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Friday WA time was when I was able to download the latest Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), I then decided to perform an upgrade of my existing 9.10 (Karmic Koala) rather than a clean install – that was a big mistake.

Apart from taking over 3 hours to perform, once it was complete I found that my desktop effects wouldn’t work – Lucid had broken the ATI/fglrx graphics drivers, and it wasn’t possible to uninstall all components in order to re-install and fix the problem (major bug there). And on Ubuntu’s forums I wasn’t the only one having that problem. After a day of stuffing around, I had it fixed … sort of.

But it wasn’t good enough, so I bought a new WD 500 GB ‘black’ hard drive, replaced the 640 GB (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) drive, and performed a clean install of 10.04 which it only took about half an hour – next was installing my usual applications and then migrating my data across to the new OS. Once done everything worked as it should, the new desktop ‘dark’ scheme looks great, and does it boot fast – from POST to a ready desktop in just 35 seconds, damn that is fast!

My new desktop 2560 x 1024 (spanning 2 x 19″ monitors @ 1280 x 1024 each)

more later …

I’d been thinking of upgrading the system graphics card to better cope with dual monitors, there was just to much lag and a few other little annoyances with the existing ASUS EAH3450 card – it would probably be ok running just one monitor, but  running 2 seemed to be stretching it’s capabilities.

So, after the debarcle with upgrading the system memory, or rather not upgrading it, I ended up with a credit note at my local PC shop. Rather than just leave the credit note just sitting there doing nothing, I decided to cash it in with an additional $90 and grabbed a new Sapphire HD5770 card.

Well the card is great, but unfortunately the new ATI drivers didn’t get along with Hardy 8.04 LTS – the ATI Catalyst Control Center simply wouldn’t open, and as such I couldn’t make any adjustments, nor set the dual monitors to run as one big desktop. (continue reading…)

In February 2008, I decided it was time to build a new PC; not that there was anything really wrong with my AMD Skt A system, but technology had moved on, and components had gotten more powerful, and cheaper.

Within 6 months of building the new system, my Win XP OS was bloated, bogging down and becoming very unreliable – I was getting so sick of this shit! I just wanted a reliable PC that would let me look after my business sites, browse the web, and handle my emails.

For a few years now, I’ve toyed with the idea of getting rid of’ Windoze’, and running a Linux based system instead. Over time I’ve installed and fiddled with various distros on spare hard drives, but nothing had seemed friendly enough to make the switch over from ‘Microsuck’.

get Ubuntu

Anyhow, I was trolling through a PC magazine sometime in August ‘08 and came across an article about the latest version of Ubuntu – 8.04 ‘Hardy Heron’. It sounded pretty good, so I downloaded the iso, burnt it to CD, then ran it ‘live’ from CD first (which doesn’t make any changes to existing system) just to see what it looked like – it was pretty impressive, not perfect, but certainly worth a closer look, so I installed it on a new drive.

(continue reading…)