I’ve been blogging heavy on guns lately, so I’ll take a little break and write something on computers.

I’m not a fan of Microsoft Windows. My ThinkPad came with XP Pro; I burned a set of backup discs, then wiped the drive and installed Linux. After playing around with SUSE, Fedora and Debian, I finalized on Ubuntu.

In a word, it’s outstanding. While Linux has come a long way in terms of ease of installation and usability over the last few years, getting everything working right can still be a hassle (I’m glaring in your direction, Debian). That goes double, or maybe ten times over, for laptops, which tend to have more proprietary hardware bits than a desktop machine. Those hardware bits may not have any drivers available, or the drivers may need to be manually downloaded, installed and configured. Power management is also a concern with laptops. Automatic frequency scaling (in which the processor automagically slows itself down when it’s underemployed) and suspend/hibernation often take some research, tweaking and swearing before they work right. Or, if your laptop’s builders were sloppy, they may NEVER work right. I’ve played around with a few HP laptops which simply will not reliably enter the suspend state, even in Windows.

Remarkably, all of that stuff “just works” for me, thanks to the efforts of the Ubuntu team. Just running through the standard installation process gave me a perfectly configured, fully functional system. My ThinkPad’s processor lopes along at a leisurely 600 MHz most of the time, but instantly jumps up to full speed when needed. The system runs VERY cool. Unlike a lot of “laptops” today, you can actually use this one on your lap, for hours at a time, without any charred flesh. Suspend mode works perfectly, instantaneously, and repeatably. I even have working 3D acceleration, with open-source video card drivers, with no hassles.

Now, I cheated a bit by my choice of hardware. IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads tend to play very nicely with Linux, especially when they’re one generation removed from the cutting edge. If your machine is a reasonably common model from a major maker, you can probably expect very good results as well. If you have a brand that no one’s ever heard of, may the god of your choice be with you.

For a seriously lazy bastard (such as myself), having this level of refinement available takes away about 95% of the aggravation that used to go along with setting up and using Linux. Part 2 will cover that last 5% and why it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon.