My relationship with Ubuntu can be mildly described as love-hate. Ubuntu hates me. I love Ubuntu. Wait a minute, I am so frustrated with all the trouble that Ubuntu gives me that I hate it. Maybe it’s hate-hate. Still, I’ve installed Ubuntu at least 9 times. Most of the times, the Internet wouldn’t work and I’d give up and delete the partition and switch back to Windows. I even had to download the text-only alternate CD because the drivers for the wireless card messed up the graphical installation. I tried Fedora as well–no luck. Maybe all Linux hates me.

See, I’m a graphics designer/web developer, so it makes sense that I need my Adobe suite to work. Recently though, my work load has been mostly business-like and managerial, so I thought I’d give Ubuntu another–maybe final–shot.

A little bit about my setup: I have a HP dv2610us laptop, which works great with Vista. It’s got plenty of ram and hard disk space. So why would I need Ubuntu? Well, I really don’t. I work in a highly technical environment, so it’s partially peer pressure that I want to be well-versed in a Linux environment. Partly, it’s because I like switching computers a lot, and the main draw is to play around with a new OS. I’ve owned PCs, Macs, but emulating all of those is easy in a Linux environment–or so I’d heard. I also want to play around with customizing the OS to my tastes. I like how the fancy Compiz stuff works, and I want to learn/play around with bash scripting.

So, on with the story. Everytime I’ve installed Ubuntu, I’ve done it on a small partition, keeping my Windows partition intact. This time, I thought I’d take the plunge. I have all my files backed up, I’ve got restore discs in case disaster strikes. And I have about a week to play around in new environs. I decided to format the hard drive and go fully Ubuntu.

Most of my previous attempts, I’ve gotten as far as getting the restricted nVidia drivers installed, but wireless is crucial for me. Since I have a broadcom wireless card (BCM94311MCG wlan mini-pci to be exact), nothing I tried worked for me. I tried ndiswrapper (following the directions from this site), but that failed. I tried several other options, but nothing really worked. Good thing I learnt Spanish in high school, because a Spanish Linux forum had the exact instructions I needed to get my card working. It took me a day or so, but here I am, writing my blog through my wireless Internet connection! There’s a few mistakes on that page which I have corrected and I’ve documented the correct mechanism to get the card working on this post.

I’ll write more about my experiences in the coming week here. I’m a Linux newbie, so if I’m doing something wrong, or if there’s a better way to go about doing it, please comment or send me an email!