Using Ubuntu 9.04

Firstly, I want to say that I am no expert in computer and definitely a noob in Linux and Windows.
This post will be about Ubuntu.

Ok, I had used Ubuntu 8.04 before, dual booting with windows using Wubi. It was a good experience, introducing me to GNU/Linux Operating System. However, I want to really try dual boot so I uninstall Ubuntu 8.04. I partition my hard disk. This is really troublesome since DELL has already partition my hard disk into four parts, C: Drive containing Vista, D Drive for recovery, Media Direct and EISA configuration. Luckily, Ubuntu can be installed on extended partition logical drive. I shrink my C Drive to give some 7 GB for Ubuntu. Then I downloaded the Ubuntu Desktop 64bit iso and burn in onto a cd. I booted the cd, tried out the live cd first to make sure my hardware is recognised and installed it.

After installing, I tried out the operating system. Looks fine, but not as blazing fast as some of the beta testers said. Nonetheless, it was very responsive. Then I tried to enable desktop effect. To my dismay, it said that desktop effect cannot be enabled. After running compiz-check, I found that my graphic card is blacklisted. This is really shocking to me since I used my laptop to run Ubuntu 8.04 without any problem. After some googling, I found the reasons of blacklisting but i cannot make head or tail of it so I decided to bypass the blacklist. I really missed the graphic effects. Nevetheless, I also feared the consequences so I just enabled those effects that are really useful like desktop zoom.

Then, I tried to connect to internet. As I was back in my house in Kampar, I used the command 'sudo pppoeconf' to configure my connection. I did this before many times so I was pretty confident it will work. Who knows? After rebooting my computer, I need to reconfigure it again. After googling agian, I found that someone had reported this as a bug but no response yet. I found another alternative solution which is enabling the network manager. I tried, and it worked, for now. I hoped that the wireless and DHCP will work when I am back in NTU.

Another thing worth mentioning is booting to Media Direct wont work anymore. I think this is because the computer is using grub boot loader now. But I didn't use Media Direct a lot so this is not a big problem for me.

Despite all the problems I face, this is still a pretty decent OS. I recommend anyone who want to know more about Linux to try Ubuntu.