Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

I’ve already got a partition set up for the installation, /dev/sda7, which was the upgraded Ubuntu 12 version I’m not happy with.

The first step is to create a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu 12 on it using the Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS ISO.

The USB booted up into a Ubuntu installation with an icon on the desktop to install Ubuntu. I used /dev/sda7 which was the previous upgrade from 10 to 12 that I wasn’t happy with. The boot loader will be installed to /dev/sda as before. I added a separate 2 GB swap partition different than that used by Ubuntu 10.

The new system booted pretty quickly, but of course, I don’t have all my stuff on it yet. On to the check list:

• Ubuntu 10 still works
• Windows XP still works
• Wireless networking works
• Ctrl-Alt-Delete brings up the dialog box (by default!)
• Suspend works

While checking out the system, Upgrade Manager started itself to look for updates, but it crashed. I sent the crash report in and restarted it and installed the 20 updates that were waiting.

• Used the Software Center to install GKrellM, EMacs, Chrome, Fingerprint GUI, Dropbox and KeePassX.
• Fingerprint reader works.
• Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 printer driver–The Printing application found the printer when I told it I had a network printer and entered its IP address. It identified the printer as Lexmark Pro800-Pro900, but had no driver for it. I installed Lexmark’s (disk space wasting) driver. I chose the 32-bit Postscript PPD for CUPS-based and OpenOffice Printing with Debian-based packaging. After installing it, I couldn’t figure out what to do next, so I ran dpkg --contents lexmark-inkjet-legacy-1.0-1.i386.deb and saw the file lxPro800-Pro900.ppd in /usr/local/lexmark/v3/etc. I gave that file to the Printing application with “supply a PPD file”. The test page printed just fine.