As I had to replace the hard disk on my laptop (IBM Thinkpad T43 1871-4AG) with a new 80GB Hitachi I also decided to have (another) go at installing Linux. I have tried it before on an older PC I had and had quite a few problems with getting the drivers. Also the Linux environment is pretty daunting and quite demanding, esp for someone used to Windows. Then I think I tried it again in 2006 using the Parallels virtual desktop app on my Windows XP. There were many issues with installing and I kept on getting some error messages that might have something to do with the CD-rom burning process. I was successful with Red Hat and Ubuntu but it expectedly all worked quite slow.
This time I had a fresh hard disk on a not-so-old computer and tried to install the ever more popular Ubuntu distribution of Linux. The version I used was 7.10 (latest at the time). I burn the ISO image from ubuntu.com with the tools they specified (InfraRecorder). I do suggest you test the MD5SUM values as the first download had a problem and I didn't check it. The ISO image burnt nicely, but there was an error message during install.I tried a different mirror (Canonical UK) and the MD5SUM check was fine. The program I used for that was winMd5Sum.
I wish I could give you some pointers on some install problems but I can't - that is because there weren't any. Really. The whole think installed without a hitch.
The only problem I had was with setting-up the internet connection. As I didn't have a spare UTP cable as it was being used on the PC I got from home, I tried to setup the wireless access first. Now I am not sure whether the driver was incorrect or it had to be set-up manually. I installed the WiFi driver from MadWiFi, then entered the IP address, subnet mask... manually and it worked.
After that the update service installed 150 updates and after that the network didn't work again and the new drivers went missing, or so I presume. This time I didn't bother installing the drivers again but just re-entered the network data. The little Thinkpad WiFi light came on and the internet was back and running.
For those who will have a try at this with the similar computer can find a somewhat usefull but very advanced (for my taste) website at http://foosel.org/linux/t43. As a novice I was surprised to see how little standard programs are made for Linux. The only luck I had was with Kaspersky antivirus, but even that seems to be mainly for servers and after installing it it doesn't seem to work. There are probably think I missed during installation but I will probably try out a native Linux antivirus ClamTK. As the Firewall I installed the Firestarter via the Applications - Add/Remove utility.There was an added complication with the wireless setup and the WPA connection with my Netgear router kept on dropping. I found some good instructions on how to fix the problem and I am posing them in this post.
