Ubuntu On A Second Computer

ubuntu1With Ubuntu being as stable as it’s been for me, I decided to install it as a backup OS on another computer here.  This one is a Biostar iDeq 200N from a few years ago.  The challenge this time was to install to this computer, which has an integrated video chip on the motherboard (the nVidia GeForce4 MX), along with wireless networking.  Not only that, the CD-R/DVD drive has been acting up, so I had no way to install it from my LiveCD.  Given my issues, I’m glad I was able to boot into Windows XP for troubleshooting!

I’ve had frustrating OS installations in the past, and this was no exception.  First of all, when you install from LiveCD, you usually have three choices, including one to install Ubuntu inside Windows.  As you can boot and install from a USB memory stick, I located a 1GB stick and copied the ISO image to it.  But, that third menu choice was nowhere to be found.  My backup plan: copy the ISO image to the computer in XP, then mount it with MagicISO.  Well, that worked, and the basic installation went much quicker than with a CD.

First login, I notice the screen is very large.  The resolution was set to 800×600.  And that began a two-day quest to get the proper video drivers installed…and see if they would even work.  I fortunately found a set of drivers on the nVidia site, downloaded the .run file, and attempted a few times to run it.  The installer kept complaining about various things, and after a few tries, it seemed to abort in the middle of the process.

Reboot…and, now I’m at 640×480.  Finally, I read more into the installation documentation, and ran a utility, hoping it would finish the installation by editing the xorg.conf file, which it did. That seemed to work.  The visual effects didn’t want to work, though, and I lost my title bars.  I found via Google that I could add a few lines to the “Device” section in xorg.conf, and sure enough, it worked.

My only issues now?  At the login screen, I was getting a monitor frequency that was out of range, and I couldn’t see the login.  Just an error message on the monitor.  Once logged in, though, the resolution shifted, and I could see the desktop.  The other issue: even though I save my current resolution using nVidia’s utility, in the xorg.conf file, I still have to manually change the resolution each time I log in.  Once I get that figured out, I’ll try to retrace the steps I used to get the video working, and post it here.

The wireless networking card would not work out of the box.  But, it is easy to make it work IF you have all of the information you need for the card, and the network.  As I use WEP encryption (so the Nintendo DSes will work), I needed that key, the MAC address of the wireless card, IP addresses, etc.  Once everything (and I mean everything) was entered, the card connected to the network with no problem.

I still need to fix file sharing with my “work” WinXP computer (which involves opening some ports for Samba), install Wine, and do a few other things.  But happily, it’s pretty much up and running, and the mouse and keyboard response on this computer is better than on our Dell.  Then again, I’m using Opera 10.00 beta right now, which seems snappier than Firefox.  (I’ll report on the new Opera in another installment.)

One experiment I want to try on this computer is to get all of the browser plugins for Firefox (or Opera), and see if it will run all of the kids’ online games.  If so, I may start having them use Ubuntu over WinXP, just to see if they acclimate to it. But how about Rudy?  Well, I’m getting used to Ubuntu, and can find my way around fairly well right now.  I still need to use XP on my main work computer, due to the dozens of applications that run in XP, and may never run using Wine.