buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu

[Jerry Feldman]

On 01/22/2009 12:55 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On 2009-01-21 3:33 PM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:
>   
>>       2. was purchased at Staples, but, after installing Ubuntu, the
>>          screen driver was simply too slow to tolerate.  We returned the
>>          laptop after running the Windows restore.
>>     
>
> I've seen the Dell sign in the window at Staples, but didn't look at the 
> display - do they have demo units to try?  I'm thinking an Ubuntu LiveCD 
> or USB stick could be useful here.
>   
This might not be a valid test. If the notebook, for instance, has an 
Nvidia or ATI  chipset, the LiveCD driver would most likely be a generic 
VGA driver. Subsequently once you have Ubuntu (or other Linux) 
installed, you could install the proprietary Nvidia or FGLRX drivers so 
that you can get a good resolution. Windows comes with the proprietary 
drivers installed. Although I am not a fan of Dell's for the most part 
they put out a decent product, unlike Gateway. What you would need to to 
with Ubuntu is to install it, and set the software sources to include 
proprietary drivers and multiverse. These are check boxes. I suspect 
that once you have added the proper software sources, the appropriate 
drivers will be installed and you can get good resolution. You are going 
to run into this problem in most systems today.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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