After having problems with Ubuntu 9 dual boot system with Vista home basic.
Ubuntu worked fine from grub boot.
Vista was a different matter, Vista boot process is so fragile sometimes Vista would freeze on boot.
Various options would repair the boot including doing a repair from vista. Everything seemed ok for a day or two
Ubuntu booted perfectly every time from the grub menu. Selecting windows boot would work one day and not the next.
Vista came free with the Compaq laptop. No Dvd, you have to make 2 bootable DVD's from the hidden recovery partition.
On loading you have no control over the install.
The install is slow and the computer reboots forever during the process.
Once you have completed this you have hours of service packs and updates.
Compaq don't even have a separate driver folder for on the recovery partition. (emachines laptop do).
I reformated the 300gb hard disc drive
Loaded windows XP Professional using half the drive space. Left the other 150gb free for Linux.
Downloaded, Ubuntu 10.04 Beta1 dvd i386 iso (Overnight took a few hours).
Burnt the iso to DVD.
The installation Ubuntu 10.04 Beta1 dvd i386 on a Compaq Presario CQ60 305EA installed like a dream, everything worked almost automatically, with an Ethernet cable plugged into the laptop for loading additional drivers.
The whole process took less than 40 minutes.
The splash purple boot screen seems to take a long time during the load.
Everything on the laptop worked. Not sure if I like the violet boot screen but this does not matter. The desktop graphics looked superb the default fonts are very clear.
Hey I like this Ubuntu 10.04 desktop it’s different, it’s great.
I normally like KDE desktops but this Ubuntu gnome desktop looks good with nice colours, perhaps the old Linux die-hards will not like Lucid.
Those nice people at freshunbuntu have made a podcast about the desktop. See if you agree.
http://freshubuntu.org/They have created a podcast shortcast 0003 - the user's interface
http://ia331213.us.archive.org/2/items/UsersInterface/fup_shortcast_040210.oggHappy computing
Tony
