When it works its great but when somthing goes wrong it can be quite frustrating to work out whats going on.
If you haven't tried 9.04 I highly recommend it! everyone download a live CD and give it ago it couldn't be simpler!
Ubuntu and its philosophy are quite admirable, despite its kernel (the standard Linux one) and itself not being completely free. But depending on your views that's a technicality (or not). Especially their aim to reach the "for every language" goal is impressive, as as far as I know every majorish language is covered. As for your wireless: you've been kind of lucky with your hardware. Ubuntu is very good in discovering hardware and offering you both free and proprietary drivers for it; but unfortunately a lot of hardware manufacturers still choose to be bitc... about free or kind-of-free software. (And so do many routers. Mine, France Telecom's "Livebox" refuses to accept my laptop's (running GNU+LinuxLibre) wifi connection. It's impossible to get an internet connection in my area without using some kind of "ISP-box": an ISP-proprietary "router" which you even have to pay for to "borrow" from your ISP! You can't change anything major, the firmware is updated automatically, ... "Nice"!) Sorry for the ranty bit, but it kind of leads to my suggestion: for all those falling into this thread through a search or out of curiosity, check the FSF's hardware compatibility list. If it's on there, it'll work on your GNU/Linux system, and save you a lot of money and frustration (Oh, and don't live in France )
Yes i was lucky, however my laptop is a shocking 3 years old now, hard to believe when i use it, got to love Dothan's! I have a belkin wireless router that hooks directly to my cable modem, so that was a big help.
Off-topic: lucky ******* for getting to use your own router The wonders of GNU/Linux Mine's a Dell Latitude from 2002. I haven't counted the time with its current distribution, but when I put Arch Linux on it (I just had to try it after all of the raving reviews) it was amazing to see it boot in under thirty seconds and using 8% of its 512MB RAM running X with Fluxbox. I just Googled "Dothans", turns out its a processor (I'm not very good on most hardware, as you can guess by now )? As I'm unfamiliar with that I'm doubting the validity of the above paragraph, however, my stubborness and utmost belief in our Beloved Leader's Beard makes me un-doubt it. Have you tried Windows Vista on it? Wireless may work out of the box but you may have to wait ten minutes to start your browser after login
FYI Intels Dothan clock for clock could keep up with AMD's 939 single core processors if I remember correctly, day to day it runs XP Pro, the laptop came with home installed, which lasted all of a bout 10 minutes before I uninstalled it and went Pro like my desktop. Never touched Vista, and I don't think this laptop would ever get it, considering the processor is limited to 32-bit operations, making all the advantages of vista pointless. last summer I played around with Kubuntu and Mythbuntu, trying to find an ideal set up for a media centre, however the problem of DVD playback soon put a stop to all that. I also love MacPup, simple and small good play around as a live CD at the time.
