08/06 at 09:32 PM | 0 comments

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to use an operating system that is NOT Windows 95 through XP? Yeah, me as well. I had been hearing a lot lately about this new Linux distribution called “Ubuntu”. The name was as elusive as my ability to use it apparently. More on that later. Ubuntu is supposed to be the next operating system to possibly give Windows a run for it’s money. Translation: They are shooting for a 5% market share among home users of a personal computer. So what was the big deal about Ubuntu that caught my attention? It is supposed to be very user friendly and easy to set up. They even claim that it is easier to set up Ubuntu then Windows XP. Whoooiii! Naturally I download the 800mb download of the latest build and burn the setup on a CD. Next step is to partition my hard drive to commit a 2nd operating system, Ubuntu in this case. What follows is pure hell.

Popping in the CD and booting up the computer everything seems a bit exciting. I’ve done my research and this Ubuntu looks quite nifty. Loading the setup menu goes quite quickly and without flaw. Looking good so far.

The set up screen is locked in at a 640x480 resolution. Ok, that is fine - assuming a quarter of the screen did not over-run off my 19” monitor! Ok, well I’m a well versed computer geek. I manage to set up Ubuntu on my newly partitioned drive anyways. The way I did it was a miracle in it’s own respect. Because the screen was partially cut off every instance of the “Next step” , “Cancel” or other related buttons were not visible. Not only that but the “Cancel” button is always before the “Next” procedure button. This means tabbing through your buttons gets a little funky as Ubuntu assumes you may be canceling more often then moving forward or submitting? But why is tab so important? Let’s remember I could not see these buttons. I was blind tabbing and hitting enter. So after a painstaking 15 minutes of guessing I finally get to the bulk of the installation.

At this point I am thinking that I’ll be able to use full range of my screen resolutions once the Ubuntu operating system is installed. I was wrong. Very wrong. Ubuntu loads for the first time and I speedily run to the options to change the resolution. I will say that it was fairly easy to find this setting which is a good point. Does that matter? No. My only option is 640x480 with part of the screen slipped off the monitor. I don’t know about you but doing anything at this resolution is nearly impossible. I hop on the pre-installed Firefox browser and find the Ubuntu website to see what I can do about this issue. A search on their help files reveals a possible solution. Looking at the help topic for “Screen resultion stuck at 640x480 after install” reveals a solution. The solution is to change the screen resolution. Grrrr. Not my solution.

Off I go to the community forums which are pretty active. What did I find out on the forums? Many others are having this problem with various graphic cards. Each solution required your typical Linux solution of studying data and making extremely challenging changes in text files that require a level of programming knowledge.

I trimmed down my search to my graphics card in particular with this problem. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon Xpress 200. It seems that Ubuntu does not support this video card. Why? Apparently it sucks. Good grief. It works fine with Windows XP. I can play games that require high system performance, I can watch High Definition videos. What sucks about this card? Not only that but this is a fairly popular HP video card shipping with a LOT of HP computers nowdays.

Well, reading on it seems a few people have worked around this issue in a simple 14 step process of hacking .conf files, installing packages and running administrative commands in the terminal. I think the package I needed was “XLF14” or something like that. Yeah, very intuitive. Sure. What the hell, I prepare to make these changes. The community told me to do so.

After making the changes I lost all graphic support. No, I could not even access Ubuntu anymore. I was greeted with a flickering screen that reveale nothing. There was no choice but to stomp my CD with Ubuntu into the ground and smash it to smithereens and then delete my partition and pretend I never even tried to give Linux a chance.

Let me say this, do not buy into Ubuntu. It still lacks a LOT of general support that is needed from ANYONE who is new to Linux. It is nowhere near as user-friendly as WindowsXP. Solutions are complex and require you to make changes that can very likely ruin your entire installation, leaving you with no functional operating system. Sadly, Linux is still for geeks.