Enter the Koala

I've been wanting to get away from Apple for a while. Now don't get me wrong I think their stuff is super cool but the idea of complete freedom really appeals. I've a household that has 2 iMacs, an old powerbook and a macbook. So the quest for freedom means Linux and I've chosen Ubuntu for no reason in particular. My personal machine is used for development stuff (Netbeans, Eclipse, Textmate) and the usual web surfing stuff. I also keep my music on this machine and sync it to my iPhone.
Now I tried to switch away to Interpid Ibex but found a number of problems:

1. My Microshaft Bluetooth Mouse wouldn't pair
2. Sound quality was dodgy
3. Couldn't drive my external 24 inch monitor (deal breaker)

After getting annoyed with some Snow Leopard problems (trouble loading images from sites in 10.6 but these work fine in 10.5), I decided to try again with the latest Ubuntu, Karmic Koala.

My initial findings were really positive, the install process was easy as always, and relatively quick even compared to Snow Leopard. The bluetooth mouse paired without incident and I was really impressed with the look and feel. The number of free software packages is outstanding and really I haven't been able to find anything that I'm missing.

However, my poor old Macbook (mid 2007 model) can't push the pixels required for the external monitor even when turning off the native display. This is a blocker for me as I need the extra screen real estate with my failing eyesight. Another small issue is that while sound plays out of the inbuilt speakers, it wouldn't play from a headphones or line out to external speakers. I'm sure with a little digging I could find a solution for that but without the graphical power to use my extra monitor I'm going to have to go back to Apple.

This being said I feel that Karmic Koala is totally awesome and I'd happily move to it if my hardware would do the job. Given PC prices are cheap in Oz at the moment, I might consider getting a box and using that as my main machine. (PS I blogged this from Karmic and felt totally free while doing it).