2009/3/2 Rowan <rowa...@googlemail.com>:

Yes, the instructions that Sean and LC provided should get you back online. Of course you could then install more updates that break it again, and so you'd need to go through the procedure again. It should take only about 1 min once you have got your head around the commands.

Pretty much all laptops these days are "designed for vista", and most linux vendors simply buy those laptops and rebrand/reinstall on them to get a more acceptable solution.

Of course things are getting better. Canonical and others are testing hardware and providing feedback both to western distributors/manufacturers and the original equipment manufacturers in the far east. Things are a lot better these days than they were a few years ago.

Some of us were in a Sony store recently and one person put a bootable Ubuntu linux USB stick in one of the display Sony laptops. It booted up and everything we tested worked, straight out of the box. Now I'm not saying everyone should go out and buy Sony kit, but in the past Sony laptops had been somewhat troublesome in getting working in Linux. To be able to boot one off a usb stick (or CD/DVD) in a store and find _everything_ work is quite a mean feat. I'd say it's only going to get better as companies like Canonical, Novell and Red Hat test and certify kit.

But then I'm a "glass half full" kinda guy.

Cheers, Al.