A while ago my old laptop broke down so I got a new Asus G1S (very good one by the way.
)
I only had version 7.04 of Ubuntu on my old laptop so I hadn't tried the latest version Ubuntu 7.10 until now..
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whati...sktop/features http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
Installing it on my Asus G1S was a breeze..
The only "challenge" during the installation was that it didn't recognize my graphics card (Geforce 8600M GT) so I had to run the installation process in safe graphics mode (really no problem at all).
Like the previous versions of Ubuntu this version was quite a lot more easy to install that Windows XP (or Vista for that matter...
).
I used 14Gig for the root partition, 14Gigs (got more available) for the Home partition and 3Gig for Swap.
After everything was installed it still didn't recognize my graphics adapter so I didn't get all the "bells-n-whistles" of Compiz..
But after a quick search on the net I found this very handy tool for installing the latest Nvidia and ATI drivers on Ubuntu Linux and Debian:
Envy:
http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html
Guide how to install it on Ubuntu:
http://albertomilone.com/pmwiki/pmwi...tionsForUbuntu
I just downloaded the Envy Legacy file to my home folder, right clicked on the file and choose install. The just follow the guidelines and it should appear under Applications/System Tools. Run Envy and select nVidia drivers then it will install everything for you..
Also found a good installation guide here:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/02...-a-deadly-sin/
To get full use of all of the Compiz effects, like the 3D cube you'll have to run "sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings manager" in the terminal window.
The settings manager should now appear under: /System/performance/Advanced desktop effects/
Lots of cool stuff to test there, so the "fancy" effects in Windows Vista isn't really that impressive anymore..
Here's a demonstration video of the different Compiz Fusion features and effects:
And the best thing about Ubuntu is that it's not resource hungry at all..
I had 5 desktops open, one with a running video, one with a running MP3, one with the Openoffice spreadsheet and wordprocessor open (w/excel and word files loaded), one with some games and the last one with the system monitor..
Only 400-500Mb memory and 15% CPU usage when I was spinning the cube around and testing the different effects!
Windows Vista would probably crash my laptop if I tried something like that there....
No I'll just need to download and test Wine on some games this weekend..
http://www.winehq.org/
