My Ubuntu Lucid Beta play

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 Technical Overview | Ubuntu

I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 (Lucid) on my Toshiba Portege (ie. old, old laptop) because XP was running a tad sluggish. So far, I'm loving it! Yes, they've put the window buttons on the wrong - I mean the Apple (left) - side, but then I've been using a Macbook Pro as my home laptop for a while.

User experience:

It's fast - snappy even - which is saying something considering that the laptop it's on might be best described as antique. The new interface/themes which they have put under the banner of 'light' - Ambiance and Radiance. I currently use Ambience - and I have to admit, it's a lot nicer to look at compared to the 'woodsiness' of the old Ubuntu colours.

Installing:

The install (I used the Wubi installer which installs as a separate virtual disk so there's no risk) was easy and relatively pain free - didn't even have to answer much in the way of questions.

Problems?

I say relatively because the one issue I had with the install was that Ubuntu didn't recognise my ancient video card - a Trident CyberXP - and the default screen size was 800x600... positively tiny. Not much of an issue if I could easily fix it up. Of course, I couldn't, at least not easily. This led to a couple of hours of searching forums until I found that I needed to create (because Ubuntu doesn't use it by default) a blank xorg.conf file with some basic settings (below). Once that was done, restarted the x-server and voila! Had a 1024x768 resolution again! And then, after heaps of searching, I find out that Trident CyberXP cards can't do 3D under X-Server (though it can in XP). Just have to suck that up and move on.

In terminal, run sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf , enter your password when asked, and then add the following:



Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection


Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection 

My Customisations:

On the other hand, I've customised it a bit - added a dock because I like the icons - added Google Desktop and Chrome (because I'm a fan boy) which was all really easy using the Ubuntu Software Center. Screen:

Ubuntu Software Center

This is a really great addition to the distro. It makes finding the software out of all the mess which is Linux Packages simple. Nice. It's basically an application for easily finding, installing and removing programs. It's a 1-click type of interface and categorises the types of applications you might be looking for. Screens below.

Final Comments:

If you're looking for an alternative to Windows, Ubuntu 10.04 is already a great OS, with some final tweaking (I guess) before the final. Worth a play at least using the Live CD.