Ideapad Y510 and Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04)…

I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.04 32bit on the Ideapad Y510 with Intel’s X3100 graphics chipset and it was not a lot better than Ubuntu 7.10 32bit. Here are some specifics:

– Webcam…
…did not work! — just like in Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10)

– Subwoofer…
…did not work out of the box … needed some minor tweaking …

– Compiz…
…worked out-of-the-box

– Screen Brightness/dimness…
…was reversed! This is something which was working 100% correctly in Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) but in Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) seems to have itself completely backwards (ie. dims when it should brighten and brightens when it should dim).
The issue has been reported as a bug to the Ubuntu team and there is a technician assigned to it … so a fix should be out soon.

– Wireless…
…perfect!

– Screen Resolution…
… perfect!

– SD Card Reader…
…perfect!

Conclusion:
Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) was a welcome upgrade to the Ubuntu lineup, however the fact that it still had a number of pretty “basic” issues was a bit of a let-down on the Ideapad Y510.

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on a T60 Thinkpad…

Well after a much anticipated wait the new Long-Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu 8.04 has been made available in all its glory.

The first machine I had it on was a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 (DC 2 GHZ, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, ATI X1400). Needless to say Hardy Heron took to the thinkpad like they were made for each other and both Wireless and Bluetooth were automatically installed and working smoothly. The open-source Radeon driver was the default driver installed for the ATI X1400 Mobility Radeon graphics card and it picked up the high-resolution of the screen completely automatically.

The graphics and look of the logos and icons in Ubuntu 8.04 are noticeably crisp and smooth. With Ubuntu 8.04 comes some new applications which where not in Ubuntu 7.10 as part of the default setup. There is a disc burning application (Brasero) as well as an CD extractor for extracting audio off of an audio CD.

OpenOffice has been updated to version 2.4 and Evolution has been enhanced with more task and alarm features integrating into the Gnome clock applet in the panel.

Installation of Ubuntu 8.04 is very fast and incredibly simple and now Ubuntu can even be installed inside of Windows just like you would install and run any application … but why would you want to do that? — I guess just for those who want to “check it out”.

I will soon be installing Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) onto an Ideapad Y510 which has a built-in webcam and 5.1 surround sound.

I’ll let you know how it goes…