jamescuarterodotcom

i have an old dell latitude C800 laptop that chugs along with XP installed. it’s serviceable but (my assistant) james has been suggesting that i try out ubuntu, aka “linux for human beings”. it installed with mixed results:

i recommend downloading the text-based installer vs. the live cd, especially if you’re going to try and install this on an older system. the live cd just runs way too slow to be practical and the text-based installer isn’t hard to follow.

- after installing, my screen came up with a weird tearing effect that split my display into three vertical slices (first third of screen, third third of screen, third third of screen). unfortunately you can’t even see the login screen with this issue. i took a wild guess and just typed username, enter, password and got in. couldn’t find anything in the system about it (a situation made even worse considering that it was my first time trying to use this version of linux) but i did find a two part fix. part one was to hit Fn+F7 to change the monitor resolution to 1:1 mode. it fixes the tearing but the display is tiny. part two was to edit xorg.conf, a permanent solution that i found on ubuntuforums.org.:

there was already a section "monitor" in my xorg.conf so i just added the horizsync, vertrefresh and option lines. you can leave out vendorname & modelname.

- a bigger issue is getting my linksys WUSB54GS to work properly. i tried installing & uninstalling different versions of ndiswrapper and the XP drivers with no results. so far, i’ve had the best luck following this howto but ndiswrapper -l doesn’t show me the device (it only shows the device is installed), and dmesg says that a USB device is present. one thing that was odd during installation, it was asking me for system files named usb8023k.sys & rndismpk.sys instead of usb8023.sys & rndismp.sys. i was tired and impatient so i just renamed what was in the driver directory but i’m guessing that i must have copied over the incorrect system files.

the above issues notwithstanding, i’m really pleased with what ubuntu delivers. if you have an extra system lying around i strongly recommend giving it a shot.