The Geeks Say Hey, That's Half The Fun...

So last week the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released, and a co-worker talked me in to giving it another shot. You may remember I flirted with Linux a few months ago with minimal success [meaning I spent five hours getting my computer to recognize my wireless card, and even then it still didn't work--along with audio and video]. On his recommendation I installed it over Kubuntu (7.10?) which I still had loaded onto the second partition of my hard drive, despite not using it since I first tried dual-booting. This time my results were much better. After a mere four hours, I was able to get the wireless connected along with getting my video card recognized enough to enable desktop effects, and I even had sound. All of this, of course, means that I'm spending too much time geeking out over a second OS that I don't really need.

In my quest to get everything working, I stumbled quite a few helpful blogs via Google. So it seems like a good idea to add what I learned to the mix--so here is what you need to know if you're trying to get Ubuntu up and running on an Acer Aspire 5050 laptop:

• You have a 64-bit processor, but 64-bit support for most of the extras you'll need for this laptop are still 32-bit only. Stick with the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, at least for now.
  
• Yes, there is a Linux driver for Atheros wireless cards; it's called madwifi, and no, it will not work for yours. Ditch it and use ndiswrapper, which should be already installed. And don't make the mistake I spent an hour figuring out--even though you only load the .inf file, you need to have -all- the files from the driver in the same directory or it won't load. If you still have problems, you probably need to blacklist the default ath_pci driver--you can do that with this command in the terminal:
  

  echo "blacklist ath_pci" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

• Want those snazzy visual effects? You'll need to enable the ATI restricted driver. Restricted drivers make Ubuntu nervous, but don't let that stop you.
• Your sound works, really! It's just sort of weird. Double-click the volume control and click Edit>Preferences. Put a checkmark next to "Surround" and then un-mute it. Viola! You can listen to music through your crappy Acer speakers again.
• You may notice a BIOS bug when you boot up (#181 or 81 or something like that). I looked into it and it seems like the common link between everyone who got that error has a Turion64 processor, so I have a feeling that's the issue. Even if it's something else, other than displaying the message, the bug doesn't seem to affect anything.

I snagged the blacklist code from this more in-depth guide to getting the Aspire 5050 connected to wireless. You'll probably find the modem to be problematic as well--but then, who still needs a modem these days? I didn't follow-through with it, but if you need the modem to work, it doesn't sound too hard to find a driver. Apparantly Dell has some Linux modem drivers up on their site somewhere that may be compatible, although I haven't checked.

And if anyone does happen to read this and has luck with the x64 version, let me know. I'm curious as to whether or not it would be worth upgrading.

And for the rest of you who didn't understand or care about anything I just said...rest easy. As the school year winds down I plan on making more time for writing, and that includes blogging in a way that doesn't read like a technical manual.

Real World Skills

It's that time of year again--elections for college office. A lot of people don't really see the point of running for student office--but I for one feel that the whole thing is a valuable learning experience for the entire student body. It not only teaches future politicians valuable campaigning skills [see: sidewalk chalk], but the onslaught of "vote-for-me" messages all over campus also teach would-be voters valuable apathy skills.

Although, I still maintain that the sidewalk messages that appear overnight as if by magic are not drawn by students, but by sidewalk chalk pixies.

[Real content updates will resume begin in a week or two.]