My Ubuntu Experience: Day 1

That Frethog!generic episode motivated me to switch to Linux for my primary workstation, finally. And Ubuntu has the biggest buzz/hype in the Linux world these days so I went with it. (I know mainsteam is not my thing but with limited Linux experience for personal usage, I'd rather go with the mass since more info/help/how-to will be available and I'm sure I need a lot of them)

Let me briefly go over my installation: I downloaded the iso from here. Burned a CD. Went to BIOS and move my CD-ROM up in the order of boot device. Then boot the computer with the CD. Chose the first option on the menu, which start Ubuntu from the CD (that's why it's called a Live CD) Once I'm in it. I clicked the Install icon on the Desktop and the installer asked a series of questions, which I picked the default for most of them. The only tricky question was about partitioning: I had 5 partitions on my first hard drive: 1) Windows (NTFS), 2) Swap, 3) a /boot (ext3), 4) a root (ext3) and 5) a FAT16 partition. (2)-(4) were there because I had previously installed RedHat and I want to replace RedHat with Ubuntu, i.e., use the same partitions but don't care about keeping the content. So I picked "Manual" when the Installer asked about partitioning and edit the old RedHat parititions to indicate they will be used as /boot, root(/) and so on. Finally, the default location for the "Dual Boot loader" (which allows me to run multiple OS as I'm still keeping XP) was (hda0) and I was a bit skeptical at first since I recall going through a few extra steps to take care of that for RedHat (put GRUB on /boot instead of MBR) but it turns out fine.

Now, actually using it was when the fun began. I have a habit of making a list of things I want to try with any new toy before it arrive. So I did the same for Ubuntu. More things work out of the box then expected!

1) Browsing Chinese websites: I didn't need to install any extra font. It just worked!
2) Change monitor resolution to 1920x1200: this requires some work, non-trivial but manageable:
- Install Restricted driver
- Run the Autodetect Script Again (follow the section with the same name)
3) Watch videos: I tried a few of my favourite videos and the included Totem player can't play any of them but I knew a simple solution:
- Install VLC (Application->Add/Remove, choose All available applications and look for VLC)
I have been using VLC on Windows anyway.

Stay tuned for more of my Ubuntu Experience!