Dev-Picayune

So I couldn’t help myself, I had to install Ubuntu Edgy Eft on something. I had been meaning to rework my old laptop anyway, so I kicked Breezy off completely, and reformatted. Honestly, I thought Dapper was slick as an install, but this was even easier. The one thing that trips me up still on that old Dell C840 laptop is loading the restricted Nvidia driver. By default, when the system installs… it gets it right, 1600×1200 screen and the whole works but it isn’t the Nvidia supplied driver so 3D is dog slow. The trick to making the driver work right (and that’s assuming you do the simplest of installs (just search the web for the basic install) ) you still have to change the /etc/modprobe.d/options where they say “nvidia” make it read “nvidia NVreg_Mobile=0″. This solution is referenced on the web but it’s buried amongst a lot of other things that don’t work.

But honestly, it’s really just a click and enter a few things kind of installation that is much faster and simpler than a Windows XP install. Dapper and Edgy seem to support so many more devices out of the shute than XP SP2 even does.

The bad news is that Python 2.5 is not the default version. It’s available as a secondary version but it’s not run by default (i.e. when you type ‘python’ at a command-prompt). I wonder now how long it’ll be before they handle that full upgrade?

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