A good day for Ubuntu 8.04

After a few instances where the keyboard and mouse locked up in Ubuntu 8.04 on the $0 Laptop, I decided to write my weekly column for the Daily News' Tech Talk space entirely in Ubuntu.

I use Google Docs because I need instant access to my documents from any computer I happen to be at, and while Docs works well in Ubuntu's Firefox 3 beta, Google's Gears extension doesn't yet support Firefox 3, so I'm out of luck with offline functionality for Docs, which I sorely need because this laptop doesn't have wireless connectivity and it's not always hooked up to Ethernet.

At any rate, I've got about 10 Firefox windows open, I'm switching between them madly, doing searches, writing, and generally beating the hell out of the keyboard and touchpad (I didn't connect the USB mouse today).

No crashes, no freezes. Nothing but trouble-free computing.

It's possible that the keyboard/mouse freezes were due to the somewhat precarious nature of my power connection. The kludgy DC power jack that I added to the $0 Laptop to bring it back from the dead isn't a perfect fit for the Gateway Solo 1450's power supply. And when the laptop is not on a desk, the power connector can get jostled. The battery is dead enough not to help much in this situation. I'm thinking of building a little adapter that will allow me to tighten up the power connection without resoldering the power jack, mostly because I don't think I can find one with an "exact" fit except for the original Gateway part, which I a) do have but b) can't install because there's no way I'm pulling the motherboard from this laptop.

I will be opening it up eventually to replace the PCMCIA slot, which unfortunately suffered from bent pins when a screw got lodged in there and I subsequently tried to insert a WiFi card.

In other Ubuntu 8.04 news, I've had trouble finding the Childsplay package in Ubuntu. I never bother to enable the various Universe and Multiverse options in Ubuntu's package management, but a search for Childsplay and Ubuntu told me that the children's-educational package is in the Universe. I switched the "Show:" option in Add/Remove Applications to "all open-source applications," and installed it right away. Now my daughter can use Ubuntu instead of Debian and have all of her games at the ready.

I have another short Ubuntu item coming up later this afternoon.