Today, I'm going to give a mini review of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn herd3. I know that its not really "reviewable", as this is only touted as "alpha", but I've been using it as my ONLY OS for about a week, and I think its safe to give my impressions (besides no one reads my blogs anyways).

So, first off, the install: I originally dove into ubuntu feisty herd 2. Herd 2 did not love my notebook (Dell XPS M1210, 1.83 GHZ core duo, 100 Gb HD, 1 GB ram). Gnome kept crashing, I couldn't connect to the internet, and I just had a bad experience. I then switched back to edgy, and things went pretty smooth; that is until I ran into the transparency bug (http://linuxfud.wordpress.com/2006/09/29/ubuntu-crashes-on-start-and-returns-to-the-login-screen/)
. This happened with both predictability and frequency, so I tried kubuntu. Very nice. Coming over from windows, KDE was very easy to use and quick. I liked it a lot, and even upgraded to the feisty version.

Over time however, I found KDE to be bloated with apps I didn't even know operate, let alone utilize. Additionally, I began to yearn for all of the new features suggested in the gnome version (namely the notebook support, and the automatic prompt for third party plugins and codecs). I decided to give feisty another try, this time herd 3.

What ever was breaking my box in herd 2, seemed to be fixed in herd 3 (now herd 4). Everything works (what I've tested anyways). Its rock solid, and I even have beryl running. Its fairly quick, and I now have no complaints. Even though I get the free "upgrade" to vista, I'm pretty sure that I've left windows for good. I don't have to worry about security any more (although if ubuntu ever does take off like we all hope, this might generate incentive for hackers to start focusing more on linux, but I doubt it). And what's spyware?

Bottom line: Feisty Rocks on the M1210!

Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on XPS M1210
So, in my attempt at ultimate mobility, I purchased the M1210. Its little, fast and it has a lot of power. At work I heard a lot of good things about Ubuntu, so I thought I'd give it a spin. What a pain in the ass.
First, I don't recommend ever using the "latest alpha release" of any thing. Not having a clue, and wanting the latest and greatest, that's exactly what I did. Ubuntu 7.04a Feisty Fawn. It was completely unstable, and crashed consistently. I have to say, that my first impression of Ubuntu wasn't too good..
Needless to say, after consulting with colleagues, I decided to use Edgy Eft, which I already had a copy of. Unfortunately, there were a few things that I didn't take into account when I installed it on this system; namely Dell Media Direct.
You see, the M1210 ship with a media playing software which is embedded on the hard drive, and cannot be overwritten. This much I knew in advance. What I didn't know was that when I installed FF, it had attempted to overwrite it anyways, making it unintelligible to any OS I had. When I did the Feisty install, I really didn't care about overwriting windows, as the system was still new, and I already have a copy of Vista on the way (its part of the "express upgrade").
Later, when I tried to install Edgy, it would hang about half way through. Then I tried to reinstall windows (which saw my hard drive as empty) and that didn't work either. I began to panic. My Hard drive was brand new, and I had already murdered it! Eventually I figured it out, and hopefully my pain can be avoided.

Firstly, the hard drive needs to be "prepared" by the MD CD. The CD basically helps you partition your drive, and labels its self to be recognized by other OS's. I allocated 60Gb to Windows, and left 30 in an unformatted partition (the last 10 was for MD). After preparing the HD, I plopped in the Windows install, added the necessary drivers (from another CD conveniently supplied by Dell), and finally I got my computer functional again. Next was Edgy. I was a little reluctant, after having just recovered a serious hard drive failure. But I was still hearing how "Great" Ubuntu was, and finally I took another plunge.
The first thing I did was use the Live CD, and tried to get the wireless working. In Feisty it was a no go, but at the time I was using WPA, and again after talking to friends, I switched to WEP, and it worked. So on to the install. At first I wanted to do the partitioning manually, to try and avoid overwriting everything again. But it wouldn't recognize the "root" directory I had selected, so I opted to "use all available unused space".
And now, finally, I write this from Ubuntu. So far mostly everything works, except I had to tweak the screen resolution by using synaptics package manager to download and install 915resolution. Then in the terminal I typed:

sudo 915resolution 5c 1280 800.

Now everything is clear as crystal. Then there was the sound issue. Sound worked out of the box, but as soon as I plugged in the headphones, it died. I'm still not sure exactly what I did to fix it, but now the speakers work again, and the middle headphone jack works (the m1210 has two).
I've installed Beryl, and enabled coasting on my mouse pad, as well as tweaked firefox not to advance forward and backward with horizontal scrolling. I'm still tweaking here and there, and I have to say that Ubuntu is definitely more hands on than windows. But so far, I think that the lack of spyware and virus threats is worth it.
I hope this was usefull to someone, as I just spent an hour throwing it together.