I reported a little while ago about my experiences with Ubuntu. It’s time for a quick update.
The short version is that I like it. I like the way that it looks and feel. I even like the OpenOffice software, though it does bizarre things once in a while (need to make a few bug reports there). The performance on this Dell D820 is snappy, and it starts lightning fast (at least compared to the five minute startup of my previous Windows XP box).
That said, there have been problems…
I still haven’t been able to get the external monitor thing working right. At the recent JUGC (Java Users Group Cologne) event, I couldn’t get it to display right at all. At Java Forum Stuttgart earlier today, I did manage to get it to play well with the projector, but I had to restart and then fiddle with the resolution settings to make it work. At least it’s not a show stopper (rebooting doesn’t take all that long). I’ve heard that the next version of xorg should address this, so I’ll just wait.
I was having a problem getting suspend and hibernate to work, but they magically started working a couple of days ago. I switched to the restricted (i.e. non-open source) drivers for the display and that seemed to make everything right (or maybe it was another update, I really wasn’t paying close enough attention).
I tried to get bluetooth working today, and I ended up somehow screwing up the wireless networking. After removing the bluetooth stuff, everything started working again. I may spend some time next week trying to sort it out again since all the pictures I’ve taken this week are pretty useless to me without a bluetooth connection to my phone to download ’em.
Speaking of the wireless, it just stopped working a couple of days ago. It took me a while to figure out that after I had connected to an ethernet cable the “roaming” setting on the ethernet adapter got turned off. After turning this back on, everything started working.
So… there’s been problems. But I’ve been working around them. All-in-all, as a former Windows user, I’m happy with the Ubuntu experience.
