Ubuntu on a Gateway T-6836?

I just bought an inexpensive gateway laptop for work and school and I'm wondering what kind of driver support there is for it with ubuntu. I'm a pretty experienced linux user, but I haven't had a laptop in a long time so I don't know how the drivers are. Also, I'm curious whether installing ubuntu will freak out the gateway / vista 64 bootloader and whether it is prohibited by my warranty.

 

After experiencing ubuntu/kubuntu, I don't like windows either, but a little advice. NBR is a wide community, and although most behave themselves, calling windows winblows or windoze isn't going to score any points here, and only serves to fuel flame fests.

On that note, you could easily install ubuntu with vista already there. GRUB will configure itself according, you'll notice during setup, it will search for other operating systems. It wont void your warranty, it's only software after all.
Mind you, that's using 8.04, I have no idea how previous versions are, if that's what you're using.

 

Thanks for your help, and I fixed my post to be polite!

 

I had another question though, since vista came preinstalled on this notebook, will ubuntu be able to resize the vista partition to create one for ext3? I know vista is picky and that linux in general doesn't like ntfs, although it has gotten much, much better.

 

Driver support however, I have no idea sorry. I had a heck of a time searching for compatible hardware lists, and finally gave up and just installed it. Thankfully my system is old enough, it recognizes all my hardware. Yours on the other hand, I really don't know.

 

Yes it can. What I personally did was, in windows I created a second partition, and let ubuntu format/use that, but it recommended creating a third partition for the swap space.
After that, I reinstalled ubuntu once, and just used the third partition as swap, and the 2nd as root. It will format it, and I chose ext3. Your partitions will become invisible to windows after that. But I'm pretty sure you can create your own partition in ubuntu. Thomas, Calvin and others would really be the ones to ask, I'm new to linux myself.

 

Thanks for your help!

And by the way if you were interested, I found a tool that allows Windows to read and mount the Ext3 partitions. It says that it's only for ext2 but I've been using it with ext3 on my desktop with no problems. It's nice because if I download something or save a file in one os i don't have to deal with flash drives or email or anything to move them back and forth.

http://www.fs-driver.org/

It's freeware, it just runs and windows instantly becomes smarter.

 

^^^ I use this too although sometimes it is helpful to reinstall it after partitioning.

 

Did I hear my name? You'll be perfectly fine, GRUB will do it's job just fine and everything will be smooth. If you have any questions my Linux Switcher's Guide should cover it well.

 

Calvin, we need a linux support team..lol

Take a look at my Ubuntu guide(see sig) for actually installing it.

 

Isn't that already the NBR Linux team? I'm apart of it but can't put it in my sig because I like it clean. Although I may go for it soon, since one of my comrades has it working out for him.

 

Got hardy heron working on my laptop, vista dual boots perfectly. Still trying to ndiswrapper the proprietary gateway wireless driver, but other than that it's golden.

Thanks for all your help!

 

Wait, what wireless card do you have?

 

No problem, what wireless card do you have? It might require something different than NDISwrapper. I might also be able to provide you with a guide.

 

The device is a an Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG

Driver files: ~\Drivers\NETw4v64.sys; NETw4c64.dll; NETw4r64.dll

Driver provider: Intel
Driver Date: 10/31/2007
Driver Version: 11.5.0.34

The only downloads that I found in Gateway.com support are for Vista.

Any help would be much appreciated. I didn't see any similar drivers on the synaptic package manager but it's very possible that I overlooked them. It's just a generic wireless device so drivers shouldn't be too hard to find.

 

Intel wireless? It should work OTB, have you tried enabling it with Hardware Drivers?

 

Nothing under hardware drivers but I ended up fixing it by accident. I had been looking for drivers online on my gaming rig and when I plugged the rj45 into the lappy it called it "wmaster0" and didn't show up under eth0, but then when I unplugged it and put it back in it saw it as eth0 and all of a sudden it saw wireless networks too. Very strange. So you're right, it works out of the box. I must have done something dumb in my efforts to find drivers.

 

yep, OTB for that card. If you've got it cabled, it won't see wireless networks.

 

You guys have been great. Thanks for your help!

 

No problem, if you have any more questions just ask.