dawiese
October 14th, 2010, 06:09 PM
...on a Toshiba Satellite A45-S120
First I'd like to say that I truly appreciated the upgrades in Meerkat. I thought the whole Ubuntu 10.10 install and the look and feel of the new Gnome DE was quite an enjoyable experience. I was glad to see Meerkat recognized my A45 and activated all the "function" keys on the Satellite's unusual keyboard layout. Recognition of my Buffalo wireless card and the semi-automatic post install of the B43 drivers occurred without a hitch. Great work guys!
But notice that the paragraph is written in the past tense. I'm sad to report that I had to revert back to Lucid. Why? A graphics snafu. You see, my laptop was born with an inferior graphics chip-set, the now famous i852GME. The original parents didn't want it anymore, so I lovingly adopted it. Sure it had it's limitations in XP (and more so in Linux) but, as all special needs creatures, it brought a lot of love into my life. I wanted to pay it back and give it a much needed face lift (it was looking pretty ugly after 4 years of age). Lucid was a nice look. It gave me a few hurdles to jump, and in the end I was able to do most of the, what I call, "make pretty" stuff, although video acceleration suffered but was still ok. I posted a few questions about how to trick the 852 into speeding up video display to no avail.
But then I got wind of the Perfect 10. Hey, maybe that will fix my video problem? So I gave it a try. No BSOD, this is looking good. Smooth install, nice. Keyboard and wireless working, even better. Looks like we got a winner. But no Compiz. No shadows, no wobble windows, no rotating cube. I guess that's ok, those are things I can do with out. Then I stumbled on Docky. I really like Docky. But Docky didn't like me. It kept telling me I had to activate compositing, and it used squatting rights on the bottom quarter of my screen. Wait... what's this "drum roll" I hear during audio and video playback... seams like it occurs every 10 seconds... that's wierd... and the mouse pointer pauses at the same time... and the keyboard pauses. That's gonna leave a mark. Sure enough the System Monitor verified a CPU spike every 10 seconds. I posted questions again, but I just got frustrated and popped Lucid back in the CD and, well, you know the rest.
The important thing here is my disabled laptop is quite happy with Lucid and KMS activated. I like Docky, and Docky likes me back. And she showed me her icons, and I like them too.
First I'd like to say that I truly appreciated the upgrades in Meerkat. I thought the whole Ubuntu 10.10 install and the look and feel of the new Gnome DE was quite an enjoyable experience. I was glad to see Meerkat recognized my A45 and activated all the "function" keys on the Satellite's unusual keyboard layout. Recognition of my Buffalo wireless card and the semi-automatic post install of the B43 drivers occurred without a hitch. Great work guys!
But notice that the paragraph is written in the past tense. I'm sad to report that I had to revert back to Lucid. Why? A graphics snafu. You see, my laptop was born with an inferior graphics chip-set, the now famous i852GME. The original parents didn't want it anymore, so I lovingly adopted it. Sure it had it's limitations in XP (and more so in Linux) but, as all special needs creatures, it brought a lot of love into my life. I wanted to pay it back and give it a much needed face lift (it was looking pretty ugly after 4 years of age). Lucid was a nice look. It gave me a few hurdles to jump, and in the end I was able to do most of the, what I call, "make pretty" stuff, although video acceleration suffered but was still ok. I posted a few questions about how to trick the 852 into speeding up video display to no avail.
But then I got wind of the Perfect 10. Hey, maybe that will fix my video problem? So I gave it a try. No BSOD, this is looking good. Smooth install, nice. Keyboard and wireless working, even better. Looks like we got a winner. But no Compiz. No shadows, no wobble windows, no rotating cube. I guess that's ok, those are things I can do with out. Then I stumbled on Docky. I really like Docky. But Docky didn't like me. It kept telling me I had to activate compositing, and it used squatting rights on the bottom quarter of my screen. Wait... what's this "drum roll" I hear during audio and video playback... seams like it occurs every 10 seconds... that's wierd... and the mouse pointer pauses at the same time... and the keyboard pauses. That's gonna leave a mark. Sure enough the System Monitor verified a CPU spike every 10 seconds. I posted questions again, but I just got frustrated and popped Lucid back in the CD and, well, you know the rest.
The important thing here is my disabled laptop is quite happy with Lucid and KMS activated. I like Docky, and Docky likes me back. And she showed me her icons, and I like them too.