A Thanks on behalf of my mother-in-law

[lykwydchykyn]

About 3 years ago, a coworker gave me an old acer laptop that he said "Windows wouldn't install on".
Xubuntu 9.04 installed beautifully on it.

I didn't need an extra laptop, and my kids didn't need to live in front of a screen any more than they do, so I gave it to my wife's parents. My mother-in-law has been happily using it for three years on 9.04.

Last weekend, they came to visit, and she told me it needed looking at because Hulu wasn't working any more. Rather than try to upgrade it, I decided to shrink the existing install and put 12.04 on it.

Xubuntu 12.04, sadly, wouldn't boot due to a bug with the wireless hardware that crashed the kernel. Fortunately, the bug was fixed in 12.04.1, so I downloaded that disc and installed like a champ.

The only real hiccup in the install was getting the Broadcom 4318 chip functional, which required downloading the fw-cutter packages and the appropriate firmware on a separate machine, then transferring them via USB drive. Once this was done, all the hardware is working great, including the DVD playback (which was choppy and unwatchable under 9.04).

The machine is snappy and stable; my Mother-in-law can watch Hulu, check webmail, chat with my wife, play solitaire, play CDs and DVDs, and work with documents on this old cast-off laptop, all for the price of having me as a son-in-law . She's very happy with her "new" laptop!

Thanks Xubuntu devs and all the other free software devs out there in Internet land!

[lancest]

Oh what a feeling!

[Tamlynmac]

lykwydchykyn
The machine is snappy and stable

I couldn't agree more. We had Xubuntu 12.04 running on a desktop for testing and recently I installed it on my mini. It's quick and extremely stable, plus easily configurable. It's setup & configuration is very similar to 10.04, which we appreciate.

I haven't seen my mini for a few days now. It's making the rounds of about 12 local family/friends that are still using Ubuntu 10.04 and so far all the feedback has been extremely positive. Just hope my mini finds it's way back home "soon" - as I really do miss it.

One great thing about Canonical is the variety of available distros. Seems, there's something for just about everyone.

I glad your Mother-in-law is enjoying it.
Good Luck

[valroadie]

Great story! I love it when people fall in love with hard work

[funicorn]

good for u to make her happy

[coldraven]

At this moment your mother-in-law is probably downloading Backtrack5 and considering a career as a security consultant