Kubuntu on my laptop

So far, my laptop has been running Mandriva with very little problem. Sure, there has been the occasional configuration issue but I never had any problem installing new version or upgrading the current one. However, on a few occasions, I managed to screw things up completely so that I had to reinstall. This is always cumbersome; fortunately, I learned early on that my home directory should always be on a separate partition. Like this I can trash and reinstall / all I want, I'll always keep my personal files safe (I know, I'm also supposed to back them up!).

How long have I been using Mandriva? It's actually been a few years: I started around Mandrake 7 or 8, testing it on a small partition of my desktop machine but never used it as my main OS. After a got a laptop a few years back, I started dual booting it between WinXP and Mandriva. Then my hard drive started to fail and I replaced it with a larger 80GB one. I think I simply forgot to reinstall Windows that day and I've ran Linux ever since. I currently run Mandriva 2007 Spring.

Just to let you know, I don't think my laptop is particularly suited for that: it's an aging HP Pavilion ze 4240 running an AMD Athlon XP and 512MB of memory, up from 256 when I bought it second hand. The battery is dead and I can't even put a new one in: firstly, replacement are way too expensive; secondly the space is now used by the antenna of a wireless network card I have recently installed.

Well, an aging machine, slowly, albeit surely, running Mandriva.

When Ubuntu came along, I started playing with it. I was specially enjoying the Live CDs as they allowed me to get a feel of the system without installing. Unfortunately, it would not boot on my laptop. I tried many version as they were released but always unsuccessfully. It would run fine on my desktop machines but I had not luck on my laptop and no time to try to figure it out. Until today…

Today I finally decided to test Kubuntu (ho yes, I forgot to mention, I use KDE) Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 3. That's the 3rd beta of the next release, due for final release next October. I know Beta4 is out but I haven't had time to download it yet.

Well, the laptop booted beautifully from the Live CD; my hardware seems to have been fully detected and configured, including this stupid Winmodem and the Intel wireless card which gave so much troubles under Madriva. I am actually writing this post from Konqueror on Kubuntu 7.10 beta 3!

I think I'll download the 4th beta in the next few days. Then, when 7.10 will be released, I'll very seriously consider moving from Madriva to Kubuntu.

I'll keep you posted.