Ubuntu 8.04 HP Pavilion a Perfect match

Ubuntu 8.04 HP Pavilion dv8305


Before I begin my writing on "Ubuntu 8.04 on HP Pavilion dv8305 laptop" let me put the output of lspci command that gives detail information of hardware present on my laptop. So that the people who may not have exact laptop model but exact hardware may able to refer to this post to solve the issues.



One of the key hardware blockers in past were Display card [ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M] and Broadcom BCM 4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless card.

Ubuntu 8.04 is one of the finest Ubuntu release made by Canonical. Install it and most of your hardware is detected! Yes all you need to do is from menu goto "System -> Hardware Driver"
and Check the boxes for ATI display card and Broadcom card. After you check the Boradcom card wait for couple of minutes a window will be shown that may ask you whether to fetch firmware. Just check the same and wait for download. Internet connection is must for both these drivers.
Thats it! your ATI card & Broadcom wireless will work like a charm! Yes 8.10 has been released however users who would like to stick one release for longer period should install 8.04.2 instead of 8.10. I found 8.10 quite buggy and decided to skip it instead I'll directly jump from 8.04 to 9.04.
Add following application to make life easier on linux
1. VLC & Mplayer to play video formats
2. Banshee 1.4.3 for all your Mp3, Last.fm needs
3. KeePassX for your week memory and password needs
4. FrostWire for all your P2P needs
5. I removed OpenOffice 2.4 and replaced it with 3.0.1
6. MusicBrainz PICard and EasyTAG for mp3 tagging
7. GNomad 2 for my Creative Zen 30 player
8. Acrobat reader 8
9. DFO for Flickr Photo management
10. Pidgin with Guification plugin for all my MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk needs
11. GIP as my IP calculator

I'm sure there are tonns of application that people will suggest but above listed one satisfy most of my needs.


KDE 4.2

Mean time I also tried the Kubuntu with KDE 4.2 on my other desktop. I must say KDE is gonna catch GNome napping! With every KDE release its getting stronger and stronger. I was KDE fan for long time on Fedora. I used KDE from Redhat 6 to Fedora 5 release it was nice journey of KDE 2 to KDE 3. However KDE 4.2 is still not ready to take on GNome. However KDE 4.3 onwards it will slowly but surely take the battel with GNome. I moved to GNome due to Ubuntu 6.06 release.
If you wish to try KDE 4.2 I wont recommend KUbuntu to be distro! Yes! There are really nice alternatives that give KDE a better value than KUbuntu. Like: PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Knopix, Fedora.
Looking at the KDE progress I wont be surprise If I move to KDE 4.3 on my HP Laptop by year end. GNome needs to do some major improvements in order to fight back. The new GNome 2.26 update has Horizontal volume meter!!!! I wont call it exciting improvement so its better GNome check its feature box again.