First Steps

For the longest time, I've been plagued by Windows.

By plagued, of course, I mean that I have worked as an IT person for several different companies, constantly battling the onslaught of viruses, spyware, and the like.
I've tried time and again to migrate to one of the extremely numerous variants of Linux, generally to no avail.

However, on Sunday, March 19th, 2006, I decided I'd had enough. I dug frantically through my many burned copies of Linux and stumbled across a shining, glowing beacon from the heavens: a fresh, unopened, official copy of Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger). I had apparently ordered several copies many months before, and had never taken the time to install it.

Honestly, looking back, I think the thing that inspired me to really push for my move to linux was an article I found here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=120615 which details the method of installing World of Warcraft with Wine in Ubuntu. Since basically all I do in Windows currently (aside from work, which will most likely become hybrid of linux/windows shortly for me) is internet, email, watch DVD's/videos, and play World of Warcraft, it seemed like the perfect time to make my leap to Linuxdom.

Luckily, I had a spare laptop hard drive, and not much actual necessity for my Windows XP-based laptop, so I decided it would be my testbed, my beginner's box. I quickly swapped my OEM Dell 30Gb drive for the 20Gb IBM I had laying around, and hopped to work. Placing my Ubuntu 5.10 install CD in the drive, I had the OS up and running within minutes. MINUTES! With Windows, I would normally tell it to install, then go out for dinner, and by the time I got back, it might be 3/4 of the way finished, but this honestly took very, VERY little time to complete. (That being said, the base Ubuntu install is a bit bare, so don't plan on completing it in 20 minutes...)

After the install completed and updated my packages and repositories (sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade), I decided to try my hand at installing the ATi graphics drivers. I will detail my process here. After several tries, and a good browse through http://www.ubuntuforums.org, I managed to get the ATi driver installed, and 3d acceleration enabled. I jumped for joy (this will become a recurring pattern... keep an eye out for it).

My next decided task was to get the networking entirely set up. The wired ethernet card was automatically detected, so no problems there, but the wireless card (the bane of my existence for the next two days) refused to auto-detect. I googled, I searched ubuntuforums.org, mostly to no avail. It seemed everything I tried just wouldn't work. It wasn't until I completely removed ndiswrapper (wraps up the Windows drivers to make them work in Linux), downloaded the source, and compiled it manually, that things started to brighten up. Like magic, things started working (process described here). However, in a very incompetent move on my part, I moved the windows drivers from their current location (Desktop) to a Drivers folder, because I was under the Windows assumption that the system would copy them over to an INF folder of sorts, so they wouldn't be necessary... boy, was I wrong. The X-server crashed on startup the next time, the wireless card refused to work, and I was given no indication of any problems other than that. I quickly moved the driver back to the Desktop, rebooted, and all was well again (I love fixing problems on my own!).

Between that time (beginning the wireless install and completing it), I decided to try my hand at World of Warcraft using Wine. Again, I had many problems in the beginning, but after downloading and compiling Wine from source, I copied my Windows-installed WoW folder, changed a few video settings, opened it up, and it basically worked the first time! Sound is still a bit buggy, and it's definitely not as fast as it is in Windows, but it's a step in the right direction...

I think that's enough for now, I'm sure I've bored everyone to sleep by now. It's late here as well, and I must retire. I will fill in the blanks on my process as I find time. :-) Thanks for reading!