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Jan
29
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Tim Bray is looking to switch from Mac OS/X to Linux on his laptop. Some good comments on his blog about sourcing a laptop vendor that will pre-install Linux. I haven't looked for a while but when I did a couple of years ago - your choices we're pretty limited - you'd end up with a gawky looking laptop and a gawky Linux install - but they would work together.
I'm sure things have improved. I'm currently running Ubuntu (see previous blog postings here) on a three-year old Sony Vaio (VGN-S170B) - it's a compact and light machine and fast enough for most things - the best feature is the 1280x800 display which is pretty sweet (you'd expect Sony to have decent displays) - coupled with Ubuntu's aesthetics it's turned a couple of heads and a few people have asked me what "it is" at conferences, etc. By far, Ubuntu (6.x) is the best laptop install experience I've had with Linux - pretty much everything worked out of the box (aside from getting it to play DVDs).
So is Ubuntu an OS/X killer - nah, not anytime soon - but keep watching - the gap is closing. Give it another couple of generations and I think Linux will compete favourably on the desktop - maybe then we'll see some real adoption and the availability of more apps. Maybe a Vista killer then.
