About a week ago, I was walking as always towards my Physics class. I was quite bored, as I was starting to get tired, it was friday, and the only “friggin’” thing I actually wanted to do, was to go to my girlfriends house, because we were going out with some friends. I had to go to swim after that class, so it was quite a long run. I kept walking towards the building, when something caught my eyes. I saw an Ubuntu logo.
I thought it was just my imagination, but I turned back only to see if I had actually seen that. To my surprise, there was a huge Ubuntu logo in the Asociations Stand. Now, in a university where everywhere you go, you find Windows, more Windows, Windows plans, Windows computers and Windows labs, this is amazing.
I was already late, but I couldn’t help stopping. “I’m just stopping by” I thought. I actually wasn’t planning anything, I was only going to have a look, and I would go to my class. The were around 4 people in, with lots of laptops. I guessed they were installing Ubuntu in them. I already knew how to do it myself, I installed it plenty of times before. But not in my new computer. They told that they were actually doing everything. I thought about it for a moment, and I decided to leave my computer so they did the dirty work.
But just when I was about to do it, this guy tells me “Uhhm I’m sorry but I have class at one o’clock, you can leave it but I won’t be here”. It didn’t sound good enough, so I decided I wouldn’t leave my poor little laptop there. Instead of that, they gave me a disc and a sticker which I pasted in my car. Inside the case, there was a brand new, shiny Ubuntu 8.04 disc. I was simply flattered. I couldn’t wait to install it. I even forgot I had a class… When I realized I was late, I rushed to my classroom. I was lucky, as the teacher wasn’t there.
I got to my house early that day. I went to pick my girlfriend, we ate, and the we went with our friends. As soon as I got to my house, I started the System Rescue CD with GParted, and opened up a block for Ubuntu with ext3 and a Swap space. It was painfully slow, I remembered the first time I did this to install a Ubuntu with a dual-boot. GParted move every single bit to the back of my disc, resized the NTFS partition with Windows, and created an Ext3 partition with my swap right at the front of my disc. It took about 4 hours to finish… It was that damn slow that I even forgot what hour it was. I left my computer doing its job while I was with my girlfriend. When I got home (Again…) I inserted the Ubuntu CD in my computer. It ran pretty fast, and the installation went on without problems. Actually it didn’t even took 20 minutes.
It booted with GRUB just like the last time. I didn’t realize that hell was about to emerge when I logged into the new system. Practically, no drivers where working. The nVidia chipset wasn’t working properly, my Wi-Fi module couldn’t connect, my webcam and microphone didn’t work, it was pretty ugly. So I decided I had to do something. All of what I had to do, will be published in my next post, which I hope will be here by tomorrow.
