Ubuntu for two

Marcel seems to think that computers are for downloading random programs from the Internet, preferably without an up-to-date anti-virus program.

So of course his computer (running Windows XP) got very, very ill. I managed to clean it, but unfortunately this left many programs broken.

Our only set of XP CDs didn’t work on his 64-bit computer, so in an act of desperation I wiped his harddisk clean and installed Ubuntu Linux on it instead.

Surprisingly, he rather seems to like it, and I have had no requests so far to reinstall Windows XP. Is he a new convert to Linux, I wonder?

Having burned an installation CD for this purpose, I decided to reinstall Ubuntu on my laptop, which had been left somewhat useless after the auto-upgrade from version 7 to 8 failed.

It worked beautifully, except that the wireless connection didn’t work.

However, after rebooting three times with a wired connection, it managed to locate and install a proprietary driver on its own, and suddenly the wireless card kicked into action without any action from my part.

Perfect!