I agree with the post #2 on a fresh installation. What's good with Ubuntu (and a few other distributions) is that the installer is a live cd, so you can try out some/most of your hardware before actually installing the new system. You can install Ubuntu without "trying the CD out", but I recommend "trying it out" anyway, because of the hardware. You'll then obviously see if your screen/video works (otherwise you couldn't start the ordinary installer), but you can also try out speakers, keyboard buttons and all kinds of devices you'd like to plug in. What you cannot test are devices that require you to install something that requires rebooting (i.e. change the kernel), which means some wireless cards (those that do not have a native driver ready to use) for example. Also if it happens that you have both Wifi and Bluetooth and they're on the same card, test them out simultaenously. I just met a HP laptop where the wireless hardware worked, but only Wifi or Bluetooth, not both, would work at the same time. Anyway, you should be able to test out most of the things. If something doesn't work on the live cd, it doesn't mean it doesn't work in the installed version either (chances are you'll just need to install a driver, for example, to fix it, but that it needs to be done after the OS installation), but if it works on the live cd, it surely works (or can be made) on the harddisk-installed version too.

As long as you have backups of your valuable data (personal data that you can't just re-download from the net), you're pretty much safe. Best case was if you had a 2nd harddisk to perform the installation on, keeping your files available at the original disk all the time, but that's probably out of the question.

There is no version 10.4, it's 10.04. And what tentacles are there that are not present in the other versions, let alone other operating systems?

Bugs are bound to be found in every operating system, but I haven't met many (none "bad" bugs) on 10.04. Put short, it feels and is better than 9.10 in a lot of ways, and faster too. Plus it's LTS version which means longer support time. I don't recommend staying one release behind the current release; I recommend either staying at the LTS versions and upgrading (through a clean install) from one LTS to the next one, or staying at a distribution that's stable enough for you. Slackware would not be bad for that purpose...

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Some package, that is part of the *-buntu distro, does this detection.
RedHat(tm) gave this a name kudzu. Can anyone tell me the package name for the *-buntu family of distro's?

By design (or chance) is this detection scattered about through the use of "upstart" style initialization?

~~~ 8d;-) Dan

See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hardware/Detection, it has some information about Ubuntu's hardware detection mechanisms.

Edit: the page is last edited a while ago (2008 to be specific), but no doubt it gives you an idea of what's happening.

The Linux kernel.

Can you tell me where I might read the details about what happens
and how this works?

I am specifically interested in:

• How does the kernel discover the presence of devices?
• Once discovered, what does the kernel do? How does data flow
  so that "upstart" might create and configure that device?
• When and how does the "device driver" enter the process?
  Does "upstart" load it or does the kernel request that in parallel
  with its other interactions with "upstart"?

So many questions!!! Few clues how to get answers?!?!

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

Respectfully I don't really have the expertise or time to answer deep questions about the inner workings of the Linux kernel. In the 4 days since you posted your question, you've had ample time to burn an Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD and verify for yourself whether or not your hardware is supported.

If you want to learn the nitty-gritty, there is a book/distro called Linux From Scratch that will walk you through step-by-step. Ubuntu is generally regarded as a distro for people who want their system to magically "just work."

Wow, they are to busy with the new version to fix their LTS-version.
This would make me think about a change to a different distribution.

Another possibility is that repairs to LTS-specific issues will be part of the v10.10 development and become available to v10.04-LTS as Maverick rolls out.

Also, where does responsibility for a repair accrue to Canonical as opposed to the maintainers of the various drivers(modules) or application packages?

Curious,
~~~ 0;-Dan