After purchasing a new notebook, a friend convinced me to test Ubuntu on it. Since I am a Debian fan and Ubuntu is based on Debian, he didn’t have a hard time convincing me. So after figuring out the correct boot parameters (heck, why doesn’t it do this on its own?), I was able to start and install the system.
For the most part it went smoothly, but I had to choose manual partitioning since I didn’t want the partitioner to fiddle with my setup. Apart from some minor issues at a point where I hadn’t figured out the correct boot parameters, this was easy. So I set up boot, root and swap partitions. After that the installation went through.
The problems started with the first reboot. Sound wasn’t available. I have one of these Realtek HD Audio chipsets in my notebook. Alright, so I found a way to compile a new module without recompiling the whole kernel and things worked out fine in general. Of course I had to use a proprietary driver for the nVidia GPU that was built into the notebook, but this was as easy as a few mouse clicks and I was done and the 3D effects on the desktop are more than a compensation for the hassle with the sound.
Anyway, one problem remains and I do not seem to be able to fix it without recompiling the kernel. If I plug in a USB flash memory stick, it works as long as it was available during bootup (and usb-storage gets loaded early), but unfortunately this is not the case if no USB stick is plugged in during bootup. So this is still a problem which is unsolved, but it doesn’t prevent me from using Ubuntu as my secondary OS now.
// Oliver
PS: the WLAN chipset was detected and available immediately. So the configuration was merely telling it the credentials to the available network(s).