Man, my Adventures in Linux series has had a slow start... I've actually had half this one completed in a file for months and never got round to finishing and posting. Until now! Of course, now I have a million other posts to do with stuff like printers, video and upgrading to 9.10. So expect those to be done by 2015... at which point I'll need a break to go to cafe 80's on my hoverboard!
So, (way back in the distant days of last June) I’m ready to try Linux. I visited the Ubuntu site and downloaded an installation disc image, burnt it to CD and powered off. I restart the machine, boot from the CD and prepare to begin the installation. Ubuntu will install itself onto a seperate partition to Windows.
Oh, wait, I don’t have partitions. In fact, I don’t know a lot about partitions. Or setting them up. Maybe there’s something in the installer that will do it for me?
Hurrah! There seems to be! Brilliant. So what are my choices?
I can either install over windows, but that would defeat the dual boot option. Or it will set itself up on a new partition. Lets go with that!
Right, I want my Linux partition to be large as I hopefully will end up using it more than windows. So I set the utility to half the disc, 100GB for Windows, 100GB for Linux. It warns me it’ll take a while, which seems fair to me. However, after about 45 minutes, it all crashes. Oh.
I try it again, this time I allow a smaller partition for testing purposes. Just 20GB for Linux. So it goes through fine and Ubuntu installs! Hurrah! Right time to see what works.
Hm, the screen resolutions not great, and I don’t seem to have option to change it to anything else. Interesting. So I better figure out how to install my wireless adaptor so I can search the web for a solution. Oh, it’s installed. Log into my wi-fi. Hurrah! That was easy!
I do a search on my monitor type in Ubuntu. It's an HP w1907v. My search quickly turns up this blog which has someone with a similar situation. Right, so apparently I have to modify my xorg.conf file. Ok, how do I get to that?
Turns out I need to use the terminal. So I start that and I quickly find out about the 'sudo' command, which I need to prefix my commands with. Ok, so 'sudo gedit/etc/X11/xorg.conf' seems to work. Asks for my password and then opens up the xorg.conf in a text editor. Ok, so far so simple. I make the advised changes, which to my relief are really straightforward. You make a new subsection in the file and instruct it with the resolutions. I do this, save the file and restart the machine.
On restart the screen resets itself a few times, and is still at a low res setting. I go to check what I've done, as I do this I get a window pop up asking if I want to activate some drivers for my graphics card. I do. I restart and now my screens fine! Hurrah!
For some time I assumed this was due to the xorg.conf alterations, but recently it occured to me that maybe it was activating the nvidia drivers for my graphics. I'm thinking the latter as on re-installs, I haven't modified the xorg.conf and once the drivers are on the screen resolution is fine.
Next time: Getting my IPod working
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