And its been up and down since then. Tuesday night I couldnt get my X windows to work with Xorg. And I realised I installed the 2.4 Linux kernel instead of the 2.6 kernel. So I tried updating to the 2.6 kernel. Downloaded several different 2.6 kernels but they all didnt work: all hung on the boot screen, the part where it said “booting to kernel” or something like that. Yesterday (or rather I should say this morning, EARLY in the morning) I’ve made progress and now I have my GUI =D Only problem is that the resolution is 1024 by 768 NOT the native 1280 by 800 that my new laptop has (yep its a wxga screen, didnt really want 1 but the deal for the rest is just too good to miss and I’ll accept its ‘flaw’ of a wxga that I dont really like)
Anyway today is software freedom day and people from The NUS Linux User Group are giving out free Ubuntu CDs at outside LT27 from 1145am onwards! The new world of Linux. Exciting and interesting but I dont really have the time to be exploring too much into it. Its been 2 ‘sleepless’ nights just trying to configure and learn about Linux. No regrets in terms of learning, but regrets in time being taken away from my projects, especially FYP. But I guess thats my nature. See a problem fix. Must fix……
Tell you the stupid thing that happened today. Woke up at 9, 2 hours before my tutorial so I decided to sleep for an hour more then get ready to go to class. So I sleep and by the time I get up I feel like I’ve slept for a long time and go look at my clock. 11 o’clock!!! DOH!!!! Tutorial starting!! I forgot to switch the alarm on… I set the alarm to 10 but I didnt switch it on… doh…
So I rush to class, luckily it’s at Science which is pretty close, get there and switch on my laptop. Or rather say I tried to switch on my laptop. Didnt boot… Didn’t know what was wrong so I just took out the battery and plugged in the power and it worked. Kind of freaked me out, just been 1 day and its already spoilt. Luckily it wasnt so I thought… Switch on and the touchpad doesnt work.. Thought it was because of some application I uninstalled or removed from start up to clean my system to no load unnecessary junk. So I tried system restoring and that didnt help. I even reinstalled windows and that didnt work. I kind of gave up at about 9pm. Then I accidentally but the computer on standby. Then I wanted to switch it off. So I turn on the computer and play around with the touchpad just for fun, and I see the mouse cursor move!!!!! Then it just stopped again and didnt work. Repeated recovering from system standby and the same thing happened again.
It was then it hit me, there was a disable touchpad Fn key. Pressed the combination and viola, it worked. Man…. ‘Wasted’ day worrying that the laptop was screwed :P I hate touchpads :P Give me my nipple. That didnt have any funny thing like this. The funny thing was that even after a system recovery (from the recovery disk) the touchpad was still disabled. So basically there is some low level firmware / hardware keeping the status of the touchpad. The worse thing was there is NO indication of it whatsoever… except for the fact that the touchpad didnt work… :P Anyway I know now. Stupid touchpads…
Anyway things to do today. SLEEP… Been up all night configuring because I finally managed to install a 2.6 kernel, just had to add the ‘noapci’ boot flag in the install. Linux is fun if you have the time to explore. Which I honestly think I do not really have. I just hope I can get this resolution to 1280 x 800 then I can start my slow move to Linux. Trying to install Steam and try Counter-Strike Source on Linux :P New lappie has 64mb X700 =D
Have a nice day people. I’m sleepy :P
The Wheat Field 
You know…this whole thing reminds me of our dependency on certain specific things that we never even think about. I tell u…if I get a laptop with a nipple, I will need like a day or so to get used it. And it will be very uncomfortable for sure.