I’ve been waiting for many years now to be able to run Ubuntu on my primary machine which is usually a laptop. My previous laptop was a Lifebook T5010. My current one, a Thinkpad X201.
As part of the waiting process, I’d set aside a small partition to install the latest release of Ubuntu, and try to use it for a few days. My most recent endeavour saw me booting up a copy of Ubuntu 11.10.
And here are the reasons why it’s still not ready for me, and why Windows 7 is still my best option.
‘Suspend’ is unpredictable It’s been the case a few times now, where I’d quickly close the lid and slide my laptop into my bag to get off the train or something. Only to find later on, the machine still running, and the fan going full blast to keep the temperature under control amidst the thick padding.
Monitor switching I’ve got a docking station with 2 external monitors set up at home. When I dock the machine, I expect the desktop to quickly detect that it has docked, the laptop lid is still closed, and there are two external monitors that it should use for display. Same thing for undocking. It should figure out that the monitors have disappeared, and it’s time to switch back to the laptop screen.
(nice to have, but not deal breaker) Evernote on Linux, please.
And that really is why I’m still stuck with bleepin’ Windows 7, because it works so well with the hardware. Not a day goes by where I dream of a real shell and proper virtual desktops.
No, and I’m not getting a mac.
What window manager are you running?
I’m using StumpWM and it’s great. I’ve got shortcut keys bound to explicitly control things like suspend, monitor switching (work in progress there, but looks good), volume control, etc.
I’ve used Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux professionally and have to say that Linux is head & shoulders the best choice for a dev environment.
Fire me an email if you need help getting set up …
By far the weirdest behavior on Ubuntu 10.04 (They still run it at the place I work at) is Spotify under wine.