It's been a couple of years already since i posted my notebook's hardware specifications and my experience installing Ubuntu 7.10 'Gutsy', since then i have loyally upgraded to every new Ubuntu release, Ubuntu has been my distro of choice because HP's original concept was to actually market the nc4200 with Ubuntu so they made sure that all the hardware was 100% Linux compatible (and believe me, it still is!!)
A few months ago i upgraded the ram to 2 Gb and got a 100 Gb hard drive before upgrading to 10.10 'Maverick' and just a couple of weeks ago i upgraded the same notebook to Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' which is running perfect.
One thing i don't like from the latest Ubuntu releases is the Unity interface, it feels like a huge smart phone and i just couldn't work comfortably with it, so i kept using Gnome 2 and waited (un)patiently for Gnome 3 to be released.
When i upgraded to 11.04 i read with great pleasure that Gnome 3 was released so i happily made the necessary arrangements to upgrade to this long awaited release.
Gnome 3 is great, it's interface is a bit like Unity but you find your way around much faster... at least i do. Coming to think of it, if Gnome 3 looks and works as good or even better than Unity, why didn't Canonical stick with Gnome and saved themselves the whole work of developing Unity?
Gnome 3 is great, it's interface is a bit like Unity but you find your way around much faster... at least i do. Coming to think of it, if Gnome 3 looks and works as good or even better than Unity, why didn't Canonical stick with Gnome and saved themselves the whole work of developing Unity?
Well, there are a lot of happy Unity users too so kudos Canonical for developing another way to customize our desktop :-)
While running on 11.04 Gnome 3 was lacking a bit of performance but after upgrading to 11.10 it's performance improved a lot and G3's interface is very pleasant and user friendly, if you still want to customize Gnome 3 beyond what configuration editor allows you'll need the Gnome Tweak Tool to do so.
To sum it all up, the Oneiric Ocelot / Gnome 3 combo is great, and my notebook is a perfect example that you don't need the latest, most expensive and fastest hardware to run the latest Linux releases efficiently, so you can keep your hard-earned cash for more important things :-)
To sum it all up, the Oneiric Ocelot / Gnome 3 combo is great, and my notebook is a perfect example that you don't need the latest, most expensive and fastest hardware to run the latest Linux releases efficiently, so you can keep your hard-earned cash for more important things :-)
