Ubuntu on my home desktop

So, in my urge to find an all-GPL distro, I went out looking for all-free distros instead and landed up installing Ubuntu on my desktop at home. I repartitioned my hard drive using Partition Magic, and then installed Ubuntu on the new partition. The install went off remarkably smoothly, and a functional system was up and running quite quickly (functional = net connectivity, audio acccess, and a screen resolution that looked good). The two old partitions were visible (as HDA1 and HDA2) and readable (but only by root). I copied over some .mp3s to test mp3 playback and got a string of errors. So, I tried installing xmms the hard way (not having realized the power of apt-get), and found out I didn't have gcc. But the next day, things got better. I learned how to use the Add Applications command, added xmms, learned the power of apt-get (and used that to install a bunch of other useful programs including a developers kit that included gcc) and then with Scott, figured out how to make the two partitions readable/usable by users other than root (we changed /etc/fstab - I'll explain more in a later post and include those entries as well).

So, now, I have a functional system: I have net connectivity, I have personal productivity applications (read "office"); I have Latex; I have mp3 playback. I have a nice screen resolution. Bravo Ubuntu! I'm now planning to stay with Ubuntu and see if I can contribute to user forums in a meaningful way (including learning enough to make this my system for all work). Tonight, on returning home, I'll see if I can get DVD playback working. I can't imagine its going to be all that difficult.