Linux on Notebooks.. It's a great thing, for the most part.

Linux Notebooks

Ibought an Asus A8JP a few months ago (which I really like, ati x1700 graphics, core2duo, great screen) which came with the harddrive partitioned right down the middle, 50gb/50gb, and formatted as FAT32. That's pretty strange for a Windows lappie: they usually come out of the box formatted as NFTS and with no partitions. But it's not strange at all if you're going to be dual-booting Win and Linux, so I took a clue and downloaded Ubuntu, because I'm a noob and heard it installs like a breeze.

Running a Linux notebook has all the perks of a linux desktop, which is a way of saying no more windows hassles. For myself, and probably a good number of you other notebook users, there are some problems. Mostly, it comes in the shape of lack of driver support: I had some issues setting up my ATI graphics card (they are notorious for not providing Linux drivers for their cards) and with my sound card still. While my graphics card now works, I'm missing out on some cool, 3d desktop effects because there's no driver for it yet. My sound is still off and on in Ubuntu; whenever I try to turn the vol. up or down, it just shuts off. Following those are the little annoyances like bad trackpad scrolling. It's nonexistant; I guess that's too special a feature to expect someone out there to write a driver for it, but I do miss it. More troubling is battery life. In my Windows setup, I have great battery-saving options like "CD/Audio," "Battery Life," with which I'm able to squeeze a lot of juice. I haven't found any simple battery life controls in Linux yet, and it's down to less than half of what I'll get in Windows.

I still can't wait to see the improvements to Linux notebooks coming in the next few years-- The Dell/Ubuntu deal should produce some really nice lappies. Cheers to all of you guys and girls out there doing the Linux thing!