help needed for Ubuntu 8.04 on HP 6720s notebook

[Mario Vukelic]

On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 10:04 +0530, Abhishek Bawkar wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I am new to Ubuntu. I have HP6720s laptop <snip>
> Network Interface: Intel Fast Ethernet Integrated Controller (10/100
> NIC)

I have an nc6400, which has a Broadcom NIC, so I can't give advice from
experience with your machine, but let's see if we can make this work ...

You do use the wired NIC (not the WLAN) to connect to the ISP, yes? 

> 1. Ethernet is not working. My ISP does not have DHCP. After setting
> IP address, subnet mask, gateway, DNS, it shows that the LAN is
> connected, I can see the packets being sent/received, but I cannot
> open any web page neither I can ping any IP.

If packets are being sent/received, you can certainly not say that
"ethernet is not working" :)

Let's try this step by step:
Can you ping 127.0.0.1?
Can you ping your own IP that you received from the ISP?
Can you ping the ISP's gateway?
Can you ping the DNS servers?

<snip>

> 2. build-essential is not getting installed.

Of course, if your network does not work.

> 3. not able to compile any of the software packages like AWN, Compiz
> settings manager etc. It shows "C compiler could not create
> executables".

Of course, you are probably missing the packages libc6-dev, g++, and
others (which get installed by build-essential).
This will be easy to make work once we have your network connection
working.

I am concerned, however: why would you even want to compile AWN, Compiz
Settings Manager, etc.? Why now simply install them from the
repositories and be done with it?

>  When I checked on forums I came to know that g++ is not installed. So
> I tried to install g++-4.2 (debian package, the one which is there on
> ubuntu CD (ordered from ubuntu website)), 

Stop trying to install stuff as long as your network does not work, it
will just confuse you more and more :)

I don't understand what you mean by "ordered from ubuntu website", but I
get the impression that you need to learn how to install software in
Ubuntu. Please read this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/add-applications/C/index.html

(But don't expect that to work as long as your network connection does
not work)

> but it says "Dependency not satisfiable: libstdc++6-4.2-dev" and when
> I try to install libstdc++6-4.2-dev it says "Dependency not
> satisfiable: g++-4.2". I didn't understand this, g++-4.2 and libstdc
> ++6-4.2-dev both showing dependency not satisfiable for each others
> (at least one should be independent of other).

If you read the link I gave above, you will see that you do not have to
take care of dependencies yourself, it's mostly automatic. (This depends
on a working network, however)

<snip>
>  Would like to know whether Ubuntu 8.04 (64 bit version) is the
> correct installation for my notebook. 

Yes

> Please let me know if anyone has got solution for these, at least the
> Ethernet problem. I guess, once my Ethernet problem gets solved then
> everything else will be solved by "aptget".

Exactly :)
Let me know the results of the questions I asked, then we'll see how to
move forward.