Ubuntu for Laptop
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
Like I said, I have bought a new laptop, an Asus Z92J with Intel Duo T2400 1.83 GHz, 100GB of hard drive, 1024MB RAM, ATI Radeon X1600 and DVD+RW, among others.
Its working just right, I haven’t found any problems or malfunctioned parts, yet…. (well eventually it will I’m sure, like any other machines.. but hopefully not anytime soon).
Only thing I’m not really satisfied is that it has this Portuguese keyboard layout and I had to reset it to english layout (because I’m already accustomed with english layout), with the consequence of having to be able to remember the location of each key in english layout. For example: using this keyboard, I actually have to press the key with ‘:’ character to get the ‘>’ character, which is a bit annoying to me. Worse is when you want to type the ‘(’ character, I actually have to press the ‘)’ character, something that I still get confused very often. But well, I’ll get used to it… If you look at the bright side, we can think of it as a kind of souvenir from this country, something you cannot get at other places,.. 
One other thing is that it comes with Windows Media Center (or something like that) version of Windows XP, which is completely in (guest what ?) Portuguese! So you’d get something like Iniciar instead of the familiar Start button. And everything else…. completely in Portuguese.
Fortunately, I have been used to using Linux for some time now, and the first thing I did was to grab and Install Ubuntu, so I can have English interface (or perhaps even Indonesian?) on my laptop. Initially, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) and gave it a try. I didnt really like it because the desktop style and look was not very interesting . Ubuntu uses Gnome, while I have prefered KDE (mainly with SUSE and Mandriva/ex-Mandrake), which for me, has a better look and style. So, I opened up Kubuntu website, and place a request for some free Kubuntu 6.06 CDs. Not long afterwards, the CDs arrived and I installed it immediately.
Kubuntu has a nicer look, to some extent, compared to the Ubuntu Breezy, but I had some problems with some of my hardware that it cannot recognized them properly. For instance, it cannot play well with my wireless card, for some reasons I dont really know.
Then I thought, perhaps the ‘original’ Ubuntu, could be better on this, so I replaced it again with Ubuntu, but this time with the newer Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper, which I got from my friend.
The moment I installed it, it was working really well. It could detect my wireless card automatically and connect me with the Internet connection quite easily. I had to use wpa_supplicant to make the wireless connection in my residence because the wireless connection is configured to have WPA aunthentication method, but luckily the administrator has given complete guide of how to set this up.
So, now I’ve been using it to browse the Internet (writing this blog), downloading, chatting, editing documents, playing music and movies, even playing games occasionally, without many problems. Better yet, after some tweaking and some installing some accessories, my desktop now looks really nice and cool. It has 3D desktop switching tool, nice little applets on the desktops and a comfortable 1280×800 resolution which really makes me enjoy using it.
My previous impression on GNOME now has completely gone. It turns out that it too can be really nice-looking and made ‘cool’ with catchy accessories apps. Best of all, it is really usable and comfortable. I have even less reason to to boot to Windows (not to say I will never use it, of course).
Now I am trying to install AIGLX and Compiz, one of the latest additions to X server, that will enable many 3D effects on desktop applications. Just to satisfy my curiosity.
Anyway, Ubuntu is great. Not surprising that have been the most popular distros recently.
I would recommend it to anyone wanting to try Linux for the first time.
