After repeatedly running into issues with running the thesis game on my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1100 from a few years' back), I decided to install Ubuntu Linux on it. Let's face it, the Windows installation on that computer wasn't exactly fresh, and I sort of felt it had outlived its purpose anyway. The main reason I'm still running Windows on my desktop is that most modern games require it, and I'm not quite ready to trust Wine or Cedega to not screw things up.

So what did I learn from my experience?

1. Laptops are resource-limited

My first instinct was to just get the latest Ubuntu (7.10, also known as “Gutsy Gibbon”), slap it on a CD, and go to town on the laptop. Turns out I was conveniently (or not so conveniently) overlooking an important factor here: That laptop isn't exactly modern with its mere 256 MiB of RAM, 64 of which are instantly eaten by the integrated video card. So, in other words, Ubuntu failed to install utterly due to memory issues.

I know I really should have realized beforehand, especially if I'd taken the time to note that the regular Ubuntu install requires about 320 MiB of RAM to work properly. I guess Ubiquity is just that hungry. Anyway, I could've used the Alternate install CD, which lets you install in text mode, but in the end, I figured that if I couldn't run the installer, I probably couldn't run the regular interface either. So I scaled it down instead, and got Xubuntu.

Xubuntu is simply Ubuntu with Xfce instead of Gnome as the desktop environment, which makes it lighter, faster, and generally more suitable for the laptop. In the end, I'm happy I did; while I can't know for sure that Gnome would've been unusably sluggish, Xfce is running smooth as peaches even on this aged hardware.

2. CD drives can be bitches, so use quality CD-Rs

I usually don't like to spend a lot of money on one-off recordable media, so my usual CD-Rs are a cheap noname brand that works fine in my desktop CD reader. Sadly, the laptop CD drive is slightly pickier, and downright refuses to recognize these cheaper CDs. Bummer.

Eventually I dredged out some old (already burned) CD-Rs I know had worked in the drive previously and noted the brand: Fujifilm. The laptop accepted the new CD-image I burned using brand new Fujifilm CD-Rs, but still stuttered something horribly, and, as a result, the installation procedure took longer than usual due to incessant skipping. I guess the lesson here is that you can't rely on all laptop drives to be equally powerful, especially not laptop drives, so make sure the media you are using actually works.

3. The network configuration panel blows

Okay, so this may be a case of me simply doing it wrong, but as far as I could tell, the network configuration dialog will not let you select ad-hoc wireless mode. Y'see, this is a problem, because in my home environment I only have two computers and no interest of getting a router, so if I want to interface the laptop and the desktop, I just use two WLAN adapters in ad-hoc mode.

Well, in the end, the problem was easily solved by simply doing the network configuration manually (all run with sudo, of course):

This still has a few problems, though. It leaves an ugly “network not connected” icon in the system tray, and the configuration is not particularly persistent; a reboot, and it's gone. Now, this last part is probably me being a failboat again, but it's the best I can do right now.

Overall, though, I'm happy with my new Xubuntu installation. Lightweight, fast, and runs the thesis program just fine (using genuine ncurses, no less).