Ubuntu on Dell

My laptop shipped on Monday. The delivery was supposed to take 3-5 days, but it arrived yesterday. My sister's MacBook arrived last Monday, but my dad wanted us to get ours at the same time. So last night, we opened them. Here's my Dell E1505N laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed.

There's no Windows on this laptop; it didn't even come with a Windows CD. That's perfectly fine with me because I'd rather not give money to Microsoft. It belongs to Dell's new N-Series of laptops and desktops, which come with open-source operating systems (Ubuntu and FreeDOS). Here's the page on Dell's site where you can buy PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed.

I'm really enjoying the laptop, which my friend Luke christened "Day Tripper" (It's a Beatles song, and it describes a computer that you can take around, like on a day trip? Ha ha? Well, I liked it.) Though I haven't been using it for 24 hours yet, I thought I'd give my impressions of this laptop. I've never had a laptop of my own before, but I've used a few.

The first thing that was pretty annoying was getting on the Wi-Fi network. Ubuntu will prompt you for a keyring password every time you log in, and that gets annoying after a while. If the keyring password is the same as your user password, install libpam-keyring (sudo apt-get install libpam-keyring) and add the following lines to the end of /etc/pam.d/gdm (sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/gdm):

auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass
session optional pam_keyring.so

If you set a different keyring password, delete the keyring in the Keyring Manager. Then, when you connect to the network again, enter the network information like you did the first time, and then enter your user password as the password. Then you can follow the previous steps for great success.

That was the only real issue I had. I haven't encountered any bugs or other weird things; then again, I haven't used the battery yet. Supposedly, the battery life indicator can be pretty inaccurate at times, but I haven't had a chance to find out for myself. I'd heard good things about the keyboard. It is very good. Even the touchpad is good -- I might even actually get used to it. The only thing I needed to do was disable the tap-to-click feature (it's very easy to trigger it by accident). I edited the xorg.conf file (sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf) and in the section for the touchpad, I added the line Option "MaxTapTime" "0".

Another thing was that I wanted to change the computer's name. "dell" is a very boring name. I went to System -> Administration -> Network -> General and changed the host name (to daytripper, of course). After that, I logged out, and the change took effect.

(Don't think that I'm a Linux wizard and that I instinctively knew how to do all that. I had to look it all up.)

The computer also comes with "MediaDirect" functionality that apparently allows you to play CDs without booting into Windows. Or something like that. Since this computer doesn't have Windows at all, I wasn't sure how it would work. It turns out that if you have the computer on and you press the MediaDirect button, it will start Rhythmbox (the default music player in Ubuntu). The buttons in front of the computer can be used to skip tracks, stop, play, pause, change the volume, and all that stuff.

Today I've pretty much been moving files from my old computer(s) to this one. It's been going okay, my only limitation being that I'm using a 512 MB flash drive to do the work. Apparently they get worn out pretty easily? Anyway, for future file moving (there's still quite a bit to do), I think I'll burn them onto CDs. It's a more robust method of transferring files, and it leaves a physical backup in case things go sour.

After I wrote that, the screen froze. It probably had to do with Beryl. Luckily, this computer boots (or reboots) quickly.

Anyway, here are the obligatory specs.

• Dell Inspiron E1505N
• Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn"
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5600 (2MB/1.83GHz/667MHz)
• 15.4 Inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WXGA+
• 2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache
• 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 24X Combo CD-RW/DVD
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
• 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

So far, this laptop is great, and I'd look forward to buying a computer (without Windows) from Dell again.

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