Windows Out, Ubuntu Linux 8.10 in

My benchmark for a risky Linux installation is my Toshiba Tecra A4.

It was new to me 4 years ago, a gift from friends at Security & Property Management Services (SP&MS) in Sydney when I left the University of Sydney.

It is a beautiful laptop to use, with a big screen, and the usual compliment of USB ports, PCMCIA slots, WiFi, Modem, External monitor, etc.

Unfortunately, it has a less than standard implementation of most of these devices. With Windows XP, the drivers make everything work fine. Unfortunately it is a different story with Linux.

I am keen to make Linux my standard desktop, but I need a computer that WORKS, and Linux, on this machine has,largely, not worked.

I fell in love with PCLinuxOS 0.92 because it made much of the system work, but PCLinuxOS 2007 broke much of that. Sabayon Lunux 3.4 made most of the hardware work, but the need to compile almost everything from source, taking hours, and small but annoying issues made me abandon that. I tried many Linux distributions, to no avail.

Something That Works

Finally, Ubuntu 8.10 made all of the hardware work. I got WiFi, Ethernet, ACPI power management, dual screen, Skype audio, USB, Virtualbox, Wine, basically everything working on my long time dual boot system. I decided to install Ubuntu 8.10 as the only system.

As usual with Linux, not everything went to plan.

My first install, from midnight to 2am went well, and I left the computer updating as I went to bed. I made a typo trying to install Windows fonts, and found a computer almost unusable because many prompts, web pages and Google documents now showed space instead of text. I started again.

I re-installed Ubuntu. I installed Wine, Audacity, VLC, VNC, Firefox 3.0.7, Thunderbird, Virtualbox, Kompozer, LibDVDCSS, Win32Codecs, Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 using the script at tatanka.com and other bits and pieces.

But Then, The Other Shoe Dropped

The install looked perfect. I updated everything, destroying what remained of my monthy download limit from Netspace.net.au. Not a problem, they shape the network speed until the next pay period rather than charging outrageous excess fees like Testra.

Then the other shoe dropped... No audio. I think the mistake I made was installing with the headphones and mic plugged in. Sound out did not work, recording caused crashes, Skype would not work, generally a very annoying situation. After hours of installing and copying I was not disposed to try another installation. I booted the live CD and copied the settings over. Currently everything works except recording and Skype Audio functions, and I believe this is just a configuration issue.

I have copied Virtualbox VM's and other software across and installed. The Watchtower Library 2008 installed perfectly under Wine and Winetricks from www.kegel.com.

I have a script to mount two shares from the server and printers working.

I am pleased, and I am sure the audio will be working soon. It shows that the best Linux install still has some annoyances, but is getting much better.

The entire install, other than partitioning, only involves about 4 questions and is fast, about 20 minutes beginning to end including almost every piece of software the average user will ever need. Windows installs can take hours, have many questions and do NOT include any useful software. Installing software can take the best part of another day, and require constant user interaction.

Linux does not (yet) rule, but will soon, probably in the next two to five years. More on other issues and fixes later! - Phil S.

(images by (1) Andre Mason (2) Kordite (3) Gonzalo Valenzuela)