Weird Question (Sorry, a bit long)

[Liam Marshall]

How do I tell what version of Ubuntu I am running?

I had several versions of Ubuntu downloaded and burnt to cds

Both the version of 5.1 Breezy and Dapper Flight 5 that I downloaded 
yesterday appear to work, but I have to use linux vga=771 in order to 
run the installation on my laptop.  When I do, things appear to go fine 
until the unmount of installation cd and reboot.  At that point I get a 
message about the xserver failing and would I like to see the output, 
which I do not understand, then it tells me gdm has been disabled and to 
fix it and then reenable x.  I have no idea how to do that

I have an older cd which I thought/think is a prerelease fo 5.1 which 
does work, I get in and all is fine, until I do a complete update of 
everything, then I get the same thing/errors.

I have discovered, through trial and painful effort, that if I deselect 
update choices for all the xserver updates on the older version then I 
can continue/function.  I can load/install whatever I want, but get the 
nag every boot about updates being available.  I am scared to do any of 
them for fear of breaking my install.

I would like to resolve this as I am interested in the updated features 
of the more recent versions.  Specifically, when I ran the install of 
Dapper Flight 5, I noticed that it automatically detected both my wired 
nic and my wireless nic (a Broadcom AirForce One 54g according to 
hardware info)

My laptop is an HP Pavilion 8215US  it has the dvd burner dual layer, 
ATI x600 video, etc.

I also heard that Dapper allows us to look/see files on a windows 
partition.  This is important to me as well.  I have files that I would 
prefer not to duplicate on both the windows partition and the ubuntu 
partitions.  I teach at a k-12 school in Winnipeg.  I have a K12LTSP 
server and 40 thin clients.  The server is running the Fedore Core 4 
flavour, and for next year I want to try the Ubuntu version, so I want 
to take it out for a spin.  Right now I use my laptop, with windows, 
network boot into the LTSP wired, and have a partition on my laptop to 
play with linux distros.  If all goes well, The server next year will be 
loaded with the Ubuntu LTSP combination.  It would be wonderful to have 
my local (to my laptop) also be a ubuntu distro.  I have some 
applications that I just can't find a linux equivelent of so must keep 
that damn windows partition.

Sorry for the long post but if I could get help on any/all of these 
issues that would be great.