After much brow-knitting and consternation, I bought a laptop. I’m ready to blog from GA 2008.
I decided to go with a used, but not obsolete machine: a Dell Latitude D600. $350 with mouse and case, which is in line with what comparable machines were selling on eBay. Thank you, Craigslist.
Used, rather than a new, more powerful Ubuntu Dell because I
- didn’t want to pay that much, even for a cheap laptop
- didn’t want to contribute to our national export debt
- didn’t want to contribute to the global electronic waste pile
- wanted to prove that Linux can extend our resources, as I’ve written before
To that end, I was willing to spend a bit more to than perhaps a cold, financial eye would think is fair to get a laptop. Even so, I think I did pretty well. I went with a Dell Latitude because of their reputation for robustness and asked ahead of time about its wireless card — Intel — since that’s one of Linux’s Achilles ankles.With only 256 Mb of RAM, it bucked at the Ubuntu live disc, so I tried out the lighter Xubuntu live disc which made for a usable, if slow, desktop. Installed it, ran very well and fast, but I kept looking for software and features that you loose with Xubuntu, so decided to upgrade to Ubuntu (apt-get install ubuntu-desktop for those who grok these things.)
I made the GNOME desktop, the hallmark of Ubuntu over Xubuntu, the default. I’m now updating it. Will note any additional software and problems, if any. Oh, and there wasn’t a lick of problem with wifi.
Lastly, I removed xubuntu-desktop and added ubuntu-serverguide.
