Installing Ubuntu on HP Pavillion

With there being so much talk about the Ubuntu operating system, I decided to buy and install the Ubuntu operating system on my HP Pavillion a735w. I currently had the XP operating system on my HP Pavillion, and decided to install Ubuntu as a dual boot so I could retain my Windows XP operating system. An earlier article on AC described how easy the process was, so I decided that surely I could install and use Ubuntu with little or no trouble.

Before I installed the new operating system, I tried the live cd and it seemed to work without problems. I loved the clean look of the desktop, and while I was confused by the menus, I decided to proceed with the Ubuntu install.

During the install, everything went smoothly just as described in the previous article. I was pretty happy when I removed the disk and restarted the computer and booted up with Ubuntu. Ubuntu loaded quickly, much quicker than Windows XP did.

One of the first things I did was sample the games and play music, and that was where I found my first problem. The music tracks played, but I had to turn the speaker volume all the way up and still the music was muffled. It wasn't until I did some research that I found out that Ubuntu doesn't recognize popular file types. It is necessary to install codecs in order for the Ubuntu operating system to process popular files such as Quicktime.

The most important thing for me is internet access. Unfortunately, nobody told me that it was nearly impossible to get a dialup modem working in Ubuntu. It has been over a week now, and despite hours of installing driver packages and following programming instructions given at the Ubuntu Forums, my dialup modem is still not working in Ubuntu. Several posters have told me to switch to DSL or cable internet access, but that is not an option for me due to my location.

Since I do have XP still installed on my computer, I have switched back to it for most things. While there is some great free software available for Ubuntu, without internet access most of it is unavailable. I would gladly start using Ubuntu if there was a way to get my HP Pavillion online.