Learning Ubunto #1 - Getting Started with 9.04

The objective of this blog entry, and likely several more, is going to be getting Ubunto dual-booting on a Toshiba laptop, and getting it doing the things that I do day to day:

1. Surfing the web. Preferably with Google Chrome, but I can switch back to FireFox
2. File sharing with some XP machines, and Vista machines scattered around the house. Oh yea - with another Ubunto machine I built a couple of years ago as a web server.
3. I use OpenOffice a lot, so will need to get 3.1 up and running
4. Gimp - great tool for photographs
5. My other favourite tool for photos is Picasa 3 - great stuff for simple photo management
6. I use Google Earth now and then - would like to get that working
7. Gotta have Garmin Mapsource - I love my Zumo - great for travel - especially on the bike
8. I have about 12G of music - some AAC mostly Mp3 - if I have to - I can toss the AAC and rerip from the original CDs
9. Burn a few CDs and DVDs now and then
10. Current Python and Perl for some work stuff I fool around with sometimes from home
11. Wireshark, just because I am a geek
12. Sirius Satellite radio - I love the Outlaw Country and Blues channels.

Thats about it. No doubt, I will find a couple of other things I forgot to mention, but that is the basics.

I have used Linux off and on since early 2000, but this is going to be my first shot at making Linux my "daily driver". A couple of nights ago, I downloaded the Ubunto 9.04 64-bit ISO, created the CD, and was pleasently surprised to find that most everything seemed to work.

So, here we go. Tonight, I started by following the directions posted at "How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots". So far, the resizing of the main Vista partion seems to have worked fine, I am going to do some backups, and then off we go.