My experience with GNU/Linux in my new Lenovo G570

Updated on 28 June 2011: 3 days before I deleted this post by accident. So I'm republishing it with some modifications.

If you are revisiting this post yourself to read it, Thank You so much and please go ahead... :)

I did not get any chance to use any GNU/Linux distribution regularly yet, hence I did not own a computer. Still I did try many distributions in father's office computer using USB boot. But it was not faster and reliable as much as a installed OS. Now I got a new Lenovo G570 laptop with Intel Core i3 Processor, 3GB DDR3 RAM, 640 GB Hard Disk, 15.6” screen and Windows 7. As I want GNU/Linux as default I partitioned it with one more unformatted partitions.

My favourite GNU/Linux distro is Ubuntu and also like Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu (and again Ubuntu is based on Debian... LOL...) But firstly I installed Open SuSE with KDE from a DVD which I got from Linux For You Magazine. And let me be frank, I did not like it. KDE's UI is superb but I didn't find it so much user friendly for me. May be because I'm a GNOME guy.

So I decided to install Linux Mint. But I had to download it yet and only I had Ubuntu 10.10 CD. I could not wait for Linux Mint to download so installed Ubuntu. Next day I got 11.04 and tried to upgrade it from 10.10. During the installation it said all of my private files in home folder would get deleted. So temporarily dropped it. Then searched for the reason through out the Internet but could find the exact one. At last somewhere I did read that for a complete upgrade from 10.10, it should be updated with latest updates. Definitely there would lots of updates to download. Why should I waste that much time and Internet usage to update 10.10 and again upgrade to 11.04? Instead I can install 11.04 as new. I copied all of private files into Windows partition. (Thanks to Ubuntu as it mount Windows partitions from the first start.) After upgrading to 11.04, updated it with 159 MB of updates. And now it is working perfectly smooth.

The real surprise is just coming when I tried to configure my Airtel mobile for an Internet connection in Ubuntu. As I did before, I needed to download WVDial and other few application for the configuration. But this time I tried to configure it without all those applications. I connected mobile with data cable. Clicked on network connection icon, a new connection was already there as GSM GPRS. As I clicked on it an Internet connection set-up wizard appeared and asked to select Country, Network Operator and APN. That's all. A new Internet connection is ready. I checked network connection icon and clicked on Airtel to establish the Internet. I was expecting that it wouldn't work without WVDial configurations but surprisingly it worked. I got shocked and still wonder that why it did not ask for any driver software for modem or for any manual configuration.

Well, now all things are working good and have lots of things to do. With the hope for all good things with my PC I'm stopping here.

I don't like to say B-Y-E word. So see ya......