubuntu version is very
similar to installing Windows. The exception being when you want it to
share the hard drive as a dual boot system with Windows. Then a few
extra steps are needed. The first step is to download Ubuntu. This will
be an ISO image file. That is a compressed file in the format specified
by the International Organization of Standardization. It is almost 700
megabytes in size, so it’s best to have a broadband connection for your
download. (If you don’t have a broadband connection, you can request a
free CD from Canonical and have it mailed to you.) Once the file is on
your hard drive it has to be decompressed and the image burned to a CD.
Most commercial software can burn the ISO file image to a CD. I used
CDburnerXP, a free Windows program, to burn the image to the CD. That
gave me a bootable CD that either runs Ubuntu from the CD or it can
install the OS to a hard drive as a dual boot with Windows/Vista or it
can take over an entire drive. If you have two hard drives in your
computer you could have Ubuntu take over the second drive and dual boot
with Windows. There is also an option to install it as Windows software
allowing you to run it within Windows or Vista. I haven’t tried this
option. It just seems to me that running Ubuntu under Windows you would
lose many of the benefits of Ubuntu, especially its stability.
The hard drive on my laptop was already partitioned into
C and D drives and formatted with NTSF. (That’s the file system XP and
Vista use.) My intention was to install Ubuntu on the second partition
as a dual boot system. As I found out, if your hard drive is not already
partitioned, don’t change it. Let the Ubuntu installation do it for you.
That is much easier. I ended up doing a more manual preparation of the
hard drive which requires a better understanding of how Linux systems
need to be set up. You can find the info on the Ubuntu site, but why
make things any harder than you have to! Once the drive was set, Ubuntu
spent some time installing all the files needed for my hardware and the
additional software. If you are interested in the details of installing
Ubuntu, check out this web site:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall. They have a
detailed graphical presentation (screen shots) of the steps involved.
During the installation Ubuntu asks for a user name and
a password. I used my initials and a fairly secure password. I recommend
that you do not shirk this password setup. It will help to protect your
computer from problems caused by outside entry of worms or trojans
through the Internet connection. The password has to be entered for
software installation or any other administrative function. So using a
strong password is advisable.
Now I was ready to do my part of the setup. I had to
program my new USB modem so I could connect to the Internet. That
requires some knowledge of the command line functions in Terminal. I had
done this on my previous computer but some of the information for the
new modem was different, so I had to find that first. It took a little
hunting, but everything worked once I had the commands right. The other
thing I had noticed was that the sound didn’t seem to working and the
video resolution was not right. So I investigated both of these through
the Ubuntu forums. That turned out to be far more difficult than I
imagined it would be. My laptop has an NVidia graphics card. It turned
out Hardy Heron did not have the drivers for my card, it was too new.
The drivers available on the NVidia web site also didn’t seem to help.
My sound card was part of the Intel chip and the drivers just didn’t
seem to want to work with it no matter what I did. Then I also found
that Hardy Heron didn’t recognize my eSATA port. After doing more
research in the Ubuntu Community forum, it seemed like I needed to try
the Intrepid Ibex upgrade or maybe I would have to wait for Jaunty
Jackalope to solve my problems.
So, next I downloaded the ISO file for Intrepid Ibex and
burned it to a CD. That gave me a bootable CD that I could use to test
how well this version would work with my laptop. When I booted from the
CD, although it took some time to load, the video setup was perfect. It
recognized my NVidia card and gave me the 1200x800 resolution that I had
with Vista. It also had the expected 3D effects and other graphics
features that my card supports. Next I tried the sound and had no
problem playing some WAV files I had stored in the Linux partition.
Better and better. With previous live CDs I had never been able to
connect to the Internet with my old wireless modem. But I clicked on the
wireless Icon on the top bar of the window and it gave me a list of
several local wireless networks and it also had a choice of a wireless
broadband connection. So I tried the broadband connection and within
seconds I was connected through my Verizon wireless modem to the
Internet. This live CD also recognized my printer, but didn’t have the
drivers to print to it. However, everything was working much better with
Intrepid Ibex than it had with Hardy Heron. So, I decided my next step
was to upgrade to Intrepid Ibex.
