Saturday, 11th June 2005
Ubuntu keeps my laptop happy
My search for a suitable Linux distribution for my laptop has seemingly ended and Ubuntu Linux is the solution.
According to me it is the best linux distribution for laptops with very good support for Intel Centrino based laptops.
My first experience with Ubuntu was when it was first released. I had then downloaded and tried out their Live CD. I was impressed at that point but was speculative about how good their install CD would have been considering that they had a single CD, as supposed to 4-5 CDs of other distributions. A single CD couldnt possibly contain drivers for a wide array of hardware support is what i thought. A google search for "best linux distribution for laptops" throws up Ubuntu fairly regularly. After a prolonged battle with Fedora Core 3 for driver support for my laptop and consequently giving up and then moving on to Debian (Not their latest Sarge version) and failing miserably (Debian wouldnt even boot up after base install), i was more than ready for an easy to use, out of the box functionality distribution like Ubuntu. And i am pleased that it has totolly met my requirements. All hardware including sound and wireless worked out of the box. Wireless especially was a pleasent suprise.
If you are a non advanced Linux user, then this is the best distribution for you. The synaptics package manager, apt-get allow you to get updates easily. Best part is that it manages removal of old version, installation of new version, package dependency tracking very very smoothly. The Ubuntu starter guide and Wiki pages are very clear and any dim-wit will be able to follow it.
However the problems i did experience are. Advanced Power Management (ACPI) doesnt work perfectly and is not well documented. When i shut the lid of my laptop, it logs the user out. I googled for a solution to that, and instead got an ugly hack which after following causes my laptop to suspend (unrecoverably) upon shutting the lid of the laptop. Certainly not something i want. I'm still looking for a decent solution to this, since i dont want to keep my laptop open during nights (when often i'm doing a long download).
Another minor irritant is that real player doesnt function as needed and the browser plugin doesnt work at all. This means no listening to music online on sites which rely on real player plugin like www.raaga.com and www.musicindiaonline.com. (I'm all sour grapes about this). To be able to use real player, an option in sound and video menu needs to be switched off.
One issue that linux distributions do now address is "using LEAP/PEAP to access wireless networks". Most universities and some companies use LEAP/PEAP based authentication methods to provide Wi-Fi access. While the universities only provide help/instructions on setting up access on Windows, use on Linux is not supported. Is is here that online documentation is sparse (almost non existent). I fought with PEAP access to try and access my school's wireless network, but all in vain. I hope the online help on this issue improves so i can roam around with this. I notice that slowly Wi-Fi Manager tools are slowly popping up. Most of them are open source (Source Forge) projects and aren't fully documented/supported yet and havent been incorporated into mainstream linux distributions yet. Hopefully soon they will.
Despite all these irritants, i still would pick Ubuntu over the other distributions i have tried to this point.
Overall, it is a satisfying distribution. Life of linux on laptops seem to be looking up.
Posted by Nikhil on Saturday, 11th June 2005 in TechnoBabble