Ever since HP-Compaq stopped giving Windows XP drivers for their laptops customers across the world have been having a tough time setting up Windows XP and configuring all the devices (See our post on Windows XP drivers for HP-Compaq Presario F733AU). Sometimes these drivers work and sometime they don't. We have been installing Ubuntu on almost all the Laptops that we have been selling and we have not had any problems with Ubuntu so far. Recently we installed Ubuntu on Compaq Presario F733AU Laptop.
Normally Ubuntu installations on new laptops are very simple and straightforward. The only additional configuration that we end up doing are the restricted drivers. Compaq Presario F733AU comes with NVidia M7000 series chipset and requires the nvidia restricted drivers.
Initially we had problems with the installation getting hung on the Ubuntu 7.10 alternative installation CD at around 6% of the installation progress. We then tried Kubuntu 7.10 live CD for a change we were able to install Kubuntu from the Live CD. Once installed we tried to do dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to set the nvidia drivers to see if the drivers worked. The nvidia drivers that came along with the cd did not work and the resolution remained at 800x600.
We then tried the restricted drivers and tried to enable the nvidia restricted drivers. This required installation of the nvidia-glx-new package. When you try to install it using

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new

you will get the error
"The software source for the package nvidia-glx-new is not enabled"
To avoid getting this you will have to open synaptic package manager(or adept package manager in case of Kubuntu) and enable all 'restricted' repository and then reload the repository information by running

sudo apt-get update

Instead of using synaptic(or adept) you can also choose to edit /etc/apt/sources.list file yourself and include the restricted repository. Normally we enable all the repositories by default to avoid the reloading of repositories in such cases.
After this we had a strange error while trying rerun the apt-get install nvidia-glx-new command. The error was

package nvidia-xconfig None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/nvidia-xconfig.list] failed to install/upgrade: trying to overwrite `/usr/bin/nvidia-xconfig', which is also in package nvidia-glx-new
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:

Before the installation we had tried to use the nvidia default driver by running dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and selecting the nv driver. We got around the above problem by logging in console mode, changing the driver from nv to vesa and then rerunning the installation of nvidia-glx-new. Once the installation of the nvidia-glx-new drivers were done we enabled the driver from the restricted drivers manager interface and then ran

sudo nvidia-config

Then re-logging into X it was just a matter of enabling the restricted drivers and the system took to the full resolution available for the laptop. Since the laptop was meant to be used primarily as an office laptop we did not configure compiz or any of its eye-candies. Perhaps another time. In all the customer was happy with Ubuntu and the way it was working. We even configured Airtel GPRS internet via his Nokia Communicator 9300.
If you have problems installing Ubuntu on your laptop and you are in or around Trivandrum, drop by our office and let our experts do it for you. If you can't get it to our office you can use the comments form below to ask us your questions and we will try to help you in whatever way we can.