My Linux Laptop

I have been a fan of the Linux/Open Source Community, since 1999 when I had my first taste of Linux at the National Institute of Oceanography. Since then I have installed/configured/customized many a linux distributions on various hardware. Every setup was fun and a challenge I relished especially at CFDVS, IIT Bombay where I dabbled with System Administration.

However, since joining TCS I have been stuck with Microsoft Windows. So when I bought my laptop a couple of years back, My first instinct was whats the best linux distribution around. I have been a loyal RH fan, So I decided on Fedora 3 and was surprised by the progress linux has made wrt desktop graphics and hardware support. Everything worked out of the box (except for wifi, mp3/dvd playback and proprietory codecs, which I could easily setup). However, I tried a few things to setup hibernation to work in futile. That basically stopped me from making FC3 the primary OS and was stuck with windows.

Thats when I decided to try ubuntu early this year. I wasn't really impressed with it (maybe I was used to the way Fedora worked). However, the virus/spyware/adware problems on my laptop and some free time from work, pushed me towards giving it another shot. This time, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper Drake and wow.... I was blown away.

Installation was seamless, clean and simple. As usual rest of the stuff worked out-of-the-box except wifi. That was simple to fix. Lots of how-to-guides out there to solve ubuntu problem.
I don't like the brownish human theme, so I changed to a bluish one. Hibernation worked. XGL/Compiz was fabulous, however it slowed the desktop performance. So I turned it off. I found a replacement for DVDShrink on linux (K9Copy) -- a must-have for me. As for the rest of the softwares, I am spoilt for choice. The winner for me was the synaptic package manager which makes installation/upgradation of software simply a few clicks away.

Though I still spend time on Fedora, Ubuntu is more more likely to get windows-only users shift to linux. The best part, my wife's impressed too (I had to setup the mac-like animated dock on the desktop to win her) and now its very likely I can get rid of windows someday from my laptop.