Ubuntu

I finally become so sickened by Windows that I'm willing to go through the difficult transition to Ubuntu. I'm expecting trouble since I'm using a two year old Toshiba laptop (Satellite A10) and I require it to work with extended desktop covering the laptop 1024x768 display and an external 1280x1024 LCD panel. I'm willing to change any applications if I have to, but I mainly used Firefox and Open Office so there should be no problem there.

Log

• I've downloaded the Ubuntu 7.02 ISO, made a CD and booted it live to test it out before nuking the horrible but semi-functional shitware installation.
• Testing from the Live CD by making adjustments then restarting X with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE
• Backed up important data on the windows drive
• I can't get the dual-monitor configuration to work, and when it doesn't work I have to reboot, but since I'm testing in the Live CD environment, the log information is lost, so I need to install on a writable disk.
• I don't want to nuke the windows partition if I can help it, but since Ubuntu can't natively write to NTFS, it can't install onto any of them. So to start I'm attempting an install onto my 4GB ram stick. (I'm actually able to install the OS while I write this since this is a Live CD environment)
• Day2: Wouldn't boot from RamStick and boot drive fucked up, installing onto main drive now.
• Rob came over and we got dual-monitors working but only at low res (800x600)
• I found out that it's not how high the res is, but that they can't both be different, so now both can work at 1024x768 (the max res of the smaller monitor)
• Day3: Tried installing newer driver and 915Resolution but they didn't work, and after trying to revert back, the display is more buggy. I'm going to start with a fresh install again - reinstalling now.

File System

The drives are all currently in NTFS format which the Ubuntu system can't natively write to.

Network

I was pleasantly surprised by how well the networking went. It has detected all my network interfaces and automatically connected to the local wireless network establishing internet access.

Video

As predicted, the dual-monitor setup is not inherently available, it's only operating on the external screen and the maximum resolution available is lower than the screens native resolution. After reading this on Ubuntu forums, it looks like my only option is Xinerama since it's the only dual-monitor solution which supports any arbitrary video hardware supported by XWindow.

• Ubuntu forums: Dual Monitor HowTo
• Ubuntu forums: Xinerama
• My /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
• My xorg.log file
• About xorg.conf
• xorg.conf syntax
• i810 Driver Details
• IntelLinuxGraphics Docs
• Example of i810 config
• Google search for i810 configuration
• No need for Xinerama?
• Another i810 example
• Google search for running i810 at different resolutions

File System

All my external drives are

Organic Design

Ubuntu was packaged with Firefox as the default browser, but there are a number of differences with the rendering compared to Firefox under windows. The most noticable difference is that the font has changed to serif.