After my experiences with the installation of the Ubuntu 12.10 Linux distribution in Virtualbox; finding that even with the latest Virtualbox 4.22 release the Ubuntu 12.10 Unity desktop is still very slow; I have installed this distribution onto a 2 terabyte hard disk and I am currently downloading the fglrx packages to get the ATI Radeon hardware I have working. I added the nomodeset parameter to the end of the linux line in the Grub boot menu and I can use the Unity desktop fully to set up my new Ubuntu installation. Type sudo apt-get install fglrx fglrx-amdacccle to install the ATI Radeon drivers on Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Do not install the driver package from the ATI website as that will cause untold problems when you are trying to get the Ubuntu ATI packages installed. Just install from the Ubuntu repositories and you will have less problems. Make sure you type sudo apt-get update first to update all of the package lists and then you may install any packages you wish. The Ubuntu installation is very fast and easy these days; if the downloading of packages is slow after the initial installation you may click skip and it will go on to the creating user accounts stage and then after a short delay the installation will be complete.
The Ubuntu installation ISO includes the Gparted application that you may use to create or resize your partitions before installation. I was resizing a 2 Terabyte partition; but it was going to take three hours and forty five minutes so I quit that operation and created 3 new partitions instead and that was much faster. I am aware that this distribution is including some Amazon ads as well as an Amazon icon in the launcher bar which you may right-click on and remove. Are they sponsoring the Ubuntu distribution now or what? What kind of deal have Canonical done that includes advertisements in the Dash when you are searching for something? But they are easily removed; just go to System Settings->Privacy and then adjust the two sliders to disable the Amazon botnet and you will have some peace of mind that everything you do on your computer will not be sent to a third-party agent. This screen-shot shows this process. So at least this is opt-out; you still have a choice; but I am wondering why this is necessary. Are they making money from the ad revenue generated by the users of the Unity dash? But at least this distribution is finally available and we can enjoy using the updated Unity desktop.
After the installation of the fglrx drivers and a re-boot later; the desktop is performing very well indeed. You just need to run sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras if you wish to play MP3 music and Xvid movies with the Totem movie player. Smplayer is also a good application for playing your movies; it has good support for all movie codecs and is very configurable. The Microsoft operating systems are too dependent on the third-party security companies to provide security software to keep Windows safe from on-line threats posed by malicious software and viruses that can even be installed by visiting a salubrious website. Ubuntu provides a safer and more secure computing solution that is secure by default as it uses the Linux kernel and associated software to deploy a fun and immediately usable desktop that is ready out of the box to browse the web and do your work. Triple booting with other Linux installations is very easy and simple to manage. I am using the Grub 2 installation provided by my Linux Mint 13 installation to manage the Ubuntu 12.10 installation. Overall; once the Ubuntu distribution is installed; it is very reliable and fast; just do not install it in Virtualbox unless you have a slim distribution like Xubuntu.
Linux can install updates whilst the operating system is up and running; Windows needs to shut down before it can install the pending updates. That is horrid. If Windows could install updates whilst it was running then it would be a better operating system; Linux would suck if you had to wait ages for it to shut-down as it was installing all the pending updates that the user had installed. The wallpapers supplied with the distribution are incredible; The still lake one is a stunning photograph and makes the desktop look awesome. I have to install the rest of the software that I need and then I will be all set. To install some extra wallpapers for this distribution; run this command.
4.4 Thu Oct 24 jason@Yog-Sothoth 0: $ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-wallpapers-* |
This will install some very useful wallpapers for your desktop.