Feisty Successfully Installed on Father's Laptop

Now, he still has Windows on it (he wants to be able to access audiobooks from the library, and they use some WinDRM stuff (grrrrrr....), but that's ok.

Anyway, the reason that I put it out there is I am very excited to say that though his computer has quite low specs it still managed to do the "desktop effects" (that's Compiz, from which Beryl comes) quite well. I was very surprised when I saw wobbly windows on the laptop!

Also, since my dad has a newer hard drive than I do on this awesome computer upstairs in my room, everything runs really fast (unless there's some heavy cpu processing involved). I am actually quite envious of my dad's laptop now, and am hoping that sometime soon I can get a SATA hard drive or two. I have about 5 SATA ports built-in to the motherboard, and that's great but I need the hard drives.

Then my computer would be absolutely perfect (well, not really because I'd need to get 4 gigabytes of RAM first, but that's ok) and I would have no complaints about the hardware.

I am extremely satisfied with the computer when I consider the price I paid for it, though: ~$350! (that includes a 256MB graphics card and an AMD64 cpu)


OK, back to the laptop.

My dad uses a Belkin wireless card for his Winternet, and when we plugged it in under Ubuntu, the lights didn't go on. But by some amazing coincidence the complete, perfect directions for using ndiswrapper had just been on digg a few days ago, and I had bookmarked the page. Following the directions, the wireless WORKED and now there's nothing keeping from my dad staying on Ubuntu, except the New York Public Library and that annoying OverDrive Media Console that they use.

Here's the guide that is awesome for ndiswrapper: NdisWrapper: The Ultimate Guide - LinuxQuestions.org

I am very happy with the Ubuntu Feisty Beta that I and my dad are using now. One annoying thing is that you have to download about 45MB of updates per day... But that's not a bug or anything--the release is next week!

Still having problems with the kernel, and am going to try a fix suggested for me right now.