halO

And finally Linux has *everything* I need for my laptop. Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon fixed my two main peeves, and patched every sore issue up with another very nice feature, 3D effects.

Hardware

The laptop I use is an HP: Compaq nx6325. It's a business laptop and come in two variations. The one I have has a screen resolution of 1400x1050. Ubuntu works very well on this laptop! However to make 3D effects work, you need to enable restricted drivers for the ATI card and install xserver-xgl. Just open Synaptic package manager and search for it. Oh, and add compizconfig-settings-manager while you are at it. I only wish I didn't have to search on Google to find how to enable 3D effects, but I blame it on bad drivers. Hopefully, someone will create some open drivers for ATI cards soon.

Issue 1: WiFi drivers

I couldn't use my wifi card, so I had to rely on a cabled internet connection. I still figured that Ubuntu was worth using despite this maddingly lacking feature. I could probably have tried to install ndiswrapper and done it myself, but I didn't want to muck around with this once more. The last time I tried it, I had to reinstall a while later because I made such a mess.

Status: Fixed (and also bluetooth works well!)

Issue 3: NTFS

Not really a problem with Linux in and of itself, but when Windows is in such a powerful position it does bring some problems if you can't read the filesystem it use. I have windows installed on my gaming computer and my external harddrives usually are formatted with NTFS. So usually I couldn't write to these external disks using Ubuntu.

Status: Fixed! Read AND write is now enabled by default in Ubuntu.

Cool new feature: 3D desktop

Having a desktop enabled with 3D effects are cool but not really useful by itself. However, dig a bit deeper and you will find features enabled to make your life easier! I especially like the "Scale" effect. You press Shift+Win Key+Up to enable it and all the windows are zoomed out so you can see every window on the desktop live! This is how Alt+Tab should really be! You can then point using the arrow keys or click on the window you want with the mouse to enable it.

Another cool feature is that you can unfold desktops. For the uninvited, Ubuntu (and other window managers on linux) offers you several desktops of which you can manage your windows. It is like having several desks where you could put all papers that are relevant of each other. When you "unfold" by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Down, all desktops will zoom out and you can see three of them on lined up on the screen. Just flip through them pressing left and right until you see which one you like and release Ctrl+Alt.