Windows 8 finally broke me. It wasn't any one thing in particular that pushed me over the edge, but more of the fact that I felt as tho I had an OS on my PC that was in a constant war with itself over its identity. I ended up spending most of the time in desktop mode, which worked reasonably well, but I had some issues with drivers not letting my laptop go to sleep.
So for about the 8th time, I bit the bullet and downloaded Ubuntu 13.04.
Installation was VERY straight forward (basically clicking next a few times, fill in your name and a password and off you go,) and I was soon presented with my desktop. Wifi connected straight away (although at slower speeds, it appears the current Linux kernel has issues with dual channel wireless N cards, but I can deal with that.)
The next step is the main reason that I haven't run Ubuntu yet. My HP DV7 runs 2 graphics cards, a "low power" intel based card, and an ATI HD6770 for high power requirement games etc. In windows, the software provided automatically switches between the 2 depending on weather the laptop is plugged in or not. In the past, I've had zero luck getting these going properly, but this time around, using this guide got it working.
So, how has it been? Great. Ubuntu runs far smoother than Windows 8 (and anecdotal evidence seems to suggest probably better than Windows 7 as well). Mouse scrolling in Chrome is one of the big improvements I've noticed, which seems like a trivial thing, but given I spend a fair amount of time in a web browser, I notice it a lot.
I haven't had too many dramas, but the one thing that it brutally annoying is the fact that to create a shortcut in Unity (Ubuntu's launcher thingy) is a manual script writing exercise, which is just plain lazy on Canonical's part. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the odd bit of scripting, but to create a shortcut...really.....
Anyway, I may report back on future updates soon, but for now, I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience.
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