Yeah guys. Finally, I have got a laptop (HP Compaq Presario CQ50) for myself with Ubuntu 8.04 installed! I installed it myself! (Of course, under the supervision of my father, so that I don’t screw up stuffs again. 
). Well, it isn’t entirely Ubuntu, of course there is Vista Home Premium installed.
I haven’t worked with Ubuntu before, only Fedora (no super powers 
, I mean no root access). There are some differences in the way you get to execute commands. In Fedora you have the substitute user (su) command. (Some call it the super user command). The su command is used to log into another account without actually logging out from the account you have initially logged in. So you type in the root (the god or the administrator) password, and gain system wide access to do anything you wish to do. This is a level of security, as only if you log as root can you cause drastic screwing up. But if you forget to log out of root, and absent mindedly set a command to do something naughty, BHAM!, there goes your system.
In Ubuntu, we have the sudo command. This ensures that you run certain commands as root. If I jump into the details I might start boring you. There are many other documents that have interesting tutorials for Ubuntu. Well, got one point to start loving Ubuntu over Fedora and Windows. It’s secure.
Well, I am what I am, so I just can’t avoid messing up things even with all this security. I wished to get high level graphics, and hence downloaded some drivers from the internet (Yes! Thanks to Papa, I am indeed accessing internet on Ubuntu. Finally I can now stick to Linux! (Meeting GNU/Linux, read the post-script). Ubuntu wanted me to restart, I obliged, and then? Display won’t work! Yes, successfully screwed up the display! My dad, quickly came to the rescue. He said he could recover it, using the recovery mode, but I had other plans. I wanted to install Ubuntu myself once (That’s how I ended up installing Ubuntu in the first place!).
Ubuntu back on track and am still looking for new ideas to screw it.
So what next?
The most obvious thing was watching some movie on linux, but I thought otherwise. Let me learn some shell scripting. And that’s what is keeping me busy now.
More on shell scripting the next time!
P.S.: Want to know more. Here’s more : Tux Magazine
I was wondering how you managed ot do the 8.04 install on your CQ50, because I also have a CQ50 and have so far not been able to run the Live CD. Whenever I try to boot from the lvie CD I see the Ubuntu progress bar come up and then it goes to a Debian-type command prompt. Not sure why, I’m assuming some kind of conflict, but I’m still a Linux noob.
Any advice would be much appreciated.