If you came here looking for a ‘howto’ tutorial on how to get it all working I’m afraid you may be rather disappointed…..
Well I gave it a go and, as usual with my recent experiments with Linux distributions, I wonder why I ever bothered. For a general user desktop, Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 specifically in this case) is still just too much like hard work for most.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long in the tooth IT professional and have enjoyed many long and late hours building and configuring Linux environments as a hobby and professionally. I’m a huge fan of Linux in the enterprise (small and large) for both desktop development stations and servers and have been for 15 years or more. For me, as a general user desktop its just not worth the bother.
Quote from the Ubuntu home page:
“Ubuntu ‘Just Works’
We’ve done all the hard work for you. Once Ubuntu is installed, all the basics are in place so that your system will be immediately usable.”
Method
I downloaded the most recent Ubuntu distribution (8.10 Desktop Edition), burned to a CD, popped into a USB CD ROM drive attached to the Advent and off we went.
Very straightforward with the wizard guiding me through the partitioning process (XP was already installed and I wanted to dual boot). The whole basic install process took around 15 minutes.
The machine was then restarted and booted to the default Ubuntu desktop environment.
What worked ?
Well the Ubuntu quote above was right – the basics were in place – well most of them.
What didn’t work – the network
A good default application set to cater for most uses had been installed – not many of which were of use without a network connection – neither the Ethernet LAN or Wireless network adaptor had been recognised during the install process.
A quick Google session revealed the location of source bundle for the RealTek wireless device driver
No direct Internet connection from the Ubuntu machine of course and no USB stick to hand. I did have my Huawei 3G mobile broadband USB dongle handy so I thougth I’d give that a shot. It worked !
I downloaded the driver bundle to the desktop, unpacked, ran the make scripts (makecln and install) and away it went – warning the install script restarts your machine without warning!
I was plesantly surprised to find that after a restart the wireless card was recognised and the configuration wizard worked without fault.
Now the Ubuntu package update manager kicked in with a desire to update around 170 packages – I obliged.
Twenty minutes later, packages updated, machine rebooted and the wireless network no longer worked.
I recompiled and installed the drivers again – success, clearly a conflict/dependency between the updated packages.
What doesn’t work – the sound
Ubuntu was making its feint startup drum sound on login, I wanted to try Skype. A straight forward .deb package download and install from Skype followed by account configuration and Skype fired up together with a very quiet Skype swoosh startup sound.
I eventually gave up trying to adjust the volume through function hotkeys, Gnome sliders, ALSA configuration boxes etc. It just stays quiet.
I also gave up trying to get the microphone to work, everything attempt has left the speakers clicking occasionally.
Frankly I got rather disillusioned at this point and called it a day. I’ll leave the Ubuntu partition on there for a while and track the device driver developments but I have promoted XP back to be the default boot OS.
Downside summary:
1. No wireless networking device support within 8.10 – although a driver package is availble
2. No Ethernet networking support within 8.10 – did not pursue a fix for this while wireless is working
3. No reliably working sound playback or microphone recording
Upside summary:
1. Bluetooth support work with 8.10
2. The webcam worked with 8.10
3. Someone more able will undoubtably fix the issues at some point – more than a year after the device was released.
Summary
Ubuntu, like all the other Linux distributions before it, suffers from the lack of device driver support by most of the consumer focussed hardware manufacturers.
