A while back I decided to experiment with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) AMD64 version. I have an AMD64 CPU obviously. It worked ok but there were numerous things that just sucked a bit, like having to run a 32 bit version of firefox to get flash to work, and my ATI drivers that were only available in the 32bit variety. (Notice the proprietary suckiness)
Anyways, I was having some wireless issues at iWeek and decided to upgrade to Gutsy (tribe 5).
The upgrade was pretty painless since I store /home on it’s own partition. Actually, it was very painless since I essentially have everything I used to have, settings wise, on this “new” machine. I got one gnome-panel moan about an app (cpu temperature monitor) that was in the panel but no longer existed on the machine.
Getting my wireless to work properly was a little bit of a bitch. For some reason ubuntu still hasn’t reaslised that the bcm43xx module *does not work* with HP Pavilion laptops. This means that the basic procedure to get it working again is:
* Blacklist dodgy driver
* Install ndiswrapper & gtkhelper if you’re feeling lazy
* Install your old windows driver via the gtk ndiswrapper interface.
* Make ndiswrapper startup when the interface comes up (ndiswrapper -m)
* Reboot.
Everything seems to be working fine. Gutsy isn’t really all that amazing compared to feisty but it’s running nicely and I keep on noticing nice little additions that make me happy.
I tried the screens & graphics thing but I don’t have an external monitor to test with and I couldn’t get my built-in lcd to 1280×800 using that interface… I will track down whomever is responsible for that and see it’s a know bug.
Either way Gutsy is looking good. I know this is a cheesy comment to make, but I love the way open source works… nibble by nibble we get things better and better.
Nibble by nibble, as you probably know, is the prescribed way to eat an elephant!
Having said all that. I want a macbook, mostly because I want something small that I can flip closed and put it to sleep and then flip it open and have it awake. Suspending and hibernating continue to be elusive on my laptop. I must do some more googling.
(Since I was recently asked if we have Malaria in Cape Town I think it is prudent to clarify that we don’t eat elephants)
arbitraryuser 
Well, you know, I was struck down by Malaria in Cape Town not more than a year ago. Whoever asked is very well informed at the massive epidemic that awaits them here!
(Or, it could’ve been that trip to Uganda…)