… or, how I spent the last 6 months trying to get a brand new laptop to suspend / resume correctly … and am still trying.
In a previous post I talked about my initial experiences in choosing an operating system for my laptop; the saga is far from over. I’m trying to be pragmatic, but my unreasonable interest in the underdog OS keeps urging me on. Perhaps it’s my dislike for Microsoft’s decades of overwhelming dominance; why should 6 billion people have only one choice in operating system? Anyway, 100+ subscribers later, and growing, my ubuntu bug report has gathered noticeable community interest but garnered ZERO attention from Canonical or anyone else who could actually help. Over on the Linux Kernel bug report we’ve had far more commitment from Tejun, but even he has his limits.
To be fair to the Ubuntu’s bug reporting system, Launchpad.net, it has acted a focal point for sufferers of the dv5’s refusal to suspend / resume properly under Linux. Aside from a community effort in spamming the HP support teams we’ve also been able to make a small but noticeable protest on the HP forum. But the big question remains, will a fix present itself within the useful life of my laptop?
There is this notion, out there in Linux land, that there are these crack, benevolent developers floating around, just spoiling for a chance to fix someone’s hardware woes. Sadly, I’m yet to meet such coding superheroes. The truth is I’m running Vista and wishing I’d just bought a Mac. Fortunately, I see most of my computing life through the window of Google Chrome, which gives me a sense of having chosen an Open Source-friendly corporate overlord, but it’s not the same. I miss GNOME’s minimalism, the value of F-Spot, the native stability of GIMP and that beautiful, eminently useful, Bash shell.
A laptop is just not a laptop without suspend and resume.