Ubuntu?

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a linux fanboy. After my testing of Vista, I installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10.

Linux has come a long way since I first started to use it back on Mandrake 6 I think it was. A lot more programs and support are available now than ever before, and the community spirit and ease of use has grown.

I am by no means a Linux newbie. I used Linux as my primary desktop for 2 years running Slackware, compiling my kernels, installing programs from source, running servers, etc.

Linux is notorious for a couple reasons.
1. It’s hard for new users to use. This is false. When a friend of mine’s laptop crashed, we installed Ubuntu on it for her until her XP disk was shipped to her from England. She loved it, and liked how more hardware worked for her out of the box than it did on XP (which was a massive multi-day driver hunt).

2. It sucks on laptops. Well this is where I start to agree. Linux has a reputation to be sucky on proprietary hardware. Laptops are the apex of proprietary hardware. This being said, I think laptop vendors are starting to converge on a standard. This doesn’t keep Linux from now working, however.

Most of you know, my laptop is a Toshiba A100 PSAA9C-SK9E. Everything I’ve tested hardware wise has worked. My mouse works, my video card worked, and my sound works. Getting the nVidia drivers in Linux up is not too difficult, but not simple for a new user.

The main sticking point I’ve found so far, is that suspending does not work. That is suspending and hibernating. Most of the time, my laptop just hangs. After unsuccessfully suspending to disk a couple times, when I got to class and turned on my laptop, it refused to boot until I got home. I think it somehow was due to the fact that I wasn’t plugged in, forcing me to go back to WinXP.