Green Folly

Intro

When it was time to get a new laptop, the decision I have been putting off for a while now needed to be made.  Do I move to Vista or jump over to Linux.  Up until now, I was the proverbial Charlton Heston:  you can pry XP from my cold dead hands.  My main PC had so much Windows specific baggage that a full jump to Linux would have been too disruptive.  In addition, I don’t have a lot of resources left to support a dual boot set up.  However, with a new laptop to order, all that baggage did not exist.  I ultimately decided to make the move to Ubuntu but I wussed out and still ordered the laptop with XP Home on it.  The idea was to make a dual boot system so that I could use Ubuntu for my main work but keep XP on the side for a failsafe.

Ordering the laptop

The biggest fear I had was that I would order hardware that was incompatible with Ubuntu or other Linix distributions.  Dell has an Ubuntu site that I used for reference.  I built a laptop from that site and used that to drive the specs for the laptop with XP I wanted to get.  The only change I needed to make to the laptop specs was the wireless card.  I needed to upgrade the card to match what was spec’d on the Ubuntu laptop from Dell.  A couple google searches confirmed that the default card that came with the XP 1520 laptop would have issues in Ubuntu.  After making that change, I ordered the laptop.  After getting over the disappointment that the laptop would not just simply materialize after I clicked “Confirm Order”, I waited.  In turns out that perhaps Dell follows the Scotty Principle.  My laptop arrived 3 days earlier than they estimated.

Prep for the install

After getting the laptop, I ran it through its paces on the XP side just to make sure all was well.  Once that was complete, I needed to burn an Ubuntu install disk.  Ubuntu’s instructions for this were very clear and made no assumptions on the technical savviness of the user.

Install

Once the disk was ready, I popped it into the laptop and turned it back on.  The laptop’s boot sequence had the CD drive listed second so I needed to interrupt the boot and choose to boot from the CD.  Once this was done, the graphical install kicked in and Ivwas on my way.  I partitioned my hard drive to account for the fact that I wanted a dual boot system.  The install was basically hands off.  I was able to do the install, watch my 3 year old and get dinner going at the same time.

Did it work?

I rebooted the laptop to see what would happen.  I expected a boot menu to come up so I could choose the OS I wanted to use.  It did come up and I went into Ubuntu.  It came up fine.  Wireless connectivity worked.  Since it is a new laptop with no baggage, there was not a lot of extra config/installs that I needed to worry about.  My laptop has an embedded webcam as well but I have not tried that as of yet.

First application install

As my kids watched a movie, I moved on to the important stuff:  how to get back into Twitterland.  I use twhirl on my Windows boxes for a client but they don’t have a version for Ubuntu due to Adobe Air.  I searched and found some other clients that would work and I downloaded the app called gTwitter.

Here is where I hit my first roadblock.  How to install?  I am a lifelong Windows user.  I was focused on installing and did not realize that the menu option Applications –> Add/remove existed.  I did another help search and found another helpful article  that explained in detail why I was overthinking things. I did a quick search from the Add/remove window on the term “twitter” and up popped gTwitter.  I selected it and installed it with no issue.  Now I can get my tweet fixes.

Day 1 conclusions/thoughts

1. Ubuntu is very easy to install and there are helpful instructions all over the place.
2. I would have had hardware issues if I did not start with the end in mind when ordering the laptop
3. I have found a way to avoid Vista for home use.  I think I danced a little jig when all went well with this install.
4. My kids don’t know how to react when they see their dad dance a little jig.
5. Twitter is worse than crack
6. twhirl is my crack pipe of choice.  Adobe Air has an alpha version (one guy’s results)that will run on Ubuntu so that is next on the list to install.