Converted from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux

I'm now running Ubuntu Linux 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook computer. I have named this computer Mercury (as opposed to Pericles, the Ubuntu web server that I've been writing about thus far.)

There were a couple pieces of hardware that I had to tinker with in order to get it working or optimized:

• Wireless: BCM4318 AirForce One 54g 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller
• Graphics: Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller

Here is a list of the software I'm running on the system so far. This list isn't exhaustive, but basically includes things I frequently use and things that I had to deliberately install:

• Gnome (desktop environment)
  
• Mozilla Firefox (web browser)
  
• Evolution Mail
  
• Kopete (with MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and IRC connections.)
• Tomboy Notes (a Wiki-like sticky note applet)
  
• gnubiff (a tray notification tool to make a penguin dance if I have any email.)
  
• xmms (music player)
  
• Totem xine (movie player)
  
• Codecs for virtually all Windows and Macintosh audio and video formats and full DVD playback.
• wine (a windows API replacement layer to support a few windows apps that I still use.)
  
• VirtualDub (a GPL'ed video manipulation program for Windows. I run this through wine.)
  
• Internet Explorer 6 (I use this to test the websites I develop for my business. It also runs through wine, and I installed it using the very convenient IEs4Linux script.)
  
• vmware player (I have it set up to boot off of a 6GB raw SCSI partition, with the MBR and other partitions mapped to zero so they cannot be affected by the virtual machine. I use this to run a few design tools that I don't have functional Linux equivalents for yet.)
  
• Compiz (eye candy for Linux.)
  

I will be following this up with a series of posts to explain how I have already (or will yet) accomplish any non-trivial configuration tasks.