On the plus side, I am using Listen for mp3 and VLC for avi movies. All’s fine, no installation hassle. So far so good. On WinXP I had to get a CODEC program to be able to watch avi movies.

Edited @7am - After successfully un-blacklisting the bcm43xx, and making a trip to WinXP to check my wifi card details (needed it for asking help), I rebooted onto Ubuntu, and surprise! The wifi is working now. Hope it keeps working afterwards.

So, I burnt the CD image and installed the OS onto the laptop. I had to partition the HD into two parts, as the two OS cannot be on the same drive. I was a bit surprised to find out that the partition made through the CD installation resulted in the Linux part not visible while on Windows. After installing Ubuntu, I tried to login onto the net … without success! I tried several times, trying to config the connection as we normally do on Windows but hit a blank. I kept having an error message saying “SIOCGIFFLAGS error: No such device” ….

This afternoon, I have been browsing through Ubuntu forums and found the way to get connected to internet through the LAN cable (such easy steps if you know what to do). That’s a start. But my wifi connection is still unusable. I have read through the forums that Broadcom wifi chipsets have compatibility problems with Ubuntu and one has to modify some commands/lines to get it working. I tried one suggestion but it didn’t work. I have sent a mail to one of the posters who happened to have the same laptop model as me, and hopefully (s)he’ll give me the proper steps to get the wifi working.

Well, fingers crossed I will be able to surf and listen to the mp3s on Linux before the end of the week.