Transition to Ubuntu on the new laptop
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on March 1st, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
I decided to bite the bullet and install Ubuntu (the latest version, 8.10, Intrepid Ibex) on the laptop and figure out the wireless after. I briefly thought about setting up a dual boot (Vista can resize its own partition and give you space to install Ubuntu), until I saw exactly how much space minimum Vista needed - well over 40 gigs! I only have a 160 gig HD and I'm just not willing to give up such a big chunk of my HD.
That was my second shock as to what a hog Vista is. Besides the fact that a lot of things seemed slow on my brand new and comparatively powerful laptop while running Vista, there's the fact that my system recovery discs would have required 14 CDs! I used 2 DVDs, but still. Ubuntu fits on one CD, and that includes complete internet and productivity software.
Intrepid has extremely good support for the HP G50. Once you install the proprietart Nvidia driver, which it prompts you to do automatically, the 3D acceleration works well, and all the peripherals such as my USB extenal hard drive, and the built in card reader Just Work.
In contrast, Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) has awful support for the HP G50. The video card is not properly supported, and when you try and install the driver suggested by the system, it results in a permanently black screen. That's way more trouble that it's worth. I discovered this in my quest to get the wireless working, which gives you an idea of how much stuff I had to try.
The HP G50 has an Atheros AR5007 chipset for the video card, and Atheros is a good company for working with the open source community. In Intrepid, the Atheros cards are supposed to work out of the box (for me at least they didn't, and judging by the posts on Ubuntu Forums this is a universal problem with this model of laptop). So, I spent a lot of time first finding where madwifi.org had gone (they are at www.madwifi-project.org now - see this post for an explanation of why they apparently moved without leaving a forwarding address) and then building and installing various versions of the ath_pci driver to no effect.
After a lot of hunting, I stumbled upon the solution. You have to do the following:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-intrepid
You also have to have the Atheros driver that comes bundled with Intrepid enabled. This retardedly simple solution enables the full functionality of the wireless. So far it's working extremely well for me. So, all's well that ends well, and I'm enjoying my new laptop with Ubuntu.
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