Decius wrote:

netpython wrote:

Decius wrote:
I went through about a year back in the early part of the decade trying to work with desktop linux on a laptop. It didn't work very well. Eventually I got a mac. The trouble with Apple is that about 30% of the hardware they produce has serious design flaws. After many years of dealing with them I'm tired of the high cost of their stuff and the annual week without a computer.

So I thought I'd give Ubunto a try. I'd been told by many people that it "just works." I installed it on a pretty run of the mill Dell laptop. It did not "just work." Within a few minutes I'm googling around for long winded explanations of how I have to configure this and compile that and download this other thing in order to get this OS working on this extremely ubiquitous hardware.

This HOWTO describes how to get Wifi working on your Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop using Ndiswrapper.

Im sorry, but if in 2007 you STILL have to compile something in order to get a basic thing like wireless networking working on an extremely popular hardware platform, LINUX WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL ON THE DESKTOP.

You might want to try Pardus2007.3
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04600

or

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/index.html

If you have tried Ubuntu you might be up for a pleasent suprise.

Really? A turkish distro? Why do like it better?

It has a simple but userfriendly GUI installer. Plays encrypted DVD's, mp3's, and other propietary formats out of the box so to speak. A lot of wireless drivers are installed or easily added via the intuitive graphical package manager.

But only install it if you like big cats :-)

RE: Ubuntu sucks, nothing has changed.