Success story!!

[binary-boy]

There have been a number times in the past where I've tried to move over to Linux at home. It feels like I've tried every distro under the sun but there's always been some little thing that proved to be a sticking point, whether it was hardware or just some obscure proprietary file format.

When I had a look at Debian a while ago, I was impressed with what I saw - RedHat and SuSE had become too commercial and bloated but Debian seemed to be keeping it pure and "free". The only issue was with that most of the software was a bit behind the times... I wanted to use Firefox, not any previous Mozilla offerings.

Then I found Ubuntu and with everything I read about it, I became more impressed. I'm a Gnome man too so everything seemed to fit and last week I decided to take the plunge.

So, feeling reckless one evening, I backed up all the data from my laptop onto my iRiver and had great pleasure in eradicating that dirty old NTFS partition and replacing it with a fresh and fragrant Ubuntu install.

And it couldn't have been easier. Having supported PCs for quite some time now, I expected a bit of a battle with a laptop but I'm glad to admit that I was totally wrong! The install was as smooth as I could have hoped for, my graphics and sound cards were picked up without issue and even my iRiver (which I'd left plugged in) greeted me from the new brown desktop!

Thinking that this was too easy, I tried my Konica digital camera, which also just popped up without a care in the world! The only issue I did have was with my wireless PCMCIA card (a Linksys WPC54GS) - which despite much forum-hunting and ndiswrapper-fiddling, was recognised but never actually managed to send or receive a single byte of data.

Feeling reckless, I decided to splash out on a new card, so one quick e-shopping spree later, I found a D-Link DWL-650+ which seemed to be well supported according to the wiki. And so it was. I plugged in, switched on and was on the net again without a single dialog box! Needless to say, my laptop has seen the last of Windows!

[weekend warrior]

That's great to hear binary-boy. Welcome to ubuntu! :) ubuntu guide (http://ubuntuguide.org/) is a great resource if you haven't been there yet.

[binary-boy]

Cheers, I'll have a browse!

[void_false]

Congrats mate! And welcom! (Well, I´m a noob by myself.) \\:D/

[poofyhairguy]

Feeling reckless, I decided to splash out on a new card, so one quick e-shopping spree later, I found a D-Link DWL-650+ which seemed to be well supported according to the wiki.

Welcome.

Thats a good way to fix problems. Brute force. I like it!

[binary-boy]

Well that just sums up my reckless personality!! Plus I must have racked up hundreds of hours trying to get different bits of hardware working throughout my life that I couldn't be bothered with another battle!! :)

[Psquared]

Welcome to Ubuntu. I'm an FC refugee myself. I started with Linux last summer just as something to tinker with, but I soon found it was a true alternative to W$.

My experience with Ubuntu was pretty much like yours. Everything worked out of the box. That was not true with FC2. FC3 and FC4 may be different, but I like Hoary so well I just have no desire right now to check out another distro.

BTW, even though you are a Gnome man, check out Xfce just for fun. I think you will like it.

[SparkyDawg]

That's great! I just recently took the plunge into Ubuntu about a month ago. Viva l'Ubuntu. \\:D/

[garnertr]

Greetings,

My name is Tom Garner and I've been 'attempting' to install any flavor of Linux on my alienware laptop, all w/ failure except for two distro's Ubuntu and Fedora.

My biggest issue w/ Fedora is the lack of installed software for my DVD Writer. I've installed numerous video packages and 1/2 of them never worked or something flaky happened. Which is funny b/c I could never get the same item to work twice on this Alienware Laptop...

So, here I am now w/ Ubuntu (ver 5.04), and so far, I'm enjoying what I see, took two times to install; I was using E-mule and the swarm was too much for Ubuntu to install, so I had to kill some time while the swarm died off... anyway, just wanted to throw in my "I have installed Ubuntu" statement.

I have the software installed, rebooted a couple of times just to test items up and everything is working ok at this time, in fact, it looks like I just might have found my DISTRO. We shall see, I'm still testing her out and I'll report back later...

anyway, just wanted to say hello, i've signed up for the forum's and for the e-mail list (I love e-mail) and I'll be reading up... thanks for the install.

Linux to install on my laptop is and was VERY PAINFUL and so far Ubuntu is shining through!

v/r
TOM

[NightwishFreak]

Greetings,

My name is Tom Garner and I've been 'attempting' to install any flavor of Linux on my alienware laptop, all w/ failure except for two distro's Ubuntu and Fedora.

My biggest issue w/ Fedora is the lack of installed software for my DVD Writer. I've installed numerous video packages and 1/2 of them never worked or something flaky happened. Which is funny b/c I could never get the same item to work twice on this Alienware Laptop...

So, here I am now w/ Ubuntu (ver 5.04), and so far, I'm enjoying what I see, took two times to install; I was using E-mule and the swarm was too much for Ubuntu to install, so I had to kill some time while the swarm died off... anyway, just wanted to throw in my "I have installed Ubuntu" statement.

I have the software installed, rebooted a couple of times just to test items up and everything is working ok at this time, in fact, it looks like I just might have found my DISTRO. We shall see, I'm still testing her out and I'll report back later...

anyway, just wanted to say hello, i've signed up for the forum's and for the e-mail list (I love e-mail) and I'll be reading up... thanks for the install.

Linux to install on my laptop is and was VERY PAINFUL and so far Ubuntu is shining through!

v/r
TOM
Hoary is my First Ubuntu experience as well, and so far, i have found that it is my favorite distro. i cant even think of going back to mandrake or fedora core. Ubuntu, you've made a fan out of me! :D:D

[BAshworth]

What can I say, I have become very fond of this little brown box. I tried Mandrake, Suse, Slackware (for about 10 minutes after the install, until this n00b here broke it), and Fedora Core 1,2,3.

All left me wanting something more. Something just wasn't a good fit.

Ubuntu has now become the only distro that I'll stick with, and if I can get my wife to get over her disgust with Gaim (purely an aesthetic thing, she's been using Trillian Pro for about 3 years now) then this will also be the first distro that has been complete enough to allow me to ditch Windows on my home pc.

Seriously though, tight distro, excellent forum support, and the Ubuntu guide is by far the best piece of linux distro documentation that I have ever read.

[Nu-Buntu]

Hi Binary Boy!

Yep, Ubuntu is great. You bought the same wireless LAN card that I have, which by the way, did NOT work in Mandrake, my former favorite distro. I have toyed on and off with Linux for a few years, and am finally spending most of my time in Linux. I only keep Windows around for Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and SimCity 4. Other than that, it's all Linux at home. Still have to use XP at work.

I also much prefer apt-get over RPMs. WOW! Goodbye dependency hell!