(Continued from Highway to Dell, part three.) Before buying the Dell Inspiron1525 I did some research and I found a thread about PPP problems with Ubuntu on the machine. I sent a PM to the author of the post and asked of his/her experiences. I got this reply (quoted with permission):
I am no longer using Ubuntu 7.10 on this notebook. I converted to Fedora 8, have not yet returned, and do not plan to until the 8.04 release. Fedora functions beautifully in an unprecedented manner. My primary issue with Ubuntu was power management, which is a complete wreck. The screen saver, for example, would activate only sporadically. To no surprise, hibernation and sleep never functioned, and I would lose sessions consistently upon reactivation. Not that this situation is unique, but, on the other hand, Fedora 8 has managed to execute power management flawlessly and I have maintained highly stable uptimes of up to two weeks. I would highly recommend its installation on this particular model, as I have experienced virtually no drawbacks.
Ubuntu works fine for me, but if you can’t get Ubuntu to work properly it sounds like you might want to try Fedora!
Update Continued on Highway to Dell, part five.