Setting up Ubuntu for the first time

Recently we've seen a shift here at work to start using Linux OS's for as much work as we can. I've not been as quick to jump on that bandwagon but decided last Friday to use the Windows installer for Ubuntu and setup my system to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04.

With a little help from Google and my co-workers, I've been able to figure out many of the things that I've wanted to use Ubuntu for but still feel like there's so much more. The biggest trouble that I've had so far has been with docking my laptop. Initially there wasn't any problem until I activated additional drivers for my NVIDIA graphics card.

Additional Drivers window - showing the NVIDIA drivers

Not knowing what I was doing, I activated the drivers and expected them to work just fine, but when the laptop was docked nothing would show on the monitors. I have a Dell laptop, docking station, and two 24" monitors and after activating these drivers, the monitors kept saying they were going into standby mode. For whatever reason, the laptop screen didn't have any issues - just when the laptop was docked.

The resolution (no pun intended) to this was to de-activate the drivers and reboot.