SubscribeWhy I am kicking Ubuntu to the curb
I have had it with Ubuntu Linux. I’m kicking the penguin to the curb. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s proverbial back was this morning. I was writing a blog post on my HP Pavilion dv6000 notebook running Ubuntu 9.10 when everything locked up on me. I couldn’t save what I had written and I couldn’t even close Firefox.
That was it. This wasn’t the first time Ubuntu had locked up on me, but it will be my last.
I got on my desktop PC and went to the HP website. Armed with my laptop’s serial number and model number, I was able to easily order a restore disc for only $15 that will install Windows XP back on my laptop. When I first installed Ubuntu, I wiped the entire hard drive, including the partition that held the Windows XP restore image, and reformatted it for Linux. Because of this, I needed a restore disc.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a PC lockup on me as much as this laptop has with Ubuntu installed. I’m just tired of it.
More RAM fixes everything
What do you know, if you replace your laptop’s 512MB of memory with 2GB of memory, Ubuntu is much faster. Go figure.
I noticed a decline in performance shortly after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04. I didn’t even realize my HP Pavillion dv6000 only had 512MB of RAM installed. I would have increased it a long time ago. I was able to get two (2) sticks of 1GB SoDIMM PC530 memory at Best Buy for only $34.99 each. I purchased them yesterday online and picked them up at the Hagerstown Best Buy on my way home from work today.
It couldn’t have been easier. Seriously, Best Buy has their stuff together when it comes to buying something online and then picking it up at the store.
So that’s why I can’t log in as root
I’ve noticed since installing Ubuntu 8.1 Linux that I cannot log into the root account as the superuser. Normally in UNIX, you can temporarily login in to the root account by opening a terminal window and typing su and then when prompted, the password for the superuser.
In Ubuntu, the su command does not work because you cannot log into the root account. Instead, you have to use the sudo command to temporarily give yourself superuser privileges.
When typing the sudo command in a terminal window, you are prompted for your password. Not the root password, but your regular user account’s password. The first user account created when you install Ubuntu automatically has the ability to use the sudo command. Any user accounts created after that must be added to the sudo group.
Life with Ubuntu
I blogged a couple of weeks ago about ditching Windows XP on my laptop and performing a full install of Ubuntu Linux. As it turned out, I installed the wrong version of Ubuntu. My HP Pavilion dv6000 has the AMD Turion 64 processor chip. That meant I could install the regular 32-bit version of Ubuntu, or the 64-bit version.
I chose the 64-bit version. That turned out to be a mistake.
I had a problem installing certain applications such as a flash player. This meant I couldn’t do important things like watch YouTube videos.
I decided to go ahead and install the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 8.1.
The install went very smoothly. I did though run into a slight problem unassociated with re-installing Ubuntu. The night before and earlier that day, we had some very high winds in our area. Electric power was fluctuating through out the day. That day at work, I had to log into my PC five different times because of power dips. Evidently, my wireless router didn’t like these power fluctuations and reset back to it’s factory default settings. When I tried to connect to my wireless router, I didn’t see it among the list of available wireless routers.
Evidently, quite a few people living in out apartment building have wireless routers. There is even one named Neverland Ranch. How creepy is that? I used to think I knew who’s wireless router that particular one belonged to, but the weird pasty looking guy down the hall moved out last year.
It was not him. Go figure.
It turned out my wireless router was the one named linksys without any security in place. Once I realized what was going on, I was able to log on to my router from my desktop PC and reconfigure everything.
Once I got that wrinkle straightened out, I was able to go online and download and install new applications like Wine. I had a hard time doing that with the 64-bit version of Ubuntu.
I have entered the world of Ubuntu
Yesterday I installed Ubuntu Linux on my HP Pavillion dv6000. I first tried Ubuntu by booting it up from the live CD I downloaded and burned to disc. Everything worked fine except the wireless adapter. I did some research and found a website dedicated to getting Ubuntu up and running on HP Pavillion laptops. It had a link to a tutorial on how to set up the wireless adapter. I planned on following the tutorial as soon as I installed Ubuntu. As it turned out, it was totally unnecessary. Upon booting Ubuntu for the first time from a complete, all-the-way hard drive install, Ubuntu automatically detected that I had a wireless adapter that wasn’t activated and it asked for permission to update the needed driver. After authorizing Ubuntu to update the driver, I was told to reboot the laptop.
After it rebooted — very quickly I might add — the blue light indicating that the wireless adapter was active was illuminated. I could then see my wireless router from the available wireless networks and after entering the WEP password to connect through my router, I was on the Internet. It was a piece of cake!
Over the years, I’ve installed many, many different operating systems on lots of different computers. Ubuntu Linux has been by far the easiest to do. Other than activating smooth fonts, I didn’t have any tweaking to do.
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