OSNews

It seems to me he went about his little "trial" in the wrong way. People ordering Ubuntu Dells are going to at least understand some of the limitations (which aren't really limitations - see the usual mp3, DVD rant) that are thoughtfully and well engineered around.

The lack of an option for the synaptic touchpad is an actual shortcoming, however I've never had a problem with accidentally launching applications using my Toshiba M2. Maybe we just use them differently.

I'm also not really sure what "To get the computer to recognize my Kodak camera and Apple iPod, I had to reboot it several times" implies ... if you plug something in, it's either recognised or not; if the software that does the recognising is hit and miss then there are bigger issues than playing your videos!

"When it did find the iPod, it wasn’t able to synchronize with it." - you'll have that problem on Windows too, without iTunes (yes I'm aware there are 3rd party applications, but come on, the guy was put off by a helpful codec installer, I doubt he uses anything but iTunes for his iPod).

While I may have found the review a little poor, it does provide a great resource for focusing efforts. This is a "normal" user in every sense of the word - the sort that we sit here and rant about all the time. He just wants to get on with things, and has provided a list of what's important to him. That is the one serious strength that will come from big hardware manufacturers shipping a non-Windows OS - "normal" user feedback, something sorely needed to polish applications, control panels, system services and how things work. You just can't get that sort of feedback from us geeks who quite like the quirkiness of their daily OS.