Hey all... I'm using the latest ubuntu version (7.10) that I installed yesterday. It's my first time installing a linux OS. My laptop is an Acer Travelmate.

It seems to work ok so far. The sound seems to be fine and various applications are working (the graphics bit dodgy; when I view some pictures it tends to flicker).

My question is: Are the drivers automatically installed when I installed the Ubuntu OS or is this a separate process?

I still have my original driver cd -from when I bought the laptop- but these are an .exe file and Linux won't open them.

At the moment, I reside at university dorm and am not familiar with how to connect (even with windows) so a technician is coming soon to help out. But I wonder if I'll have needed to install a driver for that...? Or was it automatically installed?

Cheers!

All of the common drivers are installed automatically during the Linux installation. That does not mean that a better driver is not available. For the video--eg--there may be some features only available by installing a proprietary driver.

Networking should work "out of the box".

Hey pixellany... Thanks for your reply. It's a bit confusing for a person that's used windows for the last 15 years.

That is pretty cool that these drivers are installed automatically. I'll be well impressed if everything runs smoothly.

Would you attribute the flickering jpeg images to a shitty driver?

Depends on the driver being used. What is your graphics chipset?

Ah... I just went back to my room and left the piece of paper that it was written on. I'll have to check later.

Well, the technician guys still couldn't figure out how to get the net up and running! They are sending in more reinforcements soon...

The DNS entry was really confusing the tech guys.. After entering the details for IP etc (3 entries) we switch to the DNS but after entering the DNS, it seems to disappear?! Is there something we are doing wrong?

~~~ edit~~~ Well, damn it working. Stupid me. You just need to click outside the box and then it doesn't disappear. And after a reboot, the net works! w00t!