So, I use Ununtu on this laptop. I had most things working. Then it wanted to upgrade itself to Gutsy. Okay...

I followed recommendations and wireless stopped working. I was able to undo that, though.

Password prompt no long comes up when I close and open the laptop lid.

And the biggie... the default media program no longer played WMA or AVI files. For comparison,when I installed Feisty, the program said "I can't run these... would you like me to get the software to run them?" So they've managed to degrade performance. I've installed all recommendations I can find, and can actually play video with a couple of other programs -- unfortunately, their interfaces are inferior, and I'd like my old one. Help has not sprung forth, yet.

Also I note the font I'm seeing in this text entry box is different.

Hadware: Compaq Presario C500, 1.5 G Ram, $400, 1.6 GHz Centrino

So, I got this thing... last Sunday. Didn't really start in on it till Tuesday. Been playing with it since.
As noted earlier, it came with Vista, which took 40% of the RAM and chewed the hard drive. I tested that stuff such as wireless worked, then moved on. FreeBSD got a try -- a couple of tries, since the first one crashed -- but didn't recognize key laptop bits like the lid, and I didn't want to mess around. PC-BSD, a user friendly version, also didn't work until the second, the first simply failing to install /usr and /var -- and had problems with sound. Ubuntu mostly just worked, though I had to perform occult spells to get wireless working, and have to perform another one to get the speakers to turn off if headphones are plugged in.

(IU VPN wireless will need its own incantations, but that's not the laptop's fault. Ubuntu, or IU IT whose instructions don't work.)

Other stuff really just does work. Battery monitor, sound, lid closing doing something. But there's been weird behavior, the cursor jumping around and such. At first I thought I was hitting the touchpad, but that doesn't actually do much. Then I discovered a menu key on the keyboard, which explains some things, though I'm not always sure I'm touching it when the menu pops up. After some really weird behavior in vi I tracked down the big culprit: a special part of the touchpad. There are orange lines along the right and bottom. Pad space beneath the bottom isn't special, but pad space to the right of that line acts as a scroll bar. Which is actually pretty useful, now that I know about it, but brushing *it* with my thumb causes a lot of problems.
This version of Ubuntu/GNOME (Feisty Fawn) seems to have known problems with unmounting external hard drives from the desktop.

I've also played with desktops: default GNOME, KDE, compiz, xfce. GNOME's pretty good, and in response to AVI files said "I don't have the codecs for this, would you like me to get them?" which worked. GNOME takes half the memory of Visa. xfce has some nice transparency aesthetics and seems very configurable but played AVIs without video. KDE is also configurable, doesn't have much else visibly going for it, and just refused to play my AVIs. compiz is a window manager which can supposedly do neat effects, like putting workspaces on the walls of a cube or room, which you can rotate, but the configuration looks like a nightmare without some extra software I didn't feel like exploring.

There are quirks. Firefox managed to obscure the desktop panels once before, and has done so again while I was typing. Not replicated yet. totem, GNOME's AVI player, I discovered was rather washed out. I found settings which fixed the whiteout -- oddly I had turn down contrast, not just brightness, and the tradeoff between "visible" and "dark" seems fine to non-existent, especially depending on the input anime. I installed mplayer and will test it, but will post this first before I lose all the test.

Update: no difference. Guess totem changes hardware settings (but doesn't affect the desktop appearance), else they read the same configuration file.

Other laptop thing: it feels that I'm exploring exciting new unergonomic positions. Instead of being hunched over my too high (but large and cheap) desk, I sit on my couch and feel an extra 6 pounds on my tailbone.

Other news: Le Petit Cafe is now up to $10.95 for the price fixe Sunday brunch, and $1.95 for tea or coffee. I'm still not sure if you're supposed to tip at a place where you're served by the owners. Bloomingfood's West has Honeycrisp apples.

The panel hiding problem seems connected to F11 in Firefox. Though if I hit F10 or F12 that stops working for a bit. Tres weird.

Installation happened without any freezes or failures. Sound was picked up. Contrary to expectation, it seems to have found the Wireless device as well, though the wireless has not yet managed to hook up to the network. (Vista could, so I know the laptop is capable of it.) Ubuntu's GNOME seems well designed, too; Windowsish, lots of easy to find administrative options. Though a sour note: each one seems to be its own program, and after closing one option you have to go back to the menu to get the next one.

By default, you have to enter your password at bootup. Or even at waking up after sleeping. Oh yeah -- it picked up the battery, and goes to sleep when I close the lid. And the sound buttons work. And I just plugged in my external USB hard drive, and that opened up in the file manager automatically. *Win*

Of course, I'm in GNOME, and I'd like to play with other window managers. But hopefully FreeBSD can cope with my mother's desktop, and I can try Enlightenment there. Though I suppose I should think about keeping XP on it, just for network setup ease.

Actually, Windows isn't driving my monitor at more than 1152x864 (could do higher, but I'd lose color or refresh rate; I hate flicker.)

But FreeBSD had frozen once during installation, then crashed again when I tried to sleep it. I decided to try friendlier installation routes. There are wrappers for FreeBSD, PC-BSD and DesktopBSD. Desktop wouldn't download quickly, and then the website wouldn't respond. PC-BSD came okay, but failed to make /usr or /var as far as I can tell. I gave it a second try (yay, ghost bugs) and that time it did install. Maybe the CD was jilted at the wrong point the first time around? But it didn't recognize sound or wireless.

Next stop: Ubuntu. To be fair, apparently Ubuntu needs to be told how to handle wireless as well. OTOH, I actually have instructions for that.

It has FreeBSD, and X Windows.

And a 1200x800 screen, which now feels rather cramped.
And a hyper-sensitive touchpad when I'm typing.