FSC si1520 and Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn”

My new laptop FSC si1520 came with Windows Vista pre installed, but as I was always sympathising with Linux I had to give it a try – Ubuntu 7.04 was my choice. I had played with Linux before, but I always had some problems and did not have the time to go deeper into the Linux world. But this time it could be forever…
I just realize this now, while writing this post: since Feisty Fawn is working with the correct resolution (more about that later) I did not use Windows any more! The other experiences with Linux were more like playing around. Whenever I bumped into “trouble” and did not find the solution immediately I switched back to Windows. This time seems to be different. I have installed pretty much everything that I need for productive work.

Installing Ubuntu 7.04 on the Fujitsu Siemens si1520

The installation process is quite straight forward, so I will not go too much into detail. I encountered basically only one problem – Ubuntu did not recognize the correct resolution (1280×800). I was working quite a while on the xorg.conf and with xorg-edit, following some tutorials on the net. But the resolution was still 1024×768. Finally I found the solution: I had to install the 915 resolution package. Now the screen resolution is set correctly.

Buy the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Si 1520 12,0 Inch Notebook (Intel Core Duo T7200 2,0 GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, DVD+- DL RW, Vista Premium)

WLAN worked out of the box and I could connect to our little network from the living room (I did not get it work with 6.10 – although I have to admit that I did not try to hard). I did not try blue tooth as I do not have any other device that supports blue tooth.

Last Sunday I also had the chance to test the internal card reader with an SD card from a friend and it worked fine (my camera uses XD cards, which are not supported).

Usefull software for Ubuntu

First of all: I like the way how Ubuntu allows you to install the standard software. I still not really used to the terminal and appreciate that software can be easily installed. Here a little list of software that I have installed so far and consider useful or a must have:

• OpenOffice: a good alternative to Microsoft Office which allows you to work with texts, tables, presentations, databases, etc. I have used this software on my previous computer under Windows.
• Evolution: I was always using Thunderbird for emails, but the good integrated calendar and the possibility to sync with Google Calendar (I will write more about this in an other post) made me choose this piece of software.
• Scribus: Scribus is a good DTP program, also available for Windows and MacOS.
• Inkscape: a vector drawing tool I am using for quite a while now. I love it!
• Quanta Plus: a good HTML editor. I was always jealous of the Linux guys as they got such a good software for developing websites for free. Lately I was using Aptana (based on Eclipse IDE), I will probably install this, too.
  
• Gimp: What other software for treating images on Linux? (I am using it for quite a while now and like it. What I still don’t like is the GUI, which has some serious usability problems. But hey – you can get used to basically everything).
• Skype
• FileZilla: Somehow you have to bring your websites online, right?
• Multisync-Gui: A tool to sync different devices and software (calendar, contacts, files, etc.).
• CUPS: Cups allows you to make PDFs from any file that can be printed.
• Hugin: allows you to create panoramic images (see my post “Nice Weekend”).
• Liferea: a news aggregator. I was never using one of those but I gave it a try and imported my feeds from my personalized Google startpage (there is a tool to create OPML files from the Google personalized startpage). What should I say: I like it and it helps me to scan a lot more posts and select interesting information. How could I live without it? 😉
• A few others

I think this is enough for now. In the next week I might give some more detailed information on the software I am using and the problems I will bump in (hopefully I have nothing to write about the later).