Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron & HPdv9500 works great!

I just wanted to tell everyone how pleased I am with my experience with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on my hp dv9500t. I've messed with linux on and off for 10 years. Linux is great for servers but for workstations or desktops, its been a pain in the butt. big obstacles for me have always been networking with windows machines (samba), flash plugins, hardware needing drivers (especially wifi) and having to recompile the kernel or compile a program from source code and messing with libraries. In short you had to be really computer savvy just to get the darn thing running - Until Now! Linux for the desktop has finally matured enough for the average user or novice to install, use, and enjoy! I've even installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my girlfriend's Toshiba and have had no complaints.

All the hardware in my DV9500t was detected and setup properly in ubuntu 8.04 automatically: Wifi, Bluetooth, CD/DVD writer, webcam, external USB NTFS drives, Windows Shares on my network, even the multimedia function buttons! The only thing i had to do was tick a checkbox in the System/Administration/Hardware Drivers to allow the use of proprietary drivers for my Nvidia 8600m which it had already detected properly.

I was even amazed that just about any software that i wanted to use was already built in. bittorrent client? check. office suite? yep. Photo editor? mp3 player? video player? yes its all there! and if there is some software that you need that isnt installed you can easily add it with the add/remove button. I was easily able to add Mozilla Thunderbird, VLC (VideoLan), and Audacity with just a few clicks of my Bluetooth mouse.

The installation of Ubuntu 8.04 was super easy. even a novice computer user could set up a dual boot system with windows which is what i did. My only recommendation for dual booting is to first do some disk cleanup and remove any data or programs you no longer use to free up some disk space, and then defrag the disk. Also I highly recommend backing up any critical files like documents, mp3s, etc before booting off the ubuntu linux CD. Better to be safe than sorry

The installation procedure is pretty straight forward. the only thing to remember is when the disk partitioning tool starts that you choose manual instead of the suggested settings. You need to resize the windows partition to make room for linux. Minimum of 10 gigs is recommended. For example if you have a 120 gig hard disk, just resize it to 110 gigs. Then with the empty space, create a swap partition of 512 Megs, and the rest of the space leftover set as EXT3 and set the mount point to /. thats all there is to setting up dual booting with windows.

This is not really an installation guide, I just wanted to show people how easy it was to do if they wanted to try, or switch over to linux.

 

yeap im with you on this

Ubuntu is awesome, i didnt have to install a single driver and it comes with every program you need pre-installed already. This is how an OS should be, simple and easy with no problems

You can even just run it from the CD!

The installation part might get a little confusing though specially when working with partitions

I got hooked into it just by watching this Youtube clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxfSwzhSn1c

It kills vista's aero specially with the 4 screen cube function

 

Well I don't like things simple and easy, so no Ubongo for me.
I've run Debian exclusively for ten years on all my machines.

"System/Administration/Hardware Drivers" sounds like a special setup app?

And by the "the 4 screen cube function", you probably mean Compiz Fusion, which blows the doors off of every other OS usability UI out there.

 

Ubuntu 8.04 worked perfectly for me too
All of the last versions of Ubuntu had problems with sound and such, but i had no problems with 8.04

 

I was suprised to see my Express card remote work straight away with the built-in media player

Aswell as the blue/orange mute button without any sort of drivers

 

I wanted to thank flipfire for suggesting Compiz Fusion. I gave it a try this morning, and i'm hooked now. i got random animations enabled when windows open/close/minimize/maximize like a window going up in flames when you close it, or quickly folds into a paper airplane and shoots off the screen. Plus of course the cube task switcher. I should point out that you need to get both the program Compiz Fusion, and the configuration tool for it compizconfig: