netbook

While my experience to date with Ubuntu 10.04 has been mixed, I have found one compelling reason to employ it, at least for owners of laptops based around AMD's Athlon L110 and RS690 chipset, like my Gateway LT3201u: it has working power management support. This processor does not support typical power-saving methods, i.e. manual frequency scaling; instead, it provides support for AMD PowerNow! in the form of multiple idle states.

Faced with failure from Ubuntu Lucid UNR 10.04 on my Gateway LT3201u "netbook" (11.something" 720p LED LCD makes it more of a subnotebook) I decided to try Lubuntu, a faster, more lightweight and energy saving variant of Ubuntu using LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. So far it has been an unqualified success; the ati video driver worked correctly and I have so-far-stable 720p, OpenGL-accelerated graphics. Compiz seems a little slower than on Karmic, but I haven't exactly done any benchmarking.

Filled with dissatisfaction with windows, I set off on a quest to find a suitable Linux distribution for the Acer Aspire D250-1165. It came with Windows XP, but the performance was always less than impressive and Windows is a magnet for spyware and botnet clients. The machine is theoretically highly compatible and thus support should be simple, right?