SOLVED Re: 12.04, Dell Vostro 1720, and good experiences?

[Karl Auer]

On Mon, 2012-08-06 at 22:34 +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> I wanted to upgrade from 10.10 to 12.04. However when I booted 12.04 off
> USB stick, there was no wireless network. In fact, Network Manager said
> "wireless disabled" which is definitely not the case.
> [...]
> I'm now concerned that my laptop (Dell Vostro 1720 - yes, I know, a heap of
> ****) is somehow incompatible with 12.04.

There were three bad experiences upgrading to 12.04 on my Dell Vostro
1720, but all have been overcome.

First the wireless. To get wireless working I had to blacklist the
dell_laptop module.

    - create /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_dell_laptop.conf
    - put the line "blacklist dell_laptop" in it

Second, grinding slowness. I have NVIDIA hardware, and the default 12.04
driver version is 173.14.35. This is ancient. I used the "additional
drivers" program to update 295.40, and the slowness went away. 12.04 is
still noticeably "heavier" than 10.10 - my load average floats around
0.80, it used to float around 0.20. There is some suggestion that there
is a later and faster version, but I'm OK with what I have.

Third, Unity. Argh! OMFG! But a bit of googling got me a GNOME3 desktop
and while it will take a little getting used to, at least I have some
semblance of usability and configurability back.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://www.biplane.com.au/blog

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