Oleh Prypin's questions

Brightness adjustment keys <Fn + ⇑/⇓> have no effect (although they are recognized by the environment), and I can't change the brightness using GUI tools as well. This seems like a problem in Linux itself, not the desktop environment.

I can change the brightness in Windows OS, so it's not some kind of hardware fault.

Details:
          Lenovo B570 (Model Name: 20093)
          Integrated Intel HD graphics card
          Kubuntu 11.04 (Linux 2.6.38-10-generic, KDE 4.7.0), everything up to date
          No proprietary graphics drivers (only Wi-Fi one)

What I've tried:

• Edit /etc/default/grub↦GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT: acpi_osi=Linux, acpi_backlight=vendor, nomodeset. And yes, I did update-grub
• Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (no such file, even after sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg)
• Edit /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness (no such file)
• sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=XX (no effect)
• xbacklight -set XX ("No outputs have backlight property")

How can I fix this issue?

It is really annoying to click the update icon and enter password every time to confirm updates.

How can I setup fully automatic updates without any prompts? (Not only security updates)
Some small notification about finished updates would also be nice.

I'm using Kubuntu 11.04 and KPackageKit.

I want to try out Ubuntu (and hopefully choose it as my primary OS). After looking at many versions of it in VirtualBox and from Live CD, I've finally decided to install it.

So I defragmented and shrinked one of the partitions to make room for Ubuntu.
My current setup (after shrinking the D: partition):

[·100 MB·] [······250000 MB······] [·······600000 MB·······] [··100000 MB···]
 Reserved   Windows 7 system (C:)          Data (D:)            Free space
   NTFS             NTFS                     NTFS              (for Ubuntu)

The Internet (including AskUbuntu) is full of scary stories about Windows not loading after installation of Ubuntu, something about installing GRUB to a wrong partition, etc.
As I am a newbie to Linux and Ubuntu, it is very easy for me to do something wrong. Please mention the problems that may appear and explain how to avoid them.

Ubuntu version that will be installed: 10.10 Desktop amd64

Please note that I have installed Windows 7 about a year ago, so I have much to lose if something goes wrong. I want to be very careful because there is no way for me to backup all the data.

I've been planning to change my OS to Ubuntu,
but my hard disk contains 750GB of files (in two NTFS partitions: 250GB and 700GB).

I know that it is possible to keep the larger partition and install Ubuntu to the remaining space, but I would like to know if it is efficient to read an NTFS partition from within Ubuntu, and whether there are better ways.