2. install restricted drivers

Make sure all hardware is working properly and install missing drivers.

Drivers installation is usually not necessary, because they are already present in the Linux kernel. One exception is the proprietary restricted drivers for Nvidia and ATI graphics cards. For optimal performance of your Nvidia or ATI graphics card, you'll want to install the closed source restricted driver (the proprietary driver).

The Restricted drivers manager alerts you automatically about the availability of restricted drivers for your graphics card, by a notification in the system tray in the upper panel of your screen (on the right). Click on the notification icon and follow the steps. If there is no automatic alert, perform a manual check: System - Administration - Hardware Drivers.

The required driver is then automatically downloaded from the internet, from the software repositories of Ubuntu, and (also automatically) installed. Afterwards you will have to do a full reboot of your computer. Ubuntu will issue an alert for that.

Do you have a graphics card of the brand ATI or Nvidia, which is so new that the proprietary restricted driver version in the software repositories of Ubuntu is too old? Then you can use the latest restricted driver of ATI or Nvidia. An easy tool named Envy (envyng-gtk) will take care of downloading and installing the latest ATI or Nvidia driver for you.

This package is in the Universe software repository of Ubuntu: in order to access that respository, you must first enable all repositories, both official and semi-official.

You can install envyng-gtk as follows:

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

Search word: envyng-gtk

Tick it and press the Apply button.

After the installation: start envyng-gtk through Applications - System Tools.

Note: The use of envyng-gtk is an "emergency measure". If everything works fine with the somewhat older restricted driver for ATI or Nvidia from the repositories of Ubuntu, then you should stick with that one. Only the restricted driver in the repositories is tested for stability in Ubuntu.