Dell XPS M1210 Ubuntu Edgy Eft install
Basically, on the course of three days, I reinstalled Ubuntu 4 or 5 times, because I broke my installation from manual installs and installs from third-parties... In the end, I did the following:
- Let Ubuntu handle the wireless network adapter. Formerly, the driver (ipw3945) was previously said to be missing from Ubuntu, but it is now in linux-restricted-modules (which isn't installed by default either).
- Install the nvidia display taken from the Nvidia website. Followed these instructions (while getting the build-essential package, as well as the linux-source). There's a bunch of things I can do with my graphics card, like TwinView. See README. Here is the xorg.conf file I used. (The version from packages doesn't seem to support Beryl)
- Install Beryl + Emerald from the Ubuntu Beryl Project repository (deb https://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy main-edgy). More details.
And then, I'd like a virtual machine, and a couple of network services, and also an easy way to access my network resources. Phew! Sleep now - something I haven't had for the past week... Oh yeah, and Windows games. :P
I also found that I could use the "zoom" button on the Microsoft Notebook Optical Mouse 3000, by tying Button 9 with the Initiate action of Beryl's Zoom Desktop effect. Mice usually consider left-click as Button 1, middle-click as Button 2, and right-click as Button 3. Up and down on the wheel are respectively Buttons 4 and 5, and it seems that if you had a trackball, then Buttons 6 and 7 would be left and right. Then, anything above would be for extra buttons. In the case of this mouse, the only button is mapped to 9. I guess that it's at the level of the mouse driver that button numbers are mapped, but I did not look more into it.
That's a really useful option, because I have a 12.1" screen, and my eyes will be roasting like marshmallows from 10-hour-plus per day of total exposure to a monitor. It's considered a widescreen, so I am still well-off at the level of resolution.
On one of the previous installs, I had a few problems with the wireless. It was probably because I mixed repositories (to install Nvidia as a package), of mixed versions, and was in presence of files of the wrong version for the wireless driver. So, as a general rule, I'd say to trust the official Ubuntu packaging system, and if it doesn't work, trust sources that either come from big corporations and big open-source projects.
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