[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu/Linux is still not an OS for the masses - discuss

[Barry Drake]

On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 15:14 +0100, Melv Bailey wrote:
> Clearly the regulars on here (I have been following this list for a 
> while) will defend Ubuntu to the hilt, but if you want its use to expand 
> someone need to accept there is a problem. 

First I wish I could help - but haven't seen anything remotely like this
problem except when I booted a PC from a drive onto which I had cloned
the drive in my netbook.  The video was out of range for the monitor
that was connected at the time so I altered the monitor stuff and
re-booted as failsafe.  Can't remember how I did it - maybe by
temporarily swapping monitors.  Could you plug an external monitor into
your laptop while you alter the resolution/sync rate etc?

I won't defend Ubuntu to the hilt, but I will say that in the last six
months, since I bought my Dell laptop, preinstalled with Ubuntu (sadly
now no longer available), I have put Ubuntu onto seven PC's and one
laptop with absolutely no problem.  These are now in regular use by my
wife, my daughter, myself, a non-computer literate friend who thinks
Ubuntu is better than Windows and so on .....  One of these machines has
an Nvidia-based mobo, but the proprietary driver installed and worked
just fine.  Oh, and of course the install did at first work with a video
spec that the monitor could see.  Having said that, I do understand how
frustrated you are!!  I would be too.  From my experience, your
situation has to be something of a rarity because of the particular
machine that you have.

I agree with many comments in this thread.  If you possibly can
persevere to the point at which you can file a bug report, this will be
an enormous help to the community.  You don't seem to be the sort that
will give up on Ubuntu and I hope you don't!!!  

As a last resort thing, you might want to try installing Ubuntu on a
machine (any machine) that will actually run it, then adjusting the
video parameters to something your laptop can run, and then cloning the
working machine onto your laptop hard-drive (maybe using gparted or
something similar).  Sounds hard, but is quite simple.  Then prepare to
be amazed by the fact the your cloned version will (almost certainly)
run on a totally different motherboard.  Windows was never like that as
you well know!!!!

Regards,		Barry Drake
-- 
Sent from my Dell Netbook using Ubuntu - the window-free environment
that gives me real fresh air.