Gordaen’s Blog

Unfortunately, ATI does not appear to be very “Linux-friendly.” Their Linux drivers are scarcely supported in many cases, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I installed Ubuntu and couldn’t set the resolution I wanted on my Acer Aspire 5672 laptop. My only options were 1024×768, 800×600, and 640×480, but the screen is a 15.4″ widescreen that normally uses a resolution of 1200×800. I probably spent two or three hours before I finally found the right solution. After that, it was just a couple of minutes and things were working well.

Ubuntu has made a lot of good steps forward in terms of user friendliness, but I still think it has a ways to go. Of course, Windows still has a long way to go before it is user-friendly, but more people have experience with it, so help is usually closer at hand with Windows. Accessing a lot of different file types is easier on Ubuntu than Windows (XP, atleast, because I haven’t touched Vista, oh darn), because it comes with support for all the “normal” ones (PDF’s, Doc’s, torrent, gz, etc.). It comes with useful features like extremely easy creating of keyboard shortcuts and plenty of extras (e.g., screensavers). I was also able to easily access my Windows machine from either version of Ubuntu (6.10 and 7.04). /end rambling… for now.