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So on a whim I decided that my HP Pavilion zv5260us notebook will no longer run WinXP pro. Thus began the mission to install Linux. Now, I have two other computers in the house set up as servers that run Ubuntu Linux (Technically, one runs Ubuntu, the other runs Kubuntu - Ubuntu with KDE as the desktop manager instead of the usual GNOME). I've had experience setting it up and configuring it, so I'm very excited to get it going.

There were two things driving this effort:

  1. my notebook has a AMD64 processor, so I was anxious to finally install a 64-bit OS.
  2. I've seen the magic that is Xgl and Compiz, and I was champing at the bit to try it out for myself.

I went to install Kubuntu. Setting up the wireless and nvidia drivers was pretty much a snap. Installing Xgl and Compiz was a bit of a pain. I couldn't get the dependencies from the packages resolved, so I decided to wipe it and try regular Ubuntu, since it seemed like all the stuff available was for Gnome anyway.

Then I set up regular Ubuntu - one thing I noticed that KDE has over Gnome was the presence of a desktop wallpaper randomizer! Anyway, I got Xgl and Compiz set up and running, and there was some 3D eyecandy - but there were some major problems.

The windows had no titlebar or borders (slight problem). There were extreme redrawing problems that were causing blotches of unexpected colors and lines. Say I were to mouse over a button, it would highlight sometimes, and other times it got filled with another button on the screen. Things were all out of whack. The desktop cube looked nice, but all those screen problems were just too much. I got rid of Xgl and Compiz and hopefully can reinstall it when the software reaches some better maturity.

But at least I've got a working Ubuntu install on my laptop. Yays.



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