Ubuntu 9.04 on Dynabook
Wataru Tenga
(Satellite A300 Series with Intel Core2 Duo).
Good things: Fast and easy installation, much nicer fonts than in older
versions (after downloading and installing Japanese support and
Microsoft fonts, which are both easy processes), automatic detection of
wireless network (Atheros), OpenOffice 3.0 installed, etc.
Not so good: Japanese has to be added after installing; there is no
option to install multiple languages from the start as with openSUSE and
Mandriva, etc.
Deal-breaker: Even though there is a setting for what to do when the
laptop lid is closed, it doesn't recognize lid closing on this laptop
model.
I now have Windows 7 Build 7100 installed in its place (details are
outside the scope of this list, so I'll not go into them here).
Given that the laptop is a second computer, I would have continued using
Ubuntu if it didn't have the problem with the laptop lid. I'm curious to
know whether other distros have this same problem. Anyone else encounter
such a problem, with this or other software/hardware combinations?
--
Wataru Tenga, Tokyo
marc...@gmx.yamaha.com
Hi Wataru,
Just as a counterpoint, I've been using Ubuntu on my desktop, which runs flawlessly, and would have replaced Windows completely for me were it not for my need for Trados and the occasional PC game. Am liking 9.04 thus far.
I also have an old Sony Vaio w/ 256MB of ram and a 550mhz Celeron processor, which was running reasonably well on Xubuntu 8.10. I reinstalled with 9.04 and have experienced a significant speed increase to the degree that running faster than it did with Windows 2000. Xubuntu appeared to offer the ability to install in Japanese, although I didn't try it and thus can't provide verification. It also detects lid closing without any problem.
-Marc, Shizuoka
Keith Wilkinson
The acpid daemon is what handles events
like pressing the power off button or shutting
the lid. It seems that an update to this has
been released recently.
In any case the behavior (when you press
the power-off button or shut the lid) is
customized using configuration files.
http://acpid.sourceforge.net/
Likewise in Windows also you can customize
whether pressing the power off button
or shutting the lid causes "suspend
to RAM", "hibernate" (suspend to file),
or power off.
I vaguely recall that Windows hibernate
and LINUX hibernate may conflict (i.e.
bad things may happen if Windows tries
to start up from a LINUX hibernate image
file, or vice versa) so hibernate may be
a bad idea on a dual-boot machine.
HTH
Wataru Tenga
I had only Ubuntu installed on the laptop. There is a Ubuntu
configuration setting for behavior when shutting the lid, but the
problem is that Ubuntu did not recognize when the lid was closed. Maybe
the update fixes that?? I don't intend to buy Windows 7 for the laptop,
so eventually I would like to have a workable Linux system on it.
Wataru Tenga