In the comments to the article I wrote about running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on a Gateway MX7626, I added that my friend who owns the laptop had “upgraded” to Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 4 to try and fix a problem with intermittent sound under Feisty. The initial upgrade did work and her sound functioned properly. I talked to her again last night and she is giving up on running Ubuntu beta software and is going back to Fiesty.

After the initial upgrade everything worked. She wanted to check out Compiz-Fusion and that required further upgrades which she did. Sound still worked but Compiz kept randomly freezing her system. I don’t just mean freezing X so that a CTRL-ALT-Backspace would have recovered. I mean locking the system up hard. When Compiz worked, though, it was impressive. She found that it was far more impressive visually than the 3D effects in Windows Vista. I had read the same in

Anyway… as upgrades became available she applied them religiously. The only problem, of course, was that she was running development code. The last upgrade broke wireless and wifi is her main way of connecting to the internet. To her that made the system just about unusable. So… it’s back to Feisty, sound bug and all.

Is she upset she tried Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 4? Not at all. She told me she likes to push things to the limit and doesn’t mind breaking her system in the process. Me, well… I need my systems to be reliable. I never recommend running beta or development code and I never try it on a system I care about.

Am I down on Gutsy? Not at all. It’s a work in progress and we knew that going in. It looks very promising. It’s just not ready for prime time yet. Hopefully by October it will be.

Original post by Caitlyn Martin