Seems like no one responded to my
Ubuntu Linux CD giveaway. Oh well [:P]
Anyway just last weekend I was finally able to buy myself the cheapest
laptop there is -- Celeron M 1.3 GHz, 512MB DDR, 40GB hard disk, WLAN,
14.1" 1024x768 screen
for less than PHP 35K. Now I installed Ubuntu
Linux 5.10 (yes, one of the copies I was supposed to give away) on it.
Let me tell you how it went.
Well the installation was pretty straightforward. Anybody who has
installed Windows XP from a CD-ROM will be able to do it, never mind
the stuff about partitions. Ubuntu automatically suggests partition
sizing anyway. I think the install went on for about less than an hour
and I finally saw the Ubuntu login screen on my desktop. Cool. Except
for the brown color. [:P]
Until I noticed a few things:
- The screen resolution was stuck at 640x480, 60 Hz. Ugh. Some of
the dialog boxes in the Ubuntu Preferences panel did not even fit the
screen.
- It did not detect the 802.11g WLAN adapter in the machine (it's a
mini PCI card that's connected underneath the laptop chassis). I think
it's supposed to be a RALink card, forgot the model number. At least it
got the LAN interface right. Oh wait, the built-in software modem
wasn't detected too.
- Otherwise, all other stuff worked well. It detected the battery
level correctly, the touchpad worked (including the scroller), plugging
a USB mouse (from CD-R King, cheapo me!) had the system automatically
detecting and using it, standby/shut down/hibernate all worked OK.
Great!
I think Linux is getting really ready for prime time. It's almost
there. [;)] However, for it to really get there I think it has to
progress to a point wherein users won't have to do command-line magic
and extensive Google searches just to be able to find
workarounds for
the WLAN and the video.
Oh, by the way, I finally got my display working correctly after finding the open source
915resolution utility. [:)] And I settled for the very clean-looking ClearLooks theme for GNOME instead of the default Ubuntu brown.