Recession Tech: Ubuntu 10.04 install

Hey all!

Continuation of the Ubuntu investigation as part of my recession tech phase.

I wanted to install Ubuntu 10.04 on my Dell E1505 laptop. The last time I wanted to try Ubuntu on this laptop, I had problems with getting the Dell wireless minicard working (Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard). Using the Ubuntu Live CD for 10.04, it looked like this was going to work better.

So Ubuntu released 10.04 a couple of weeks ago. I have waited for a few weeks to let things shake out and reduce some of the traffic on the server.

I plugged my laptop into my network using a cable - I wanted to make sure that I if anything went wrong, I could download what I needed without having to worry about drivers for the wireless card. Then I went to the Ubuntu site.

I downloaded the 10.04 .iso file and burned it to a CD.

I popped it into my CD drive and made sure my BIOS was set to boot off the CDROM drive, and I hit reboot.

After a few seconds of churning on the CD drive, I was presented with a few options from which I selected the default and then let it rip.

After a few minutes, I got to a Ubuntu screen and miracle of miracles, it found the Dell wireless card and offered to install the Broadcom wireless drivers and I was online!

This version of Ubuntu is sweet. It comes with Open Office, Firefox and a number of other standard application installed. I popped my SD card into the slot on the side of my computer, and it found the card instantly.

I had it check for updated drivers and it even installed some drivers for the ATI video chipset on the machine.

I launched my iGoogle applications and I was instantly checking my Gmail, visiting my usual sites and even watching a few videos on the Hulu website.

Next post will tell what I like, what I don't like and what is missing.