I liked some things about Fedora 11, but ultimately I ditched it. The blue color theme did not appeal to me, and I was having no luck enabling dual-monitor support. So I decided to have another go with Ubuntu 9.04 using Unetbootin. In a previous post, I said that the Live CD on a USB flash drive option didn't work. Well, turns out I was wrong. I just didn't follow the correct procedure. What you need to do is run Unetbootin, select Ubuntu 9.04 > Live CD and make sure you have your flash drive specified as the target. Then go do something else for awhile as Unetbootin downloads the ISO, unpacks it and writes it to your flash drive. You'll need at least a 1GB flash drive for this to work. Then when Unetbootin asks if you want to reboot, say yes if you are already on the machine you wish to install Ubuntu on, otherwise exit. Plug your drive into the target machine, boot up and select boot options from the BIOS menu. Make sure USB is at the top of the list.

Installing Ubuntu from the Live CD is a smooth, simple process; much easier than installing Windows. I picked the entire disk option, chose a login name and password, and let the installer do its thing. Booting into Ubuntu went smoothly, but initially graphics support was limited to just the screen of the U810 and not the external monitor. I followed this procedure to enable dual-monitor support. This time, I did a little more research on the Import Key step. Turns out that I did this wrong before. I saved the HTML page as a file, but really you should only save the key text as a file. No file extension is required and any name will do. I left a comment about it on the tutorial page.

So now I have dual-monitor support with the full monitor resolution. Sweet! I have set up my printer drivers as well. My printer is a Dell 3110cn which I purchased specifically because it supports Linux. Some printers, especially budget ones, don't support Linux. So make sure it supports Windows, Mac, and/or Linux before you buy a printer, then you will avoid disappointment.

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself at the moment!

I've been thinking about ditching Vista for awhile, and a couple days ago I pulled the trigger. My Fujitsu U810 netbook lacks an optical drive, so I used Unetbootin to install Ubuntu 9.04.

Unfortunately, that process didn't go as smoothly I would have liked. For some reason Unetbootin didn't download the GNOME graphical environment. So when I booted into Ubuntu, all I had was the text-based command line. 

No problem, I just used apt-get to install GNOME. I've done this before, but it was very helpful having the Palm Pre at hand to look up the relevant articles on the Web.

EDIT: I have found a much better way to install Ubuntu 9.04 using a bootable flash drive.