Switching to Ubuntu – for good this time.

Today I made the switch, again! I have been using windows XP pro for more than 5 years, and I can say with confidence, that I know how to use it. I know where all the buttons and settings are, I even know how to play with my boot.ini file to manipulate my dual boot settings. I consider myself a windows user, that is, until today.

I have just finished tweaking the last setting on my almost 3 year old Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop. When I got this laptop, it came supplied with Microsoft's Windows Media Center edition pre-installed. It also came with about a hundred other applications that Dell decided I needed to have. Most of it was junk, and only served to frustrate me as I tried to navigate through the myriad of clicks and pop-up windows.

At that time I heard of a new Linux distribution that everyone was talking about - Ubuntu, Linux for Human Beings. The latest release then was Dapper Drake 6.06 and I had just received my FREE CD from Canonical, the commercial sponsor for this distro. Ubuntu was not a brand new Linux distribution at that time, it had been around for a while and was now starting to really gain a foot-hold with adventurous window users like myself.

For the most part, everything went fine. I went through the install and nuked windows while I was at it. It's not hard to re-install an OS and I was not really happy with my pre-install anyway, so it was worth the risk. I played with dapper for about a week. During that time I had to drop to the command line more than a few times, which was actually painless. But in the end I just didn't get what I wanted out of Ubuntu. I switched back to Windows.

With the next release of Ubuntu, Edgy Eft, I gave it another try. This time, it didn't go so well. No wireless, and my video card was not working at all. I have an ATI x1400 video card, and at first it would only boot to the command line. I played with the settings, and scrolled through the forums to solve these problems. But I still wasn't happy, and I switched back to Windows again.

This back and forth has gone on since then. With every new release of Ubuntu, comes another go-at-it. But today is finally the day I switch for good!

I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, and it is amazing! There were still a few issues, but a quick Google fixed everything. This is how I did it...

First things first, my hardware:

Dell Inspiron 9400 (Core Duo T2600 processor 2.16GHz) Centrino
1.5GB RAM
Intel 945PM Motherboard chipset
100GB hard drive
SD Card Reader
DVD DL writer
6 x USB2.0
Firewire,
RJ45 (LAN) 10/100
RJ11 (modem) 56K data/fax
VGA, DVI, S-Video output
Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Wifi
17 inch TFT wide-screen display
ATI Radeon Mobility X1400
1920 x 1200 Max resolution

Installing Ubuntu

Download and boot from live Ubuntu 9.04 CD. Note: Ubuntu includes the Wubi installer, which actually lets you install Ubuntu from within your windows environment. I have used it in the past, and it works great. In this case, I have decided to get rid of windows all-together.

Get Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Once the Ubuntu desktop is running, double click on the install icon. There are a series of screen that for the most part you can click through. You will want to pay attention to the partitioning screen. This is where you must decide how you want to split up your hard drive. I've heard that it is a good idea to setup a separate partition for the /home folder, that way if you re-install Ubuntu again later you won't loose any user files.

Losing the Brown and Orange

When the install is complete, you will be given the option to remove the CD and reboot. When the computer reboots, you will be looking at a fresh install of Ubuntu. Ya, I know, brown... yuck!

For some reason, Ubuntu's designers, some time ago, decided that brown was their colour. I don't know why they choose brown, which is arguably the most unexciting, plain, boring colour in the entire colour pallet, but they did.

Fortunately, if you are as un-enamored with the shades of brown and orange of Ubuntu's default Gnome (the default window manager) interface as I am, it is very easy to customize. The appearance of your GUI can be changed from the System → Preferences → Appearance menu. This is a good start, but for me I've found something better!

I have always loved the look and feel of Apple's OS X operating system. It just looks so pretty. For me, I'm all about the eye candy. I want my computer to look beautiful. And OS X looks simple stunning. While a windows user, I would employ an OS transformation package to make my boring XP desktop look like OS X. It was an application called “FlyaKiteOSX”. Strange name for an app, but it worked great! So I set out to find the same thing for my new brown Ubuntu system. After several Google searches, I found my answer.

Mac4Lin is a sourceforge project that let's you completely change the look of Gnome, to look like OS X. And with the addition of the Avant-Window-Navigator, and removing the lower panel, I have to say I am impressed with the look of this OS X clone.

Get Mac4Lin here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mac4lin

Fixing Wifi problem

With this particular laptop I did have a problem getting the wireless to work correctly. The network manager did not display any wireless networks, and I was not sure that my network card was even detected. I ran the following command in terminal;

lspci -v | less

This displayed all the devices in my computer, including my wireless card. So I knew that Ubuntu knew it was there. After another Google search I found a suggestion to remove the existing Network manager and install a new one.

I ran the following commands in terminal.

sudo apt-get install wicd

This placed the Wicd App under Applications → Internet menu. From there I could see my wireless network and connect to it.

The finished product

You can see from my screen shot that Mac4Lin really does a nice job making the Gnome desktop look like OS X. It also change the minimize, maximize, and close buttons to the left side of open windows. I've turned on the extra visual effects as well. So I have wobbly windows. I've also setup an effect very much like OS X's expose by going into the Window Management --> Scale in the CompizConfig Settings Manager and making sure it was enabled. I set mine to trigger when my mouse hits the top right corner of my screen.

I'm very happy with my Linux system right now. It was easy to get everything setup and working, thanks to Google. If you have any questions, let me know.