My Slice of Reality

I’ve played around with Ubuntu alot since it first came onto the scene a few years ago. I even went so far as to use it as my main operating system on my desktop for over six months. However, there was always some silly little issue that drove me away from it (whether fit and polish, incompatibility with some app I required at the time or just general boredom) but I keep coming back like some crack addict.

Until release 8.04.My, what a clusterfuck.

I tried Ubuntu, I really did. I installed you, I spent three days troubleshooting my problems. From the pulse audio bullshit, to the eating of my external drive (are you serious? An operating system should NEVER “delete” a hard drive, even if I was able to recover the partition table later on with the help of some friends) you were one troubled bastard. Apparently, I wasn’t alone either. It was by far the least polished and press ready release I’d yet seen from the guys at Canonical. Suffice to say I dropped that release like a cheap, two dollar bottle of whiskey.

And I must seriously be a glutton for punishment. I decided to install it again. On my laptop. The machine I’ve been using every day. For work.

This second time has been a surprise. The install went quickly, with no errors or issues. So far, it appears that the wireless card was correctly detected and setup. Wait, scratch that. Its detected but apparently I have no way to join a wireless network.

There’s no obvious method to detect or join. Perfect. The screen resolution is also massively off (seriously, you still cant work properly with an Nvidia 7150 Go chipset yet?) but hell…bluetooth works.

Yea, cause thats important right now.

Atleast it properly detected my wireless Logitech mouse. Most likely the forward and back buttons don’t function properly (to be tested) but thats always been the case.

Thankfully, sharing an internet connection through Vista is pretty easy and the laptop’s now setup with atleast a wired connection through the wireless. Not ideal, but it’ll work till I figure out the mess that is wireless on linux. Lord is this piggy backing slow though.

Expect updates soon if I run into more bugs or issues (and Im sure I will)

EDIT:EnvyNG to the rescue. In two clicks through Synaptic and then two clicks through Envy’s interface I have the correct Nvidia drivers installed and running. Ahhhh…1440×900 how we’ve missed you

Today is the eventful day; Service Pack 1 for Vista is finally released. I’ve linked to the stand alone installer page but it’s seeding out through Windows Update now. I’ll be installing later this evening and will update with how it goes in the morning. Wish me luck.

Download details: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone (KB936330)