If I had done an install from the live CD, it would have
wiped out many of my files that had been created using Hardy Heron. It
wouldn’t affect my documents as they were backed up to my external
drive. However, there were other files that I had created to help with
hardware compatibility and additional software I had downloaded that
would have disappeared. So I went back to the Ubuntu site to find out
how to upgrade, rather than install Intrepid Ibex from the CD. It turned
out to be much easier than I had anticipated. In the
System-Administration menu there is a selection for "Software Sources".
This contains the information on locations where the Synaptic Package
Manager will find additional software. On the Update tab you will find
the options for operating system updates. Mine had been set for "long
term support" updates only. I changed that to "standard updates",
clicked OK and exited the window. The package manager told me that there
was an update available, version 8.10, and it could be downloaded. It
also gave me an estimate of the amount of time it would take with my
connection. The estimate was two hours, but it ended up taking 30
minutes less. Once the download was complete, the upgrade installation
started. About an hour later, the screen announced that the system
needed to be rebooted. Since I still have the live CD for Intrepid Ibex,
I automatically have a backup CD, should problems occur down the road.
After the upgrade, the first thing I noticed was that
the dual-boot menu reflected the new version of Ubuntu. Next, it took
far less time for the user name/password request to show up. Then, very
quickly, on the desktop there was the Intrepid Ibex. I will be replacing
the Ibex graphic with my own wallpaper, another very easy task. But, I
had noted there was no sound. So I clicked on the sound icon and found
that the sound had been muted! Once I corrected that, it worked
perfectly. First problem solved! Then I clicked on the wireless icon and
there was the broadband choice. I selected it and within seconds I was
on the Internet. Second problem solved. However, the screen resolution
didn’t seem right. With some hunting I found an NVIDIA X Server settings
on the System – Administration menu. That allowed me to change the
resolution to 1200x800. Third problem solved.
Next, I realized I hadn’t tried to use the eSATA port
when I was running the live CD, so now was the time to try that out. I
plugged in my external drive and all three partitions appeared in the
Places menu. I clicked on the main partition and all the files come up
in the file manager (nautilus) window. So, everything that I had
problems with under Hardy Heron seemed to be working with Intrepid Ibex.
And, the improvement came without having to do anything with the Ubuntu
command line. In my mind, that makes Ubuntu much more ready for the
average user. With an easy install, either single or dual boot, a great
selection of software that is easily available through a graphics
interface, it is becoming something that anyone can try and, probably,
enjoy using. As for crashes, in more than 10 years of using various
flavors of Linux, I have yet to have one crash. I certainly can’t say
that for Windows over the same period of time.
My next step will be to download a live CD of the latest
version, Jaunty Jackalope, after the initial surge of business slows
down. I really don’t want to be trying to download almost 700 MB of data
at a time when thousands of other Ubuntu enthusiasts are trying to do
the same thing. By trying out the live CD version I can be sure that it
will work with my hardware before doing an upgrade. I have already seen
the problems that occur when you have to remove a newer version and
revert back to a previous version. That is something I really don’t want
to do again. Windows has similar problems as those who replaced Vista
with XP found out. I am also considering downloading the 64 bit version
of Ubuntu. I am very curious as to how it would work with my hardware.
You may be sure I will share the results with you.
So for all of you Windows/Vista users who are curious
about Ubuntu, the easiest way to test it on your hardware is to download
a live CD. From the home page,
www.ubuntu.com, you can download either the latest version, or
an earlier version. I would recommend that you not go back any further
than version 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. You really should give it a try and
download the CD, especially if you have a broadband connection. You’ll
also find the Ubuntu has a large selection of games that come with the
installation. So, have some fun and games with Ubuntu!
*Dr. Lewis is a former university and medical school professor of physiology. He has been working with personal computers for over thirty years, developing software and assembling systems. He can be reached at bwsail at yahoo.com.
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Copyright 2009. This article is from the
June 2009 issue of the
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