Installing Ubuntu on new laptop - advice

[Dougal]

Hi guys - I am buying a Dell Studio 15 with 2.53GHz chip, 1066MHz bus, 4Gb ram and 256Mb ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics card running a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Hope this is okay for my planned installation of latest version of Ubuntu.
I am looking forward to running it with 3D effects in all their glory (not games, got bored of those years ago). Will mostly use the machine for editing photos using the GIMP unless there are any other suggestions of good alternative to or in addition to the GIMP for editing...
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of spec and running Ubuntu on it?
This is me coming back from a short spell in the wilderness of having to put up with Windows XP being the only OS that will run on my ageing Acer until recently getting Freespire 2.0 to run flawlessly now for around two months. I have even toyed with installing Freespire on my new machine as it works well. Does everything I need.

Any comments welcomed.

Cheers guys.

[whych]

You can download the kubuntu cd and try it first before installing - ubuntu is a live distro and does its install over the internet.
Same goes for most of the other distros. Try the live cd first, and if you like it, give it a go.
This will also identify any problems before installing.

[rokytnji]

Linux Mint 6 is another one you could try. Think of it as Ubuntu with codecs.

[elija]

You will need the x64 version of your distro to take full advantage of your ram and processor. The 32 bit versions will only use 3gb.

I am posting using Mint 6 x64 edition which I have just installed today (I got bored) and so far it has worked flawlessly which is a far cry from how I remember 64bit distros!

[Dann]

In my experience, ATI cards are kind of hit or miss in Ubuntu. I'd google it to see if anyone has had any luck running your specific ATI. But if Freespire handled it, I assume you'd be fine.


GIMP is pretty much they way to go for editing photos. You have some other options, but nothing really as powerful. Cinepaint is really good. It handles higher resolutions than GIMP, but has less tools. It's mostly used for touching up movies (harry potter, spiderman 2, etc), but it will work on stills as well. But I really doubt GIMP will leave you wanting anything. But if worse comes to worst, you can use Photoshop CS2 in Wine without a problem.

Other than that, definitely get the 64 version.

[whych]

ATI cards aren't that much of a problem. Go to thee ati site and d/load the latest driver and do a manual install.
Let the guy decide which distro he wants before giving him too much to worry about-;
Someone will allways help with the minor problems.

[jmadero]

I've read horror stories about dell with radeon. please post after to let us know if it works

[JK3mp]

You will need the x64 version of your distro to take full advantage of your ram and processor. The 32 bit versions will only use 3gb.

I am posting using Mint 6 x64 edition which I have just installed today (I got bored) and so far it has worked flawlessly which is a far cry from how I remember 64bit distros!

32bit versions can use up to 4Gigs NOT 3Gigs, anything more though and u need 64 bit.

[JK3mp]

Oh...and i've used ati cards in 2 diffrent laptops with several distributions and never had a problem ... though i've heard bad things..idk ... :-S

[elija]

32bit versions can use up to 4Gigs NOT 3Gigs, anything more though and u need 64 bit.

I moved from a 32bit to 64 bit OS yesterday and can now access all 4gb of ram in my machine (previously it was only 3gb).

I have read somewhere this very evening that this 3gb limit is per process so that might be why I was thinking I was accessing only 3gb when looking at top?