[mdlug] opensuse 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.04 Impressions

[Peter Bart]

The systems these were installed on IBM T30 laptops, P4-M 2.0GHz, 1 gig
RAM, 40.0GB HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, cd/dvd combo rw,
Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), 802.11 minipci wireless card

I have to say once again opensuse impressed me. In addition to the other
comments, my laptop runs a lot cooler with the default power scheme
compared to 10.2. The battery also lasts quite a lot longer. Very nice
for an older battery. Well over an hour of runtime. I had problems with
some programs exiting under 10.2 which I attributed to a lot of mucking
around by myself. Those included Seamonkey, Firefox, Epiphany and to a
lesser degree Evolution. That is no longer a problem. All appear rock
solid. The only problem seems to be suspend/resume and the scanner on a
Brother MF machine. The scanner has allways been solved with help from
Brothers own website
<http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html>. The
suspend/resume sometimes pops up a box !!??!! in the notification area
telling me I have a problem. It then directs me to
<http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/>. I downloaded and ran
the script which gave me:

peter at plumber:~> /home/download/quirk-checker.sh
Checking your system...

CRITICAL ERROR: No supported distro
peter at plumber:~>

Hmmmm, but the only problems I've noticed are sometimes when resuming it
will actually go into hibernate instead and sometimes when closing the
lid it won't suspend. Resuming from hibernate is uneventful. Suspending
from the menus as well as the hot keys works fine. So that takes a
backseat for now.

	Ubuntu 7.04 impressed me as well. Easy install after the upgrade failed
from 6.06. I had to try! Suspend/resume finally, printer, wireless,
ethernet,mouse, etc all detected at install. The only thing that doesn't
work out of the box is the scanner on an Epson MF machine. Support
appears to be much more in place to get this working w/o to much
compared to 6.06. Even the problem with the box not wanting to boot
while docked in the port replicator was solved. This was traced to a
keyboard jammed behind a file cabinet, I guess she didn't like the way I
set it up! No more keyboard. Battery life is much reduced over 6.06 but
I'll take it even if I have to listen to the whining. Still well over an
hour with an older battery.

Best Regards,

-- 
Peter Bart <peter at petertheplumber.net>
http://petertheplumber.net