Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon"
It is almost one month now since Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), the popular Linux distribution was officially released. October 18 to be exact. So it isn't really a recent news any more. Many a time I have considered migrating to Linux but always held back. I would give it a shot every couple of years but somehow felt that Linux wasn't quite there yet for the desktop environment that I have got so accustomed to, namely MS Windows. I have this love-hate relationship with Microsoft.
With all the news and hype about the latest release of Ubuntu, I figured it is that time to give Linux another try, to check it out. Also being a computer guy, it wouldn't sound very techie to say that I have never tried Ubuntu, since I constantly hear mention of it. And I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
Installation Experience
I chose to install Ubuntu on an IBM Thinkpad T40. The installation was surprisingly smooth and straight forward. You almost do not need to make any decision if you are just prepared to install the default configuration. Ubuntu detects all the hardware and installs the drivers without any intervention from me. I still remember a few years back when I was playing around with a couple of the Linux distribution, the installation demanded more inputs from the user, that I felt a novice user would probably have a hard time doing it by himself or herself. For this installation, I did successfully on the first install and it wasn't long before I was already booting up in this new install.Even though I managed to boot up into Ubuntu successfully, one thing I was acutely aware of was that it was awfully slow to boot up and I thought that it might have crashed or something. Took almost 2 minutes. That can't be right. I was staring at a blank screen while it was booting up. Once I was in Ubuntu, it was fine. Everything seems to work like normal. But I was just not happy with the boot up process and I was determine to get to the bottom of it. If this is a normal thing, I'm sure thousands would have complained by now. Since I have not heard anything specifically related to this issue, I guess it probably has something to do with either my installation, or my hardware compatibility.
Google to the rescue. A little research on Google helped to resolve the problem. Apparently it wasn't an uncommon problem, and has something to do with the Display resolution setting and the splash screen. I found the following instruction to fix it:
Step 1: Identify what the resolution and color on your machine in the following table
# +--------------------------------------------+
# | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
# ------+--------------------------------------------+
# 256 | 769 771 773 775 |
# 32K | 784 787 790 793 |
# 64K | 785 788 791 794 |
# 16M | 786 789 792 795 |
# +--------------------------------------------------+
For example: if you know the color is 64K and the resolution is 1024x768, you will get a value of 791 for VGA.
Step 2: Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst file
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Step 3: Search "splash" and move to that line, like this
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=bc93b5ac-7bfa-4dc6-a121-efffdae0057a ro vga=792 splash
Step 4: Replace the wrong value (e.g. 792) with a correct one (e.g. 791) and save the file
Step 5: Edit /etc/usplash.conf file
Step 6: Change to your resolution and save the file. e.g. in this case
# Usplash configuration file
xres=1024
yres=768
Step 7: Get your kernel version
uname -r
The result looks like this
2.6.22-14-generic
Step 8: Rebuild the bootsplash screen, e.g. like this
sudo update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.22-14-generic
Step 9: Reboot your computer
# +--------------------------------------------+
# | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
# ------+--------------------------------------------+
# 256 | 769 771 773 775 |
# 32K | 784 787 790 793 |
# 64K | 785 788 791 794 |
# 16M | 786 789 792 795 |
# +--------------------------------------------------+
For example: if you know the color is 64K and the resolution is 1024x768, you will get a value of 791 for VGA.
Step 2: Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst file
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Step 3: Search "splash" and move to that line, like this
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=bc93b5ac-7bfa-4dc6-a121-efffdae0057a ro vga=792 splash
Step 4: Replace the wrong value (e.g. 792) with a correct one (e.g. 791) and save the file
Step 5: Edit /etc/usplash.conf file
Step 6: Change to your resolution and save the file. e.g. in this case
# Usplash configuration file
xres=1024
yres=768
Step 7: Get your kernel version
uname -r
The result looks like this
2.6.22-14-generic
Step 8: Rebuild the bootsplash screen, e.g. like this
sudo update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.22-14-generic
Step 9: Reboot your computer
After having resolved that, I was quite satisfied with the boot up process since then
Next: Ubuntu User Desktop experience.
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