Like I said yesterday, over the weekend I installed Ubuntu (a flavor of Linux) onto my PC. I did not take the Linux only route this time around because i wanted to get a lot of things working and tested before I completely switched over to Linux again. Main reason for this is because I telecommute into work 3 days a week so I had to be able to do my work from Linux without any issues. I also wanted to get the 3D desktop stuff working (Beryl in this case) because I wanted the eye candy. For today’s article I’m going to link to some websites that helped me get this up and going.

• Ubuntu Download Page – Pretty much necessary to install the operating system
• Ubuntu Guide – There is probably not a more helpful site for getting your Ubuntu install to be able to do everything you need.
• Updating Xorg to Version 7.2 – I was having some issues with the Beryl installation, and I had read that Upgrading the Xorg server might help eliminate those issues. This helped me upgrade my Xorg server without a hitch.
• Envy for Nvidia Drivers – While the Ubuntu Guide has a nice how to on Nvidia drivers, I found that using Envy is much easier. Nice graphical interface for inside the GUI and it also has a nice text interface if you use it inside a command console or terminal. Envy will work for ATI drivers as well.
• Beryl Installation – The folks over at the Beryl project website have a really nice wiki with instructions on getting Beryl installed in Ubuntu using the Nvidia drivers. Again, the Ubuntu Guide has a section on this, but I found this one to be slightly better and a little easier to follow.

There really is not much more to it than that. I should note that everyone’s mileage may vary with installation and drivers and such. Everyone’s computer is different. If I can get everything working the way I want it to under this little 10GB partition, you can bet that I will be moving to a complete Linux only install. That will be nice, to not be relying on Windows at all.