On the other side, my experiences with Vista on a laptop are actually far worse than those on Ubuntu. Constant constant problems particularly with video drivers and file permissions. I really wanted to love Vista but for the first time since I’ve started using Windows I’ll be reverting to an older version and putting XP back on it.

I tried a the recent Beta of Ubuntu 8 on three different machines in the past few weeks. It got stuck booting at different points on all of them. I really hope they have sorted out those issues before the full launch this week.

I had an awful time getting my Dell D630 working properly, but eventually the problems worked themselves out. It was worth it. Ubuntu works perfectly now. I never had the problems you did with Skype.

I vaguely remember trying to get an early version of XP running on a brand new box with stinking new SATA drives. That was sheer hell.

Hope you come back to using Linux, once it’s familiar territory you won’t go back! (probably:)

I just tried gOS on the old laptop. CD wouldn’t even boot. Ubuntu alt-ISO next I guess.

I may have to eat crow for one of my comments tho. I’ve just spent the past two days trying to get Office 2007 to install on Vista. I’m currently stuck and thinking about reverting my travel laptop to XP!

I have recently moved from Kubuntu 6.06 to Debian Etch with KDE, and it is excellent, apart from not talking to my camera, I have to go back to Kubuntu for that. I don’t ask as much of my distro as you do, but if you are looking for a workhorse then you would be better off with Debian or CentOS than the “wobbly edge” distros like Ubuntu and Fedora.

what is the real problem? ..hardware support is not where it should be, i agree, and i have said that in my previous post ..who is at fault for this? i know the end user will not care about this ..but since this post in about educating and interest the general public what linux is ..also mentioning why hardware support is as lacking as its currently is i think will do more that just listing one failed hardware after another.

“I am currently on a 5 year old HP running Linux which has no sound. ALSA says it supports my audio chip, but for some reason, I’ve yet to find a distro that will detect it.”

how many distros have you tried? try PCLinuxOS or mepis ..like i said linux hardware support isnt perfect, its a miss and hit, if one distro doesnt like your hardware, try another one ..whose fault is it? linux should bear some of it but most of it should go the the manufacturers and i think the author should have acknowledge the effort linux kernel devs put in reverse engineering this devices to work properly ..

..there are devices that are known not to work and no development is planned for them because they arent in circulation anymore and they are on their way out, blotting the kernel for them isnt worth it ..maybe your device is in that list(my PCMCIA wireless card was, that how i know this) ..have you checked the status of your card? …you could be waiting for something that will never ship ..

another problem with linux is lack of consistency as a result of having two popular toolkits, gtk(gnome) and qt(kde) ..

ubuntu is not the only linux distro, ubuntu has never liked my hardware, i use pclinuxos because i didnt have do anything to configure what i have ..i am sure somebody else could say the same thing but in reverse …if one distro doesnt work for you, try another one …

checkout distrowatch.com/ ..you could try the ones at the top

solution? stick with apps from your DE/toolkit of your choice ..

Open up volume control, go to switches, and tick the box next to enable microphone capture. If the option isn’t there, go to preferences and look for it, then add it. I admit it took me a bit of fiddling to find that out, but now skype mostly works.

Br,
ollesbrorsa