Hope for Ubuntu on the Acer – Part 2

So I’m writing this on an Ubuntu LiveCD while it’s installing to a partition I set aside yesterday. I must admit except for the wireless issue it appears that everything else works right. The sound controls are functional, USB works fine, and power options are in place. It’s actually very clean. The screen dims after about 20 seconds of no use but lights up again as soon as I touch anything. The touchpad works fine although Ubuntu didn’t magically know I like to set up the right button as a middle button and the right side of the touchpad as a right button. The installer is chugging away now at around 70% putting it’s files on an ext3 formatted drive. I opted for no swap partition as I know it’s easy to set that up later. Although wireless is out wired networking worked perfectly find.

I’ll keep everyone updated…

Update: I managed to get the wifi working finally. I followed the instructions on this forum except I downloaded the drivers I found here. It took a bit of mucking around but finally it worked. We’ll see how this develops the next few weeks. Also note the wireless LED does not work.

Hope for Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire – Part 1

I’m writing this on a different computer because at the moment mine is being repartitioned. Earlier today I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop version and gave it a whirl.

Everything worked, that is except for the wireless card. After some Googling I found plenty of links which direct me to try out ndiswrapper which apparently does the trick.

So I’m attempting it. Although currently I’m making room for it and shifting around my partitions to make a new one. I’m using Gparted LiveCD 0.3.6-7 to assist me in the task. So far everything seems good but it’s taking forever. 150 gigabytes of stuff apparently takes a while to move around.

I’ll keep everyone updated. So far the current plan is to dual boot so hopefully I’ll still have my Frankenstein Vista copy safe and sound.