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On Friday I reinstalled Ubuntu, but with a different goal in mind then last time. This time, it was to get set up, fix any problems I ran into, and see if I could get everything working correctly. As of today, I can say that 99% of it is working perfectly.

I started off only using my secondary video card because it is an nVidia chip unlike my main card, an ATi Radeon 9250 (because we all know Linux works better with nVidia). My wireless card didn't have drivers for it, so I downloaded ndiswrapper on my Windows partition and got my wireless drivers for Windows. I got the Windows drivers because TRENDnet doesn't make Linux drivers, and the purpose of ndiswrapper is to be able to use Windows drivers for Linux network devices (eg: a wireless card). Once I setup my internet with my now functional wireless card, I downloaded EnvyNG and downloaded the newest drivers for my nVidia GeForce MX 4 graphics card. Upon rebooting my computer after the installation of my new video drivers, I noticed Compiz was running. This is a bad thing, seeing as I was going to enable it anyway.

The next thing I did was get my audio working correctly (yes, audio barely works correctly, if at all out-of-the-box). I started off by reading a tutorial on the Ubuntu Forums on how to change your output from eSound to ALSA. This forum thread explained what to do, and gave a script to use so you can have multiple applications use audio at the same time (which you'd think should be standard, right?). After doing so, everything seemed to be working good as can be. Now, pulseaudio does crash every now and again (*cough* during Skype phone calls *cough*), but it's running good besides that. The last thing I did was replace my default audio mixer with KMix (seeing as it doesn't have spasms like Gnome Volume Controller does).

Then the fun part came, application installing! The only thing I had to compile from source was my alarm clock applet, which came as a surprise. One of the first things installed of course was Opera, which isn't as stable as it is on Windows, but still runs good. Then I ran Pidgin (no need to install, it comes with Ubuntu) and set it up (I was a Pidgin user on Windows as well, so it was an easy transition). Then, came time to get and setup an IRC client. This isn't as easy as it sounds seeing as how I am a huge mIRC fan (enough of a fan to write his own modified version). I decided to go with XChat because mIRC isn't very stable when run under WINE, and everything else is either too much or too little. Another easy transition for me was from Winamp to amaroK. Now I did use a lot of the little known features of Winamp, but they weren't that hard to let go seeing as I used amaroK when I was using Winamp a year or so ago on my Gateway). Then came VLC Media Player, uTorrent (yes, I still refuse to use anything else, Linux or not), Photoshop CS2, and Skype.

I still hit the occasional hiccup in pulseaudio, and Opera crashes more, but it's bearable. I've changed my nVidia GeForce MX 4 card with a GeForce 6220, which runs so much smoother. And as of now I'm using Ubuntu as my primary install, I don't know how long it will last, but as of now, It's primary. As for anyone looking to jump into Linux, don't expect it to be a walk in the park, you'll realize that a lot of mainstream software, and your "favorite" software isn't ported to Linux. And be ready to learn how to use the terminal, it's not a nightmare, but it's out of the usual for a typical user.