Ubuntu 7.0.4 Feisty Fawn - First Blood !

Booting from the Ubuntu 7.0.4 Feisty Fawn live CD was no problem at all. Right from the start once the X Server was running, I could notice the much talked about, distinctive “human” theme of this linux distro. Unlike most other Operating Systems who have chosen to pursue blue and grey themes to their GUI, Ubuntu has chosen the “Earth” colors.

I logged in to the Gnome desktop with a nice African drumbbeat startup sound. This meant that my sound devices worked :)

The display however was a problem. I landed in to 640x480 by default. I dived straight in to the System > Preferences > Screen Resolution section to correct it. However this would not help. I figured, I would have to take to tweak the etc/X11/xorg.conf file. This did not alarm me one cent as I have been used to these initial tweakings with these conf files to have X up and running as I want it to.

I wasted no time in using -F2 : gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. I prefer not using vi unless X is not working at all.

I quickly noticed the possible problem. I had to add my monitor Horizontal and Vertical refresh rates. My trusty Viewsonic e70f has been with me since the last couple of years and has seen all the linux distros I have installed on my home computer so far. Experience has taught me to write down these values on the monitor casing with a permanent marker, at a place where I can easily read it in situations like these.

I edited the file, made the necessary changes and saved it.

A ctrl + alt + backspace to restart the X server solved the problem. My screen showed up the crisp 1280x1024 at 60MHz which is its best resolution.

Every time I have chosen a computer, I have bought hardware which is linux friendly. In that I mean hardware which is most likely to be supported by current and future linux kernels. This is a commitment I have kept even if I am not a regular linux user. I know that someday I will again download a new distro and will be hacking away and creating new exploits again.

I have an Intel P4 - 266MHz processor plugged in to an Intel 915GLVG motherboard and 512MB of DDR Ram. Other detailed specs are mentioned in another blog.

My network was autoconfigured from my Dlink 502-T adsl router's DHCP and it was up and running. I could browse the net.

All in all the live CD was perfect expect for the small display tweak.

Next, I had a 10GB partition carved out on my computer, ready to get Ubuntu in. I clicked on the “Install To Hard Drive” option and within a few minutes and minimal intervention, I had Ubuntu installed on my computer.

I restarted to find the Grub loader having taken over from the NT Loader displaying the Linux Kernel main and recovery mode. Windows came under other operating systems menu.

Windows XP worked fine, however my W3K server install broke. I figured this out later on as a small change in the boot.ini file.

I was up and running in this shiny new Earth colored OS in 15 minutes flat without requiring a single restart (ofcourse not counting the post completion phase !) and a single driver install.