Kimi Raikkonen F1 World Champion 2007

With a wonderful race Kimi finally made it! Cheers to Ferrari, Kimi and Felipe which gave to McLaren what it deserved: NOTHING! After a lot of years ending up with nothing Kimi finally made it out and now he is the new World Champion! Simply Fantastic!

Without any touch of style and fairness Ron Dennis ended the season with an official protest to FIA for not punishing BMW & Williams... maybe he doesn't remember what happened during the whole year?

Ubuntu 7.10 gusty gibbon on Asus Z53Jr F3Jr

I've upgraded my notebook from Feisty to Gusty. So this isn't a "fresh install experience". I've published the Asus Z53Jr specs before but here they are (again)

Notebook Specs

• Model: Asus Z53Jr / F3Jr
  
• core2duo T7200 2GHz 4Mb cache
• 2Gb RAM DDR2
• 160Gb HD
• ATI X2300 Video Card with 128Mb RAM up to 898Mb shared mem
• SD Card Reader
• 1.3 MPx Camera
• Ethernet + Intel i3945 802.11 a/b/g Wireless
• Ports 4 USB 2.0, 1 FireWire, VGA out DVI out

Upgrade Procedure
When I logged in Feisty and opened the update manager feisty suggested the distribution upgrade, and so I did.
The all process was smooth and clean and took less than 2 hours (most of which were spent downloading the software from the internet).
The upgrade procedure told me that support for some software ended... not a real problem for me (I've never used gcj, I usually download the official jdk directly from sun).
Here are some screenshots:


Fisrt Look
The first impression is that Ubuntu improved it's general usability.
I usually work connected to my network via WPA wireless. Using the restcricted modules as in feisty I managed to use the intel wireless card and ati x2300 gpu without any problems (except for the suspend issue, see below).
The drivers where already installed before in feisty, gusty simply upgraded them to a newer version.
Two major usability improvements on the network configuration are that without any manual configuration now you can automatically activate the wireless connection without unlocking the keyring when you login. This could have been done in feisty with some configuration now there is a checkbox directly on the unlock keyring dialog.
Another improvement is the support of wpa connectivity when you manual configure your network: now if you want to manage your network manually you can do it really easily!

Almost everything it's working without problems
As in Feisty this things are working without any issues

• display driver at correct resolution (1280x800)
• touchpad
• usb ports
• integrated sd card reader
• Fn buttons
• Fn+F1 (suspend) is recognized but I thing that the ati driver has major issues while suspending the notebook
• Fn+F2 (enable/disable wireless)
• Fn+F4 opens the browser
• Fn+F5,F6,F7 panel light controls
• Fn+F10,F11,F2 sound controls
• Fn+Arrows the sound controls (tested in Banshee)

Not Tested
I've not tested the external display and the Fn+F8 button as I don't have an external display available right now.

The Bad Part: Things that don't work
Suspend and Hibernate
Suspend and Hibernate still doesn't work :(!!
I suspect an issue with the ati fglrx driver. I've tested the 8.42.3 driver downloaded directly from ati without any success too.
The only thing I've managed to do on my system was to stop the system from suspending and hibernating installing this packages on the system:

• apmd
• hibernate
• uswsusp

Composite
Composite is disable and doesn't work with the fglrx driver. With the new 8.42.3 driver it is theoretically supported via AIXGL but the only thing I've got was a white screen (an internet search told me that I'm not the only one).

1.3mpx camera
The integrated 1.3mpx webcam isn't recognized as in feisty. In the next days just for curiosity I'll try to recompile the syntek driver http://syntekdriver.sourceforge.net/ (se previous posts).

If you find any workaround for this problems (suspend and hibernate in particular) or if they are working for you on the same notebook (or very similar one) via a fresh install please feel free to contact me.

Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon

Last night I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gusty Gibbonon my Asus notebook (please see previous posts for the details on the notebook). Actually it wasn't a fresh install but an upgrade from Feisty (7.04).
The upgrade process proceeded without any problem (maybe the servers where a bit slow but this is normal on day 0) and Gusty seems to work without any problems. This week end I'll try it a bit more in depth if Michele (again see previous posts) will leave me enough time to experiment the new distro.

Cheers to the ubuntu team,
Terenzio

Ubuntu -1

tomorrow Gusty Gibbon will be available for download.
I hope that in the next few days I manage to backup all my data and try the update from my Feisty.
This time it won't be a fresh install but an upgrade... I'll try to report out the "Gibbon experience" in the next days.

Regards, Terenzio