2

I just dual-booted my PC with Ubuntu 12.04 alongside Windows 7. I like everything about Ubuntu except two things.

First, whenever I click the right mouse button in Firefox, it immediately hangs. I have to kill the process then. It becomes very annoying when I have several tabs open and I forget not to use the right mouse button. I had previously booted Ubuntu with UNetbootin, the same problem was there even then.

Secondly, when I had not installed AMD drivers on Windows 7, the laptop was just eating through the battery. Only after installing the drivers, did it come to cool down and started giving the 6 hours backup it was supposed to. Now, the problem is that in Ubuntu, the laptop is just throwing up the heat as if I am playing some heavy game. It goes without saying that the battery backup is poor - barely 2 hours.

Is there any solution for this?

And make that questions three - is there any beginners guide to Ubuntu? I feel seriously confused when trying to install a software. In fact I have no idea how to do it. I know there is Software Center but I have no idea how to operate it. The last time I used a Linux OS was Mint 8 few years back. At that time too, I felt seriously confused with all the commands you have to know about, in order to have any sense of control.

MY system is HP Pavilion G6-2005AX, if that helps.

5
  • There seems to be three separate questions combined into one. Can you break it up and provide reasonable info, such as hardware specs. Aug 29, 2012 at 13:16
  • Go to the software center, enter the search term, hit install. You can't say that's hard, right? As for the battery and heat issues: try disabling the hybrid graphics in your Catalyst control center.
    – user77111
    Aug 29, 2012 at 13:19
  • @mikewhatever - I am not sure what more detail I can give regarding the questions. You can ask what exactly is needed to be known. I'll be swift to reply.
    – Saakaar
    Aug 29, 2012 at 13:23
  • @cumulus007 - Well, the hit install button remains faded/dead. Hwo do you enable or disable hybrid graphics in Ubuntu? please guide me.
    – Saakaar
    Aug 29, 2012 at 13:25
  • HArdware specs - AMD a8 quad core , 4gb ram, 500gb harddisk ( 5400 rpms) , AMD radeon HD 7640G + 7670m dual graphics.
    – Saakaar
    Aug 29, 2012 at 13:29

1 Answer 1

1

The issue with Firefox has been reported as a bug on Launchpad. You can view the bug report and find some potentially useful comments regarding this issue on this page

As for the over-active GPU issue, you'll want to install the AMD Catalyst driver, which does an infinitely better job managing power consumption on RadeonHD cards and includes a utility (Catalyst Control Center) to manage the switchable graphics and set GPU-specific power management settings. To install the driver, just follow the step-by-step directions on this page. Note that these directions are intended to be used to download Catalyst version 12.4 -- this version works well, but is now a couple of versions behind. If you want the latest version of the driver (12.8) instead, you can still follow these directions and simply replace all instances of "12.4", "12-4", etc. with "12.8", 12-8", etc.

If something goes wrong, or if for some reason you don't like the Catalyst driver and want to remove it and revert back to the default driver, follow the directions on this page (specifically answer #2, posted by bioShark).

Finally, when it comes to installing software, check out this page for a good overview of various methods and this video for a tutorial on using the Ubuntu Software Center.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .