Futzmonkeyin’

OK, I use my laptop primarily as a windows machine.  There’s no hassle about getting my hardware to work with it, but it’s not as much fun to be in windows as in linux.  I have a partition there for Ubuntu, but I had hardly done anything with it, until just recently
Traditionally I report futzmonkey twiddle here, so here goes…  If you’re not familiar with Linux, just don’t even bother reading further.  There’s nothing there for you.  Summary: I was reminded why Linux hasn’t taken over the world yet.

• I tried updating Ubuntu linux to the beta of the upcoming version, codenamed “dapper drake.”  When I did that,  the wifi stopped working.  It had, as best I remembered, “just worked” on the old linux install.  (I was wrong about this.)

• I tried installing SimplyMepis, Debian Sarge, and the CD installer from Dapper Drake.  None of them completed the install successfully.  However, they did succeed in trashing the partition where GRUB was expecting to find its boot menu, thereby rendering me unable to boot even to Windows.  Niiiiiice…  Before it was all blown away, I did notice that my old linux install seemed to be using ndiswrapper for wifi.  Doh!  It hadn’t “just worked” after all!  I needed to ndiswrapper it!
• I reinstalled the current stable version of Ubuntu which I’d had before, and made the wifi work.  I noticed sound wasn’t working, so I futzed with that all the ways I knew how… with no luck.  No sound.  I also noticed that suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-ram didn’t work.  But at least there was a relevant grub boot menu.
• I realized I could live with the awkwardness of developing with open-source software on Windows, and sighed sadly.  Honest sadness because I like using Linux, especially Ubuntu, quite a lot.  It’s a pleasant place to work and play.  I just hate fighting with it about whether a given piece of my hardware is going to work with it.  It did very well with my thinkpad, but this Gateway… not so good so far.