It's happened! I'm a convert! Ubuntu is now my linux of choice! What follows are my personal notes for installing 7.10 onto a HP nx6125 laptop (this is not intended to be a "How to"). There are a few issues that really, really, really should be attended to by anyone installing this OS on this laptop—especially configuring usplash.conf to speed up boot time. Notes specific to the nx6125 are noted as such.

3D Acceleration & Desktop Effects (nx6125)

Enable the repositories:
System --> Administration --> Software Sources
...and ensure that at least the first 4 check-boxes are selected under the "Ubuntu Software" tab.

Install restricted drivers by appeasing that pop-up in the system tray, or if you've dismissed it already go to:
System --> Administration --> Restricted Drivers Manager
...and select "ATI accelerated graphics driver"

Change last bit in xorg.conf ("Composite") from "0" to "1":

Then issue the terminal commands:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl
sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager

Go to "Add/Remove..." and search for "ms fonts". When the search is finished "Microsoft Core Fonts" should be at the top of the list. Installing this package improves the rendering of web pages.

Splash-screens & Boot-time (nx6125)

Startup is really slow and the splash-screen is missing. Also there is gibberish on screen at shutdown instead of the splash-screen. Fix this by issuing the following command:

And change the resolution to 1024 by 768.
And then the command:

...which can take a few moments.

Grub's config file has a different name to what I'm used to. It's edited by issuing the command:

 - I don't like the spacer "Other Operating Systems" which causes grub to crash if selected so I deleted it.
 - I reduced the timeout from 10 to 5
 - I added the following line to enable my custom background (Ubuntu has none):

Ubuntu has a giant command prompt. I removed \w and the semicolon from the file .bashrc in my home directory:

# PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u
@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u
@\h\[\033[00m\]\[\033[00m\]\$ '

...and...

# PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h\$ '

Gnome is the only GUI under which I like to use desktop icons, Ubuntu switches these off. At the terminal launch gconf-editor and then go to...
apps --> nautilus --> desktop
...and check the items you'd like to see on the desktop.

System --> Administration --> Synaptics Package Manager
Search for, and install, "mozplugger".

There is a wee bug that requires you to delete a file if present:

The file may regenerate in a healed state.

Screen Brightness (nx6125)

An unwanted side effect of the fglrx driver is that the screen brightness isn't easy to control. If you have an old BIOS, which you probably shouldn't have, screen brightness may be changed by using ctrl-alt-fn-f9 or f10. Otherwise to change brightness you have to firstly switch to a text console by pressing ctrl-alt-f6, press fn-f9 or f10 to adjust the brightness, and then press ctrl-alt-f7 to return you to X.

CPU Fan (nx6125)

The CPU fan never switches off in the first half hour or so of the computer being on, after which the CPU fan begins to behave as expected. The speed of the fan in this half hour is very low. Apparently the kernel switch acpi -t fixes the problem, allowing ACPI to only begin when the CPU temperature reaches 60 degrees C. I haven't tried this yet, I'm hoping it's fixed in a future kernel.

Go to "Add/Remove..." and search for, and install:
flash plugin
...and whatever else you can think of. Typically plugins installed via "Add/Remove..." behave better than those installed via Firefox itself, although the latter situation is always improving.

When IE7 detects that you are entering a password into a web-form, it asks you if you would like this password to be “remembered” for next time. If you choose “Yes”, well and good. If you choose “No”, it will never ask you again—a problem if you later change your mind. Well, recently, I changed my mind.

I followed the instructions given here on watchingthenet.com. Upon revisiting the page in question and entering my password, IE7 once again asked me if I'd like the password to be "remembered". Yay!

I recently purchased a Gigabyte NX88T512HP 8800GT. I decided on this card as it shipped with a custom cooler installed, saving me the job of having to do this myself.

I didn't realise it at the time, but this card is also factory overclocked. In fact it is factory very overclocked. The stock speed for the core is 600MHz; this card is clocked at 700MHz. That's a very ambitious overclock, and indeed the largest factory setting I found after a quick glance around the web.

After I installed the card the screen would go dark at random intervals, sometimes at boot, sometimes after several hours, and sometimes during a game. Also the card would display the classic 3D freeze during a game, a sure sign that the card is being pushed too far. By the randomness of the blackouts, my guess was that the card (possibly the memory) was damaged, so I returned the card the next day.

I then waited a week until a replacement card was sent from Gigabyte. But this card too displayed the 3D freeze, something I had seen many times from my past youthful attempts at overclocking.

I was upset at this point. I did not want to wait yet another week for a third and possibly crappy card. I decided to return the card to its stock clocks. I used NiBiTor to capture and create a new BIOS, setting the clocks to their stock speeds of 600, 1500, 900 (1800). I then used nVFlash.exe running from a startup floppy to reflash the BIOS of the video card. So far a week on and all is well.

This is my first experience with a factory overclocked card—and it sucked. Please don't anybody buy this card.

Under OS X I wanted two things to happen every day. Firstly I wanted iTunes to download my podcasts before I woke - during the off-peak download quota offered by my ISP. And secondly I wanted EyeTV to delete the recordings it had made the day before, as those recordings would have already been exported to iTunes.

Using CronniX to edit the crontab file (which I find easier than using "crontab -e"):

iTunes actually doesn't need to be told to launch, after receiving the updateAllPodcasts command it launches and behaves as expected. Unfortunately EyeTV isn't as well behaved. I've included the same commands for iTunes as a matter of completeness. Note that "> /dev/null 2>&1" sends the output from cron to the big unix blackhole, else you'll receive e-mails everyday telling you if the jobs were completed successfully.

If your iPod is attached you can have iTunes complete a sync by issuing the AppleScript command update.

For example:

If your goal is to allow the currently downloading podcasts to be copied to your iPod you best allow some time for this to happen:

That's 10 minutes. I'm lucky to have a fairly fat pipe. You may have to allow more time.