I have continued to Run and Update Lucid Lynx with no problems or incidents outside of the Optical Drive Problem. I have reached the conclusion that in case of the specific laptop( Compaq Presario V5000 ) the optical drive itself may have failed.

Additionally, I have successfully connected to a Mobile Broadband connection using a Modem Adapter( Dongle) and a Mifi Device.

There has been an effort to conceal dangerous command line commands in various Ubuntu Help Forums. These instructions can erase your hard drive and destroy data to attached devices such flash drives. Use extreme caution when running commands in Terminal/Console based on advice posted help forums. You may read an Official Alert with more detailed info from the link below.

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=319

I’ve been running Lucid for just over a month. In my June 26 update I noted an issue with having to manually reset/install the Wireless driver at each start up–I solved that problem and wireless activates as soon as the system boots. It activates, connects and locks onto whatever network(s) it detects.

The inability to mount the onboard CD/DVD drive remains unresolved and the error message: “Unable to mount cdrom0, mount: special device/dev/scd0 does not exist” persists,

I have found this problem remains an issue with many Users even at this late date. I am however able to use an external DVD-RW drive. It is detected instantly upon connection and works without any problems.

I discovered one day after I got the WiFi to work that each time I shutdown the computer I had/have to uninstall the Wireless driver then reinstall it for the wireless to activate and work. It works flawlessly as long as the machine is not shutdown. It is an annoying yet easily dealt with situation but unacceptable in an OS that is supposed to be LTS. A convert from Windows might or might not figure out how to do the work around and it would do nothing to enhance Ubunut/Linux in the opinion of average computer users.

Approximately, 2 days ago I decided to check out something with the CD Drive and found that it is no longer detected. I received this message:

“Unable to mount cdrom0, mount: special device/dev/scd0 does not exist”

I am researching this issue and found I am not alone encountering this problem. What good does it do for the Lucid to look so beautiful when it is so fatally flawed?

I finally got the WLAN card to work! The primary reason my machine was not working was found in this output in Terminal: “Network not claimed”

During my initial attempts I had installed Ndiswrapper, Wicd and Broadcom wireless drivers(on a wired connection) via Synaptic Package Manager and following various instructional guides using these tools I was not successful.

I reinstalled Network Manager which I had removed to accommodate Wicd and found a collection of Broadcom drivers( on a Fedora Site) specific to the card on the V5000, I downloaded these files on another computer transfered to Documents in the Home Folder. I extracted 2 Inf files, 2 Windows EXE and 1 SYS Files. Once this was done I went to System>Administration>Wireless Drivers and directed it to Install Drivers(GUI). The first of the 2 Inf was selected and the Wifi Led lit within seconds. I was able to connect to a neighbor’s connection successfully.

I used the following Command Line commands in Terminal to reach the point of success.

#1. nm-tool { This indicated that my card was not turned on}

#2. sudo Ishw-C network {this verified my wireless controllers and if you run this command without sudo a warning advising to do so will appear in Terminal }

I did not need to run other commands or Blacklist anything. The above tips worked for my specific setup. I hope this will help others avoid the frustration I encountered. Below is the “Official Ubuntu Wifi Troubleshooting Guide link.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessTroubleShootingGuide#lshw

What I don’t like:
– vmware server 2.x crashes kernel. Although I installed it (with a patched kernel module), it disabled automatic startup.
– evolution is not evolving to my needs, I switched to thunderbird 3 (part of repo!) which has great calendar plugin and works great with google calendar. I love “open in new tab”.
– notification aggregation in a menu. I disabled it, Now empathy is in the notification area again, so I see when some writes me.
– empathy’s IRC client does not highlight enough important messages. I switched back to xchat-gnome. Before, I used pidgin as unified messanger. Now I use empathy / xchat-gnome combination.

I don’t use Ubuntu one. Currently, I have no need for bookmark sync. And 2GB may not be enough. I subscribed another multi-platform backup solution (crashplan) which works great.

All in all, I’m very happy with 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

Have you thought about all the changes, optimizations and improvements under the hood that you don’t see that goes into each release of Ubuntu?! What do you expect, a reinventing of the wheel every six bloody months?

Alt+F2 > Type “gconf-editor” & hit run > apps > metacity > general > edit the value for ‘button layout’ to “:minimize,maximize,close” (the colon at the beginning rather than the end moves them back to the right).

Unfortunately if you change theme at any time it reverts the buttons back to the left again so you will need to do this any time you change theme.