Translations by Cheng-Chia Tseng

Placeholder.

2010

Canonical Ltd. and members of the <placeholder-1/>

Your computer consists of a number of connected devices, which are collectively known as computer <emphasis>hardware</emphasis>.

Proprietary drivers

Some devices attached to your computer may need proprietary drivers to be installed in order to work properly.

Proprietary drivers are drivers for your hardware which are not freely available or open-source.

Most of the devices (hardware) attached to your computer should function properly in Ubuntu. These devices are likely to have <emphasis>free</emphasis> drivers, which means that the drivers can be modified by the Ubuntu developers and problems with them can be fixed.

Some hardware does not have free drivers, usually because the hardware manufacturer has not released details of their hardware which would make it possible to create such a driver. These devices may have limited functionality or may not work at all.

If a <emphasis>proprietary driver</emphasis> is available for a certain device, you can install it in order to allow your device to function properly, or to add new features. For example, installing a proprietary driver for certain graphics cards may allow you to use more advanced <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:desktop-effects">visual effects</ulink>.

Some computers may not have any devices which can use proprietary drivers, either because all of the devices are fully supported by free drivers or because no proprietary drivers are yet available for the device.

Proprietary drivers are often maintained by the hardware manufacturer, and so cannot be modified by Ubuntu developers if there is a problem.

Enabling a proprietary driver

To use a proprietary driver for a device:

Find the driver which you would like to enable and read the description.

Press <guibutton>Activate</guibutton> to enable the driver. You may be asked to enter your password.

The proprietary driver may have to be downloaded and installed.

You may need to restart your computer to finish enabling the driver.

Disabling a proprietary driver

If a proprietary driver is causing problems, or you would just like to turn it off, follow the procedure below:

Find the driver which you would like to disable and read the description.

Press <guibutton>Remove</guibutton> to disable the driver and continue using a free driver, if available. You may be asked to enter your password.

You may need to restart your computer to finish disabling the driver.

This section provides instructions on how to handle disks and drives, such as removable hard disks.

format

Checking how much disk space is available

Run <application>Computer Janitor</application> by clicking <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guisubmenu>Administration</guisubmenu><guisubmenu>Computer Janitor</guisubmenu></menuchoice>. This will remove unused or obsolete software packages from your computer. Read the list of packages carefully before you click <guibutton>Cleanup</guibutton>; packages that you have manually downloaded and installed may be listed as unused, even though they are not.

Remove software packages that you no longer use. See <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:add-applications#removing"> Add/Remove Applications</ulink> for information on removing packages.

You can use <application>GNOME Partition Editor</application> to partition storage devices. <ulink url="apt:gparted">Install the <application>gparted</application> package </ulink> and then press <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guisubmenu>Administration </guisubmenu><guimenuitem>Partition Editor</guimenuitem></menuchoice> to start the partition editor.

Press <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guisubmenu>Administration </guisubmenu><guimenuitem>Partition Editor</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

A filesystem is a particular way of storing and organizing files on a storage device such as a hard disk, and is an important part of an operating system. Without a filesystem, accessing and storing files would be difficult.

ext2, ext3, and ext4: these are usually found on GNU/Linux operating systems. Ubuntu uses <emphasis>ext4</emphasis> as its default filesystem.

<acronym>HFS+</acronym>: this is the Mac OS X default filesystem type.

More advanced touchpad configuration options are available using the <application>gsynaptics</application> utility.

Install the <ulink url="apt:gsynaptics">gsynaptics</ulink> package.

Access the utility from <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Touchpad</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

There are a number of different tabs here with various options for adjusting touchpad behavior.

If you suffer from any of these problems, you should report a bug to <ulink url="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug">Launchpad</ulink>. The problems will hopefully be fixed in a subsequent version of Ubuntu.

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