We need another computer, but can’t afford one right now.
So I thought I’d try and make use of an old laptop that was going spare – a Toshiba Tecra 8000. It had Windows98 on it, but was so slow as to be unusable. I don’t have a copy of Windows98 to do a clean install from, so I thought I’d try some Linux… Ubuntu seemed like it might be a good bet for a newbie like me – I’ve run Ubuntu and SuSE from ‘live’ CDs, but never attempted an installation before.
Installing Ubuntu was okay, I spose. Couple of false starts – first go I plugged a serial mouse in druing installation and that crashed the installer out to a command-line, and the second time I tried to repartition the drive – that caused it to hang. But with wiping the drive and just doing as I was told, it was ok, took about an hour to install… then I reboot to log in for real… and I should have gone to bed. The machine was in configuration hell for another hour or so – no human intervention required, it just tweaked and configured every damn bit of software on the installer.
Next morning I had a machine that worked – just about. I was very impressed that getting on the internet was so easy. The Tecra8000 doesn’t have built-in ethernet, but I did have an old 3com PCMCIA ethernet card, and Ubuntu just got on and worked with this. My router has DHCP enabled, and again Ubuntu just talked to my router and it worked without me having to tweak any settings either on the laptop or my router.
But the screen would only work at low resolution, 800×600 or something, but filling the screen in a yucky, blocky way. Quick look at the Bugzilla for Ubuntu revealed a fix, but this would mean diving into the command line… well, I’m up for that. Only, could I get it to work? Could I feck. More lost sleep and frustration.
Got it sussed now, though. Obviously the Ubuntu bugzilla guys aren’t writing instructions for newbies, they’re trying to make Ubuntu better, and the next release is intended to offer insanely great laptop support…
If you have a Toshiba Tecra 8000 and want to run Ubuntu, here’s how to get the screen to work at 1024×768 pixel resolution:
Run the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
Type
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
Note that X11 has a capital letter X. You’ll be asked for a password, use the one for the account you created when you installed Ubuntu. (This line of code makes a backup of the config file – if you mess things up you can rename the backup to xorg.conf and you should be up and running again.)
Then you need to edit this config file, so type
sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf
This opens it up in a text editor, page down until you find the monitors section which should look like this:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Edit it adding two new lines so it looks like this:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 36-52
VertRefresh 36-60
EndSection
You need to press the tab key to get the text to line up.
Then press ctrl-o and enter to save the file, and ctrl-x to exit. Then reboot. All being well, Ubuntu will start up its graphical environment in lovely 1024×768 pixels.
As I say, it works for me – but it’s very very slow, espcially if you try to do more than one thing at once. I tried writing this in Firefox, cutting and pasting from other tabs or the terminal, and it was so sluggish that I gave up, and am now typing it in a simple text editor – gedit – instead. Maybe more memory would help, or perhaps there are other tweaks to strip Ubuntu down a bit… maybe another browser? Although Firefox is happy enough to do plain browsing and I’m posting this in Firefox ok – without any other tabs or apps open, though.